Back from hiatus and moving right along. Dead Center, by Mary Collins

 

978888011708

Stark House, 2025

202 pp

paperback

It's been a long and very busy summer, filled with busy hours in  preparation for selling our house and moving out of state.  We're leaving the tropics and heading to the Blue Ridge Mountains, where for part of the year anyway I can be happiest in my winter clothes.   And, while I've not stopped reading completely, the frequency has dwindled over the last few months while we've been more than a bit on the stressed side.  Things are finally starting to get rolling now so we can relax, and that means attacking the stack of books I've been stockpiling over the summer.   Since Stark House has been so incredibly generous, I'll start with their upcoming November release, Dead Center, by Mary Collins from 1942.   Earlier this year I had the pleasure of reading her Sisters of Cain (1943) which was her fourth novel.  Dead Center, according to gadetection , is her second.  

Janet Keith is a well-known San Francisco socialite — the daughter of a wealthy family living in the  “Victorian monstrosity” she calls home on Pacific. But despite the charm of her well-appointed home, Janet much prefers the cramped, slightly shabby office she rents at 706 Montgomery Street, where she’s trying to make her mark as a writer — “one novelette and four quite good short stories” to her name.  The building itself has character to spare. A laundry occupies the first floor, while upstairs a handful of tenants — mostly artists, with two exceptions — work away in their own small studios. Janet’s office in this “dank old tenement” somehow feels more alive to her than her elegant house ever could.  By the end of Chapter Three, we’ve met all of Janet’s fellow tenants, and the author has skillfully planted the seeds of tension among them — rivalries, resentments, jealousies — the kind of atmosphere where a spark could easily set something off. And it does. One of their number, Anne Ehman, a woman known to “stir up trouble everywhere she goes,” turns up dead in the tenants’ shared workroom. Unfortunately for Janet, she’s the one who finds the body the next day while searching for a hammer to hang a picture, in grim fulfillment of her earlier joke that 706 Montgomery “was a perfect setting for murder.” The police think they’ve got their killer, but Janet isn’t so sure. She’s convinced they’ve made a mistake — and she’s determined to prove it.

1942 first edition cover, from Bibliophile.com

While I have to admit I enjoyed Sisters of Cain a bit more, Dead Center was still a thoroughly entertaining read — the kind that sweeps you back to 1940s San Francisco, both in atmosphere and in its sharp social and political observations. As always, I turned to one of my favorite resources, San Francisco Film Locations Then and Now to visually trace Janet’s path through the city. Following her through those streets  makes the book feel that much more alive.  She is an interesting figure: raised in privilege but drawn toward the bohemian world of struggling artists who share her building. As Ashley Lawson notes in her introduction, Janet “moves back and forth between both worlds," but she is never quite fully accepted by her fellow tenants and her family tends to see her as "something of a black sheep."   After the murders (yes, there are more than one)  things get worse on both fronts, with her father insisting on hiring a bodyguard for her, while her friends' distrust is heightened when she offers the police her help.   As she learns more about the other residents of the office block, and as the police seem to be going down the wrong road, she decides that she will have to step up and play detective to find the real answer to the crimes. 

A staple of vintage crime novels: map of 706 Montgomery Street offices; my photo, from the book

I wouldn’t exactly call Janet a “plucky heroine,” but she’s certainly entertaining to watch in action. What’s amusing is that she’s not a particularly skilled detective — the police are usually a step or two ahead of her — yet that’s part of her charm. Her back-and-forth with Spike provides some genuinely funny moments, the kind that lighten the tension just when it’s needed. As for Fitz, her fiancé… well, I have to confess I couldn’t stand him — though that's likely a personal bias.  Overall, Dead Center is a pretty good mystery (I never guessed) and an interesting look at the time period as well as the divisions existing between Janet's two worlds.  

Definitely recommended for readers of American vintage crime as well as for those who have enjoyed Mary Collins' work.  My many thanks to Stark House for my copy of this book and the others I'll be diving into here shortly.  

