Search Results for 'Death in a little town'


CORNELIA PENFIELD – After the Town Clerk Died. Typed manuscript with corrections made by hand. No date. Unpublished.

CORNELIA PENFIELD

Prologue: Cornelia Penfield was the author of two published works of detective fiction, both of which have recently been reviewed on this blog: After the Deacon Was Murdered and After the Widow Changed Her Mind. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend going back to read the earlier reviews (follow the links) before continuing:

   The Internet is wonderful. It’s terrific. It took only a few days to trace down the family of Mrs. Cornelia Penfield Lathrop. She died in 1938, and a son Robert died several years ago, but Marilyn Lathrop, Cornelia’s daughter-in-law, is still alive and well. She lives two towns over to the east of me, and I’m not sure exactly what she thought when she opened the letter I wrote her, asking if she indeed was who I thought she was. (No, I have that wrong. I wrote the letter to Robert Lathrop, as the telephone is in his name, and I wasn’t sure if it were Robert the son, still living, or perhaps Robert, a grandson.)

   In any case, she wrote back, saying yes, Cornelia was her mother-in law, and yes, she’d welcome a chance to talk to me on the phone. I called not too late the following evening, hoping to set up a time when we could talk longer. What happened instead was a conversation about Cornelia Penfield that lasted at least 30 minutes. I no longer remember whether I received the answer in the initial letter that she wrote me or in that conversation, but the question that I was simply itching to ask, given the first suitable opportunity, was “Do you know why the third book was never published?”

   What I didn’t expect, whenever it was that the question was asked, or at least not realistically, was the reply that manuscript still existed, and would I be interested in seeing it sometime? I think my mind went blank right about then, but you know what my reply had to have been.

   I went to see it, had a chance to have another lengthy conversation with Marilyn Lathrop and (which I never really anticipated) I was allowed to borrow it. I have kept it far too long. There were some extenuating circumstances, including a number of unexpected events that intervened and kept me from starting to read it, but I think the real reason I put off reading it for so long was that for me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I was simply relishing the anticipation much longer than I should have.

   As to the answer to the question as to why the book was rejected – and this is the family’s version of what happened – is that the publisher said it “wasn’t seamy enough.” When we get to the review proper, I’ll go into that, but later on Marilyn partially reconsidered, saying that perhaps “seamy” wasn’t the word that was used, but even if it wasn’t, it was close.

   What I didn’t realize right away, though, is that the title of the manuscript I have is NOT the title of the third book that was promised, and there is nothing in the story itself to suggest the title was changed, there being no doctor in the tale that I have.

   So there is a fourth novel, and it is still missing, and unless someone in the Lathrop family remembers something – a box or trunk never opened – we shall reluctantly have to assume that it no longer exists.

   It also seems possible that After the Town Clerk Died is a novel that was never sent to Putnam’s. It may have been that After What the Doctor Said was the one that was rejected, with the aforesaid comment attached, and that Town Clerk was abandoned before completion, almost but never quite finished.

   It is, I am sure, no longer possible to say. It is remarkable that the typed pages still exist. As a mystery, it needs some work. I’ve never tried to write a full-fledged detective novel, or even an unfledged one. Reading this, in what I’m going to continue to think of as being in the form of a rough first or second draft, gave me quite a bit of insight into the physical problems of doing so. Being sure that an event mentioned on page 233 (say) as having happened earlier on page 165, really occurred, for example, and that a clue discussed on page 198 (say) was mentioned and pointed out back on page 53.

   That’s what still needs some fixing, not a lot, and editors of detective story fiction deserve all the praise we can give them. (There are still a few of them, but not as many as before.)

   Jane Trimble, the semi-elderly genealogist who appeared in the two published books, also appears in this one, her primary focus being that of keeping her friend Gordon Burr from becoming a suspect in the death of a man in a suspicious fire. Burr is a writer who is not only having problems completing his latest book, but who is also having domestic troubles with his wife, and Jane cherishes them both.

   I don’t imagine retelling the plot in detail makes a lot of sense, as when is anyone else ever going to be able to read this as a work of detective fiction? I’ll retract a good deal of what I was going to say, and start painting things with a wider brush.

   But what I started to say still applies. Jane was hardly the detective of record in the first book at all, and it was something of a surprise to find that she appeared in the second. In the second one, Widow, she shared sleuthing duty with another character, but in this one, she is the primary detective, even to the extent that she is the one with a watchful eye out for trouble even before there is trouble to be had.

   And here lies a problem. It takes nearly 150 pages before the body of the dead man is discovered, and it takes a fairly talented mystery writer to keep the reader’s interest that long, with little or no “action” taking place. There are a lot of characters to identify, a lot of refined conversation to listen in on – this is suburban Connecticut, after all, and even in (say) 1935, the level or refinement was greater than many another part of the world.

   Once Jane’s detective activities begin in earnest, it is quite a complicated state of affairs the mystery finds itself in, and – here’s another problem – many of the clues happened or were discovered back in the earlier portion of the book when no one (but Jane) even suspected that they were clues. An alert reader might get glimpses of the essentials of the plot in its early going, but as the manuscript now stands, some strong rewriting seems to be very much necessary.

   There is a great to-do about who was where and saw what when, and even more about beards, false beards, who had one and who shaved one off and who hired someone to impersonate them who did or did not have a beard when he needed one. I may not have implied what I wanted to in that sentence. It is all very fascinating.

   Penfield’s great talent was in miniature characterization, burbling good humor, dialogue, and in the end, a kindly heart. The mystery, as in Widow, turns out to have been a minor affair, complicated by a myriad of factors, related and unrelated, but once again – with a sense of forgiveness for loose ends – it’s a charming affair that I’m glad to have had the pleasure to read. (By the way, the Town Clerk’s death is involved, but he died of natural causes, and his involvement comes only in a clever way, one that could have been known only by someone intimately involved with the problems of genealogical research, and as such, it may be a First. The entire series, in other words, and this one in particular, may be “One for the Books.”)

Postscript: I have debated for a while whether I should do this, and once again, since you’re reading this, you will know that the better argument won. Here’s a longish quote from pages 245-246, getting within a hundred pages from the end. It will give you a sense, I think, of Cornelia Penfield’s knowledge of the conventions of the mystery field, and how, as I’ve mentioned in the two previous reviews, how she liked to play around with them.

