A Silver Spade/The Kindest Use a Knife, by Louisa Revell

 

9798886011784

Stark House Press, 2026

originally published 1950/1953

307 pp

paperback (my copy from the publisher, with my many thanks!)

Well, I actually finished reading this book some time ago, but our house has been in the hands of painters for like two weeks now so a lot of my stuff (not to mention my office) has  not been accessible for a while.  Between the construction we did and now the painting, I'm ready to be done with all of this.  Arrghh! 

  A new January 2026 release from Stark House, this two-in-one volume brings together books three and four in Louisa Revell’s short series featuring the formidable Miss Julia Tyler. A Silver Spade (1950) and The Kindest Use a Knife (1953) center on this woman in her late sixties who proves that age has only sharpened her instincts. A devoted reader of crime fiction, Miss Tyler is curious, perceptive, and beyond capable of holding her own when she inevitably comes to find herself smack in the middle of real-life murders.  In his introduction, Curtis Evans points out that, much like Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, Julia can’t seem to go anywhere without a murder tagging along right behind her. Having now read all four of these novels, I’d say that his assessment is pretty much dead on.  For readers new to the series, much of the fun lies in the fact that Miss Julia devours mystery novels, and her fondness for fictional detectives has a way of bleeding into her real-life curiosity, often leading her into situations that carry the unmistakable scent of mystery.

Fresh home from her Louisville adventures in No Pockets in Shrouds, sexagenarian Julia is busy getting the house in order for the family’s newest arrival: her great-niece Anne’s baby. Amid all the domestic bustle, she receives an unexpected visit from Mrs. Turner, who is in desperate need of a last-minute replacement for a Latin instructor at a summer camp for gifted students in Maine. Qualified Latin teachers are apparently hard to come by, and Julia is—according to Mrs. Turner—her “one and only prospect.” Julia initially refuses; she’s far too busy. But just as Mrs. Turner is heading out the door, she casually mentions the threatening letters that drove the previous Latin teacher away. For Miss Julia, that detail seals her fate, and it isn’t long before she’s heading for Camp Pirate Island, drawn by the promise of a mystery she can’t resist.  But what starts as a few anonymous letters quickly escalates, beginning with a bullet that whizzes past her on the beach and soon erupting into not just one, but multiple murders—and a summer camp teeming with suspects. 

I was also excited by the anonymous letters, thinking the book might turn out to be another entry in the poison-pen novel category, but like Miss Julia I got way more than I'd bargained for.  

from ebay (you really have to love that picture!)

Reading A Silver Spade was a genuine pleasure—easily more compelling than the two books that came before it. The mystery is strong, but what really lingers is the edgy, slightly discordant undercurrent that gives the novel its sharp bite, as multiple homicides unfold in a place that feels almost fundamentally at odds with even the possibility of such violence.  This is a summer camp where, after lessons end, the girls are meant to be singing songs, putting on skits, swimming in the lake and gathering around campfires—simple, cheerful rituals that in some cases, take on a chilling quality once death enters the picture. And, honestly, this story stirred up a bit of nostalgia for me—not that I ever studied Latin at a summer camp (I mean, really?) — but it did take me back to those fun days of Girl Scout camps I attended when I was much younger.    Let's just say I should have guessed the who but I never did, and that's definitely a win. 

first edition hardcover, from ebay

In The Kindest Use a Knife, Miss Julia is back home in Rossville, Virginia. As she notes, 

"I've been away from home a good bit since I retired. Annapolis and Louisville and Camp Pirate Island, Maine, were all nice, and the excitement in all those places had certainly kept me from sitting down and feeling superannuated and sorry for myself, but Rossville is home and the garden spot of the world." 

Garden spot it may be (to Miss Julia anyway) but it's certainly not immune from the problems of the rest of the world, including murder.  Jack Morris, wheelchair-bound son of Evelyn Morris and a father who had left years earlier, has taken an overdose of pills.  Evidently, thinking it was likely that Jack would die (he didn't), Mr. G.R. Riley, senior warden of St. Ives Church (with a "duty to see to the business affairs of the parish") had consulted an architect regarding the restoration of the Old Rectory, where the Morris family have lived for some time.  Years earlier, when Evelyn's husband Richard had taken off as part of an insurance scam, he had left her and her two children in a sorry financial state, and they had been staying in the Old Rectory rent free as a kindness.  Now Riley wants to move Evelyn's family out and make the place the parish house.  But when Evelyn unexpectedly appears at the Guild Meeting—where members are voting on Riley’s plans—the votes swing in her favor, despite a number of locals who quietly hoped she’d be forced out. So when Miss Julia later discovers Evelyn with a knife in her back, it’s no surprise that suspicion falls on a few citizens of this "garden spot" … including, briefly, Julia herself.  But Evelyn won't be the only one to die ...