Crimson Friday, by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  

9798886011463

Stark House, 2025

originally published 1943

242 pp

paperback

(read earlier this month)

Another vacation read, Crimson Friday is the work of author Dorothy Cameron Disney, who published her first novel, Death in the Back Seat in 1936.  Eight more would come along over the next thirteen years including this one in 1943.  I'm quite sorry to say that I've only read one other book by this author, her The 17th Letter, but I do have Death in the Back Seat awaiting my attention on my Kindle.

Al and Janey Blake have left the hustle and bustle of New York City for the small village of Merristone, Connecticut, the site of Al's childhood home.   Al's brother Selby had convinced them to buy an "old New England house" so they've come back to the village awaiting the completion of the remodeling and staying in the home of Al's Aunt Mildred in the meantime. While the issues and the "difficulties with the remodeling venture" were part and parcel of the village gossip, the more pressing business in the local gossip circles was a woman who had moved into the village a year before, known as the "Merristone Enigma."  This is a certain V. Moran, and as Janey, who narrates the story notes, "After a residence of a year, the village had been unable to discover so much as Mrs. Moran's first name. The provocative initial on her mailbox remained unsolved." This is a woman who had two cats that she walked like dogs, and lived with a maid by the name of Hannah, described as "lantern-jawed, bespectacled" who gave people a "cold stare" and was obviously quite deaf, carrying an earphone around with her.  She wore a "dizzying succession of rainbow hues," complete with "floating veils," and Janey's convinced she's sticking to "a single style and a single garish color for each appearance."   A January Friday rolls around, and something unusal happens leaving Janey and Al completely speechless -- while on a walk one day, Hannah stops them to say that Mrs. V. Moran wants them for tea.  Al doesn't want to go at all, and reminds Jane that their family is supposed to be getting together that night so they wouldn't have time anyway, but Hannah finds them at their still-unfinished home and "enforces an acceptance."   So it's off they go, with Al's curiousity piqued now,  and find themselves walking into a true spectacle, highlighted by  Mrs. V. Moran wearing crimson.  As she explains,

"Friday's crimson for me... just as Thursday is yellow. A deep sulphur yellow. Saturday is always green. Sunday's white, of course, and Monday's blue." Electric blue..."

Things get weirder as teatime toddles along, with Mrs. V. Moran making her guests beyond uncomfortable with easy-to-spot lies, tears, "posing and posturing."  Finally, she makes an exit, leaving Al and Jane completely alone, so they go back to Aunt Mildred's for the planned family dinner.  For some reason, that goes south as well, so Alan takes everyone back to their property to see what's been happening there.  The architect decides to start with the stairway, using a flashlight to illuminate the scene.  But instead of seeing what he wants them to see, the light picks up the dead body of Hannah, who has a crushed skull, the result of having been beaten to death.  Worse, no one can find Mrs. V. Moran -- has something happened to her as well?   

Map in Dell 1946 edition, from Abebooks

Clues start piling up that link a specific person (who is not talking) to Hannah's death, but wait -- as everyone will soon begin to realize, nothing is actually as it seems in this murder.  I sort of guessed a small part of what was going on, but as for the larger picture, I had no clue.   The author is quite clever  with her plotting, establishing a set of mysterious circumstances in which a particular clue (or set of clues) lead to another plotline that then sheds an entirely new light on the story.  To say any more would be criminal, except that the early mention of "Pandora's Box" is not at all out of line in this mystery, and that the title doesn't really make sense until everything is revealed, at which point you'll probably find yourself (as I did) doing a big "aha!"  Another factor at play here is just how very much the family suffers as the case drags on, with the anxiety being writ large throughout.  The only issue I have is that while  I don't generally say this about older mystery stories, the motives behind certain actions (or inactions) in this book seem a bit dated (and to be honest, a bit on the melodramatic side) in our own time, but overall,  Crimson Friday gave me a good run at one of my favorite pastimes, armchair sleuthing, and was very, very entertaining.   I can certainly recommend this book to fellow readers of vintage crime.  And while I'm here, I hope Stark House continues to reprint Disney's work -- these two that I've read have been well worth every second of time I've invested.  

Thanks to Stark House as always for my advanced reading copy!  

