MELVIN L. SEVERY – The Darrow Enigma. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1904. Grant Richards, UK, hardcover, 1904. Copp Clark, Canada, hardcover, 1904 (the cover of this edition is the one shown below).

   The Darrow Enigma is narrated by an unnamed doctor, consulted by chemist and lawyer George Maitland for a bit of a nerve tonic. They become friends, for the narrator is greatly interested in science, and it is through this friendship that our anonymous physician becomes involved in the case.

   Ultimately Maitland confesses the real reason he visited the medical man is because he is the Darrow family’s physician, and Maitland has fallen for Gwen, daughter of the house, and wishes to be introduced. Needless to say Gwen is beautiful even though, whisper it quietly, she does not imprison herself in corsetry.

   Well, then, an introduction to the young lady is effected and it is while the two friends are visiting the Darrow household and Gwen is appropriately singing “In The Gloaming” as dusk falls when her father John clutches his throat, cries out he has been murdered, and dies.

   Yet there is nobody in the room other than the Darrows, Maitland and the doctor, and two other visitors. How then was it done?

   The doors into the room were closed or locked, the only open window was perhaps six inches ajar and locked in that position and John Darrow was sitting in a high-backed chair over eight feet from it in any case, plus there were no niches or cupboards or curtains behind which the unseen assassin could hide.

   Or was it suicide? Either way what was the weapon and where has it gone? To find out the police bring in three investigators: Mr. Osborne, Mr. Allen, and French-born Louis Godin, now reportedly the best detective in the U.S.

   And so begins a tale with a dab of woo woo and a touch of gothic. John Darrow had had dreams foretelling he would be murdered, as a result of which Gwen makes him a certain promise that will later cause romantic havoc.

   It is established there’s a connection to India long ago — though it is nothing to do with gems stolen from Indian temples — and Maitland steams off to pursue investigations there. After that he is off to San Francisco to find and interview a couple of Darrow’s former servants, who are Chinese and so, we might say, automatically suspect.

   There follows a series of Strange Coincidences involving Anthony and Cleopatra, leading to what can only be described as a brilliant piece of deductive reasoning — involving reading detective novels! — that puts them on the track of certain parties of interest.

   The culprit is brought to trial but is it the right person? Was the murder committed by the bizarre method the man on trial describes? What about the motive?

My verdict: First, the method employed is one that fits a clue hidden in the text, though I must say that more clues are needed so the reader can deduce the culprit. There are red herrings and side trips and everything seems to fit together very well until the final confrontation in the court room when the entire case is turned upside down.

   Thus The Darrow Enigma is a bit of a mixture, though unlike the proverbial curate’s egg, on balance I would give it a nod rather than a frown since, despite the weakness mentioned, I found this novel enjoyable enough and the weapon utilised so outrageous and yet simple that points must be awarded on that alone!

   In an aside, I was intrigued by Severy’s description of the eavesdropping device employed at an important point and consulted an electrical engineer about it. He said theoretically it was possible but the technology was not up to it at the time.

   However, invention of this gizmo is not surprising as Severy held at least 90 patents. His fictional bugging device involves a piece of burnished silver fastened to a diaphragm, a small beam of light trained on the silver being reflected onto a sensitised moving tape photographically registering movement of the diaphragm for later conversion to an ordinary record.

   Needless to say the result is a vital piece of evidence.

      Etext: http://www.freeread.com.au/ebooks/c00040.txt

[BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA] Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

SEVERY, MELVIN L(inwood) (1863-?)
      The Darrow Enigma (Dodd, 1904, hc) [George Maitland; Boston, MA] Richards, 1904.
      -Fleur-de-Lis and other stories (Boston, MA: Esoteric, 1889, hc)
      Maitland’s Master Mystery (Ball, 1912, hc) [George Maitland]
      The Mystery of June 13 (Dodd, 1905, hc) [George Maitland] Stevens, 1905.

[UPDATE] 07-23-08.  Here’s an email I received from Victor Berch this afternoon:

  Steve:

  On your blog, there was an entry for Melvin Linwood Severy taken from CFIV as 1863-?.

  I’m assuming that by now Al may have his death date and other tidbits about him. But just in case,he was born in Melrose, MA Aug. 5, 1863 and died in CA on Oct. 12, 1951. He was an engineer, musician, an inventor and author. He was married to Elizabeth Ann Flint, born in Jackson, MO.