   Reviewing her evening with the Admiring Confidants, in the foggy dawn of a New York spring day, Jane felt she had not shone. How was it that fictional detectives made themselves the center of awestricken attention, summed up their findings in crisp dramatic sentences, and stated so authoritatively that the criminal must have done this and that as was clearly shown by these and those?

   How was it that invariably they enlisted the kindly and obsequious services of? (1) Scotland Yard (2) the Division of Investigation of the Department of Justice (3) the Police Department of the metropolis concerned – (Select (1), (2), or (3) giving reasons for choice and write in your own words a complete detailed description of methods employed by that organization.)

   By what magic did they also find various district attorneys, solicitors, barristers, photographers, experts in criminology and laboratory practice, reporters, butlers and valets to abet and assist the Super-Detective without wanting any reward beyond a kindly smile, who argued with him just sufficiently to point out his infallibility- and were content with being yes-men and filling about two hundred and ninety pages of escape literature?

   None of her own intense concentration and really intelligent work on the Dymchurch affair had to date earned her a darned thing — and might possibly, as Judge Whitaker had hinted, be bringing her activities suspiciously into the official limelight.

   However positive she might be that at least one of the theories so neatly worked out and counter-indexed in her notebook was a correct solution, just how was she going to submit the notebook to the Principal Official and secure his kind attention? After having, for reasons which at the time appeared to her sound, led him to believe her a romantic and muddleheaded moron?

   And coming down to her own friends from whom at least she had the right to expect some awed silent admiration, what had been their attitude?

   Merely a polite and passing interest in the least important phases of the whole affair – the beard and the altered entry – and in order to explain those she had had to battle against guppies and banal bunnies as conversational topics!

   Worse of all, Judge Whitaker upon whom she had relied for so much of encouragement and intelligent cooperation, had not only failed her utterly, but had expressed his opinion in tactful judicial terms that she was a Meddlesome Mattie, and had better let the state of Connecticut and the town of Dymchurch deal with their own affairs as they were so well equipped and prepared to do.

   â€œAh well,” said Jane, ringing the pantry service. “A bit of breakfast may chirk me up. I must hold to the thought that I am not a Super-Detective, but merely riding a hobby-horse I found grazing along the roadside: and that even so I am an unpretentious Jarrocks and not eligible to the Hunt Club: nor am I called upon to demonstrate haute école before a circus audience that thinks a balotade is probably an off-color French joke… But, all the same, if this sinister Langton person does do away with me and dispose of my body in a crematory way, won’t all the grown-ups be sorry and begin to appreciate the risk I am taking?”

   The pause-giving difficulty would be that she would not be around to hear the post-mortem regrets and to see Judge Whitaker turn her notebook pages with trembling fingers or to hear him say “Poor Jane! How little we appreciated all this clever work of hers!”

   She sipped her coffee and enjoyed one of the famous St. Crispin croissants and decided to live a while longer, Langton willing. Even though a few more deaths were needed to bring the Dymchurch quota up to a good Van Dine average.

   I’ve decided that if I’m going to do long quotes from the text, I ought to do it right. Here’s an earlier passage, from pages 35-38, in which Jane meets Don Wyckoff, a local attorney, who may or may not be representing either artist Jack Collins or his wife Julia in their upcoming divorce proceedings. As part of their conversation, some more light is shed on Jane’s detective proclivities:

   Wyckoff smiled diplomatically. “… But I can’t undertake to nurse Jack Collins all the time.”

   â€œAre you representing him or Julia in the oncoming action? Or doesn’t one ask?” Phyllis nibbled a cracker.

   â€œOne doesn’t – not at this moment.”

   â€œBut is Julia really going to carry it through, Don? I should almost think after all these years … tell the waitress no mayonnaise for me, please – just the diet dressing … I’m sorry, Don. Ethics always seem so silly among friends – professional ethics, I mean.”

   There was a slight frown on Wyckoff’s bland forehead and he addressed his next remark directly to Jane. “Judge Whitaker spoke of you as a triple A detective, Miss Trimble.”

   â€œI suppose he referred to the Gleason will case. That was simple genealogical research. Elementary.”

   â€œThe name is Wyckoff, not Watson. And I know an unfortunate lot about how much ability as well as research that sort of thing takes. Being myself mostly a digger-out of facts for others to profit by.”

   â€œOh, Don! Don’t be so ’umble. He’s in with the oldest, snootiest law firm in Tidewater, Jane – seven names and an ampersand on the door – and every one of the seven is a judge or a trustee or a receiver or something.”

   â€œExcept me and the ampersand. The only way I maintain my dignity out of office-boy hours is to keep a few clients of my own over here in Dymchurch.”

   He began to outline amusingly a case involving a farmer and his step-son. Phyllis listened with applauding phrases at the right moment. Jane divided her attention between the table in the alcove – as yet unclaimed – and his bland face and pleasant voice. She had rather a prejudice against young lawyers, so given as a rule to screening their uncertainties by bumptious pronouncements and bristling authority. Wyckoff was of another sort. He had an adaptable geniality that hinted of the politician – of experience in gaining the confidence of folk of all degrees. A tactful young man, she concluded, who had been about a bit, who was sure of himself but not irritatingly so, and who might will be exactly what her beloved old neighbor, Judge Whitaker had been in his green legal youth. The anecdote finished, he again referred to Jane’s detective experience.

   â€œIt’s been rather accidental and incidental,” she said. “If I ever tried real detecting, I’m afraid I’d be much more interested in a criminal’s heredity and background and other antecedents than in the crime and whodunit. In the long run, though, I suppose detection and genealogy require about the same amount of patience and imagination and experience – and luck – ”

   â€œThe ideal job of detection may,” laughed Wyckoff, “but the detectives I’ve met in real life depend principally upon a lack of delicacy and a certain flair for installing dictaphones, breaking down doors, and otherwise intruding on the private life of a sincere criminal. Not picturesque persons – and the less imagination the better. You ought to hear our local chief of police, Hal Flint, cuss out detective story detectives. So many of the young literary colonists scribble mystery novels and they keep looking Flint up and getting in his hair and asking him questions.”