Marble Hall Murders, by Anthony Horowitz

 

9780063305700

Harper Collins, 2025

582 pp

hardcover

We've just returned from a very long vacation which gave me the opportunity to read this book,  the third novel in this series featuring Susan Ryeland and yes, for series followers, Atticus Pünd is back as well.   While I won't be giving top much away here, I will mention that before the book even begins, there is a caveat to the reader that "the solution to Magpie Murders is revealed in this book," so to anyone considering Marble Hall Murders who hasn't yet read Magpie Murders and may be considering doing so, you've been warned.  

For those readers who are familiar with the previous two novels (the aforementioned Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders), Susan Ryeland has returned to the UK after her time in Crete, where she and her partner Andreas came to the end of their road, each realizing that they were "no longer in love." As she came to realize, "My head was in London while my heart was no longer in Crete,"  so it's back home she goes, working as a freelance associate editor for Causton Books (nice little nod to Midsomer Murders there).   Her boss hands her the first thirty-thousand words of a manuscript which is and a  continuation novel featuring Atticus Pünd, which "follows on from Magpie Murders."  The author is Eliot Crace,  the title, Pünd's Last Case. Susan has reservations about the project from the beginning, but she feels she has no choice due to financial considerations plus the fact that Causton Books "was the one place in town" that just might take her on full time in a badly-needed senior position. Crace came from a wealthy family; his grandmother, Miriam Crace, had been the author of a series of well-loved children's books that had been "turned into graphic novels, a cartoon series on ITV, a hugely popular musical ..., three feature films, a ride at Universal Studios," not to mention the merchandise and an upcoming Netflix five-season deal.   As with the other two books in the series, as Susan begins reading the manuscript, we too delve into Pünd's Last Case, which, as the dustjacket blurb reveals, is

"set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring."

 Susan picks up on a few things in the manuscript that lead her to believe that Eliot may have based Pünd's Last Case on his own family, and hearkening back to the dustjacket blurb, "once again, the real and the fictional worlds have become dangerously entangled."  As readers of the previous two books in this series know, that is precisely how those stories have played out, but the stakes become a bit higher now as the body count rises and Susan finds herself at the center of it all.  

It sounds like it should be a great story, right?, and most readers on Goodreads believe it is, garnering an average and staggering 4.38-star review score.  I'm very likely the outlier here, because I didn't find this book nearly as enjoyable as I did the other two that came before. The usual book-within-a-book was quite honestly, underwhelming.  Normally I care more for the Atticus Pünd stories than for what's happening in Susan's present, but that didn't happen here.  Worse, I figured out the who in the Pünd story long before the actual reveal because it was beyond obvious.  Like, HELLO!!!   My other major issue is that the author only decides it's time to bring out the major twist in the Susan Ryeland story way too close to the final part of the book,  giving a really rushed feel to the novel's ending. There are more niggly things, but this post is getting a bit long.   On the other hand, I have to admit that it entertained me for well over two days, so that can't be a bad thing.  When all is said and done,  it just wasn't as entertaining or satisfying as its two predecessors, so for me it was a bit of a letdown.  But as I said, people are raving about Marble Hall Murders so if you're following the series, you may likely want to read it. 

from PBS: Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan

One of the tags I used for this post is "page to screen," since according to PBS,  there will be a third (and final) installment in the Masterpiece series starring Lesley Manville as Susan Ryeland and Tim McMullan as Atticus Pünd.  The previous two have been extremely bingeworthy, so even though I didn't care for the book as much as I might have, I will be ready to watch when the series rolls around again. 

Night Cry, by William L. Stuart

 

9798886011531

Stark House Press, 2025

originally published 1948

162 pp

paperback

(read in April)

A few weeks ago I turned on my television and an ad/small clip for the 1950 movie Where the Sidewalk Ends popped up on the home page for Amazon Fire TV (I know, but I really hate cable).   I clicked on the "add to my list" button, thinking it looked like a good noir film to hold on to for a late night insomnia viewing.  So, imagine my surprise when this book arrived the next day with its photo of Dana Andrews on the cover.   I took it as kismet and read the novel right away.    And before I get into this post, my many thanks to the Stark House Press people -- they are just terrific. 