  Most of this was verified on his passport application for travel abroad. Google has lots to say about him as an inventor. (Follow the link for one such page.)

KARIN BERNE – False Impressions.

Popular Library; paperback original, November 1986.

   From the copyright page – OK, so I’m a bit of a detective, too – aren’t we all? – it is easily deduced that “Karin Berne” is actually the Joint pseudonym of two other ladies: Sue Burnell and Michaela Karni. This is their third book; presumably the first two (Bare Acquaintances and Shock Value) also starred the “incomparable” Ellie Gordon as dedicated amateur detective.

   The “incomparable” was swiped from the front cover. If pressed, however, I guess I’d have to agree I haven’t an idea of whom I could compare Ms. Gordon to. (On the back cover Tony Hillerman suggests Kate Fansler, but I think Ellie is more down-to-earth than what I remember of the snobbishly academic Ms. Fansler. Or should that be academically snobbish?)

   Ellie Gordon is divorced, but still young enough (apparently 39, but it is not altogether clear) to cause some of the chief male characters to look her way. And, no kidding, she does have charm. Or charms (usually, but not always concealed). Her previous two cases have given her a slight reputation as a detective, but not with the local Santa Fe police. (She’s visiting from California.)

   In this particular case, a local art critic is murdered, at the opening of a gallery one of Ellie’s friends is the new co-owner of. Naturally, this leads to lots of suspects, as the art critic took his job seriously. And equally naturally, there’s more to the case than that.

   This is a long book: 310 pages, to be exact. There is a lot of authentic-sounding New Mexican background to go with the mystery, plus a couple of near-fatal accidents – the second involving the rapid descent of a hot-air balloon — and occasionally one wishes for the story to pick up just a little. Still, the clues are nicely placed, and the plot thickens just in time for a rousing conclusion.

   In retrospect, one can easily identify the killer at a pair of crucial junctures. One was intended, and the other probably not — but of course I can’t tell you about either one, can I?

[UPDATE] 07-21-08.  As it so happened, this was indeed the third adventure of Ellie Gordon, and it was also her last. Nor did either co-author write another mystery under this or any other name, including their own. All three were paperback originals from Popular Library between 1985 and 1986.

   Note in passing that I called a 310 page mystery novel “long.” Times have changed since then, haven’t they?

   And, oh, one last thing. It has just occurred to me to check the Amazon sales ranking for False Impressions. As of five minutes ago, it was the 2,989,979th most popular book, which means that it’s not totally forgotten. Some sales rankings are in the 6 million range, so in a sense, it’s holding its own.

THE SECRET WAYS. Universal Pictures, 1961. Richard Widmark, Sonja Ziemann, Charles Régnier, Walter Rilla, Senta Berger, Stefan Schnabel, Hubert von Meyerinck. Based on the novel The Last Frontier by Alastair MacLean (published in the US as The Secret Ways). Screenwriter: Jean Hazlewood (Mrs. Richard Widmark). Producer: Richard Widmark. Director: Phil Karlson.

   One note about the credits before I begin the review itself. Unhappy with the way things were going, Widmark is said to have fired Karlson and directed the last few weeks of filming himself. In one sense this may have been a good idea, since Karlson later directed Dean Martin in two of the Matt Helm movies. It was his idea to go in that direction even earlier with The Secret Ways, but apparently Widmark put his foot down and said no.

   On the other hand, whichever hand was at the helm, this is not a very good movie, and in some ways it is downright bad. I have not read Alastair MacLean’s novel, but it had to have been better than the filmed version of it. If not, I submit to you that the novel would never have been published – and therefore no movie, and this review is about to disappear itself.

   It isn’t the acting – top notches should be awarded to everyone involved all the way around, starting with Widmark himself as Michael Reynolds, who’s neither a spy nor an espionage agent, but only a slightly disreputable gent forced by gambling debts to take on a task by Swiss banker Hermann Sheffler (von Meyerinck). The job? Only to rescue a charismatic political figure named Jansci (Walter Rilla) from behind the Iron Curtain.

   Posing as a journalist, Reynolds’ only lead is Jancsi’s daughter Julia (Sonja Ziemann) who has recently survived an escape attempt herself. One of the sources Reynolds uses to find Julia, by the way, is Elsa (Santa Berger), the latter an actress who proves that beautiful women can also act, Hollywood preconceptions to the contrary, which explains why most of her films were not made in this country.

