*2 Detectives: Astro, the Master of Mysteries, by Gelett Burgess and Dr. Xavier Wycherley, The Mind-Reader, by Max Rittenberg

9781616461034

Coachwhip Publications, 2011

622 pp

paperback

My latest stop along my journey into crime/mystery fiction of yesteryear brought me to this book, which despite its hefty weight and 600-plus page length turned out to be an ahhhhh read.  First of all, these books are early examples of stories in the psychic detective zone (Astro, The Master of Mysteries was published in 1912; Dr. Xavier Wycherley, The Mind-Reader came out in 1913); second, they both have this lovely early pulp vibe, and the third reason is that the plots of these stories are so out there that reading them is just pure pleasure for someone like myself who thrives on this stuff.

Even heftier than the weight of this book, the true title of Astro, The Master of Mysteries goes like this:

The Master of Mysteries; Being an Account of the Problems Solved by Astro, Seer of Secrets, and His Love Affair with Valeska Wynne, His Assistant

from Public Domain Superheroes

and there they are, the two main characters.  Of course, there's much more to this book than the romance between Astro and Valeska; in fact, we only pick up a vague idea of his feelings for her as the stories progress, right up until the very end when he starts dropping not-so-veiled hints.  In the publisher's note before the beginning of Astro, The Master of Mysteries, we're told that when this book was first published in 1912, it was done so anonymously.  It also provides another clue:

"The Introduction ... suggests there are three cryptograms hidden in the text. Two of these are known and easily discovered. (The first provides the name of the author, Gelett Burgess.) The third cryptogram remains a puzzle." 

In  Classic Mystery Stories (Dover, 1999)  editor Douglas G. Greene provides the way to solve the first two cryptograms, but goes on to say that he doesn't believe that anyone has "yet discovered the third cypher."  So we know we have mysteries within a book of mysteries before we even turn the first page.  Greene also reveals that

"Victor Berch, the scholar of popular fiction, has discovered that the Astro "Seer of Secrets" stories, were first published in 1905-1906 issues of The Sunday Magazine under the pseudonym Alan Braghampton"

and that Astro's real name is Astrogen Kerby. (131)  For a quick look at an Astro story published under the name of Braghampton, you can click here.

While I won't go into the twenty-four stories specifically, Astro is a medium whose spiel runs like this:

"...there are waves of the ether, --N-rays, X-rays, acitinic and ultraviolet vibrations, to which I am exceedingly susceptible.  I have an inner sense and an esoteric knowledge of life and its mysteries that is hidden from all who have not lived for cycles and eons in solitude and contemplation with the Mahatmas of the Himalayas!" 

He is adored by New York society, wears a turban and robes, and is fond of the hookah; he often refers to himself as the "Mahatma of the Fourth Sphere," is a "skilled and artistic musician," reads constantly,  and has a working knowledge of most subjects.  He's also a complete fake, aided by his assistant Valeska, and as the book goes along, he schools her in the art of his own charlatanry, all the while dropping hints to her that he's in love with her. Together, and often with the help of a police detective whose career Astro has helped to boost, they solve a wide-ranging variety of different mysteries that make for hours of fun reading.

Next up is Max Rittenberg's Dr. Xavier Wycherley, The Mind-Reader.  Wycherley is an interesting character who blends science, psychology, and his ability as a "mental healer" in solving problems, but he detests the idea of being considered as a detective. As we learn,

"Detective work was strongly distasteful to him unless it were to open out fresh experiences in the realm of the human mind."

 He can also astrally project, but it's his reading of auras that often provides all he needs to know about a subject.   According to Robert Sampson in his Yesterday's Faces: A Study of Series Characters in the Early Pulp Magazines Volume 2: Strange Days, (Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1984),   Wycherley made his first appearance in The London Magazine in March 1911, finding his way ("leaped the Atlantic," as Sampson says) into The Blue Book  later that same year.  (47)

The Blue Book Magazine, June 1911 

Wycherley refers to himself as a "specialist," but notes that his name would "not be found on the British register...", and that he is called upon throughout the world, "wherever there is call for my services as a mental healer."  As Rittenberg explains,

"The mental healer was a combination of scientist and humanitarian which is far from usual. As the latter, his warm human sympathies went out unceasingly to the weak, the oppressed, the suffering, the sick of body and the sick of mind. But as a scientist he would for the time being forget the patient in the subject."

We also learn that in his "younger days" he had to fight the "intense" prejudices of the English medical profession against "anything approaching hypnotism or mental suggestion..." and even though he's not on the registers, he keeps a consulting room in London. He also has a villa on the private Isola Salvatore on Lake Rovellasco where his patients often come for help.  He moves in and out of the highest circles of society and government, and for the most part, in his quest to heal minds (his life's work), often leaves it to people to do their duty, to do what is right.  This particular characteristic of Wycherley's is quite interesting, and says a great deal about the Edwardian milieu in which Rittenberg wrote.  As far as the stories go, they take him to several different places, with a wide variety of cases.  The first case, for example, finds him at Isola Salvatore where he does something that reminded me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; while later he'll find himself in Felsbrunnen where he is thrust into the midst of a most bizarre and dastardly secret in an old castle.   He does have a strange quirk: he will sort of put himself into a trance to puzzle out a problem, often locking out the outside world except for the pain caused by a lit cigarette burning in his hands that wakes him up and brings him back around.  The cases themselves are most interesting, as we watch this man combine science, psychoanalysis, and often (it seems) downright mysticism to bring about some sort of resolution.  These are absolutely not your average crime stories, and well worth reading to serious pulp fans or fans of stories involving scientific or psychic detectives

Hats off to Tim Prasil at Coachwhip for collecting these two very obscure books and putting them into one volume.  I had so much fun here, although it did take me a while to warm up to Dr. Wycherley until "The Countess Plunges," which has such an amazing solution that I couldn't help but to be impressed.  Astro, on the other hand, I loved immediately, because you know right from the start that he is a complete fraud, and the fun is not only in watching how he solves the cases he's given but also in watching him teach Valeska his bag of tricks.   The book as a whole is most likely a niche read for diehard early pulp fans and people like me who are interested in off-the-beaten-path kinds of early crime/mystery fiction, but anyone who falls into those categories will absolutely love this book.

Recommended for fellow niche readers.  Have a great time with it -- I certainly did.

from the British reading room: Murder Underground, by Mavis Doriel Hay

97807122357258
British Library Crime Classics, 2014
originally published 1934
286 pp

paperback

"The annals of murder are riddled with coincidence."