Lieutenant Mark Deglin is still angry over missing out on a promotion he thought he'd had in the bag.   He believes that he's "one of the best detectives on the force," but as his captain notes, "he doesn't do things by the book all the time" while on the job.  He's still carrying that chip on his shoulders the night he is called out to a gambling club to investigate a murder.  The victim had been in a fight earlier that evening with another gambler by the name of Kendall Paine, a war-weary, decorated  vet who had since been thrown out of the club, so he quickly becomes the prime suspect.   Deglin goes to Paine's apartment where he starts asking questions, but the situation changes for the worse when the two men get into a physical fight and Paine falls down dead.   When Deglin calls in, he learns that the murder has been solved and that Paine wasn't the killer.  Instead of copping to the truth of what happened, he goes into cover-up mode, ditching the body while leaving clues that suggest that Paine had left town.  Things might have worked out at this point, but the real complications set in when Deglin is told that  although he's no longer wanted for murder, the DA really needs Paine as a witness in the murder case, and Deglin's captain assigns him the task of finding him. Deglin's web of deceit becomes even more tangled when Paine's girlfriend, Morgan Taylor, refuses to believe that Paine would just up and leave and a reporter named Smith offers to help her find him.  To add yet another twist to the knife, some secrets refuse to stay buried, backing Deglin into a tight  corner while the walls close in. 

first edition, Dial, 1948 (from Abebooks)

Aside from the taut story here, Night Cry is a compelling psychological portrait of a man battling his inner demons as the weight of his actions comes down on him. It also asks the question of what happens when the badge becomes worthless and a cop is left to ponder what's left. It is a truly fine crime novel, with darkness gripping the narrative tightly, and with noir vibes seeping deep into all facets of this book. It is gritty, moody and emotionally charged, and I give the author a lot of credit for building this story in well under two hundred pages.  From the outset, the author crafted an atmosphere that not only doesn't quit, but stays with you long after you've finished reading.    I can most highly recommend this book, especially to readers of vintage noir, and to crime aficionados who don't mind the darkness.

from posteritati

The novel is the latest in Stark House's Film Noir Classics series, so after the book comes the film viewing.  The  1950 film, scripted by Ben Hecht and directed by Otto Preminger, is gripping in its own right and well worth the watch, although I have to admit my preference for the novel.   In the movie Deglin becomes Mark Dixon;  Dana Andrews really throws himself into the role, slipping into Dixon's skin and taking on the moral weight that drags this man down as he finds himself ever so slowly hemmed in by his actions.  Gene Tierney's Morgan Taylor changes in the movie novel from a socialite to the daughter of a cabbie who models designer gowns for a living.  The story goes well during  the first half of the film, pacing and plot on point, but starts to lose its intensity as Dixon and Taylor find themselves falling in love.   And while the novel's ending wasn't exactly the best, the film's ending was just disappointing.   But as I say, it's still well worth watching. 

Bottom line: loved the book, movie was good but not a) great or b) as well done as the novel. 

The Mouthless Dead, by Anthony Quinn

 

"It was a mask -- one that he wore so determinedly it became his other self." 

9780349146928

Abacus/Little, Brown Book Group, 2025

274 pp

hardcover 

(read in April) 

I don't remember how I happened upon this book, but I was hooked from the moment I read the blurb and knew I had to have it.  For one thing, it turns out to be a novel based on the brutal murder of Mrs. Julia Wallace that happened back in 1931, and I love historical crime, both fact and fiction.  The other thing that piqued my interest is that I had never heard of this case before, so while I was waiting for my book to arrive from the UK I spent quite a bit of time doing some research.  It was a case which Raymond Chandler regarded as "unbeatable. It will always be unbeatable" and about which he  also said that it was an "impossible murder because Wallace couldn't have done it and neither could anyone else."   So now I'm hooked and my book isn't even here yet.  By the time it actually arrived I was already primed, ready to dive in, and I was not disappointed.  

This post will be shorter than usual, because I don't really want to say too much  about what actually happens in this book  -- to tell too much is to completely ruin things, and I don't want to be responsible for that. 