This novel is also very good, though I have to admit I enjoyed A Silver Spade more. It wanders a bit at times, but the central mystery is solid, capped by a holy-crap! denouement I genuinely didn’t see coming, and the small-town dynamic is really vibing here.   And while the story itself is undeniably hard to put down (and pardon the pun, please), The Kindest Use a Knife cuts deeper than I expected, exposing some discomfiting biases toward disabled people. I won’t go into specifics, but these moments serve as stark reminders of the period in which the book was written, and they gave me pause in ways that lingered after I’d finished reading. Curtis Evans addresses these issues more directly in his introduction (which I’d recommend saving for last), along with the author's treatment of African-American characters. It’s more than a little sad to encounter, but whenever I run up against this kind of thing, I remind myself that while we can’t change the past, we can—and should—learn from it.

Overall, this is a solid and highly-enjoyable volume of two engaging mysteries. Even though Miss Julia isn’t exactly a card-carrying sleuth, it’s still a pleasure to follow her as she listens and observes, sorts through what she’s heard and teases out connections (in the detective-fiction world as well as her own) as the crimes unfold.  And while she's not always on the money, I still think she's a peach.  There are three more Miss Julia mysteries to go ... hint, hint, Stark House!!

Definitely recommended for those who have followed this series in the first two books, to those who enjoy vintage crime, and especially to those readers who, like me,  have an abiding fondness for the work of more obscure women writers. 

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!  

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 Bus Station Murders/No Pockets in Shrouds, by Louisa Revell

 

"...murder isn't a very nice ladylike hobby, I know ..."

9798886011265

Stark House Press, 2025

originally published 1947/1948 respectively

292 pp

paperback

Coming to Stark House in January 2025 is another set of two novels in one volume, written by a woman whose work, I thought, had been all but forgotten, Louisa Revell.  It is so nice that Stark House has chosen to bring at least these two back into print, The Bus Station Murders and No Pockets in Shrouds, both set during World War II in 1945.    As I started reading the first of the two  it wasn't too long before I realized that I'd read it before. I mean, seriously, there just aren't all that many mystery novels that begin with someone being stabbed by a knitting needle while on a bus so it was easily recognizable.  I'd also posted about it some time ago here  when I was first exploring forgotten and neglected women authors from the past, which has now become one of my crime/mystery-reading passions.  The very awesome people at Stark House have not only helped to support my indulgence with their wonderful reprint editions, and but have also introduced me to women writers I've never heard of.  My thanks to them for this copy.  

As I noted in my original post about The Bus Station Murders, which is the first in a series featuring Miss Julia Tyler, crime just seems to follow her whenever she's away from home.  In this story, she has gone to visit her great-niece Anne and her husband in Annapolis, and she hasn't even gotten off the bus there when a few of the passengers notice a "gray-haired woman" who seems to be deep in slumber  even though the noise should have been enough to wake her.  In fact, Miss Julia's seatmate wonders aloud how anyone could remain asleep through all of the hubbub but it turns out that "the woman was dead," having been stabbed by a silver knitting needle.  Needless to say, although she's a bit reluctant to take part in any sort of investigation, she is eventually talked into it by the lead detective on the case who, as she discovers, is one of her former students.  He changes her mind by saying that he's hoping she'll become "another Miss Marple or Miss Silver" and that he can definitely use her help. 

These are not just idle words; Julia has a great fondness for crime novels, especially those written by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Agatha Christie, Mignon Eberhart and other famous female crime writers; in No Pockets in Shrouds she also references E. Phillips Oppenheim , a hugely-prolific writer (whose book Ghosts of Society has also recently been reprinted by Stark House and which I've commented on here). 

from PS Publishing (the nerve of the designer of this book cover, for reasons which will go unsaid!) 

No Pockets in Shrouds is book number two in this series.  Miss Julia's visit with her niece has come to a close after four months, and after a suggestion by Anne that she go somewhere nice while her house is being rented out, sixty-eight year old Julia decides that perhaps Louisville, Kentucky is the place to be.  She has an old friend named Charlotte Buckner who had read about her bus-station adventures and had invited Julia to "make her a visit" at her home there.   Three or so months later, Julia had seen Charlotte's photo in a newspaper article describing the murder of the Helm family butler, along with a young member of the Helm family who had been suspected of that death.  Charlotte had long been connected with the Helms, and Julia, even though she finds Charlotte "tiresome," she decides that Louisville is where she should go next.  As she said about her choice of vacation venue, "I went where murder was."  The butler's murder is still  unsolved, while she doesn't believe Charlotte's notion that the murderer must have been a tramp, Julia hopes that she will be able to do some  sleuthing to see if she can make any headway in discovering the identity of the killer.  What she doesn't count on is another murder which takes place during her time with Charlotte; the sad thing is that the killer is most likely someone she knows.    

