DAVID FROME – Mr. Pinkerton Has the Clue.   Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1936. Popular Library #26, paperback, 1944; Popular Library 60-2234,  paperback, date?

   David Frome is a pseudonym of Zenith Brown, who also wrote under the name Leslie Ford. As with her Ford novels, the Frome books deal with polite middle-class people to whom bloodless murder is an unwelcome but speedily dealt-with intrusion. Unlike the Ford novels, which are distinctly American, the Frome stories are distinctly British; many readers have no inkling that the author was not English but an American living in Great Britain who had great ability at adopting the English idiom.

   Mr. Evan Pinkerton would be a pathetic character were it not for his deductive abilities. He is described mainly as “little” and “grey” — “little grey forehead,” “little grey man,” even “grey little spine.” His life has been “mostly drab and often miserable,” and now that he has inherited a substantial sum from his wife, he has trouble believing he really has money and continues to live parsimoniously.

   As this novel opens, Mr. Pinkerton is going on a holiday to Bath, England. Before very long he has violated his parsimony by engaging a room in an expensive hotel, led there by his curiosity about Dame Ellen Crosby, a famed actress.

   Mr. Pinkerton observes quarrels and tensions developing among Dame Crosby’s crippled brother, Major Peyton; the major’s beautiful daughter, Cecily; Cecily’s plain and envious sister, Gillian; Cecily’s fianc6, the arrogant Vardon Crosby; Mrs. Fullaway, landlady at the hotel; and the mysterious Miss Rosa Margolious, a guest who seems always to materialize at the wrong moment.

   When Dame Ellen is found murdered in her bed. it is no surprise — largely due to the author’s unfortunate “had-I-but-known” approach. Pinkerton, who has often assisted Scotland Yard, is called in on the case by Chief Constable Thicknesse (who investigates along with his spaniel, the macabrely named Dr. Crippen). And detect Pinkerton does, in his mild-mannered and affable way, with the usual satisfactory results.

   This novel and the others in the Pinkerton series — The Hammersmith Murders (1930), Mr. Pinkerton Goes to Scotland Yard ( 1934), and Mr. Pinkerton at the Old Angel (1939), among others — will probably not suit the reader who likes his heroes larger than life. It is possible, however, to identify with Evan Pinkerton’s frequent embarrassment and bumbling ways; and the plots and settings are vintage British mystery.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.