Between 1934 and 1936 British author Mavis Doriel Hay (1874-1979)  published three mystery novels, with Murder Underground as her first, followed by Death on the Cherwell in 1935 and The Santa Klaus Murders in 1936.   This is my first book by Hay, and while I found it a bit underwhelming, it certainly won't be my last.

Miss Euphemia Pongleton has been murdered, strangled with her dog's leash and left on the stairs going down to the Belsize Park underground station. There is a man in custody for her death, but no one at the Frampton Private Hotel (the boarding house where Miss Pongleton lived) can believe he actually committed the crime.  In fact, the denizens of the house have much more sympathy for the accused than they do for the dead woman, who was rather eccentric, cheap, rather "tiresome," and known to have "loved a sense of power."  While the police are called in to investigate, in this book the Inspector in charge has only a minor role, arriving late to the story.  The focus is really on the efforts of the people at the Frampton who try to discover who really killed her. In the meantime, someone else has his own reasons for wanting to conceal what he knows, and ends up causing more than a lot of confusion in the case.

Considering how very much I love these old books and British murder mysteries in general, overall this one was, like Miss Euphemia Pongleton, a bit tiresome.  What I enjoyed about it was the focus on the boarders, who have their own theories on what happened.  The best scene takes place at the beginning of the story, when all are together in one room, waiting to be called individually to talk to the (somewhat invisible at this point) police Inspector. There we discover that while these people feel sorry that she'd met with such a terrible end, they're also realistic, with one woman noting that

"It would be hypocritical to pretend that any one of us is overwhelmed at the removal of Miss Pongleton."

This conversation is very lively, with a novelist, Mrs. Daymer, applying her "expert" knowledge of the police, of investigations, and of the victim herself while "surveying the possibilities of the situation." The other boarders voice their own opinions or come up with logical questions that are discussed in turn, each one speculating on motive, means and opportunity.    But when outside of the boarding house, someone decides to gum up the works to protect himself and starts covering up his own movements and  telling a series of lies, the story quickly gets tedious, making the novel  tough to get through.  Talk talk talk, very little in the way of action until the book is nearly finished.   I read several reader reviews where people had said that they got bored enough to flip to the end, but really, it's so incredibly easy to figure out that no one should have had to do that.  For me the question was one of waiting it out to see how long it took before things are set right, and exactly how that was going to be accomplished.

While I won't sing the praises of this novel, I do still plan on reading her other two, so maybe they'll be a bit better.  However, as an example of the work of a previously-obscure woman mystery writer of the Golden Age, Murder Underground is very much worth reading.

In which "Meddlesome Matty [nearly] came to a bad end" : Murder in Stained Glass, by Margaret Armstrong

9780993235702
Pepik Books, 2015
originally published in 1939
182 pp

paperback

Murder in Stained Glass is the opener of a new series called "American Queens of Crime", issued by Pepik Books. Claire Theyers, the owner and director of this small press, has stated that "only quality fiction" that she's read and "truly enjoyed makes it into the series." Bravo for her -- and good for me, since like Ms. Theyers, I am constantly on the lookout for books from authors whom, as she notes, are "long forgotten about and their stories gathering dust in bookshops and charity stores."

You can read a brief post about Margaret Neilson Armstrong's amazing career here;  now, onto the book itself.   Murder in Stained Glass is absolutely delightful. As the novel opens, the main character, self-proclaimed spinster (although only in her "late forties") Miss Trumbull notes the following while looking back over the events of this story:

"It's like the nursery rhyme about the old woman who milked the cow with the crumbled horn. If the weather hadn't cleared I wouldn't have gone to stay with Charlotte Blair; I shouldn't have been on hand with my eyes wide open when things began to happen; I shouldn't have been forced to play the part of innocent bystander -- a dangerous part when bullets are flying about; and as I should have known nothing about the case, except what I read in the newspapers, I couldn't have been of the smallest use to anybody concerned." 

But the weather indeed cleared, and Miss Trumbull went off to Bassett's Bridge, Connecticut,  to visit her rather moody old school friend Charlotte Blair. Truth be told, she isn't that fond of Charlotte, but the lovely young girl living with "Cousin Charlotte," Phyllis Blair, is another story.   The three of them make their way to the workshop of artist Frederick Ullathorne, who has just finished a lovely (albeit somewhat flawed) stained-glass window destined for a New York cathedral. Phyllis and Ullathorne's son Leo are an item, and provide delightful company for our heroine.  A week goes by, and although she's having a lovely time with these two young people, Miss Trumbull starts thinking that she'd "had about enough of a peaceful country life," and is ready to return to the city.  But her plans are delayed when "our peace broke with a vengeance" --  to everyone's horror, news arrives that bones have been discovered in the kiln at the glass shop.  Unseen by the others, Miss Trumbull watches young Leo pick up something out of the ashes; later it is revealed that it is a dental "appliance" belonging to his father.  At the inquest, the coroner offers his opinion that "for some sordid reason" "a great genius was taken away at the height of his fame."  As the rumors fly as to who may have done away with Mr. Ullathorne, Miss Trumbull decides that she has to do something because suspicion is quickly mounting against young Leo.  She knows that something is not right and has some leads of her own to follow even after returning to New York, but she is warned more than once that her role as "Meddlesome Matty" might land her in jail or even worse.

The blurb on the back cover of this book notes that "If you like Agatha Christie then you'll love Miss Trumbull," and while this book may definitely appeal to Miss Marple fans, Miss Trumbull is a delight on her own.  She is quite independent, both in terms of money and personality, and doesn't let little things like an attempt on her life or potentially dangerous situations get in her way.  In contrast to her friend Charlotte, whom Phyllis describes as a "gloomy old lady in black and rather severe," Miss Trumbull is full of life and energy, well respected and a hit with the youngsters.  The novel also has one of the best twists that I must say I never saw coming -- and in this book, there are a number of potential suspects as well as a few well-placed red herrings that will keep any reader guessing.  Yes, it's a bit dated but once in the mindset of the period, it became a fun, interesting and delightful read.

about as obscure as it gets, folks: The Dead Letter and The Figure Eight, by Metta Fuller Victor (aka Seeley Register)

0822331659
Duke University Press, 2003
388 pp

paperback

In the realm of American crime writing, this author is about as obscure a find as a reader can uncover.

For information about this most prolific author, you can click here to get to my newest labor of love, Forgotten Females Found. 