It may well be wartime, but prominent Louisville society ("all the nice families") continues with its rituals -- the telephone is silent after ten a.m. when calls become those of the in-person sort; there are afternoon receptions and the social niceties continue to observed. The biggest interruption, it seems, is that the Kentucky Derby would not be keeping its regular May schedule.  It is because of being in this milieu that  Julia has to tread carefully, but despite everything, she will not stop until she gets to the truth.  

I will just say that there are a few cringeworthy reading moments when it comes to race, but I do appreciate that Stark House didn't go down the route taken by a few publishers to clean it all up to reflect modern sensibilities.  I once read a modern redo of No Orchids for Miss Blandish that was completely sanitized and it really pissed me off.  I remember saying at the time that Shakespeare would likely be next.   Back to the business at hand though,  even though she understands that "murder isn't a very nice ladylike hobby," Miss Julia Tyler and her adventures in sleuthing make for a truly fun read -- while the solutions to these mysteries may take their time, it is  totally worth it for readers of vintage crime, especially American vintage crime.  While you shouldn't expect carbon copies of Miss Marple or any of her British fictional counterparts here, Miss Julia certainly shares with them the ability to quietly soak up the scene on the sidelines before she makes her move.  I hope that in the future Stark House will be so kind as to continue to reprint Revell's work.  Definitely different, and definitely recommended.  As always, do not miss the intro by Curtis Evans but save it until after you've finished reading both books.  

The 17th Letter, by Dorothy Cameron Disney

 

9798886011210

Stark House Press, 2024

originally published 1945

212 pp

paperback

Published just this month, The 17th Letter is my introduction to the work of Dorothy Cameron Disney.  She was the author of nine novels, written between 1936 and 1949; The 17th Letter comes in at number seven.  According to the introduction in the Stark House edition by Curtis Evans, the novel "draws heavily" from the real-life story of Franz von Werra, a German prisoner of war in England who, after being transferred to Ontario, Canada along with other prisoners, escaped by jumping out of the window of a train and eventually made his way back to Nazi Germany.  The 17th Letter is, as Evans says, a "flight-and-pursuit thriller," and somewhat of a departure for the author, whose previous books were more in the "classic style of mystery godmother Mary Roberts Rinehart."   For someone like me who devours vintage crime, that departure and the turn to something different is most welcome.  

The main characters in this novel are Mary and Paul Strong, two journalists who live in a New York apartment overlooking Washington Square.   Their best friend is Max Ferris, who has been away on assignment for News Review documenting a picture story of a convoy destined for Murmansk.  With his task completed, Ferris made his way to Iceland, where he had been stuck for "six long weeks," waiting for some way to make it back home.  In the meantime, he'd been sending his friends a series of letters, sixteen in total, with a number denoting their order on the envelopes.   Now he was expected back home via "the Clipper" from Reykjavik, where he'd been staying with some Danish fishermen, but Paul learns that not only had Max not made the plane, but he had actually given up his ticket.  While Mary thinks that Max might be ill,  Paul believes that "Something important kept him off the Clipper", but he has no conceivable idea of what it might be.   His suspicion increases when he and Mary receive a cable from their friend telling them that there will be a seventeenth letter in the mail, and that they should "be understanding."  The weirdest part of the message is in Max's signature, where he adds a strange middle name -- Icarus. The promised missive arrives, but again it's obvious that something out of the ordinary is going on, since all it contains is a theater program for a show that had run five months earlier.   Add to all of this the theft of some of Max's letters, new neighbors in the building and a strange man in the park who seems to know a great deal about Paul and Mary and finally some devastating news about Max, and Paul decides that it's time to go and find out what's going on with their friend, setting off aboard a ship.  Mary, who has stayed behind, comes across some dangerous information that needs to be acted upon immediately, and knows she must relay it to her husband at any cost, finding herself aboard the same ship as a stowaway.  They manage to make it to Halifax in Nova Scotia, and it is here where their adventure truly begins; unfortunately, they have no idea who they can trust as they find themselves in a great deal of trouble. 

1945 first edition, from Abebooks

I love espionage stories, especially those set during the first and second world wars as well as the cold war era.  Here, Disney starts with a strange mystery which leads to a slow-building suspense before moving on into full-blown page-turner mode.   I have to share that while reading The 17th Letter, I had to employ the old suspension of disbelief here and there, and I noticed myself doing the inner eye roll at the coincidences that pop up, but when all is said and done, this story worked well for me.  What comes through very strongly is the wartime setting which highlights the urgency of the Strongs' plight as they desperately try to find anyone in authority they can trust to share the information they carry, all the while trying to prevent themselves being captured.  And finally, who wouldn't love a dog named Bosco? 