   â€œAnd I suppose he replies in the same spirit as did the doctor whose dinner-partner wanted free medical advice and asked him what he did when he had a cold – he snorted at her and said ‘Same as everybody else ma’am. I cough and sneeze’ –”

   â€œExactly the way Flint feels. Routine and romance don’t team successfully. And what’s more, if your average detective has no imagination, your average criminal certainly has less. I’ve never met a master-mind, I never hope to see one – but if I do, I’ll call you in, Miss Trimble. I promise.”

   â€œThank you,” said Jane solemnly. “I’ll endeavor to cope genealogically.”

   One more quote. I hope I’m not overdoing this, but I’d like to demonstrate what I mentioned earlier about Cornelia Penfield’s knack for dialogue. Jane is talking to Mrs. Turner, the cook in the Burrs’ household. Her husband Jim is the Burr’s handyman, and Beulah is their daughter, whom they’ve been concerned about. Either I’m right, or I’m hopelessly wrong, but I think this is the way people actually talk, instead of in neat diagrammable sentences. From pages 76-77:

   â€œPerhaps I can give Mrs. Burr a few hints when she comes back,” concluded Jane. “She hasn’t, I know, the faintest idea of making it hard for you.”

   â€œI know she hasn’t. That’s why I’ve kep’ my mouth shut and tried to do my best. Of course I never thought I’d get to do housework for other folks, but we couldn’t have it nicer than we have here, with our own little house an’ all. And after stretchin’ an’ strainin’ so many years, it’s a real rest to spend somebody else’s money for a change … not but what I don’t try to manage just as close ’sif it was my own” – added Mrs. Turner conscientiously, “But Mr. and Mrs. Burr, they’ve never had to count every cent twice, and they both do like good victuals … if we only had Beulah back and Jim didn’t get upset so easy–”

   â€œAbout her?”

   â€œYes. That’s the whole trouble. Jim kep’ straight ’s string till she went off t’ New York, but people ’round here don’t give him credit for that. An’ I was hopin’ maybe if she did come home–” Mrs. Turner’s tight lip quivered – “You see, Miss Trimble, we lived out of Branford on a farm of our own when we was first married, and all the time Beulah was growin’ up we had all our own things nice. Then the bank closed in New Haven where we had our money, and the other bank foreclosed on a moggidge Jim had taken out to buy some more proputty with, and it was before they started the Home-Owners’ Loan or anything and we couldn’t beg or borrow a cent – so we lost our place and had to sell our furniture for what it’d bring – I had real nice walnut suites that had b’longed to my folks – and the best we could do was try to live with Jim’s step-uncle over Redding-way, but he’d never liked Jim – and his second wife didn’t get along with Beulah an’ we all had it pretty hard till Beulah took a notion to take her high-school cookin’ and so on seriously and get herself a job waitin’ on tables at the Tavern. She did real well with tips an’ all an’ then she found out there’d be this place for us all so we decided we’druther be independent an’ work for pay than keep on where we were … Only with Beulah gone and no relyin’ on Jim no more, I guess the Burrs is about ready to make a change. And if we haveta leave here, Jim’ll just get from bad to worse.”


In conclusion: Thanks again to Marilyn Lathrop for allowing me the use of the manuscript, and for the conversations we have had concerning her husband’s mother. Since Marilyn never knew her mother-in-law, her own knowledge is based on what Robert and other members of the family have told her over the years. Cornelia’s daughter Helen Harriet Petty is still living. She is in her late 80s, and the memories she has of her mother have been conveyed to me through Marilyn. A nephew, Fred Lathrop, is also still alive, and he has assisted me in proofreading the reviews and commentary above. He remembers her only as a young boy, recalling for the most part the years toward her death, when she was often bedridden with tuberculosis.

   My impression of Cornelia Lathrop, through these conversations, was that she was a very progressive woman, ahead of her time in many ways. Similar in nature, I believe, to Eleanor Roosevelt, a lady whom Cornelia is said to have met. Not many women in the 1920s, for example, would take her three children to live in France for well over a year without her husband, who stayed home working.

   She was always interested in the arts. Besides her brief involvement with Broadway, previously mentioned, in the mid-30s she also wrote several articles for Stage Magazine, including five in a 1936 series on famous Hollywood directors.

   The photo you see at the top of this article/review is a publicity shot taken by her mystery publisher, G. P. Putnam. It’s nice to be able to display it again.

— February 2004

REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:
   

   

ELLERY QUEEN Calamity Town

ELLERY QUEEN – Calamity Town. Little Brown, hardcover, 1942. Pocket 283, paperback, 1945. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft.

   When I first started reading Mysteries, back in the mid-60s, I pretty much devoured the earlier titles of the acknowledged “masters” of the Classic Detective Story (except for Erle Stanley Gardner, whom I ignored until the late 70s) so I probably first read this about a quarter-century ago. I turned to it again, just recently, because it was the only Ellery Queen selected by H. R. F. Keating in his 100 Best Books of Crime and Mystery.

   Ellery “Smith” comes to the New England town of Wrightsville to work on his new novel, and stays — due to Wartime housing shortages — in a house built by Mr. Wright for his daughter Nora, when she was going to be married … only just before the Wedding, her fiance, one Jim Haight, disappeared.

ELLERY QUEEN Calamity Town

   Shortly after Ellery takes up residence, however, the missing Haight returns, and it isn’t long before he and Nora are re-betrothed and then married. Ellery gives up the house, but as he and Nora’s sister are moving some of Jim’s things in, they discover three letters, dated for the forthcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, in which he describes Nora’s illness and death.

   Sure enough, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Nora is ill, but come New Year’s Day, it’s someone completely else who buys the farm, a victim of Arsenic poisoning.

   Hard to say whether I figured out the solution of this one or just remembered it from my Salad Days, since the idea has been used since. The characters are credible, if not terribly deep, and the prose serviceable. Not as memorable as the three Queen novels on my list, but pretty good nonetheless.

Editorial Comment:   The top image is that of the hardcover First Edition. The lower one is one of the later Pocket reprints. I chose it because of the rare split-screen effect, one that I don’t believe was used very often by paperback publishers, then or now.