Published in 1866, The Dead Letter, in my opinion, is the better of the two novels featured here. Catherine Ross Nickerson in her The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women labels The Dead Letter as "the first American detective novel" (29); both books are, as she notes,

"documents of a moment in cultural history when the young professional seemed to hold the promise of mediating between the cloudy-minded nostalgia of the landed class and the unprincipled greed of the merchant and capitalist classes."  (31)

I will leave it for the reader to discover exactly what she means, but she is most definitely on target here.  While there's a LOT going on under the surface in this volume  (way more than I can explain here), for example a portrait of a) what was holding the American reading interest at the time, b) societal/cultural attitudes towards outsiders (here including the Irish, Mexicans, Spaniards and other ethnic groups) c) the focus on the home, marriage,  and the domestic sphere as a prime focus of "investigation",  these books are also fun reads for anyone interested in American literature of this period that won't likely be found on any general American Lit course syllabus.

(from LibraryThing) 

A mix of gothic, mystery, romance and sexually-charged domestic novel,  The Dead Letter starts with the story's hero, Redfield, who has been working in the government's dead letter office for just about a year. With just an outline of the basic story here, in going through the mail, he comes across one written to "John Owen, Peekskill, New York," with the date of October 18, 1857, a date that rings a bell in his head. The address also sets off alarms -- he had lived only twenty miles away from Peekskill in the town of Blankville right around that time. When he opens the letter he gets another shock, at which point the narrative begins in earnest, going back two years to the events of 1857 that took place at the home of John Argyll, Esq., Redfield's mentor and benefactor since the death of Redfield's father. Mr. Argyll lived in the house with his nephew James and his two daughters.  As the story opens, Argyll's daughter Eleanor is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her fiancée, Henry Moreland, wondering why he's taking so long in getting to the house. As it turns out, she'll never see Moreland again -- he is found dead on the road,  having been stabbed in the back.  Eleanor goes into deep shock and spirals progressively into melancholia and madness; Redfield, who is secretly in love with her, vows to find and to "bring punishment to the murderer." He hires a deep-cover detective named Burton ("there are not many outsiders who know that person")  to investigate, and between the two they waste no effort in ferreting out the guilty party, although James Argyll has seen to it that the Argyll family should consider Redfield the prime suspect, making him a domestic pariah.   This novel is also highly entertaining -- a "haunted" house complete with ghost, a young girl whose clairvoyant abilities help her father to solve baffling cases, and a lot of female sexual energy going on as well.

Moving along, The Figure Eight is (in my opinion) much more of the domestic-drama fiction variety, although as with The Dead Letter,  murder and detection  is at the heart of this story. Very briefly, the body belongs to Dr. Meredith, who has been poisoned in his own home, leaving behind only a very cryptic message in the form of a figure eight as a clue. Meredith, it seems, had fallen on hard times, made his way to the western gold fields, and came back with enough gold to keep things afloat. Sadly, when Dr. Meredith is killed, no one knows where he's hidden the gold; without it, his daughter Lilian  is headed for penury.  Luckily for Lilian, when the family fortune wanes, another family buys the home and allows Lilian, her governess (who sleepwalks and has a slimy brother named Arthur)  and the very-young, flighty and flirtatious Spanish bride Dr. Meredith had brought home with him to live at Meredith Hall.  This novel follows two main storylines -- first, of course, the hunt for the murderer; the second, the search for the hidden fortune, but embedded here is veritable hotbed of sexual energy, both male and female.  The central character in this book is Joe Meredith, who, like Redfield in The Dead Letter, has been ostracized from the family once suspicion is cast on him for Dr. Meredith's murder.  Unlike Redfield, though, Joe comes from a less-settled, less socially-approved background, eventually undertaking medicine as a field of study in order to please his now-dead uncle; his "rough" upbringing practically ensures that he would naturally be suspect.   This story finds Joe taking on a number of wild disguises (a laborer, and a "mulatto" waiter, as just two examples) in order to keep up his investigation into the identification of the true murderer and to simultaneously spy on the action on at Meredith House.

Nickerson reveals in her book that

"the first Americans to write detective novels picked the domestic sphere as the area most able to support the detective story and the area most in need of investigation," (46)

and as I continued to read through both novels here, this idea became clearer with every page turned.

As I said earlier, there's no possible way to go into all of the under-the-surface things I uncovered  while reading these books, and both are much more complex than I make them out to be here, but trust me, there is a lot between the covers that is discussion worthy. For someone like myself who loves these old books and who tries to read between the lines as to the cultural climate, the politics, and the historical significance of the time in which they were written, it is a goldmine.   On the other hand, they're definitely not for everyone, but if for no other reason, the fact that Metta Fuller Victor made an appearance before Anna Katherine Green (who I've always believed was the first American woman detective novelist) makes her extremely readworthy.

back to the past #17: Death in the Cards, by Ann T. Smith

9781434407382
Wildside books, 2010
originally published 1945, Phoenix Press
256 pp

paperback

I love these Wildside editions -- I have several in my shelves spreading across genres.  They're great facsimile editions which offer readers like myself the opportunity to rediscover old book without having to go into debt buying them.  Sadly, the author remains a mystery to me, since I could find absolutely nothing outside of this book to her credit; I couldn't find any personal information either.  I went through several sources I have at home, including Hubin's great reference work which would normally list a pseudonym as well as at least a birthdate, but got nothing. If I find more later, I'll make an addendum here, but for now, she remains a question mark. That's a shame -- I love unearthing people's histories; they're often very enlightening as well as interesting.  Oh well. I tried.

I did, however, discover two different covers of  Death in the Cards -- the original

and the reprint

both of which as you can see, offer a clue in the cat on the cover. While I won't say why the cat (whose name is Beauty) is important, let's just say that the poor kitty has a role to play, ultimately coming to a pretty sad end.  But the cat is the least of the worries at the old house on Brattle Street, where Paul and Lita Redfern have taken rooms so that Paul can be close to his new professorial job in Boston.