I can recommend this one to people who are looking for something a bit off the beaten path in vintage crime, or to those who would like to read more by lesser-known American women mystery writers, or to people who enjoy books featuring husband-and-wife crime-solving teams.  My review copy came from the publishers, to whom I owe many thanks -- hopefully there will be more books by this author in the works.  

The Wench is Dead ... / Miscast For Murder, by Ruth Fenisong

 

9798886010909

Stark House, 2024

324 pp

paperback

(a huge thank you to the good people at Stark House)

(read earlier in July)

I recently paid an online visit  to Stark House's website to order two more two-in-one volumes by this author, which together comprise the first four novels in this series.   I am a series completist so it drives me a bit batty not to at least start with book number one when I come across a new-to-me detective character, in this case,  Gridley "Grid" Nelson of the New York City Police.  Today's book contains numbers eight and nine, so I obviously have a bit of catching up to do.   

This series spans two decades in the making with the first novel,  Murder Needs a Name, published in 1942.  Ruth Fenisong (1904 - 1978)  would go on to write twelve more installments of this series, while also several publishing nonseries books during the same time frame with two more coming along  afterwards, one in 1967 and the last in 1970.  Curtis Evans provides a brief biography of Fenisong in the introduction to this book; his blog The Passing Tramp offers additional insights into the author's life as well as her work.  

1953 paperback cover, from Fantasic Fiction

It's June, and Nadine (Dene) Cameron has received and turned down several offers from friends to make a the yearly "exodus" from New York City and the Manhattan heat.  The one she accepts comes from an older couple, Vera and Sam Curtis, who she doesn't know very well at all, but Vera has assured her that she understands Dene's need for a bit of independence.  Vera's home on Long Island has a gatehouse where Dene can stay, which is not too far from the main house but will afford Dene the privacy she desires.  Vera will be away for a while, but Sam will be in residence, and could use Dene's company from time to time.   On her arrival at Sandy Crest, "at the far end of Long Island," she is picked up by Sam and another man, who is driving Sam's car, by the name of Paul Debrulet.  As the blurb for this book notes, "the attraction is immediate."   As they start to become close, Dene feels like there is more to this man than meets the eye, but whatever it may be he's not saying.   Back in New York City,  Gridley Nelson is a lieutenant and the acting captain of homicide, NYPD.   He lives with his wife Kyrie and their "two and a fraction" year-old son Grid Junio (referred to as Junie) in an apartment on Lexington Avenue, where the family is taken care of by the cook, Sammy.   Home from a very tough case,  Grid notices that his son has latched on to a pile of magazines which he'd discovered at the incinerator, a true detective sort of thing complete with pictures of wanted criminals.  For some reason, Junie just loves these things, wanting to hear bedtime stories (made up, of course -- not the facts) based on the photos.   As it happens, Kyrie and Junie have been invited to stay with friends on Long Island for a few days.   The two stories merge at a dinner party held by Vera and Sam, where, once seated at the table with the guests, Kyrie is taken completely aback when she realizes that she is sitting with someone she recognizes from the photos in one of her son's magazines, someone who is wanted for murder in another state.   This is when the action really kicks in, beginning with a hit-and-run accident, or was it? 

1954 Doubleday Crime Club edition, from Amazon

Miscast for Murder (1954) moves the action back into New York City.  The story centers around the relationship between a young woman named Bess Rohan and her estranged father, Kevin Culhane, who used to be a renowned singer  back in the day.  His wife had divorced him when Bess was still a small child, and then remarried some time later.  Bess hasn't seen her father in years, so imagine her surprise when she sees him one day while at lunch in a restaurant near  the publishing company where she works. She says nothing to him but seeing him (and the young woman who accompanies him)  weighs heavily on her mind, largely because of all of the negativity about her father generated by her mother since Bess had been a child. Even though her mother has remarried, the subject of Kevin Culhane remains "taboo" between them.  Luckily she has her Aunt Alma, with whom she lives in the city, and a new friend, Link Bassett, a radio broadcaster who enjoys a certain amount of celebrity.  While Link and Bess hang out at her place (and unbeknownst to Bess),  Alma and Kevin are dining together at a restaurant.   Alma talks Kevin into coming over to her place to reunite with Bess, but first they have to make a stop at Kevin's hotel so that he can change his shirt that is now "coffee-spotted" after a mishap at the dinner table.   They agree that Alma will wait in the lobby while Kevin changes, but more than half an hour goes by without him returning.  He can't be reached by phone in his room, so Alma decides to go up and see if everything is okay.  The door is unlocked, so she goes into the dimly-lit room where she discovers a dead body on the floor which she covers with a black coat that's laying on the floor. She did not, however, phone the police but goes back to her apartment instead, where later, Kevin shows up.  Bess shuts herself in her room not wanting to have anything to do with her father, but her father returns to her life in a very big way after the police arrive the next morning looking for him in connection with the murder of the woman in his hotel room. 