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Marcia Muller


DAVID ALEXANDER

  DAVID ALEXANDER – Paint the Town Black. Random House, hardcover, 1954. Bantam 1534, paperback, 1956.

   Bart Hardin, managing editor of the Broadway Times, is in urgent need of $500. On the recommendation of an old friend, television commentator Mike Ainslie, he applies for a press-agent job with the Latin American Trade Alliance.

   Hired for the position, Hardin returns to his apartment over Bromberg’s Flea Circus and finds Ainslie’s tortured body in front of his fireplace. Hardin’s problems are compounded by the fact that he must break the news to Ainslie’s wife, Dorothy, with whom he is in love.

DAVID ALEXANDER

   The newspaperman’s personal involvement with both the murder and the trade alliance — which urgently wants to recover a fake pre-Columbian jug that Ainslie reportedly had in his possession prior to his death — leads him into encounters with a strange curio-shop owner, a psychologist who collects art, a strongman named Andes, and a chinless man with a penchant for sadism.

   Hardin is an engaging character: a denizen of Broadway who sports embroidered vests and a cynicism that is undermined by his ability (which he would term a flaw) to care deeply — be it for a murdered friend or his old blind dog.

   David Alexander’s portrayal of the people of Broadway gives full rein to their eccentricities, but stops short of being unbelievable. The plot is intricate, and all elements tie off neatly at the conclusion.

   Other notable Bart Hardin titles are Terror on Broadway (1954), Die, Little Goose (1956), Shoot a Sitting Duck (1957), and Dead, Man, Dead (1959).

DAVID ALEXANDER

   Alexander also created two other series of two books each. The first features the detective duo of Tommy Twotoes, an eccentric penguin fancier, and private eye Terry Rooke (Most Men Don’t Kill and Murder in Black and White, 1951); the second stars Broadway lawyer Marty Land, who also appears in the Hardin series (The Death of Daddy-O, 1960, and Bloodstain, 1961).

         ———
   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.

THE BACKWARD REVIEWER
William F. Deeck


R. C. WOODTHORPE – Death Wears a Purple Shirt. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1934. First published in the UK as Silence of a Purple Shirt, Ivor Nicholson & Watson, hardcover, 1934.

R. C. WOODTHORPE - Death Wears a Purple Shirt

   Nicholas Slade — “an eminent author whose name was known to everybody, though his works, with one exception, were read by nobody” — is asked by his niece to do what he can to free the niece’s estranged husband from a murder charge. The husband is a member of the Purple Shirts, a fascist organization in England, and the man killed is a high-level member of that group who is up to no good.

   Slade is known by one book — the rest being dull satires — The Gods Are Just, which he describes as “an eruption like the pimples on the face of adolescent youth: natural but unpleasant, and best forgotten once they are gone,” and at which he shudders whenever it is mentioned.

   He and his cockney, although he doesn’t talk like one, assistant, Alfred Hicks, who spends most of his time reading the articles in John Bull, go to the scene of the crime. The two of them put up at the Island Hotel, a most extraordinary inn with a most extraordinary staff.

   There is a great deal of humor in this novel, arising both from the circumstances and the characters. The portrayal of the Purple Shirts should be enough to make any fascist organization blush, assuming it was capable of it.

   The publishers say that Nicholas Slade “will inevitably come to occupy a niche in the gallery of immortal detectives of fiction.” Well, we all know what publishers are like, but they had somewhat of a point here. There was, however, only one other novel featuring Slade (ed.–The Necessary Corpse), and two works an immortal do not make.

   Still, the potential certainly existed, and any reader who enjoys the classic mystery with humor and interesting characters should find this well worth seeking out.

— From The Poisoned Pen, Vol. 7, No. 1
(Whole #33), Fall-Winter 1987.


Bio-Bibliographic Data:   As a mystery writer, Ralph Carter Woodthorpe, 1886-?, was the author of eight detective novels published between 1932 and 1940. Two of these featured Nicholas Slade as the leading character, as Bill pointed out; a former schoolmistress named Mathilda Perks appears in another two. One of these was Death in a Little Town, an early eccentric cozy which Bill reviewed in the same issue of Poisoned Pen. Look for here on this blog soon. (He enjoyed it.)

ROUND ROBIN MURDERS:
The Floating Admiral (1931) and Double Death (1939)
by Curt J. Evans


   In its ongoing attempt seemingly to wring every last pound of profit out of the Agatha Christie literary estate, HarperCollins has recently reprinted The Floating Admiral, the collaborative detective novel (originally published in 1931) by fourteen members of the then recently formed Detection Club (each writing a successive chapter).

THE FLOATING ADMIRAL

   Although Agatha Christie’s contribution is a chapter of eight pages (in my 1979 Gregg Press edition) — 3% of the book — she gets top billing, with only Dorothy L. Sayers and G. K. Chesterton (the latter of whom contributed, by his own admission, a strictly ornamental prologue of five pages) also being mentioned by name, in much smaller letters. Such are the publishing perks of fame and continued books sales!

   To my mind, the detective novel, requiring as it does the most scrupulous planning, is not really a form that is receptive to “round robin” treatment. Case in point: The Floating Admiral. Overloaded with complications from too many eager hands, the tale in my opinion begins to take on water and sink well before reaching its conclusion (tellingly entitled by Anthony Berkeley, “Cleaning Up the Mess”).

   Nevertheless, if one is interested in authors of Golden Age detective fiction, The Floating Admiral is in many ways quite interesting, whatever its artistic failings.

   Things go pretty well for the first five chapters (written by Canon Victor L. Whitechurch, G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie and John Rhode), with the authors refraining from over-elaboration. Unfortunately the calmly floating boat is upset by water violently churned by Milward Kennedy (his chapter, which follows Rhode’s “Inspector Rudge Begins to Form a Theory” is impertinently entitled “Inspector Rudge Thinks Better of It” — the good Inspector should not have).

   Dorothy L. Sayers tries to straighten everything out that had tangled with a thirty-seven page chapter but she only makes things worse.