   The only problem is, Julia wants to go with Reynolds back into Hungary, and Jansci himself does not want to leave. (It takes a lot of effort to reach him and eventually convince him.)

   The acting, as I said, is of high caliber, the outdoor shots (Vienna, I believe) are as authentic as they could be, and so what goes wrong? The story. Individual scenes are perfectly done. They just don’t combine together in any coherent way you can think of. Things happen, you (the viewer) wait for an explanation, and the explanation never comes.

   Reynolds get beaten up early on – so, OK, his cover is blown. He’s rescued by Elsa – and if you are male, how would you like to wake up in the morning being nuzzled by Santa Berger after being rescued by her the evening before? But why? To what purpose? Why does she have the address for Julia that he needs? Why does she give it to him? How did she happen to meet him earlier in the restaurant in the first place?

   Yeah, I know. Motivations are murky in all the good spy movies, but if MacLean’s novel was the basis for this movie, you get the idea that it far too complicated for them, and they stripped away all of the non-essentials and simply went with what was left.

   Later on, Reynolds and Jansci have been caught, drugged, beaten up by the Communist authorities, and in as sad shape as they’re in, they … Or, as they say in the vernacular, aw, come on.

   I see that I haven’t mentioned Sonja Ziemann. Slim and brunette, and her character naturally attracted to Reynolds in spite of a bad start between them, she’s quite a beauty, with a long career in the German film industry, which explains why I hadn’t heard of her before. Perhaps you have.

   I’ll close by adding some screen shots here at the end. I may have gotten into the bad habit of trying to squeeze too many of them into the reviews themselves, but in this case, they’re too good to not use them at all.

(1) Reynolds being guided by Elsa to her apartment after getting beaten up:

(2) Reynolds with Julia as they begin to realize what they are up against:

(3) Reynolds and Jansci in their interrogation room:

(4) On their way to the airport and safety!

JoANNA CARL – The Chocolate Cat Caper.

Signet paperback original; 1st printing, March 2002.

   It’s not clear to me how many murder mysteries can take place in one small town in Michigan, but that’s the only possible drawback I can see to a long successful run to this new series, just started. All of the ingredients are there: an blonde ex-trophy wife trying to restart her life, an aunt who owns a chocolate shop in a resort town along the Lake Michigan shore, assorted townspeople of various ages, character and temperament, and of course I mentioned chocolate, didn’t I?

   According to the copyright page, the author is better known as Eve K. Sandstrom, who earlier wrote the Sam & Nicky Titus series, all of which took place (if I’m not mistaken) in Oklahoma, and more recently, another series of paperback originals featuring a newspaper reporter named Nell Matthews and her boyfriend, cop Mike Svenson.

   In this book, after only a couple of days back in Warner Pier, Lee McKinney watches as an unliked (unlikable) criminal defense attorney falls to her death before a party at her home begins. The lady did not die of the fall, however — someone poisoned the platter of chocolate cats Lee’s Aunt Nettie furnished for the affair.

   Smoothly written and adeptly plotted, the book is a pleasure to read, with just enough suspects to make the mystery interesting, if not challenging. There’s a hint of romance by book’s end as well, not unexpectedly. Those of you who are primarily hard-boiled private eye fans will find the nourishment here mighty thin, but enthusiasts for cozies (you know who you are) will eat this one right up.

[UPDATE] 07-20-08.   I’ll pat myself on the back for this one, since I’m going to say that I was right. The series has been a big success. Cozy mysteries have certainly continued to be popular since I wrote this review, but it never hurts to have a solid detective story at the core, which if I’m reading my own review correctly, this one has.

   There have been eight novels in the series in seven years, not a shabby track record at all, not by anybody’s standards. All of the books below are Signet paperback originals, I believe, except for the forthcoming #8, which will be the first in hardcover. (Any earlier hardcovers are book club editions which came out after the paperbacks, but if I’m wrong about that, please let me know.)

The Chocolate Cat Caper. March 2002.
The Chocolate Bear Burglary. November 2002.
The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up. December 2003.
The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle. December 2004.

The Chocolate Mouse Trap. September 2005.
The Chocolate Bridal Bash. August 2006.
The Chocolate Jewel Case. August 2007.
The Chocolate Snowman Murders. New American Library, hardcover, September 2008.