Death in the Cards is not the best book I've ever read from the 1940s, but it did keep me turning pages to find out who killed old Mrs. Carrie Seton, who owns the house and rents out rooms.  The tenants, aside from Paul and Lita, include an anthropologist (Dr. Oglesbie) whose rooms are filled with skulls, a handyman named George from South Dakota, a Navy man (Phillips) who's just finished a tour of duty on a submarine, two elderly, former Beacon Hill women (Miss Lovelace and Miss Brundage) whose fortunes have faded since the social heyday, and Mrs. Seton's granddaughter Caroline.  Within just a few weeks of moving into the place, old Mrs. Seton ends up dead and Paul, who comes across her body, finds evidence that his wife may have been the culprit.  So many things point to her guilt that he hides what he discovers and takes it upon himself to find the real murderer before the police hone in on his wife.  With so many people in the house though, that's not going to be easy -- and the police are eager to bring this case to a close.

Way more interesting to me than the mystery (which quite frankly gets a bit convoluted and even  brings in a Nazi spy as a sort of patsy -- remember, it's still wartime) is that the author takes her readers into the world of Boston's Beacon Hill society in its heyday (and later as fortunes decline) as she recalls Mrs. Seton's life.  As it turns out, the dead woman was not of their ilk -- au contraire, she was a young woman nee O'Toole from Irish stock and from the wrong part of town. She had caught the attention of her future husband who fell for her and was bound and determined to introduce her to his Boston Brahmin world, which did not go over so well and required the help of her old Miss Lovelace, who remained her very best friend and stayed with her long after Mr.Seton had passed on.

It's a good find, probably not of interest to most people unless you're into obscure vintage fiction, and aside from the meandering nature of the story, not a bad read.

Just as an aside, I have pretty much finished my obscure women writers project for this year, but I have been stacking my shelves with many, many more titles and I'll be reading and posting about them as I come to them.  I'll also be inaugurating my page "Forgotten Women Found" here shortly -- so stay tuned. Thanks to all who have commented.

*back to the past, #16: The Bus Station Murders, by Louisa Revell

Macmillan, 1947
183 pp

hardcover

<==  The very first thing you might notice about this book is its ugly cover. When you compare it to this UK paperback edition,

you really notice how unappealing it is.  Or if you look at  this one,

I can definitely claim to have the ugliest edition of the bunch.  Oh well. I'm not one to judge a book by its cover, but jeez -- for a first edition, you'd have thought that the publishers would have made it a bit more exciting to the eye.

As usual, first it's all about the author.  Louisa Revell is the pseudonym of Ellen Hart Smith who, aside from her career as a mystery novelist, also wrote a famous biography of Charles Carroll  called Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.   Strangely enough, finding biographical information about Ellen Hart Smith isn't that easy, but I'll certainly keep looking. All I know for sure is that she died in 1985 and that as Louisa Revell, she has seven mystery books to her credit, all featuring retired Latin teacher Julia Tyler from Rossville, Virginia as the main character:

The Bus Station Murders (1947)

No Pockets in Shrouds (1948)

A Silver Spade (1950)

The Kindest Use a Knife (1952)

The Men With Three Eyes (1955)

See Rome and Die (1957)

A Party for the Shooting (1960)

The crimes in this series take place where ever Miss Julia goes on vacation.  She's 67 years old, and is a huge fan of murder mysteries, as evidenced by her mention of such authors as Mignon Eberhart, Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Ngaio Marsh, Leslie Ford (who I'll now add to my list of obscure women crime writers to find), and I know there are more.  Because she's such a constant reader of mystery novels, she has a tendency to want to do some sleuthing on her own, and we get to see her in action in this book. She is, in fact, on the scene when the first murder occurs, on the very bus taking her to her destination. As they reach the Annapolis bus station, the small group passengers begin to disembark, passing a "gray-haired woman" who seems to be sound asleep.  Julia's seatmate wonders out loud how anyone could possibly sleep through all the noise, but it soon becomes obvious:

"The reason was, of course, that the woman was dead,"

the weapon a silver knitting needle.  While Julia isn't too keen on getting involved in this particular case, she does a 180 when she realizes that the policeman in charge is one of her former students.  He encourages her help, noting that he's counting on her "to be another Miss Marple or Miss Silver."

Between the two of them, they discover that half  of the people on the bus had motive enough for wanting the woman dead; now they just have to figure out who was actually responsible. They have to hurry though, because while they're collaborating, more people are being murdered.

While Miss Julia is definitely enough of a quirky character to make this book worthwhile, the setting is also quite interesting and worthy of mention. Annapolis is a very Navy town but at the same time, there are a number of people who are interested in preserving its colonial character. The author is obviously quite familiar with Annapolis, and is able to describe some of its more run-down areas just as well as several of its famous houses and buildings complete with histories.  The local chapter of the DAR is well attended, and there are different historical and building-preservation groups one can join as well.  On the Navy end of it, she describes the students who come out of Annapolis as being "trained technically and trained socially and gentlemen (sic) by Act of Congress..."   The Navy aspects of the town filter down into social circles as well -- the author describes a a strict social hierarchy based on rank not just among officers but among their wives and the "Navy etiquette" that exists within them.   Since this book is set during wartime, she also depicts several of her female characters as sewing for the Red Cross, putting up with shortages, etc.  But beyond all of that, there is also an interesting look at the mental health issues of returning soldiers that still rings true nearly 70 years after this book was written.

Although Miss Julia can slip into various social groups in her little-old-lady persona, the book doesn't end up becoming just another Jane Marple-type mystery at all.  Miss Julia speaks her mind about everything and everyone and can be rather feisty when crossed.  Will I read another book to see where murder follows her again? Highly likely -- I rather like this character but even more, I enjoy the author's insights about the town, about the people, and about people dealing with wartime issues.  Very much worth the read.

back to the past #15: The Fifth Dagger, by Dorothy Quick

1947
Charles Scribner's Sons
202 pp

hardcover

"She always got what she wanted, but when she had it, she destroyed it." 

The Fifth Dagger is the first full-length mystery novel by this author, who is more well known for her poetry and short stories (including weird tales). Personally speaking, I wasn't awed by this book, which was kind of silly in the long run and chock full of melodrama.    But Dorothy Quick isn't that well known for her novel -- her major  claim to fame is in her relationship with Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. She chronicled her experiences in a book called Mark Twain and Me (1961), which 30 years later would become a Disney TV movie of the same title.

Born in Brooklyn in 1896, Dorothy Quick met Mark Twain at the age of 11 while returning from Europe during an Atlantic crossing.  According to one obituary, she recognized him "by his wavy hair and white suit," and  "she walked around and around the deck, passing very slowly by his chair each time, until he finally came over and introduced himself."  Quick herself wrote in 1954 that "It was the beginning of a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death."  When I read this, I'm thinking, now how often does that happen, until another article pointed out that Twain had a "hobby" of "collecting" young girls as little friends.  According to that article, Twain is reputed as saying in 1908 that

“… As for me, I collect pets: young girls — girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent — dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears.”