THE FLOATING ADMIRAL

   Ronald A. Knox’s chapter, “Thirty-Nine Articles of Doubt” (Chapter Eight) warningly raises thirty-nine problematical points that have accumulated for the authors following him to consider and Freeman Wills Crofts in Chapter Nine politely notes that, among other things, the body (allegedly of the admiral of course) was never adequately identified or an inquest arranged. But all to little avail.

   Clemence Dane complains in her notes to her Chapter Eleven, the penultimate chapter, that the mystery has become “quite inexplicable to me” — and she likely has not been alone in that sentiment over the years.

   Anthony Berkeley’s conclusion has been praised heartily by over-generous critics. I deem more like the curate’ egg — good in spots but essentially rotten. But to be fair to the poor fellow, he was handed the devil of a job.

   The fun for me in reading The Floating Admiral is not in reading a cogently plotted detective novel (it simply isn’t one), but in seeing the narrative approach each author takes in his/her chapter:

    ●   G. K. Chesterton writes rich prose.

    ●   Canon Whitechurch introduces a charming vicar.

    ●   Henry Wade develops appealing and credible relationships among his policemen.

    ●   Out of the blue, Agatha Christie introduces a garrulous, gossipy lady innkeeper.

    ●   John Rhode discusses tidal movements (the admiral was floating after all) and sympathetically expands the role of the retired petty officer, Neddy Ware.

    ●   Milward Kennedy overcomplicates the story, as does Dorothy L. Sayers (the ingenious Sayers should have been given the opening chapter — she and Kennedy both clearly wanted it).

    ●   Ronald A. Knox makes a long list.

    ●   Freeman Wills Crofts checks alibis and has his inspector travel by train.

    ●   In his notes to his chapter, Knox amusingly declares, “I once laid it down that no Chinaman should appear in a detective story. I feel inclined to extend the rule so as to apply to residents in China. It appears that Admiral Penistone, Sir W. Denny, Walter Fitzgerald, Ware and Holland are all intimate with China, which seems overdoing it.”

THE FLOATING ADMIRAL

   In her recent Guardian review of the new edition of The Floating Admiral, Laura Wilson deems Agatha Christie proposed solution for the tale “as you would expect, the most ingenious” of all the solutions. Certainly it’s more tricksy than, say, the solution proffered by John Rhode (without a complicated murder means, Rhode is unable to play to his greatest strength here). It’s also absolutely absurd.

   Here’s how Christie envisioned the state of affairs in the Admiral’s household     (*** SPOILER *** to Christie’s proposed solution follows, obviously):

   The Admiral’s niece is really his Uncle’s nephew masquerading as the niece. He has been doing this in his Uncle’s household for weeks, and is able to get away with it because he “has been an actor at one time” (that Golden Age crutch for the unlikely accomplishment of great disguises) and because the Admiral has not seen the niece since she was a child (he has seen the nephew more recently, however). The servants are fooled as well, as are the various beaux of the neighborhood, whom the nephew “takes an artistic pleasure” in vamping.     (*** END SPOILER ***)

   Ingenious or rather ridiculous? You decide for yourself, but I know what I think.

   On the whole, I much preferred Double Death, a round robin novel with chapters by Dorothy L. Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, Valentine Williams, F. Tennyson Jesse, Anthony Armstrong and David Hume that originally appeared in the Sunday Chronicle in (I believe) 1936 and was published in book form by Victor Gollancz.

   It is often stated to be a Detection Club production, but I do not see how this could be, since only two of the six writers, Sayers and Crofts, were members of the Detection Club.

   In her introductory chapter to Double Death, Sayers sets up a compelling possible domestic poisoning situation, followed by a death at a railway station, at the evocatively named town of Creepe.

THE FLOATING ADMIRAL

   Freeman Wills Crofts embroiders on this opening situation ably (he even provides a stunning map of Creepe and Creepe station), as does Valentine Williams, though the latter is more known for his “Clubfoot” thrillers than his (underrated) detective novels. Unfortunately the later authors are less concerned with cluing, so that as a fair play mystery the tale ends up rather a bust (especially if you read the silly prologue, added later).

   However, the writing and overall emotional situation remains compelling throughout Double Death, thus making the tale more of a success than the The Floating Admiral.

   It’s interesting to note that in Double Death, written in the mid-thirties, all the authors are concerned with maintaining love interest; whereas in The Floating Admiral all the characters are sticks in whom one could not be expected take the slightest interest (well, there’s the vamping transvestite nephew, as envisioned by Christie).

   As the 1930s progressed, the Golden Age detective novel began to put more emphasis on emotional situations and less on ratiocination. In the end, it is this shift in emphasis that makes Double Death more interesting than The Floating Admiral, in my view. Admiral depends for artistic success on detection and too many hands on deck sink the craft.

   Yet with less than half the people involved, Double Death might have managed to work as a true fair play detective novel. Certainly Sayers, Crofts and to a lesser extent Valentine Williams made an admirable start of it.

   I rather wish the novel could have been kept a collaboration simply of two: Sayers and Crofts. The two authors corresponded over the opening chapter of Double Death in the spring of 1936, with Sayers requesting and Crofts supplying pertinent points of railway station detail.

   Sayers had already written her railway timetable novel The Five Red Herrings (1931) as a sort of homage to Crofts’ Sir John Magill’s Last Journey (1930) — these two brilliant books continue to stand today as the ne plus ultra of railway timetable mysteries. Double Death in their hands might well have been a classic product of the Golden Age. As it is, it is still a good read.

IT IS PURELY MY OPINION
Reviews by L. J. Roberts


M. C. BEATON – Death of a Witch. Reprint paperback: Grand Central Publishing, January 2010. Hardcover edition: February 2009.

M C. BEATON Death of a Witch

Genre: Police procedural/cozy. Series character: Hamish Macbeth, 25th in series. Setting: Scotland.

First Sentence: Police Constable Hamish Macbeth, heading home to his police station in the village of Lochdubh n Sutherland, heaved a sigh of relief.

   Constable Hamish Macbeth is back in the Scottish village of Lochdubh after his less-than-restful vacation to Spain. He is greeted with the news that a witch has moved into town. But she’s not there long and she is murdered shortly after Hamish’s return. As Hamish’s investigation proceeds more die.