TERROR STREET. Lippert Films (US) / Hammer Films (UK), 1953. Known as 36 Hours in the UK. Dan Duryea, Elsy Albiin, Ann Gudrun (Gudrun Ure), Eric Pohlmann, John Chandos, Kenneth Griffith. Story & screenplay: Steve Fisher. Director: Montgomery Tully.

   This is one of several (if not many) joint British-American productions in which a single star was imported from the US (Dan Duryea, of course, in this case) to make a movie, often a crime film, on the cheap in England, with the rest of cast consisting of only British and European actors and actresses.

   Two box sets of these Hammer Film Noirs, as they’re called, have been issued so far. On the basis of Terror Street, and the only one in either set that I’ve seen, I’d say that the emphasis is on the cheap. I can’t say in what way, exactly. Maybe it was only poorly done, leaving me with little more to say. (But of course I will.)

   Let me tell you about the story first. Dan Duryea plays an American flier names Rogers who marries a Norwegian girl (played by Elsy Albiin) he meets in England after the war, and they settle down there. When he’s called back to the States for some sort of training program, they have their first fight. Three months having turned into a year without hearing from her, he goes AWOL and heads back to England to see her and to learn why she’s cut off all contact with him

   And guess what. She opens the door to her apartment to find him waiting there, he’s clunked on the head from behind, and he wakes up to find her shot to death beside him, his gun (and the murder weapon) in his hand.

   Not waiting for the police to arrive for them to not believe his story, he heads out on the lam – and straight into the arms of Jenny Miller (Ann Gudrun) who works in a charity kitchen, which may help to explain why she takes him on as a charity case of her own.

   This is not a detective story – we the viewers have already seen the killer do the deed, although of course we do not know why – nor, believe it or not, is it much of a suspense yarn, even though that’s the gimmick that’s meant to keep the story moving: Rogers has only 36 hours before his superiors learn that he’s gone, having smuggled himself into England without their knowledge or permission.

   In those 36 hours, his quest is not only to find the killer and clear himself, but to discover why the long-distance romance with his wife broke up so badly. (Not realizing in the meantime that Jenny is becoming more and more important to him, and vice versa, only I think she realizes it first.) Various sleazy types try to stop them.

   A true noirish situation, right? It was concocted by a writer who started his career writing for the pulp magazines, but this time, nothing that happens seems to ring true, and Duryea appears almost too tired and out of sync to pull off the role he’s to play here, that of both hero and victim. (In his early days of film-making, as you probably need not be told, Duryea was usually a villain.)

   It is hard to say otherwise what goes wrong. The sets are cheap but for the most part, not that cheap, and there is plenty of exterior shooting that provides a glimpse of the non-touristy areas of London in the early 1950s.

   Other than Duryea, the actors are rather stolid folk, with only Ann Gudrun, who was born in Scotland, showing much spark. She was only 5 foot 3, I’m told, but she plays her role with a restrained combination of wistfulness and strength. (In this regard, I wish I had another photo to show you, one without the tears, but so be it.)

   Elsy Albriin is pretty without being beautiful, and if she’d been given a longer role, maybe some of the stiffness she shows early on would have worn away. (She did not have a very long career in either TV or the movies, especially in English-speaking roles.)

   One last generalization, then, and I think it applies here as well. Whenever I watch a movie and all I see are actors standing on a soundstage, that’s when I know when neither the story nor the players has any kind of hold on me. No mesmerizing movie-time spells this time. While in no sense did I find it disastrously bad, Terror Street was largely a disappointment for me.

ANTHONY GILBERT – The Black Stage.

Penguin, UK, paperback reprint, 1955. Hardcover first edition: Collins Crime Club, 1945. US edition: Smith & Durrell, hc, 1946. Also published as: Murder Cheats the Bride, Bantam #138, pb, 1948.

   Between 1936 and 1974 there were, by my count, 50 recorded adventures of a slightly seedy, badly dressed and deliberately vulgar barrister detective named Arthur Crook, of which total this is one. The author, Anthony Gilbert, is described thusly on the back cover of the 1955 British paperback I happen to have:

    “Little is known about the author except that his books are among the most popular stories written today…”

   Of course we know better now, but it’s remarkable that the secret was kept a secret for so long. Anthony Gilbert was in real life a lady named Lucy Beatrice Malleson (1899-1973), and she has a whole string of other novels to her credit, not all criminous, both under this pen name and two or three others.