Fenisong's detective Grid Nelson is certainly not your average New York City Cop. In The Wench is Dead we learn that he and his wife live comfortably and have "plenty of money," and in Miscast For Murder the two have moved from their apartment to a house and are still "more than solvent."  He is aware that there are some people who view his job as "no more than an eccentric hobby indulged in by a man of wealth and background," but for Nelson that's not the way it is, having 

"almost empathic identification with humanity at large, the slayer as well as the slain, the parents of each, the issue, the wives or husbands, the lovers, the friends, all those who had been encircled by the elastic radius of crime." 

His focus on "humanity at large" also filters down into his home life, especially in his relationship with the family's African-American housekeeper Sammy.  It's refreshing to see the way Fenisong writes this character, especially given that it's the 1950s.  

Of these two books I enjoyed Miscast for Murder a bit more, largely because it's much more of a whodunit than The Wench is Dead .., where I pretty much waited for the police to catch up to what I already knew.   The solution to Miscast for Murder took me by surprise, but there are definitely plenty of suspects to ponder over in the meantime. 

I love traveling back into yesteryear and discovering these old mysteries -- I actually prefer older to newer so it's a genuine pleasure when Stark House sends me a book that makes me want to discover more from the same author.  I think true fans of vintage American crime will enjoy these two books in one, and even if you haven't read the earlier series books, the way these stories are written sort of hint at Nelson's past so it's not at all necessary to know much of anything prior to reading this one.  My thanks to Stark House for the pleasurable hours I spent with this book. 

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A New Stark House double feature: Too Young to Die/The Time of Terror, by Lionel White

 

97988860157

Stark House Press, 2023

270 pp

paperback 

(read earlier)

Lionel White (1905-1985) was a rather prolific author whose writing career lasted well over two decades.  He got his start as a police reporter and editor of a true crime magazine before moving into the realm of fiction, where his work eventually earned him the title of  "the king of the caper novel."   White wrote nearly forty books  before his death, making his print debut in 1953.  Over the span of his career,  a few of his novels were made into films, one of which, Clean Break became Kubrick's The Killing, 1956, and Quentin Tarantino  listed White in the credits of his Reservoir Dogs (1992) as his inspiration.   Stark House has just released this double feature of two of White's novels, making it the tenth two-book volume in their Lionel White repertoire.  

1958 Gold Medal edition, from ebay

 Let me just say before launching into my thoughts here that it's probably a good thing that White used his powers to produce fiction, considering the way he planned this crime, down to the most minute of details.   Too Young to Die (1958) finds Quentin Price fresh out of prison on parole.  He has come to "One great big tremendous truth" during his time behind bars: 

"...there isn't a damn thing in the world more important than money. With it you have everything, without it you are nothing." 

His friend Tammie O'Neill (who, despite the first name is actually a guy)  tries to remind him that he's just out and that "it was that business of wanting money, thinking you needed money, that put you in the clink."   It just so happens that Tammie is an accountant who works for a firm keeping the books of Levinson and Sons, a wholesale diamond and jewelry dealer with offices in New York's diamond district, which is "supposed to be immune to burglary."  As Tammie explains, "there is isn't one chance in ten million of knocking over a score up there. Not one in ten million."   But Quent disagrees, and eventually a plan is concocted that actually might have every chance of succeeding, due to clockwork precision and the smallest attention to detail. However, White throws a  big monkeywrench into his story with Cindy, seventeen and the fianceé of Patsy Frocetti (also a guy despite the name), a mechanic and stock car racer whom Tammie brings into the plan for his knowledge of cars. As with the other characters in on the job, Patsy is sworn to secrecy, prevented from telling even Cindy because "Quent Price don't trust no girls to know."  But Patsy isn't very good at secrets, and between his loose lips and Cindy's growing attraction to Quent and vice versa, the plan could very well be in jeopardy.  