   The Hamish books lie somewhere between traditional mysteries and cozies. On the traditional side, by the end of the book there are a lot of bodies and the protagonist is a policeman. However, rather than there being a detailed investigation, it’s almost as if, when Hamish appears, people confess and everything falls into place.

   On the cozy side, there is an awful lot of time spent dealing with his relationships with women. He has better relationships with his pets. As for characters, Hamish is a little too good to be true. He’s tall, red-haired, good looking to the point where every woman but the one he wants throws themselves at him, and can run like the wind.

   I was a bit annoyed that Hamish’s superior, CI Blair, is portrayed as so incompetent but at least it’s balanced by Hamish’s friend, DS Jimmy Anderson, and Blair’s boss, CS Davoit

   The style is a bit simple for my taste, almost as if written for young adults. I do like that the dialogue is written with an indication of people’s accents without it becoming laborious.

   The element I most enjoyed was the sense of place. Beaton’s descriptions of the highlands and the weather, which can be a critical element in living in, and navigating around, the highlands, is well done. This was a light, enjoyable read but it’s a series I’ve put behind me.

Rating: Good.

Editorial Comment: Say welcome to LJ Roberts and her first review for the Mystery*File blog. Her reviews previously graced the pages of both the printed version and the M*F website, but in the space of time between the latter and the blog, she moved them elsewhere, but only temporarily, I’m pleased to say. Here she is again.

WILL CREED – Death Wears a Green Hat.

Five Star Mystery #42; digest-sized paperback original; 1st printing, 1946.

   Not too much is known about Will Creed, except that his real name was William Long (1922- ) and besides the two paperback originals he wrote for Five Star in 1946, he also wrote four more as by Peter Yates for Vulcan and Five Star in 1945. Vulcan was a publisher similar to Five Star Mysteries, so similar in fact, that I’ve compiled provisional checklists for both outfits and made them available online here.  [Note: See also the UPDATE below.]

CREED Death Wears a Green Hat

   I do like the both the title and the cover of this one, and yes, a green hat figures prominently in the mystery, and I’ll get to it in a minute. Telling the story is a Manhattan-based advertising agency executive named Hal Boyd. Dead is his apartment mate and his best friend, Adrian Clay, a gossip columnist well-known around town.

   Where things get interesting is that Boyd’s hat, a midnight-blue homburg is evidently a clue, because it is missing and nowhere to be found until it turns up mysteriously later in his bedroom, but green instead of blue!

   Forgive the exclamation point, but that’s purely reflective of Will Creed’s style of writing. Pulp authors often wrote in the same vein, supplying artificial suspense or amazement when they couldn’t take the time (or weren’t able) to manufacture it on their own. I’ll have more to say about this later, and what it meant to me while I was reading the story, but at the moment, let’s reflect a little bit about hats, and what they mean in today’s world, as opposed to the mid-1940s… Who knows today the difference, say, between a fedora and a homburg? Derbies, OK, and panama hats, sure, but mention the names of any other styles, and you may as well be speaking Martian.

   Inspector Day, whom Hal Boyd becomes friendly with (at least to a certain degree) and who allows Boyd to confer with him about large segments of his investigations — thinks hats are important too. Allow me to quote the inspector from his conversation with Boyd on page 34:

   At last I spoke, and my tone was short. “Inspector, I may not know about crimes and how to solve them, but I do know that there ought to be some better way of finding a criminal than wishing for a hat.”

   He looked at me sternly for a minute, his dark eyes questioning. “My dear Mr. Boyd,” came that soft easy voice, “it isn’t the hatness of the hat I’m wanting. It is anything out of place; anything the killer needed badly enough to risk calling it to my attention! It may mean nothing at all, your disappearing hat … but I cannot believe so. When a criminal keys himself to the point where he can do away with a human life, he knows that from that instant his own life lies in abject peril — that there is no choice once murder is done. It is a one-way street, Mr. Boyd. Therefore, anything that falls by the wayside, that disturbs the ordinary course of living, is important … to the murderer and to me. For instance, did the killer need your hat for something? It is far too labyrinthine to permit even the smallest piece of information to escape the eyes in this department, you see? That hat may mean nothing, but I dare not take chances. I am hunting a desperate person, Mr. Boyd, and I must be thorough indeed.”

CREED Death Comes Grinning

   Boyd thinks of the inspector as rather an intelligent fuddy-duddy, but the inveterate mystery reader knows better. The hat is important, essential, crucial and/or all of the above. The mistake I made, reference above, is underestimating Will Creed as a mystery writer.

   He may have had a pulpish, somewhat clumsy, gee-whiz style that lacks the push, the elan and/or the drive it needs to survive on its own, but he also had exactly the right instincts, Agatha Christie-like, to make the plot swivel and turn on a nickel and four pennies — or in other words, wow, I didn’t see that coming! — but without the knack of pulling it off with Christie’s ease and confidence that I really, really wish that Creed had had at his command.

   Or maybe he did and I’m just yapping because he fooled the socks off me, no lie. I’m going to have to go back and read it again — and if that isn’t a sure sign of a magician at work, no matter what level of expertise, I sure as shinola don’t know what is.

— June 2006



   
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA.
Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

CREED, WILL. Pseudonym of William Long, (1922- ); other pseudonym: Peter Yates.

      Death Comes Grinning. Five Star #47, US, digest pb, 1946.
      Death Wears a Green Hat. Five Star #42, US, digest pb, 1946.

YATES, PETER Pseudonym of William Long, (1922- ); other pseudonym: Will Creed.

      Curtain Call for Murder. Vulcan #6, US, digest pb, 1945. SC: Thatcher family.
      Death Comes to Dinner. Five Star #4, US, digest pb, 1945. SC: Thatcher family.

YATES Death Comes to Dinner

      Death in the Hands of Talent. Five Star #7, US, digest pb, 1945. SC: Sandy Blunt.
      The Dress Circle Murders. Five Star #1, digest pb, 1945. SC: Sandy Blunt.

[UPDATE] 07-23-08.   I never did finish that article on Vulcan and Five Star Mysteries, although Victor Berch and I did manage to accumulate a lot of information and material toward doing so.