Just as an FYI, the article also cautions the reader that while this may sound creepy nowadays, the girls in question were part of his Aquarium Club; collectively they were known as Angel Fish and were properly chaperoned at all times. But I don't know...there's just something about an old guy wanting to be around young girls that's just sort of bizarre to me. But I digress. Quick split her adult time between New York City and East Hampton; she married in 1925 but continued to write under her maiden name. She died in 1962.

the author with Mark Twain

***

The Fifth Dagger begins with the newly-married Diana Blakely (the narrator of this story), who has just recently tied the knot with psychiatrist Allen Blakely. As  the story opens she is being "introduced" to "Boston society" at a charity ball. Out of nowhere, in walks the beautiful Honora Davenport, one of  the Boston Davenports, and it becomes apparent to Diana that Honora and Allen have a history that he's sort of forgotten to tell her about.  He rectifies the situation later that night, but only after Honora slaps her and after someone shoots at the newlyweds as they're getting in their car to leave.  He reveals that Honora is suffering from some strain of inherited madness, and that he was one of the doctors helping her before she went a little psycho and fixated on him as a potential husband.  Despite Honora's family physician telling Allen he should marry her to help her with her illness, Allen's not having any part of the plan, and has to go into hiding until Honora gives up looking for him and moves to California.   She may have given up trying to find him, but it's clear to everyone that she hasn't given up on her fixation with Allen, even though in the meantime she married an actor from Hollywood.  Although his account quells Diana's jealousy (I did say melodrama, right?) she is surprised one day to find the Davenports (Honora and her brother Bruce) in her living room, inviting her to attend a Cotillion that Honora is throwing at her family home.  She's even more surprised to find herself accepting the invitation, but she and Allen trot off to the party.  Bad decision, Diana. Honora throws herself at Allen and monopolizes him the entire evening, and they pair up again on the dance floor where Diana notices that they're dancing too closely together.  While she's watching her husband with the woman who's obsessed with him, Honora suddenly falls in what appears to be a faint.  But as it turns out, she's been stabbed in the back -- and the murder weapon turns out to be one of the daggers given away as party favors.  The police arrive, and it isn't long until Allen becomes the chief suspect, but the Lieutenant asks for Diana's help with the case -- it seems that not too much earlier than this, she had solved the murder of her sister and has made a name for herself among law enforcement.  Of course Diana will do anything to help clear Allen, but things progressively get worse for both of them as the long night continues on.

The first word that comes to mind when considering the novel as a whole is "cockamamie," as in ridiculous, incredible and implausible. I have several reasons for making this call, but nothing beats this one:   the night that Honora is killed at her family home, Diana and Allen stay overnight there in a guest room, and Diana even borrows a new nightgown from the dead woman's wardrobe.  There's more, but it has to do with the solution to the murder so I can't go there. Trust me -- if you ever decide to read this book, you'll do more than a few eyerolls as you move through the story, especially as it winds down to its denouement. Speaking of which, Dorothy really let me down here since she made it so easy to pinpoint the murderer well before we're anywhere close to where that should happen.  And I do mean easy. Sheesh -- she should have illustrated the particular page with a red neon arrow flashing over the murderer's head!

As it stands, though, I did find another crime-writing woman author I'd never heard of before, so that's a plus, and I also discovered that Mark Twain had a thing for young girls. Now THAT is something I need to read more about.  I'd say if you're truly truly a diehard vintage-crime addict like I am, The Fifth Dagger is worth a shot but do keep in mind that it's a wee bit on the odd side.

back to the past #14: Murder in the Mist, by Zelda Popkin

00735103909
Replica Books, 2001
originally published 1940, Lippincott
286 pp
paperback


"A country inn is a percolator. News seeps, simmers, and bubbles."

 Published in 1940, Murder in the Mist is a true whodunit in every sense of the word.  In fact, it is one of the best whodunits I've read in a very long time. No angsty detectives, no gratuitous sex or off-the-wall violence in this one -- it is pure mystery-reading pleasure.  As you might be able to surmise from my photo, Murder in the Mist also makes for great by-the-pool reading.

A brief look at the author.
Born in 1898 in Brooklyn,   Zelda Popkin's (née Feinberg) parents were Jewish immigrants who had originally named her Jenny, a name she herself changed.   By the time she was sixteen, she had a job with the local newspaper in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania. Eventually Zelda moved to New York where she met her husband Louis; together they started a public relations firm, one of the first in the city.  Sadly, Louis died in 1943, and Zelda decided to turn her hand to writing, closing the PR firm and settling into life as an author.  Between 1945 and 1946, she was sent by the Red Cross to take a tour of the displaced-persons camps that were home to refugees from the Holocaust.  According to her grandson, Professor Jeremy D. Popkin of the University of Kentucky writing about Zelda in an introduction to her novel Quiet Street,

"What she saw 'shocked her into Zionism', as she later told an interviewer, and drove her for the first time to put a Jewish theme and Jewish characters in a central place in her writing."

She had a  had a long and prolific writing career that began in 1938 with the first book in the Mary Carner mystery series, Death Wears a White Gardenia.  She would go on to write four more books in this series, of which Murder in the Mist is the second entry. Another crime novel, So Much Blood (1944),  was written as a standalone, bringing her mystery/detective novels to a total of six.  [You can find a complete list of Popkin's work here.]   She didn't limit herself to crime writing, though -- she has several fiction novels to her credit as well:  The Journey Home (1945), Small Victory (1947), Walk Through the Valley (1949), and Quiet Street (1951), Herman Had Two Daughters (1968), A Death of Innocence (1971), and Dear Once (1975).   She also penned an autobiographical work called Open Every Door (1956), which, according to her grandson, started out as a biography of Zelda's husband Louis but 

"developed instead into the author’s autobiography, recounting her childhood in small towns in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania and her subsequent career."

