Sun 19 Jul 2020
A Mystery Review by Ray O’Leary: MILWARD KENNEDY – The Scornful Corpse.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
REVIEWED BY RAY O’LEARY:
MILWARD KENNEDY – The Scornful Corpse. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1937. No paperback edition. First published in the UK as Sic Transit Gloria (Gollancz, hardcover, 1936).
James Southern, a successful British novelist, keeps a one-room apartment for use when he visits London. Though married, he has a platonic relationship with an American named Gloria Day, whom he has given a key to the place, and The Scornful Corpse concerns itself with what happens when he finds her there dead.
The Police find a brief typewritten note at the scene, and when they learn Gloria was “up the spout” as they say over there, they classify the death as Suicide. Southern, convinced that Gloria would never kill herself, decides to investigate, and learns that she was rather actively involved in the Anti-Nazi movement, and in fact, there are shadowy agents out there looking for her Address Book.
Slow-moving, tedious and predictable, this may be the earliest Mystery involving Evil Nazis, but that would be its only claim to interest: There’s also some Unintentional humor in a couple of the Character Names: Southern’s wife is Ann (presumably before she left for Hollywood) and the erstwhile father of Gloria’s baby is named. after the gay German hero of the American Revolution — Baron Von Steuben.
Bibliographic Notes: Milward Kennedy was pseudonym of Milward Kennedy Burge, (1894-1968). Other pseudonyms were Evelyn Elder & Robert Milward Kennedy. Between the three pen names he wrote 18 detective novels, of which perhaps only half were reprinted in the US. For more information on the author himself, his Wikipedia page is here.
July 19th, 2020 at 6:18 pm
I don’t know about anyone else, but I kind of like the title of the British edition better:
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA
As for the US title, I found this description of the story line from a dealer on Abebooks, perhaps from the jacket flap:
“James Southern’s gentle whistling stopped short as he opened the door to his one-roomed apartment and switched on the light. Because there sat a girl he knew, her name was Gloria and she sat in the chair with her bright lips curved into a contemptuous smile. He called her name and asked what was she doing there, but no answer came because Gloria was dead.”
This, by the way, is the dealer from whom I used the image you see in the review. His asking price is $450, plus $8 for shipping.
I’ll continue waiting for the paperback to come out.
July 19th, 2020 at 8:06 pm
I think I read one Kennedy, and there is a reason he is obscure and it costs $400 + to find a copy of one of his books. Ho hummery.
Might be ahead of the curve on actually calling the bad guys Nazi’s, but thrillers were implying the Germans were up to no good from the end of the Great War on, and John Buchan predicted fascism and nationalism (“the Rational Fanatic”) in 1910 in THE POWER HOUSE.
By 1936 even Sapper was replacing Reds in the bed with Nazis.
July 19th, 2020 at 8:54 pm
I don’t want to mislead anyone. You can buy a copy in Good condition without a jacket for only $50 and change. A fair price I’d say for an uncommon book.
But as you suggest, David, with reason for its obscurity.
September 26th, 2022 at 11:56 am
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