   It took Ken Johnson to carry on independently and without me, and it’s his Vintage Digests website that you should be checking out, not mine. Follow the link in the line before, and scroll down to either Five Star or Vulcan.

   He doesn’t include many cover images on his site, however. For those, you’ll have to go to the primary Bookscans website. For the Five Star, go here, and you can find some of the Vulcans here.

    BRETT HALLIDAY – Tickets for Death.

HALLIDAY Tickets for Murder

Dell 8885; paperback reprint. 1st printing, new Dell edition, July 1965; cover art by Robert McGinnis. Hardcover first edition: Henry Holt & Co., 1941. Several other paperback editions, including Dell 387 (mapback); cover art by Robert Stanley.

   It’s been a long time since I’ve read a Mike Shayne private eye novel, and I think I’d forgotten how hard-boiled a guy he was. Back in 1941, Shayne was a two-fisted detective in the Dashiell Hammett-Black Mask mode, a bit derivative, maybe, but by no means a fellow to mess around with.

   Take pages 24 and 25, for example — a very early event in this case centered around a sudden influx of counterfeit racetrack tickets. Shayne and his wife have just registered in a hotel, when he’s called down to another room. Something triggers his suspicions, and he goes in ready for action. Within four paragraphs the two hoodlums in the room are slumped on the floor dead. Shayne himself is injured, but “It was only a flesh wound.” Naturally.

   Nor does the wound hamper his range of action for the remainder of the night. And there is a lot of action, and during the midst of it, Shayne runs into a lot of characters that both he and the reader have to keep constant track of:

   There is a pint-sized newspaper editor who seems to delight on rousing up stories. There is the owner of a disreputable night club just outside the city limits. There is a cop who, while not perhaps crooked, is heavily beholden to the criminal elements in town. There is the manager of the race track, and there is a girl who tries to frame Shayne up in the old badger game. There is another girl who knows something and tries to entice Shayne into paying her for what she knows. There is a shyster of a lawyer who is trying (among other activities) is trying to get the inventor of a new camera gimmick to sign the rights over to him.

HALLIDAY Tickets for Murder

   And there is Phyllis, who (at the time of this story) is married to Mike Shayne. Having a wife on hand is an interesting twist added to a tale of a hard-drinking private investigator, but (apparently) there are only so many twists that an author can manufacture from the concept — and marriage vows really have to tie a guy down a lot — and Phyllis soon disappeared from Shayne’s long life in fiction.

   What’s remarkable is not so much any of the above, but that out of the tangled morass of a plot (as indicated above) the author Brett Halliday makes a coherent mystery novel out of it. Most (if not all) of the confusion that the tangled non-stop motion and literary sleight-of-hand is eventually unraveled, and neatly so. Good work all around.

— August 2000 [slightly revised]


[UPDATE.] 02-24-08. I’ve read a few other Mike Shayne novels since Tickets for Death. In fact, the very next book I read (back in the year 2000) was one. Look for my comments about it here sometime within the next couple of days.

   As for Phyllis, I’ve done some investigating on my own, and I have the answer. In Brett Halliday’s own words (well in the words of Davis Dresser, who ought to know), taken from The Great Detectives, by Otto Penzler (Little, Brown, 1978):

    “20th Century Fox bought The Private Practice of Michael Shayne as a movie to star Lloyd Nolan and gave me a contract for a series of movies starring Nolan as Shayne. For this they paid me a certain fee for each picture starring Shayne, promising me an additional sum for each book of mine used in the series.

    “But they didn’t use any of my stories in the movies. Instead, they went out and bought books from my competitors, changing the name of the lead character to Michael Shayne. I was surprised and chagrined by this because I thought my books were as good or better than the ones they bought from others, and I was losing a substantial sum of money each time they made a picture.

HALLIDAY Tickets for Murder

    “I finally inquired as to the reason from Hollywood and was told it was because Shayne and Phyllis were married and it was against their policy to use a married detective.

    “Faced with this fact of life, I decided to kill off Phyllis to leave Shayne a free man for succeeding movies. This I did between Murder Wears a Mummer’s Mask and Blood on the Black Market (later reprinted in soft cover as Heads You Lose).

    �I had her die in childbirth between the two books, but alas! Fox decided to drop the series of movies before Blood on the Black Market was published, and the death of Phyllis had been in vain. I have hundreds of fan letters asking what became of Phyllis, and now the unsavory truth is told.

    “With the movies no longer a factor, in my next book, Michael Shayne’s Long Chance, I took Shayne on a case to New Orleans where he met Lucile Hamilton and she took the place of Phyllis as a female companion. I brought her back to Miami with Shayne as his secretary, and in that position she has remained since.”

    “I don’t know exactly what the situation is between Shayne and Lucy Hamilton. They are good comrades and she works with him on most of his cases, but I don’t think Shayne will ever marry again. He often takes Lucy out to dinner, and stops by her apartment for a drink and to talk, and she always keeps a bottle of his special cognac on tap.”

[BONUS.] From a website called www.bookscans.com I have found an image of the back cover I will add here at the end. Why have a map of the mystery available, and not use it?

HALLIDAY Tickets for Murder

EVELYN PAYNE – Held Open for Death

Arcadia House; hardcover; c. 1958.

   The author’s only mystery, nor is it one that’s particularly easy to find. There are two copies online that are both in the $30 range, and one other in Norway for $80 or so. I paid less than either asking price for mine, and – as long as you’re asking me my opinion – neither should you.

Evelyn Payne: Held Open for Death

   It starts out promising enough, with a heroine sleuth with an unusual occupation for, um, a heroine sleuth: that of real estate agent. There certainly must have been others, before and since, but at the moment, none seem come to mind.    [FOOTNOTE.]

   Tillie Latimer is her name, the locale is El Paso, and truth be told, when the book begins, Tillie’s been a real estate agent for only a couple of weeks. Her first big assignment on her own: holding an open house for the home next door to her mother’s, where Tillie still lives.

   It proves to be a big success, so big that keeping track of incoming visitors proves impossible. This turns out to be a big problem when Granpa Tellfair, aged 89, and father of Miss Sadie, who owns the house, is later found dead in the basement, stabbed to death with a knife still in his back. Strangely enough, he also still has $1000 in his pocket. This is doubly strange. Since time he was once robbed, he never carried more than five dollars with him at a time.

