BART SPICER – The Dark Light. Carney Wilde #1. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1949. Bestseller Mystery, digest-sized paperback, date?

   Carney Wilde gets hired to find a missing preacher, a Reverand Kimball of the Church of Shining Light. A church of Kimball’s own founding.

   Kimball’s gone awol, and no one seems to know where he could have gone.

   As soon as Wilde thinks he gets a lead, a church member is killed, and then another. It begins to look like anyone with any information about Kimball’s whereabouts gets erased.

   Wilde does some good, methodical detective work, has a bit of luck, and he’s able to crack the case. Of course.

   There’s nothing too special about the story. It’s a fine mystery, solved fairly. But what really makes the book good is how good a writer Bart Spicer is. His writing is sparkling clean, his metaphors innovative, and his voice is his own. There’s no tired, rote turn of phrase. All the sentences are written beautifully, and each phrase is fresh and new, in the hardboiled way we like ’em. I’m a fan.