As far as the caper in this story is concerned, as I said earlier, White's plotting was downright meticulous, with the job planned down to the minute and even the smallest details taken into consideration.  I have to say that while I haven't read many books of this sort (capers and heists), I got seriously caught up in the setup for the robbery because it was done so well. But from the opening chapter, which begins just a hair's breadth from the ending of the story before going back in time to answer the questions of a) what's going on and b) how did we get here, I knew that things evidently had not gone to plan, and that Quent was not going to be walking away in the sunset, pockets jingling with his ill-gotten gains.  But, and a SERIOUS caveat lector here,  the Cindy-Quent subplot, on the other hand, made me completely uncomfortable with the fact that an older guy was attracted to a teenager, but then the author took things waaaaayyyyyy too far with a scene where she's fighting him off, this "man suddenly insane," not hearing hear pleas to stop, where she's crying out "in agony as the pain shot through her."  That's bad enough at any age, but with a seventeen year-old girl, it's especially disgusting and uncalled for.  Without that, Too Young to Die would have made for near-perfect crime reading -- I have no idea exactly why the author felt it would add to the story.  

from Goodreads

Imagine my reluctance then to proceed on to the next book, The Time of Terror (1960).  As it turns out though, I needn't have worried.  From the outset we learn that Elizabeth Farrington Dobie (Bet) finds herself "again and again" reliving some sort of horrific event from a "tragic period."  The day that things happened was June tenth, with its beginning  a "bright, clear, fresh morning."  Bet is married to Chris, and the two have two children, Marion (Midge) and little Christian, aka Christian Dobie III, and they live next door to Christian Dobie Sr., Chris' dad in an upscale neighborhood.  Christian works for the Dyna-Electro Corporation, a company he had founded with two people from his days in the Navy, while Bet is a stay-at-home mom. She has a helper in Grace Williams, whom Bet found at a Catholic Protectory and who had been in some sort of trouble earlier in her life.  Now Grace works as a sort of housekeeper and nanny, taking "marvelous care of the children."    The Dobies live a good life, and on June tenth, Christian is on his way to Washington DC for work.  As we learn,  "It was like every Monday morning."   Bet, with children and Grace in tow, leaves to do some shopping, although an earlier phone call  had left Grace upset and wanting to watch the children at home.  Bet, however, knew the kids looked forward to the ride, and she needed Grace to take care of them in the car.  Off to the shopping center, and after a twenty-minute period of shopping, Bet returns with purchases in hand, watching Grace and Midge at the nearby merry-go-round in the parking lot, but little Christian is nowhere to be found.  

Meanwhile, in the neighborhood known as Shadydell Estates,  Frank Mace has found himself in a jam, in "serious, desperate trouble." His wife and kids have left and he'd lost his job three months earlier, which made a huge difference for his family, who always just "got by" on his salary.  The buyers like Frank who'd moved into Shadydell hadn't counted on all of the extra expenses of home ownership, and with children and a wife to support, the living hadn't been easy to begin with.  Frank, as the breadwinner, soon finds himself in despair, wondering how he's going to make it.  One night when the "troubles and worries and all" had pretty much "driven him out of his mind," he got really drunk and let his friend Barney talk him into letting another woman console him.  Bad idea -- his wife Ruthie, who had stuck by him through the money woes, wasn't about to hang around after he'd confessed to her.  Now he's got creditors chasing him, and he wants Ruthie and his kids back.  All he knows is that "Money was the key," and that "he'd get it no matter what he had to do," even if he "had to rob and kill for it."   On that very same beautiful Monday,  Frank decides on a plan, although opportunity changes things up a bit when he comes upon a little boy alone in a car parked next to his in a shopping center parking lot.  

While the Dobies live through every minute that follows in absolute terror,  Frank's friend Barney discovers what Frank has done and takes charge of things. As the blurb for this book notes, " And that's when the real trouble begins..."

I really enjoyed The Time of Terror.  Frank's utter desperation translates very well from pen to page here as does the horror of the Dobies having to live through the kidnapping of their child.  As Matthew Sorrento notes in his introduction to this volume, the author becomes a "sharp social critic," as he "dissects the flight to the suburbs as a financial trap."   His commentary, says Sorrento, explores "suburban decay hidden beneath the veneer of old money and exploitative practices," a topic beyond relevant more than seventy years later in our own time, another factor in making it a worthy read.   So for me, this two-books-in-one volume as a whole is a mixed bag, with the terrific caper plot in  Too Young To Die completely marred by the unnecessary rape of a teenaged girl while  The Time of Terror kept me turning pages.  

One more thing: Sorrento's introduction will definitely be appreciated by film buffs -- I spent time looking online through each and every description of each movie he mentioned and I was just in awe at his wealth of knowledge.   My (as usual!! ) many thanks to Stark House for my copy.  

Continuing on in catch-up mode: Death of a Stray Cat/ An Affair of the Heart, by Jean Potts

 

9798886010053

Stark House, 2023

236 pp

paperback (my copy from the publisher -- thanks!)

 

I love reading the works of women crime writers of yesteryear.  Jean Potts is the author of fourteen novels in this genre, one "mainstream" novel called Someone to Remember (1943) and a huge number of short stories.  Quite a few of the latter were  published in  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and at least one in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  In short, she was an incredibly prolific author; thanks to Stark House, her work is being brought back for modern readers to enjoy.  This volume contains two of her mystery stories:  Death of a Stray Cat from 1955 and An Affair of the Heart, published in 1970.