  The murder of Julia Wallace took place at her Liverpool home one night while her husband William had gone to call on a potential client.  William worked for Prudential Insurance, and one night while at his chess club, he had received a message about a phone call from a Mr. Qualtrough, who had asked Wallace to meet him at his home.  The address was also left on the message, and William made his way from his home to the meeting.  He left his house and caught a tram to the area, but never actually got to the Qualtrough home -- it seems that the address was incorrect, and he spent quite a bit of time asking for help from a policeman and other people in the area, none of whom had heard of a Mr. Qualtrough.   Frustrated, he made his way home, only to find his wife dead.  There was no apparent motive, and yet despite what seems to have been an unshakeable alibi with witnesses and the assurances from neighbors that the Wallaces were quiet people who were not inclined to argue, the lead detective zoomed in on Wallace as the prime suspect.  He was arrested for the murder and sent to trial, where he was found guilty and sentenced to hang.  Not too long after the verdict however, the court of criminal appeals overturned the conviction and Wallace was set free, with the murder left unsolved.   By the way, none of this is spoiler material -- just a very brief outline of the actual case. 

The Mouthless Dead  begins some fifteen years later, and one of the former members of the Wallace investigation team, a now-retired Detective Inspector Key who had served as a Liverpool policeman for "nigh on thirty years,"  is on board an ocean liner sailing from England to New York.  He is in the process of putting together a memoir about his career, which would have been "quite unexceptional," except for the one case "that was, in its time, wildly notorious, and had become in the years since the material of legend."  He makes the acquaintance of two fellow passengers, Lydia Tarrant, "somewhat plain" and traveling with her mother, but interested in his stories, and Teddy Absolom, a younger man in his twenties, for whom "film had been his obsession since boyhood." Teddy hopes to look for work in the industry in New York, or maybe even Hollywood, where he's interested in writing and directing.  Lydia reveals to Teddy that Key is writing about the Wallace case in his memoir,  and Teddy admits to having been "obsessed with it as a schoolboy."  Teddy believes that "the hand of fate" must be at work here, because the case would make a great movie with "the lot" -- "a brutal killing, a police force baffled, a man condemned to hang."  Never mind that  there was "no ending"  -- according to Teddy, it wouldn't be a documentary, but a drama based on a real-life story, much like Hitchcock did with his movie "Rope."  And thus it begins, with Key holding Teddy and Lydia spellbound with his continuing story.   Key is only too happy to oblige helping Teddy, unable to resist showing off his insider knowledge.   

Julia and William Wallace, from The Julia Wallace Murder Foundation

 In the Acknowledgments section of the book, the author notes that he "owes this book to a conversation" he'd had that had "triggered" a childhood memory. He remembered his parents talking about it once,  likely because  his family had lived very close to Menlove Gardens, where Wallace was supposed to go to meet the mysterious Mr. Qualtrough.   As he says, "the story came out like a revenant from the darkness of forgetting, and I knew I had to retell it."   The author's done a great job here, bringing in the historical record of the Wallace case complete with police work and materials from the trials,  solidly landing the reader back in 1930s Liverpool.  However, the real genius at work here is that the retelling is offered to us via the fictional Key's perspective, suffusing the narrative with an unexpected intensity, so much so that I could not put this book down.  

The Mouthless Dead is both a gripping, engrossing tale and a keenly observed study of character, one that I can recommend very highly to readers who enjoy historical crime fiction or well-written, intelligent crime novels.  It's also a book I won't soon forget.  

The Lizard, by Domenic Stansberry

 

9781948596053

Molotov Editions, 2025

255 pp

paperback 

I may not have been present here for a while, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been reading. On the contrary, sitting on one end of desk there is a stackus giganticus of books I've finished in the last few weeks waiting for me to share my thoughts about them.  On the top is this one, The Lizard by Domenic Stansberry, whose writing talents have earned him the North America Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Fiction (2017),  a nomination for the Edgar in 1999 which was followed by a win in 2005 for The Confession, which was evidently the target of some controversy.  It seems, according to the author's website, that a "dissenting judge ... broke with tradition to condemn the selection of this 'amoral' novel for Best Paperback Original."   Stansberry has also been nominated for the Shamus Award as well as the Barry Award, so bottom line: his work is no stranger to the crime fiction-writing/reading world.  

