Thu 12 May 2011
Archived Review: VIRGINIA RATH – An Excellent Night for a Murder.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Reviews[5] Comments
VIRGINIA RATH – An Excellent Night for a Murder. Doubleday, Doran & Co. / Crime Club, hardcover, 1937.
All things being equal, I’m willing to bet that if I weren’t here to tell you otherwise, you’d have identified Rocky Allan as one of those rough-and-tumble cowboy stars who starred in a long list of those well-remembered B-western moving pictures of a generation or so back.
And while he’s actually the detective hero in a series of mystery novels written by author Virginia Rath, to tell the truth, you’d still not be so very far from being wrong.
In this book he’s the sheriff of a small country town called Brookdale, which I gather is somewhere in California. Even though this is his fifth recorded adventure, I seem also to have gotten the impression that he’s not been the sheriff there for very long. I don’t know why I’m not sure of these things, but it’s obvious that some research into his earlier cases seems warranted. I’ll have to report in with more information on this later.
As the story opens, a stranger to Brookdale is taken in by the Graydons, the biggest name in that part of the country, but he’s quickly thrown out, and on one of the rainiest nights of the year. He makes his way into town on foot, and he wakes up dead the next morning in his hotel bedroom. He was a blackmailer, as you might have guessed by now, and a very cooperative one at that, leaving so many victims behind like this to serve as murder suspects.
The murder investigation is a fairly predictable one, but Rath does a surprisingly fine job in utilizing the folksy, small-town way of living both as background and as a general atmosphere. Surprisingly, for when was the last time you heard the name Virginia Rath mentioned in conversation, even with a fellow aficionado?
Facts are realistically uncovered in haphazard fashion, too often in the wrong order, and there’s a good twist or two hidden in the end, somewhere midst the clutter caused by having a few too many characters on hand.
Don’t get the idea that Rath writes only of a hick sheriff in a one-horse town, however. Rocky Allan is still a young guy, and he’s sharper than that. And while his meeting with Pearl in a San Francisco hotel room is downplayed, it’s quite definitely a highlight of the book.
Bio-Bibliographic Data:
A biographic profile of Virgina Rath can be found on the Ziff-Davis “Fingerprint Mystery” page of the primary Mystery*File website (follow the link and scroll down).
From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:
RATH, VIRGINIA (Anne McVay), 1905-1950. Pseudonym: Theo Durrant.
* Ferryman, Carry Him Across! (n.) Doubleday 1936 [Sheriff Rocky Allan; California; Academia]
* Murder on the Day of Judgment (n.) Doubleday 1936 [Sheriff Rocky Allan; California]
* The Anger of the Bells (n.) Doubleday 1937 [Sheriff Rocky Allan; California]
* An Excellent Night for Murder (n.) Doubleday 1937 [Sheriff Rocky Allan; California]
* The Dark Cavalier (n.) Doubleday 1938 [Michael Dundas; San Francisco, CA]
* Murder with a Theme Song (n.) Doubleday 1939 [Sheriff Rocky Allan; Michael Dundas; California]
* Death of a Lucky Lady (n.) Doubleday 1940 [Michael Dundas; San Francisco, CA]
* Death Breaks the Ring (n.) Doubleday 1941 [Michael Dundas; California]
* Epitaph for Lydia (n.) Doubleday 1942 [Michael Dundas; San Francisco, CA]
* Posted for Murder (n.) Doubleday 1942 [Michael Dundas; San Francisco, CA]
* A Dirge for Her (n.) Ziff-Davis 1947 [Michael Dundas; San Francisco, CA]
* A Shroud for Rowena (n.) Ziff-Davis 1947 [Michael Dundas; San Francisco, CA]
DURRANT, THEO. Pseudonym of William A. P. White, Terry Adler, Eunice Mays Boyd, Florence Ostern Faulkner, Allen Hymson, Cary Lucas, Dana Lyon, Lenore Glen Offord, Virginia Rath, Richard Shattuck, Darwin L. Teilhet & William Worley.
* The Marble Forest (n.) Knopf 1951 [California]
* The Big Fear (n.) Popular Library 1953. See: The Marble Forest (Knopf 1951)
May 13th, 2011 at 8:07 am
You did it again. I was all set to do some posts on Rath’s books and you beat me to it. But I may never get to do it. Or post anything on my blog for a long time. Blogger has been unavailable for over 15 hours with no sign of what’s wrong or when they will fix whatever is wrong. No news sites are covering this either. The price of using Google’s services has
In any case, I started Ferryman Take Him Across! – what a great title – and absolutely loathed it. Rocky and his wife talk of nothing but talk of going to a masquerade dance in a high school gym in the first chapter. The second chapter is a women’s bridge party filled with gossip about a woman who will end up murdered later (i only know that from the blurb) and they talk insipidly of dresses and other bridge party topics. I shut the book and stuffed it back in a box, I doubt I’ll ever return.
Previously I’ve mentioned that Jacques Barzun likes to disparage certain women mystery writers as being “feminine” and other chauvinistic things. Well, here is a perfect example of “feminine writing” that for the first time ever annoyed and bored me. I never thought it would happen to me.
May 14th, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Well, maybe FERRYMAN got better as it went along, or maybe it didn’t. I used to force myself to finish anything I started, but that was when I was younger and I didn’t know better.
Or maybe Rath got better as a writer. From my review of the book (which is almost all I remember of it), I’d say that she did. Or maybe, John, she, the type of books she wrote, and you will never get along.
May 15th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
I was probably in a lousy mood that day. That’s most likely the truest reason for being so hard on Virginia Rath. I really am a more catholic reader and can enjoy most everything I sample.
I probably should give it another try. Maybe a day when I’m hepped up on sugar and caffeine and the sun is shining and birds are tweeting merrily away.
January 14th, 2015 at 1:53 pm
‘Sheriff in a small town’ this reminds me of James Garner in ‘They Only Kill Their Masters’ –a movie adaptation of a detective series which later enjoyed TV movie installments starring Andy Griffith. No idea what it was called though.
January 14th, 2015 at 2:19 pm
From IMDb. Some of these are available on DVD, but I don’t believe all of them are. I’ll have to look into it. I haven’t thought of these in years.
“Adams of Eagle Lake” …. Sheriff Sam Adams (2 episodes, 1975)
– Treasure Chest Murder (1975) TV episode …. Sheriff Sam Adams
– Home Is the Coward (1975) TV episode …. Sheriff Sam Adams
Deadly Game (1977) (TV) …. Police Chief Abel Marsh
The Girl in the Empty Grave (1977) (TV) …. Police Chief Abel Marsh