   The earliest of the Crook stories were never published in the US, but after some point in the early 1940s, all of them seem to have been. Why was he called Crook? What a delightful deceit!

   I’ve not read too many of them, and none recently, but I think The Black Stage fits the general overall pattern. Gilbert allows the events leading the inevitable murder to build up gradually, letting the characters (sans Crook) have full rein over their actions and letting the reader in on all of their possible motives, until at last the deed is done. In The Black Stage, that’s on page 74. (The lights had gone out immediately before, and when they are restored someone is standing with a gun in her hand over a body on the floor.) Crook is not met until page 94 (out of 219 in all), having been hired to represent the interests of Anne Vereker, the young woman being held for trial.

   Which means, to Crook, finding the true guilty party. Perhaps it’s true in other books in the series, but there’s no courtroom theatrics in this book, only – toward the end – a reconstruction of the crime, designed solely to confuse the real killer into identifying him or herself.

   Somewhat earlier, on page 148, Crook confides to his assistant that he knows who the killer is. If this had been an Ellery Queen novel, it would have been a terrific spot to have placed a “Challenge to the Reader.” Which I would have failed, which I almost always do, and in this case, shame on me.

   You might be wondering if the 74 pages of preliminary action were at all boring. No, absolutely not. Not at all.

   Each of the characters in the drama is wonderfully drawn, and with the widow about to marry a man who is so obviously only looking out for himself (and the woman’s diamonds), and not the others living at Four Acres who would be her heirs or who depend so greatly on Tessa Goodier – stop and take a breath, Steve – it is clear almost from the beginning who the victim will be.

   The anticipation only grows and grows, in other words. The ensuing events and the subsequent investigation of the crime is, believe it or not, marginally less interesting – the actions and behavior of the participants less well described. (The author was trying, I believe, to make a relatively simply crime more complex and complicated than it needed to be, but if the middle events were not part of the story, then of course the book would have been, from anyone’s point of view, something less in length than a novel.)

   But I love maps in crime novels (and there is one) and re-creations of crimes (of which I have already mentioned there is one also), so all is not lost, and in fact, much is regained.

   One is only left to wonder in the end, then, whether the RAF officer Anne Vereker met after the war on the train she’s taking back to her home in the English countryside will manage to find her again. Could it be that now that the war is over, that class status will no longer make a difference to them?

   (Not that she may even remember him, but it was he, in the only other part of the story where he comes in again, who recommended Arthur Crook to her cousin to act in her defense. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?)

PETER ROBINSON – Piece of My Heart. William Morrow, hardcover, May 2006. Paperback edition: Harper, April 2007.

   Robinson’s latest DCI Banks mystery skillfully alternates between a 1969 investigation into the murder of a young woman at a rock concert by DI Stanley Chadwick and the present-day investigation by Banks into the murder of a journalist who was working on a project involving a band, the Mad Hatters, connected to the earlier investigation.

   Banks has moved back into his restored cottage which is now outfitted with high-end audio and video equipment from his late brother’s apartment, is adjusting to a new, ambitious boss, is still friendly with but no longer dating DI Annie Cabot, and displays his usual mix of thorough professionalism and stubborn independence that has always marked his investigative style.

   And once again brings things to a successful conclusion. Another entertaining entry in a long-running, well-developed series.

MARGARET COEL – Eye of the Wolf. Berkley: hardcover, September 2005; paperback, September 2006.

   I don’t find myself compulsively keeping up with this series, but the Indian reservation setting continues to interest me, even though I find the series suffers from the too predictable relationship of lawyer Vicky Holden and Jesuit priest, Father O’Malley.

   Vicky is one of those bruised women who populate the current mystery scene, with a painful personal life that is less interesting than the case or cases that engage their professional attention.

   I suppose this is intended to give them some of the density of the mainstream novel, but the convention is vastly overused and I think it’s time to give it a rest.

   In case you’ve been wondering, I haven’t had much time in recent weeks to work on the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and I’ll have to see if I can’t do something about it. (Al supplies the basic data; I add the short biographies, images and links.) This grouping of newest entries is based on books in my own collection, and will be appearing soon in Part 29 of the Addenda.