   Tillie had met Granpa during the open house, and as it so happens, while he managed to maintain his well-deserved status as a curmudgeon in his short conversation with her, he was also one of the more likable people who happened to stop by. The question is, who’d kill an old man like this, and why?

   Going hand-in-hand with the mystery, there is also a strong romantic interest for Tillie in the person of Miss Sadie’s son Rick, the “town’s star juvenile delinquent for a few years,” now out of the Army and perhaps on his way to becoming a solid citizen. Nor is Rick the only one who is showing an interest in Tillie. Trying to place the book into its proper category, I am not sure whether the two or three more murders that occur qualify this detective yarn as a cozy or not, but if Agatha Christie’s books are cozies, then so is this one. And after thinking about it some more, I shall happily concede that it is, no matter what.

   I mentioned Agatha Christie. That was a rather unfortunate reference, now that I think about it. While the author is obviously very familiar with the ins and outs of the real estate business, she’s also in over her head in making sure that the story keeps on going in the direction she wants it to. The characters are fun at first, but their lack of depth soon begins to tell. Soon after the halfway point, the many loose strands of the plot get tangled, cluttered and confused, and seemingly beyond repair. In wrapping things up, the author makes it clear she had a goal worthy of the telling in mind. It is the getting there that is the problem.

   Everything that a good mystery should have is in this book. It’s just that the ingredients have been assembled – well, not badly, exactly, and I have not come up with a more positive way of saying this – but by an amateur, in a truest sense of the word. Without a stronger pro at the helm, to come to the point a little more quickly, this is little more than a “nice try” and/or a “might have been.”

— October 2006



[FOOTNOTE.] This is the review that was my springboard into creating a list of all the real estate agents who ever happened to become detectives as part of their occupational duties. Check it out here, a post made back in January of this year.

PAULA GOSLING – Death and Shadows

Warner, British paperback; 1st printing, 2000. British hardcover edition: Little, Brown; 1998. No US edition.

   A brief bit of biographical information first, if you’ll allow me, because an explanation’s going to be needed as to why a book taking place in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has been published in the UK but never here in the US. According to one website, Paula Gosling was born in Detroit in 1939, but she moved permanently to England in 1964. After working as a copywriter and a copy consultant she became a full-time writer in 1979.

   Taken from both that website and Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a complete list of her book-length mystery fiction, as published in the UK. Most of these are also available in paperback editions, but I haven’t taken the time to investigate into these. The last four, though – the ones marked # – have never had a US edition:

• A Running Duck (n.) Macmillan 1978 [San Francisco, CA]
   = Fair Game (n.) Coward 1978. Revised and expanded from: A Running Duck.
• The Zero Trap (n.) Macmillan 1979 [Arctic]
• Loser’s Blues (n.) Macmillan 1980 [London]
   = Solo Blues (n.) Coward 1981. See: Loser’s Blues.
• The Woman in Red (n.) Macmillan 1983 [Spain]
• Monkey Puzzle (n.) Macmillan 1985 [Lt. Jack Stryker; Ohio; Academia]
• The Wychford Murder (n.) Macmillan 1986 [Luke Abbott; England]
   = The Wychford Murders (n.) Doubleday 1986. See: The Wychford Murder.
• Hoodwink (n.) Macmillan 1988 [Lt. Jack Stryker (only briefly); Ohio]
• Backlash (n.) Macmillan 1989 [Lt. Jack Stryker; Michigan]
• Death Penalties (n.) Scribner 1991 [Luke Abbott; London]
• The Body in Blackwater Bay (n.) Little 1992 [Lt. Jack Stryker; Matt Gabriel; Michigan]
• A Few Dying Words (n.) Little 1993 [Matt Gabriel; Michigan]
• The Dead of Winter (n.) Little 1995 [Matt Gabriel; Michigan]
• Death and Shadows (n.) Little 1999 [see below; Michigan]   #
• Underneath Every Stone (n.) Little 2000 [Matt Gabriel; Michigan]   #
• Ricochet (n.) Little 2002 [Lt. Jack Stryker; Michigan]    #
• Tears of the Dragon (n.) Allison & Busby 2004 [Chicago, 1931; the era of Al Capone]   #

Death and Shadows

   I’ve already informed Al that he omitted Matt Gabriel as a series character in Death and Shadows. Gabriel is the sheriff for Blackwater Bay, a sleepy backwater resort town that over the years has have more than its share of unusual mysteries to solve. Jack Stryker, who’s a lieutenant for the police force a few towns over, makes a cameo appearance in Death and Shadows – never in person, only by telephone.

   Here’s a question for you. How are hospitals and serial killers alike? Answer: I don’t usually read mysteries in which either one is involved, and here I violated my own rules twice, as that’s exactly what kind of mystery this is – one in which the staff and patients in a private nursing home are found murdered, one by one.

   As I pointed out earlier, Matt Gabriel is the local sheriff, but as it turns out, he’s neither of the two primary leading characters, the first being physiotherapist Laura Brandon. She’s the niece of the owner of Mountview Clinic, and extremely interested in learning how her friend and predecessor for the position was murdered. The second of the ad hoc sleuthing pair that gradually develops is Tom Gilliam, a patient who’s withdrawn well into himself since the mishap iy was that forced him off Jack Stryker’s police force.

   Another reason why I surprised myself in reading this book is that it is nearly 380 pages long, and in small print too. A hospital setting, a possible psychotic killer on the loose, and a book twice as long as my usual reading fare. You’d think it would be a matter of three strikes and out, but not so. This book kept me up reading for several nights in a row. I was able to put it down, but the next evening I couldn’t resist, and I was back reading it again.

   Maybe because the opening two or three chapters read exactly like a gothic novel, with a young(ish) girl coming fresh into a new mysterious and slightly spooky setting. A manor house, a hospital – it makes little difference. Maybe because in 380 pages there is an ultra-abundance of clues to be puzzled over, with lots of secrets on the part of almost everybody, broken hand railings, a local legend called the Shadowman. Maybe because of the many, many red herrings and false trails to follow and double back upon. Delicious!

— March 2007