 Mrs. Popkin died in 1983.  Although she may be a forgotten, obscure crime writer, her novels were very popular -- she won the National Jewish Book Award in 1952 for her Quiet Street, and her A Death of Innocence was made into a TV movie in 1971.  I may have to read more about this woman in the future; I'll certainly be trying to get my hands on her detective novels.

and now, back to the show... The Rockledge in Laneport, Massachusetts is home to summer visitors, built while Chester A. Arthur was in the White House. This seaside inn is run by Miss Dow and Miss Moffett, "plump, amiable spinsters, pompadoured, energetic..." who pride themselves in making sure they allow only the right sort of people in their establishment.  On one typical evening, a bridge game is interrupted by the entrance of a new arrival, a beautiful woman wearing red sandals. This is Nola Spain, a model who has come to Laneport with her little daughter.  She asks for directions to a local art gallery and sets off to her destination.  Later, two other guests arrive who are there on their honeymoon after just being married that morning.  On their way to Kennebunkport, they had missed a turn in the fog, ending up instead in Laneport.  Late that night, actually in the wee hours of the morning the next day, bride Mary is awakened by strange noises and the touch of a hand which belongs to the small daughter of Nola Spain. It seems that she can't wake up her mommy and is afraid because she saw "a witch" in the room.  Mary, who is none other than the renowned Mary Carney, New York City store detective, goes into Nola's room and finds the model  laying in bed with the dagger-like object still stuck in her after someone had killed her.  Mary calls the police but the Chief is so inept that he ruins the crime scene, making Mary see red.  Eventually the bona fides of both her husband Chris and herself are established, and Mary is asked by the local DA to take on the case.  With very little to go on, including the murder weapon, the little girl's description of "the witch" that came into her mother's room and a strange footprint that resembles a cloven hoof, Mary has her work cut out for her.

While this may sound like an average whodunit story, it is actually anything but.  Popkin has a deft touch at writing people, and the guests at the Rockledge (as well as the full-time residents of Laneport)  all have interesting backstories and many of them are hiding secrets behind their closed doors that they will go to great lengths to protect. As the author notes at the beginning of Chapter VIII,

"A country inn is a percolator. News seeps, simmers, and bubbles"

and nowhere is this more true than at the Rockledge. Its proprietors and some of the guests of the inn are very into "types" -- after Nola's murder, a Miss Templeton offers the opinion that "she was a very low type," and that Nola brought her death on herself:

"Only certain types of people get themselves murdered. People who have done something which makes other people want to kill them. People like ourselves, for instance, our sort of people never gets murdered." 

There is also a difference in the minds of the locals between the full-time residents and "the summer people," and commentary about small-town politics and small-town life. As just one example, the "Sabbath peace" tradition that is observed by everyone is noted as being

"centuries old, not to be thrust aside by the transitory turmoils of summer people."

Mary and husband Chris steal the show in this novel with their particular brand of sarcastic, snarky humor, and as soon as I can track down the other novels in this series,  I'll be back for more.

Murder in the Mist is an absolute gem and a delightful summery read.  Even though it was published back in 1940, its age should not deter any true-blue dedicated mystery fans from reading and enjoying this book. I absolutely loved it and would definitely say that if you're lucky enough to get your hands on a copy, you should go lay out in your lounger chair and let it carry you away for an afternoon or two. I definitely recommend it for people like myself who LOVE vintage crime and who are looking for something very different to add to their repertoire.

back to the past: #13: The Will and the Deed, by Dorothy Ogburn

1434466825
Wildside Books
originally published 1935, Dodd, Mead and Company
264 pp

paperback (reproduction of original)

I'll just say that most of this book was entertaining, but when it came down to the last few chapters, I would have poured myself something very strong to take away the reading pain had it not been so early in the day.  Oy!  Talk about convoluted!

About the  author.  Dorothy Ogburn (née Stevens), was born in 1890 and died in 1981. She was married in 1910 to Charlton Ogburn; in the 1920s she began writing mystery novels. She wrote three (Death on the Mountain, 1931;  Ra-Ta-Plan, 1931; and then The Will and the Deed, 1935) before she and her husband became devotées of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare's identity.  She co-authored a book about the topic with her husband, but after her husband had some kind of debilitating illness, Dorothy went on to write a book on her own, Shake-speare: Behind the Name, published in 1961, and by 1973, when she could no longer read, she'd nearly finished writing another book, Elizabeth and Shakespeare.

The Wildside edition I have has reproduced the original 1935 edition and at the back I discovered a little treasure: the logo designating this book as being part of the Red Badge Detective series.  As I've recently discovered, this was the imprint for Dodd, Mead's mystery lists; just as an interesting sidebar, I'll add the following from an article I found online (bemoaning the fact that these imprints no longer exist):

"Simon & Schuster had an imprint called Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Doubleday had the Crime Club, Dodd Mead had Red Badge Mysteries, Macmillan had Cock Robin Mysteries, and Holt had Rinehart Suspense Novels."

So now, I guess, I have to find all of the Red Badge titles. It's just what I now feel compelled to do.  But moving right along, back to The Will and the Deed.  

This is another country-house sort of mystery, taking place at Thanksgiving at a home called Stonecliffe "not sixty miles from the City of New York." The Walters family and sundry others have been "convened" so that they could hear the reading of the late patriarch's will.  They get a bit of a jolt when they discover that the family attorney isn't going to read the document, but rather it's the old man himself who's going to do it via the medium of film.  Yes, that's right folks, they set up the projector and let grandpa tell each family member (and the faithful retainers) who's getting what.  Well, after the grumbling's over when people got much less than they thought they'd be getting, it isn't long until devoted daughter Ollie Walters Neville (married to Lester) decides that everyone should clear out and then falls from the library balcony to her death.  The family is outwardly convinced it had to have been suicide, but a witness who happened to look up and see two shadows in the library window that night says otherwise. A detective is sent to the home to investigate, and besides the fact that everyone swears that she'd gone "gaga," even to the point of having to spend time in a hospital for her condition, he's not so sure that she actually did herself in.   The family, of course, is resentful of the police intrusion, and refuse to co-operate.   However, while he's there,  there is a robbery, an attempted murder and another death which sort of nullifies the idea of Ollie having taken her own life.

As I said earlier, it's the very last part of this book that drove me crazy. The first half wasn't too bad, and actually presented a good mystery and some family secrets that were revealed along the way.  There is an entire house filled with possible suspects from which to choose, and as it turns out, I totally got the rationale behind the murderer's motive once all was revealed. But when it came down to those last few chapters, it became such a tangle of strange subplots (involving among other things, a séance, a gun loaded with blanks and hypnotism)  that I had to read these pages twice.  Another thing: I'm very used to stilted language from early mystery novels, but I must say, this one absolutely takes the cake for archaic  throughout the book.  The long and short of it is that  no one should have to work that hard to read the last few chapters in a mystery novel.