Very briefly, because there are two books at play here,  Death of a Stray Cat is a fine whodunit that begins as bookseller Alex Blair and his wife Gen arrive in the small New York community where they have a beach house: "on one side of the road W. Gertz, Meats and Groceries, and across from it the filling station and Rudy's Bar and Grill."  It's Labor Day weekend, and the two of them are looking forward to a happy, leisurely three-week getaway; along for the ride is "a preposterous pair," Mr. Theobald and Vonda, who will be staying at a cottage owned by Dwight Abbott, a friend of the Blairs.  When they stop for groceries, the proprietor lets them know that a young woman had stopped there earlier in the day, wanting to know where Alex's house was.  Neither of the Blairs can figure out who it might have been, and sort of brush it off, not giving it another thought.    Vonda and Mr. Theobald take the Blair's car to drop off the groceries while  Alex and Gen go to have drinks and dinner at nearby Rudy's, a local favorite.  They've just settled in at their table when Rudy's daughter takes a phone call that leads Alex, Gen and local police chief Ed Fuller to the Blairs' beach house, where they find the body of a young woman, apparently strangled. Gen has no idea who she is, but Alex recognizes her as Marcella Ewing.   He can't believe it --  of all the people in the world, he thinks, "it was hard to imagine anybody less dangerous than Marcella."  With only a small group of people as potential suspects, the focus is on the victim herself -- why would anyone want her dead?   I have to say that I didn't guess the identity of the killer, always a plus, but even more to the point, when that person was unmasked I had  a true "whoa!" moment.  The author's brilliant plotting shines through in this story, but even better is the way in which she managed to imbue her characters with such unexpected life. Mystery readers will LOVE this one.   Another thing:  while her Edgar award-winning novel Go, Lovely Rose was awesome,  Death of a Stray Cat beats that one by a mile.  Definitely very highly recommended.  

I really love these old, lurid covers.  This one's from Biblio

After finishing the second book, An Affair of the Heart, it dawned on me that the title can easily be taken as a sort of double entendre, especially because the dead man at the center of this novel has a heart condition.  By the way, this fact isn't a spoiler, since it's right there up front in the book blurb.  This book is much shorter in length than Death of a Stray Cat; although it comes in at less than one hundred pages, there's still plenty of whodunit mystery here to enjoy.  Kirk Banning is only forty-nine, but he's been told that he needs to take things easy in order to stave off another heart attack or an even worse fate.  For some time the younger Lorraine Walsh has been "the other woman" in his life, a role that once she had "leapt into so gladly and blindly," but lately she's had not only regrets, but since meeting Kirk's wife Hilda, she has also developed a conscience about the whole situation.   Things get intense when Kirk actually proposes, something that would have made Lorraine "raptuously happy" a year earlier, but not any more.  He plans on telling his wife about everything in three days' time.  The problem is that Lorraine can't find a way to tell him how she feels now, because the shock just might kill him, given his heart condition.  As she tells her sister Mary, that's not the worst of it -- suppose Kirk had another heart attack and died in her apartment?  How could she possibly explain everything?   As one might guess, on a day Lorraine is away, the inevitable ends up happening, forcing Lorraine, Mary and their good friend Teddy to go into cover-up mode.  All goes okay with the police, and Lorraine has a perfect excuse for his being there to offer to the family.  Kirk's daughter Isobel, summoned to the site of her father's death, realizes that he doesn't have his medication on him like he always does.   Lorraine also  notices that Kirk's medication isn't in the usual spot on her bedside table, leaving Mary to wonder whether or not she and Teddy "might have blundered into something quite different from what they had bargained for."  Evidently, someone wanted Kirk Banning dead, but who?  And how?  What none of the three could possibly know is that there will be a terrible price to be paid when all is said and done.   

a rather bland cover for this one: Gollancz UK first edition hardcover, 1970.  From Dead Souls Bookshop

Once again it's the characters that really make this story, and once again, the plot focuses on a small number of people at its core, all of them with closely-guarded secrets that add an element of tension and a darkish sort of intensity into the reading.  It's not quite on the level of Death of a Stray Cat in my opinion, but it's still pretty good story with more than a couple of surprises along the way. Unfortunately, I did figure out the who in this one, but I think it's likely because it wasn't nearly as involved or written as in depth as the other. Despite that, An Affair of the Heart still makes for a good read, and taken as a whole, this two-novel volume is well worth your mystery-reading time.  I enjoyed this volume so very much that I've just bought three more (so I suppose that makes six in total)  books by Jean Potts directly from the publisher.  As long as they keep putting them out, I'll continue reading them.

