Fri 1 Aug 2025
Archived Mystery Review: MARJORIE BONIFACE – Murder As an Ornament.
Posted by Steve under Reviews1 Comment
MARJORIE BONIFACE – Murder As an Ornament. Mabel Wickley/Sheriff Odom #1. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1940.
A Christmas story, taking place on a Texas dude ranch facing the Rio Grande, When a body is found hanging from a tree on Christmas Eve, everyone thinks it is suicide, until the doctor discovers that the woman was actually poisoned first.
While Sheriff Hiram Odom is the detective in this case, the calm, seemingly slow-witted man does not do too much to produce the killer. This is a “little did I know” kind of story, but catching me by surprise, hidden in the nooks and crannies, are a few clever clues.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.4, March 1988.
NOTE: Two later books in the series appear to be Venom in Eden (1942), and Wings of Death (1946)
August 1st, 2025 at 10:59 pm
There is not a lot of information online about the author. One page, from which I obtained the photo of the cover, is
https://furrowedmiddlebrow.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-americans-bs-4-of-4.html
I wish I’d said more about the book when I put together this short review. It’s hardly a book intended for hardboiled readers, but other than that I seem to have thought it had possibilities. (I do not remember it at all.)
The reviewer for Kirkus liked it maybe a bit less than I did:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/marjorie-boniface/murder-as-an-ornament/