Still, it's another female mystery novelist  I hadn't previously heard of, so I'm quite happy to have discovered her and to have read her work. Plus, I do have this enduring fondness for country-house murders, so it's another one to add to the list, once I start keeping one!  That's another whole project for another day.  Anyway -- if you're into obscure country-house murder mysteries, I'd say read it, but beware of the last few chapters, and maybe read it after 5 pm so you can help your headache and confusion with a nice martini or something.

back to the past: #12 - The Sleepless Men, by E.H. Nisot

Doubleday Crime Club, 1959
189 pp

hardcover

The Sleepless Men was written by E.H. Nisot, a pseudonym of Mavis Elizabeth Hocking Nisot.  She was born in 1893 in Thornton Heath, Surrey and died in 1973.  She was the daughter of Joseph Hocking, a novelist from Cornwall; her uncle was Silas Hocking, who was also a writer as well as a Methodist minister.   Nisot also used the pen name William Penmare, a name that caught my eye since the main character in this novel shares the same last name.  As William Penmare, she wrote The Black Swan (1928), The Scorpion (1929), and The Man Who Could Stop War (1929).  Her list of titles as Elizabeth Nisot reads as follows:

Alixe Derring (1934)

Shortly Before Midnight (1934)

Twelve to Dine (1935)

Hazardous Holiday (1936)

Extenuating Circumstances (1937)

False Witness (1938)

Unnatural Deeds (1939)

The Sleepless Men was included as a part of Doubleday's Crime Club which published 2,492 titles between 1928 and 1991.   You can tell an original crime club selection by its logo

and to give you a further clue as to what you're going to be reading, the inside dust jacket shows a symbol you're supposed to match to the little symbols on the back cover.  

The symbol to match for The Sleepless Men is a gun being fired, which clues the reader that this book will be a "chase and adventure" story, and that is precisely the case in this book set in New York City. 

The main character is an innocent writer named Mark Penmare,  who finds himself as the main witness in a case of multiple murders.  In a restaurant one evening having dinner, he witnesses and overhears one woman, Laurel Craig,  involved in two very different conversations, including one where money changes hands.  Moving to the bar, he is later joined by Laurel  and her friend, an amateur actress and singer called Charlie, who engage him in conversation. He walks Laurel back to her hotel late in the evening, and when he returns to ask her a question the next day, he discovers that she's dead.  He walks straight into the crime scene, where the police are eager to hear from him.  Rather than being considered a suspect, the police realize that Penmare is a valuable witness, and Penmare becomes sort of an adjunct investigator helping the cops to solve Laurel's murder. But as soon as that investigation moves into full swing, another body turns up, Penmare's flat is ransacked,  and because of the nature of what Penmare had witnessed, he realizes that there could very well be a third death if the police do not act quickly. When all is said and done, while this book is definitely a murder mystery that will keep you guessing, it ultimately moves into an area well beyond the usual murder-mystery fare.  

The Sleepless Men starts a wee bit slowly but the action increases as you move further into the story.  There's a murky figure that weaves in and out called only "the man in the gray suit," so just who this guy might be adds an extra layer of mystery.   It is a fun little book, actually, and while it comes across as dated, the core mystery itself is easy to follow, interesting and leads into something only hinted at, but actually quite  unexpected.  Curiosity nearly killed me getting to the ending, since the author leaves it all until then to unravel the story, but I had a great time along the way. 

I LOVE these old books!  

back to the past: Motto for Murder, by Merlda Mace (1943)

Julian Messner, Inc., 1943
213 pp
hardcover

Merlda Mace is the pseudonym of Madeleine McCoy, but beyond that, I can find very little in the way of information about this writer.  I tried obituaries, the usual mystery novelist research sources, but found nothing. Aside from this book, she's also written Blondes Don't Cry (1945)  and Headlong for Murder (1943), both of which feature  "nice girl, with a certain stubborness and inquistiveness" Christine Anderson as the main character.  Motto for Murder was published in 1943 as well; my copy has a "Buy War Stamps and Bonds" message on the back cover. I love these old books -- even if the story isn't so great, having these old tomes in my hands complete with musty smell is heavenly.  

With Motto For Murder, we return to the "country house", closed-circle mystery format, only this time the house is in America, rather than the English countryside.  The setting is just ripe for murder: the house is miles away from anywhere, and there's a snowstorm that turns into a raging blizzard trapping everyone inside.  

The main character in this story is a man who works for the investment firm of Barnes and Gleason as a special investigator.  As Tip O'Neil (whose name actually made me laugh out loud) enters his office one morning, he discovers that he is about to spend his Christmas holiday playing nursemaid for another member of the firm, Jay Hammond.  Hammond, it seems, had "appropriated" around ten grand or so of the firm's money, thinking he'd pay it back before anyone noticed.  Unfortunately for him, the auditors found out, and Hammond now has until the following Tuesday to replace the money. If he fails, he's looking at five to ten in the big house.  His plan: having been invited (along with his two siblings) to his grandmother's Adirondack home called Pine Acres, he will try to convince the old dowager (Marie Hammond) that he really really needs his share of an inheritance left under her control.  The inheritance, to be divided among the three children, was left to them by their grandfather Hammond, to be given to them whenever she felt they were capable of managing their money.  In short, this particularly nasty woman has continued to withhold any money to which the Hammonds were entitled, all in the name of control.   Jay is constantly drunk as a means of trying to cope with his sleazy,  "musical comedy actress" demanding, money-grubbing wife Ivy; he can't tell his grandmother the real reason he needs the money or he'll be disinherited. Tip is to accompany Jay to Pine Acres as a "business friend," to ensure that Jay isn't tempted to do a runner to Canada.  For Tip, it's a Christmas holiday unlike any other -- first, the grandmother (who stays in her room and thumps the floor with a cane to get attention) shares her plans to disinherit the lot of them, changing her will so that they never see a penny; second, one killing turns into multiple murders with everyone stuck in the house, unable to leave.  It's a country home filled with suspects, and since Tip has no emotional or financial interests connected with the family, he takes it upon himself to play detective.