My many thanks to the powers that be at Stark House, along with major apologies for taking so long to get to this book and the others they've sent -- we've had a hell of a year here at home and it's only just recently that the pall has begun to lift.  Thank you so very, very much.

Night Over Fitch's Pond, by Cora Jarrett

 

Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Press, 1933

292 pp

hardcover

"There's a moment in the history of any tie between human beings that settles for good the question of who's going to be top dog." 

Night Over Fitch's Pond is number 24 on the Borges/Bioy list of mystery novels, and it is my introduction to author Cora Jarrett (1877-1969).  As a brief aside, I did read number 23, ECR Lorac's Black Beadle (1939), but it was a long while ago, I didn't really care for it all that much, and I was well behind reading schedule so I didn't post about it.  Oh well.  Things are FINALLY settling here at home (after what, two-plus years?)  so I'll just be moving on.   

One particular thing I'm enjoying about going through the Borges/Bioy list of books is that  it affords me the opportunity to read novels I have never read before, and in this case, an author I'd not heard of before starting this project.   Cora Hardy was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and after studying at Bryn Mawr, The Sorbonne and Oxford,  she entered into what would become a lengthy teaching career and married Edmund Seton Jarrett in 1906.   According to a blurb about her book The Ginkgo Tree at Abebooks, she "began writing in her 50s,"  with Night Over Fitch's Pond  her first novel.  She would go on to write five more novels, a number of short stories and a play, and as Barrie Hayne notes in Reilly's Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers , Jarrett's books are "deep probings into abnormal psychology" (Springer, 2015; 858), which is very likely one reason I liked Night Over Fitch's Pond as much as I did.  

The novel begins as our narrator, Walter Drake, sits by the body of Julius Nettleton in a cottage on Fitch's Pond, "a small solitary lake of great beauty."  Reflecting back on events that led to Julius' death, his mind replays what had happened over that particular summer, looking for any kind of clues as to what might have happened out on the lake that caused Julius to die.   

Julius and Mary Nettleton had first come to Fitch's Pond to visit their son George at a camp on the lake owned and run by a man named Maxon. They had discovered two abandoned cottages there, and Julius bought them both -- one for his family and one to be rented out.   Later, after the Nettletons had spent four summers on the lake, Julius had invited Walter to spend his summer at Fitch's Pond as a guest in their cabin.  Walter soon realizes that the Nettletons are no ordinary couple -- Julius, as he notes, wanted Mary to be  "a housemate only, a housekeeper, a serviceable kind of companion," while Mary had decided to "bear with humors of Julius."  Life at the Nettletons, both at home and at the lake, it seems, is built around what "Julius will want..." with Mary acceding to his wishes despite what she might want.  Walter, it seems, is also secretly in love with Mary but doesn't understand why she caves in so easily to what her husband wants.   

The real trouble begins when new tenants, Rolf and Eloise Deming,  move into the second cottage.  On first meeting Eloise, Drake comes to the conclusion (eventually proving correct) that Eloise would "go over the lot of us like a steam-roller," and secretly hopes that Julius would "get his proper come-uppance from this woman he had brought among us." He also realizes  that it would be Mary who "would pay," also a spot-on insight, especially when it hits him that Mary and Rolf had quietly fallen for each other and that Eloise knows.  Drake goes on to describe a  campaign of mental tortures inflicted on Mary by Eloise  taking readers to that "one fatal evening," which had "brought our whole precarious cardhouse of outward appearance at Fitch's Pond slithering and toppling down."   "Abnormal psychology" indeed -- there's a reason why Eloise is referred to as "an Iago in petticoats," but the one really deserving reader scrutiny here is Julius, as Drake spends that long night "laboring to plumb ... the bottomless dark" of his mind.  

While reading, my thoughts often came back to a  passage I'd marked earlier in the novel where Drake is told by a friend that 

There's a moment in the history of any tie between human beings that settles for good the question of who's going to be top dog," 

 and without giving anything away, all I will say is that there is much more than a kernel of truth in that statement, played out right up until the end.  To say much else would be criminal; in the long run, while Night Over Fitch's Pond  may not be a typical mystery story,  after the first few slow-ish chapters, I couldn't put it down.  The truth is that I enjoyed it so very much that I bought a copy of Jarrett's Pattern in Red and Black (1934; Coachwhip, 2017)  written under her alias Faraday Keene.  This character-driven story may not be for everyone, but there's just something about the deep delve into people's dark psyches  that appealed to me.  

Recommended, mainly to readers of older mysteries, as well as to people who, like myself, are always on the lookout for something different and who love finding the writings of authors whose works have pretty much faded away into obscurity.