ANTHONY, EVELYN. Pseudonym of Evelyn Bridget Patricia Ward-Thomas, 1928- . Born in London, England; married Michael Ward-Thomas, 1955. Author of many historical romances early in her career before turning to romantic suspense. Some 25 books falling into the latter category are included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

      The Doll’s House. Bantam, UK, hc, 1992; Harper, US, hc, 1992. Add setting: England. [An agent pensioned off at the end of the Cold War sets up a syndicate of ruthless professionals up for hire.]

KENNEY, CHARLES (C.) 1950- . Began his writing career as a reporter for the Boston Globe; it was not until nearly 20 years later that he published his first crime thriller. Besides the two titles listed below, both included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, Kenney has also written The Last Man (Ballantine, 2001).

      _Code of Vengeance. Ballantine, pb, 1997. See Hammurabi’s Code.

      Hammurabi’s Code. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1995. Add: Reprinted as Code of Vengeance (Ballantine, 1997). Setting: Boston, MA. [When a liberal Boston councilman is murdered, investigative reporter Frank Cronin begins to learn the truth about him.]
      The Son of John Devlin. Ballantine, hc, 1999. Setting: Boston, MA. A Harvard University graduate goes undercover to investigate corruption in the Boston Police Department, hoping to clear his father’s name and restore his reputation.]

LEE, RACHEL. Pseudonym of Susan Civil-Brown & Christian Brown. Under this pen name, the author of several romantic suspense novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, as well as others published after 2000. Add the title below:

      Thunder Mountain. Silhouette, US, pb, 1994. [Silhouette Shadows #37.] Setting: Wyoming. [Mercy Kendrick is trapped on Thunder Mountain with a Native American hermit she can’t trust and men trying to track her down and kill her.]

PAULL, JESSYCA. Joint pseudonym of Julia Perceval & Rosaylmer Burger. Under this pen name, the authors of three books in a spy thriller series called “Passport to Danger.” Series characters in each: British agent Mike Thompson and his American fiancée, Tracy Larrimore.

      Destination: Terror. Award, pb, 1968. [#2.] Add settings: New York City, Luxembourg. [Tracy is kidnapped and shipped to the headquarters of the sadistic leader of an espionage ring.]

      Passport to Danger. Award, pb, 1968. [#1.] Setting: Paris. [Danger follows Tracy everywhere in Paris, where she is mistaken for a spy.]

      Rendezvous with Death. Award, pb, 1969. [#3.] Setting: Caribbean. “Two rival powers on a Caribbean island use a honeymoon couple as bait in a cat and mouse game of international espionage.”

S. S. VAN DINE – The Benson Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926. Hardcover reprints include: A. L. Burt, no date (shown); Gregg Press, 1980. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #333, 1945 (shown); Fawcett Gold Medal T2006, no date (ca.1968); Scribner’s, 1983 (shown).

   Narrator ‘Van’ Van Dine originally met Philo Vance at college and is now not only a close friend but also his full-time legal and financial advisor. He is thus on the spot to record cases in which Vance becomes involved.

   Vance is rich and cultured, possessing many beautiful and rare examples of art and artefacts from various eras and continents. He easily out-Wimseys Wimsey, what with addressing people as ‘Old dear’ and constantly talkin’ ragin’ nonsense, often dropping French or German into conversations with an occasional bit of Latin for variety, not to mention quoting luminaries such as Milton, Longfellow, Cervantes, and Rousseau as well as Spinoza and Descartes. But it’s all a front, of course.

   John Markham, DA for NY County, arrives at Vance’s flat while Van and Vance are discussing business and announces wealthy broker Alvin Benson has been murdered. Alvin’s brother Major Anthony Benson has asked Markham to take charge, and Markham had promised Vance he would take him along on his next important investigation. It seems the authorities were casual about protocol as well as crime scenes, because not only do both Vance and Van tag along but they are also present at several interrogations.

   At one point Vance produces a list of suspects based upon reasoning from available information and physical evidence. The only snag is they are innocent. It is a demonstration of his conviction that “The truth can be learned only by an analysis of the psychological factors of a crime and an application of them to the individual”.

   Who then is the culprit? The actress Muriel St Clair, in whom the dead man had taken more than a passing interest? Her fiance Captain Philip Leacock, he of the hasty temper and jealous disposition? Major Benson, given the brothers did not get along? What about Mrs Anna Platz, Alvin’s housekeeper, who seems to be hiding something, or the precious and impecunious Leander Pfyfe, a close friend of the deceased?