The Lizard is no ordinary crime story, nor is it anywhere close to average or run of the mill, which is so refreshing for modern crime novels.  The narrator of this story goes by S. E. Reynolds, which is not his real name but rather one he uses when "working as a ghost."  He'd started his career as a reporter, first covering crime, but after a series of setbacks ended up "ghosting a weekly column for a state representative."  This job, evidently, was something he could do well, moving on to work for "celebrities, politicians, war heroes, people with stories to tell, ambitions, visions to share."  He had hoped to score the job of ghostwriting a memoir for a particular gubernatorial candidate, but, as he notes, the candidate had "suddenly demurred."  Now his literary agent offers him a project "that he thought he might be good for," one where he'd be on familiar ground.   It seems that an old friend and fellow investigative journalist, Max Seeghurs, is working on a book about the Sundial House in Santa Fe, a sort of shady resort once frequented by the rich, as well as the occasional politician, founded by a philanthropist with a vision whose death was the end of Sundial's popularity among the beautiful people.    Max's book is "in trouble," and the agent is worried about seeing the project through.  Getting a copy of the manuscript is not in the cards; Max wants to meet in person.  Reynolds has his own reasons for getting together with Max, so off to New York he goes, but things go horribly bad, leading Reynolds into more than one dangerous situation and to the place where the book opens --  having been involved in some "shootings,"  wandering about in the desert "in cave country," feeling "feverish and on the brink of hallucination" and eventually landing in a coastal town where he not only feels that he can't go home, but also paranoid that he's being watched.  

The story chases those events that have pinned him down in the midst of a conspiracy as he tries to get to the truth behind what is happening to and all around him, while at the same time it has Reynolds engaging in his own measure of self examination, focusing in on past relationships and the ramifications of decisions he's made.  As the back cover blurb notes, Reynolds finds himself "trapped," and there  may be no escape.   

The Lizard is not a book for those who are looking for formulaic crime with all the standard elements,  nor is it a book for readers looking for a quick, light read that will make you smile and move right on to the next book.  No way.   Stansberry writes with depth and intensity, and his prose in some places moves into the realm of the hallucinatory and the metaphorical, with the effect of leaving the reader looking beyond this world deep into another more broken one.  It is dark, bleak and has a strong noir vibe, in which we follow a man straight into his own personal sort of hell, and I loved every second of it.  

My thanks to the author both for the ask and for my copy of this book.  I won't forget this story for a long, long time. 

The Sister of Cain, by Mary Collins

 

97988866011296

Stark House Press, 2025

originally published 1943, Charles Scribner's Sons

196 pp

paperback

One of my greatest mystery-reading pleasures is discovering authors whose work has been around for a long time but who are new to me, especially women writers I've never heard of before.   I've found that joy here with The Sister of Cain, published by Stark House last month, by Mary Collins (1908 - 1979).

About this author I can find very little online, except for the brief blurb at the Stark House website, which tells me that she was born in St. Louis, MO, then moved along with her family to Berkeley at age three where later she would attend the University of California. She wrote "a few fiction stories" for a magazine called The Passing Show, eventually turning to mystery writing, with six novels written between 1941 and 1949: The Fog Comes, Dead Center, Only the Good (also reprinted by Stark House 2022),  The Sister of Cain, Death Warmed Over, and Dog Eat Dog.  It seems that she then "retired from writing" to give her time to her family.  There is also an archive of materials covering her mystery-writing years and a few years beyond, containing "correspondence, contracts, manuscripts, notes and scrapbooks, 1941-1953," for a scholarly someone who might want to delve further into her life.  

On to the novel now, which according to Curtis Evans in his introduction to this book, received a "rave review" from Dorothy B. Hughes and was also broadcast on radio in 1944 as part of  the Molle Mystery Theater Program  from NBC (I've just spent a couple of hours scanning that page and being completely awed at all the titles I know).   Hilda Moreau has arrived in San Francisco at the home of her husband David's family; more specifically, his six sisters Pauline, Sophie, Anne, Elise,  Marthe and Rose, varying in age from 51 to 20, Pauline being the eldest.  There was another sister, Berthe, but she had died fifteen years earlier.  David and Hilda had met while he was teaching and she, a teacher, had been attending a summer session where he worked.  They married just shortly after Pearl Harbor, and because of his Navy reserve commission, he had been called up for active duty, and the last time she'd seen him was a month earlier, in New York.   She has come to his family home while he was serving in the Atlantic because she had no family to speak of; the plan was that Hilda would find an apartment but still enjoy the security of being looked after by his sisters.  The Moreaus lived in "the oldest house still standing in San Francisco ... built in 1852," which Curtis Evans notes is based on a "real city mansion, built in 1852 and known locally as Humphrey's Circle." 

The Humphrey House, from Library of Congress

 Oh. And Hilda is pregnant, but neither she nor David have told anyone yet. 

 Original hardcover edition, from Abebooks

Instead of a warm and loving family, Hilda discovers the opposite.  Pauline, it seems, has complete control over the sisters, financially and otherwise, to the point where she will not allow any of the sisters to marry.  Hilda realizes early on how this woman has created an atmosphere of "fear and bitterness and hatred."  There is also a maid, Nanette, who has been with Pauline since she was born, who is as surly toward the sisters as can be.    Hilda quickly gets down to brass tacks with Pauline regarding her husband's portion of the family trust, but Pauline has other ideas.  It seems that the trust can only be broken by marriage, and since David is now married, all of the siblings should legally be able to come into their share.  Pauline refuses to speak to her about it, so Hilda tells her that she has no other choice but to use her power of attorney and to speak to a lawyer.  This situation doesn't sit well with Pauline, who has control over the trust.  Unfortunately, Hilda is pretty much stuck at the house for the time being, since housing is nearly impossible while the city was filled with "service people, shipyard workers, and government employees."  It isn't too long, however, until murder also finds its way into the house when Pauline is found dead, killed with a knife from the kitchen.  As one of the sisters says, "there's no grief in this house" over her death, since they'd all "wished her dead a thousand times."  But, as the detective says to Pauline, 

"The other people in this house have had their motives for a good many years, Mrs. Moreau. The fun didn't start until after you got here, did it?" 

While the police focus on Hilda as the possible murderer, and as long-buried secrets come cascading out that provide definite reasons for wanting Pauline dead,  Hilda does all that she can to find the real culprit in the house, but it won't be too long before there are more deaths and she finds herself in serious danger.

What a fun ride this novel is, and how incredibly hard it was to have to put this book down when I had to!  The gothic vibe is pretty strong here with Collins doing a great job establishing a dark, tension-filled atmosphere almost immediately.  While Pauline is a great villain for reasons I won't go into, it's really all eyes on Hilda here, who is an extremely strong woman, more than capable of taking care of herself and not averse to personal risk in her quest to clear her name and to bring the real murderer to justice.  I will say that it was rather cringeworthy to see her light up while pregnant, but ah, the things no one really knew back then.  The historian in me was also interested in her descriptions of wartime San Francisco which after all, she knew very well.  

I tried so hard to guess the killer's identity and absolutely couldn't, even as the number of people started dwindling, because there were just too many great suspects.    I consider that a true plus -- Collins really didn't make it easy.  I can certainly and highly recommend The Sister of Cain for vintage crime readers and for mystery lovers like myself who enjoy finding new and somewhat obscure writers from the past.  

As always, my many thanks to Stark House for my copy (these guys are so great), and I'm sure I'll be moseying over there to pick up a copy of another Mary Collins novel.  

One more thing: there is an amazing blogger by the name of Tim Welsh who has not only read this book, but has posted photos of the various locations described by the author.  Don't go there until you've read The Sister of Cain, but his blog, San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now: A Then and now Tour and History of San Francisco Through Films and Photography is well worth the visit when you've finished.  I bookmarked it so I'm sure I'll be spending time going through that rabbithole in the near future.