My verdict: Some will find Vance’s insistence on keeping the identity of the murderer secret irritating but given he had it sussed out within an hour or two of visiting the crime scene, one can see why.

   To be fair, he all but takes Markham’s hand and leads him to the culprit. There are clues aplenty, and to my delight the author provided those much-loved and now sadly missed tidbits — a room plan, a character list, and footnotes from Van.

   Although readers may find Vance’s lit’r’y meanderin’s a bit tedious, his explanation of his psychological reasonings are interesting and convincing, although I am still not certain if the author was sending it up or using it as a genuine plot device. All in all, however, a good read with plenty of red herrings to confuse the issue.

      Etext:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200341h.html

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]  Mary sent me this review back in September of  ’07, along with a backlog of others. (Sorry, Mary!) I’ll get more of them online here soon, but after posting Bill Loeser’s recent comments about the same book, I thought I ought to pull this one out of the queue and give it some priority, the idea being that two independent views of a book are better than one, and certainly far better than none. (Where else has The Benson Murder Case been reviewed in the last 10 or 20 years?)

   That’s a rhetorical question. You needn’t answer it.

   Based on an overall favorable review in Barzun & Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime, I read Anne Hocking’s Death Disturbs Mr. Jefferson (1950). Solicitor Jefferson is found dead in bed, and it soon becomes apparent that someone had put a ringer in his bottle of sleeping pills.

   At first, Jefferson seems to be an estimable character – he had no use for people and lives only for his glass collection – but it is discovered that he has been supporting his hobby/habit by blackmail on the basis of documents entrusted to him professionally.

   At this point the reader is all on the side of the murderer. In a good touch, Ms. Hocking has overcome our misplaced running with the hare by making the culprit one of the blackmailees.

   Most of the detection is ordinary policework and elimination of suspects because they aren’t “capable” of the crime. There is little action – even the killer is collared offstage.

   Not bad, not good.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

ANN HOCKING – Death Disturbs Mr. Jefferson. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1950. Geoffrey Bles, UK, hardcover, 1951.

CHIEF INSPECTOR WILLIAM AUSTEN. Author: Anne Hocking, pseudonym of Mona Messer Hocking, (1890-1966).

Ill Deeds Done (n.) Bles 1938 [England]
The Little Victims Play (n.) Bles 1938 [England]
Old Mrs. Fitzgerald (n.) Bles 1939 [England]  US title: Deadly Is the Evil Tongue.
So Many Doors (n.) Bles 1939 [Cyprus]
The Wicked Flee (n.) Bles 1940 [England]
Miss Milverton (n.) Bles 1941 [England]  US title: Poison Is a Bitter Brew
Night’s Candles (n.) Bles 1941 [Cyprus]
One Shall Be Taken (n.) Bles 1942 [England]
Nile Green (n.) Bles 1943 [Cairo]  US title: Death Leaves a Shining Mark.

Six Green Bottles (n.) Bles 1943 [England]
The Vultures Gather (n.) Bles 1945 [England]
Death at the Wedding (n.) Bles 1946 [England]
Prussian Blue (n.) Bles 1947 [England]  US title: The Finishing Touch.
At “The Cedars” (n.) Bles 1949 [England]
Death Disturbs Mr. Jefferson (n.) Bles 1951 [London]
Mediterranean Murder (n.) Evans 1951 [Spain; Ship]  US title: Killing Kin.
The Best Laid Plans (n.) Bles 1952 [England]

There’s Death in the Cup (n.) Evans 1952 [England]
Death Among the Tulips (n.) Allen 1953 [England]
The Evil That Men Do (n.) Allen 1953 [England]
And No One Wept (n.) Allen 1954 [England]

Poison in Paradise (n.) Allen 1955 [England]
A Reason for Murder (n.) Allen 1955 [England]
Murder at Mid-Day (n.) Allen 1956 [Spain]
Relative Murder (n.) Allen 1957 [England]
The Simple Way of Poison (n.) Allen 1957 [Oxford]

Epitaph for a Nurse (n.) Allen 1958 [England]  US title: A Victim Must Be Found.
Poisoned Chalice (n.) Long 1959 [England]
To Cease Upon the Midnight (n.) Long 1959 [England]
The Thin-Spun Life (n.) Long 1960 [England]
Candidates for Murder (n.) Long 1961 [England]
He Had to Die (n.) Long 1962 [England]
Murder Cries Out (n.) Long 1968 [England]