If there's a chance that anyone plans to take on this novel, just so you know, Motto For Murder really shows its age. As just one example, the housekeeper's daughter Molly is banking on a Hollywood career as an ice-skating actress, a la Sonja Henie, to whom she is compared in this book (and who I had to look up because I had no clue as to who she was).  The title itself comes from a Christmas tradition at chez Hammond where "motto candies" are handed out and put on the tree -- somewhat like a confectioner's version of fortune cookies with couplets rather than the standard fake Confucian aphorisms we get these days.  The solution, sadly, is pretty obvious and narrator Tip is a pretty crappy detective, whose one major flash of insight is accompanied by a rather excited "Jumping grasshoppers!,"   but I have to say that  I love this sort of thing.  Despite all of its flaws, it's still a fun little read, and I'm happy to have this book as part of my crime library.  Absolutely perfect for cozy readers and golden-age mystery fans; it may not be the best in the bunch, but I'll happily take on a country-home murder mystery any time.

a Marie Belloc Lowndes doubleheader: The Lodger and Letty Lynton

Marie Belloc Lowndes is really not that obscure of a crime-writing woman writer, because she is largely  remembered for her book The Lodger (1913),  which centers on a husband and wife who find themselves in dire financial straits. They are quite literally pulled back from the edge of  starvation and ruin when a gentleman calling himself Mr. Sleuth comes to take a room in their home.  The Lodger was the basis for five (yes, five) films, beginning with Hitchcock in 1927, with the latest adaptation in 2009.  In 1960, believe it or not, it was even adapted as an opera.

Aside  from The Lodger,  Mrs. Lowndes also has a huge bibliography of other books to her credit. One of these is Letty Lynton, which is most definitely an obscure, forgotten novel, and which like The Lodger, went on to be made into a movie in 1932.  The film starred Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery;  I tried to lay hands on a copy but found none available. Aarggh! Hopefully someday it will turn up on TCM.

Both of Lowndes' novels here are based on true crimes.  The Lodger is very loosely based on the crimes of of Jack the Ripper, but  is actually more of a highly-atmospheric, psychological study of a woman faced with a horrible dilemma, eaten up by fear and guilt.  The tension and feeling of dread builds slowly as the novel progresses, and I have to say that this was my second time around with this novel and I was just as sucked in to it this time as I was the first time I read it.  Turning to Letty Lynton, Lowndes based this book on the story of Madeleine Smith, a young woman who found herself standing in the dock in Glascow in 1857 accused of murder.  Letty Lynton is moved out of the Victorian era, and is the story of an 18 year-old daughter of a millionaire.  Among Letty's other traits, she is pampered, at odds with her mother (for whom the sun rises and sets in Letty's older brother) and is so beautiful that men are drawn to her like bees to honey.  Sadly, one of these men gets it into his head (after being led on shamefully by young Letty) that the two are engaged to be married, and pressures Letty to tell her family about him. Things take a terrible turn when Letty is introduced into London society and becomes the object of a lord's affection -- the Lynton family is ecstatic but they do not know that Letty's future and the indeed, the reputation of the entire Lynton family is in jeopardy.   If the opportunity ever arises to read this book, I guarantee that you'll discover one of the best and most appropriate endings to ever find its way into a crime novel.  It was so well done that I was actually taken by surprise, which for me personally is a rarity these days.

I'm going to try to figure out exactly which of Mrs. Lowndes' novels are crime novels and try to find them -- finding a keeper copy of Letty Lynton  was incredibly difficult and I had to bite the financial bullet to get one. It was worth every penny and more if for nothing else, that ending.  Wow. Now I absolutely MUST see the film!

the "cold-war" years: A Cold Coming, by Mary Kelly

Walker and Company, 1968
originally published 1956, by  Secker & Warburg
239 pp

hardcover

Before even opening this book, I couldn't help but notice the dustjacket cover. A man is inside of a syringe, attempting to keep whatever is to come out from squashing him.  The X has three lines connected to the syringe, one directly at center, the other two diagonally offset from the center line.  I don't know if anyone else has ever noticed this, but a lot of old mystery/crime novels have covers which reveal clues as to what's going to happen even before you open the book.  Really old Agatha Christie paperbacks are great examples -- after you read the book, you look at the cover again and see that in some cases, the entire story is symbolized by the front-cover art.  For a long time I had to stop even looking at the covers because once I cottoned to this fact, I was worried that the cover art would be a dead giveaway.  This isn't so true any more, but with Kelly's A Cold Coming,  it's right on the money.

Before launching ahead with this discussion, a few brief words about the author.  Mary Kelly (b. 1927) was a prolific crime writer, with one detective series (of which A Cold Coming is first in the series) that had as its main character Inspector Brett Nightingale of Scotland Yard:

A Cold Coming (1956)

Dead Man's Riddle (1957)

The Christmas Egg (1958)

She also wrote seven nonseries novels between 1961 and 1974, winning the Gold Dagger for one of them, The Spoilt Kill, in 1961.   She married Joseph Kelly in 1950, received an MA from University of Edinburgh in 1951, and went on to become a teacher. Kelly also became a member of the Detection Club, where she acted as secretary.  Her 1971 short story "Judgment," was later selected to be included in a 1984 Hamlyn anthology of The Best Crime Stories, but she put pen down and quit writing in 1976.  There isn't much more to discover about her on a personal/professional level; however, it's obvious from the prestigious Dagger award that Kelly's work was both well received and appreciated in the field of crime/mystery fiction. 

Just briefly, A Cold Coming starts out of the gate going full speed ahead. It begins with a young student, Alec Starmer,  who wakes up woozy, cold and unaware of where he is. All he knows is that he's on the ground, with the sea nearby on the other side of a rise. His memory slowly returns and realizes that he's without his friend Roy, whose location is a mystery. Little bits and pieces surface and he decides he has to get help, eventually making his way to a house. Suspicious that he might yet be walking into a trap, he sneaks about the grounds and discovers that indeed he'd made the right decision, because there was the car "from which he'd struggled and run" right there in the yard. This time, though Alec plans to use it to make a getaway. Before he can leave, however, he sees a hand waving at him -- and discovers that someone is being kept prisoner in a small building on the property. Quickly gathering his wits and the man, they make their escape on a harrowing ride away from there, but all does not go well. Eventually, though, Alec makes his way to a police station, and later receives word that Roy has been found at a Catholic girls' boarding school in Northumberland.  Once the friends are together, the investigation into what exactly happened to them and why begins in earnest, with Inspector Brett Nightingale taking the lead. 

I have to say, this is certainly one of the more confusing 1950s British mysteries/crime novels I've read -- it moves from a stay at a research/treatment facility for colds to a cancelled opera, then on to kidnappings, moving ever further outward to discussions of potential brainwashing, biological weapons and then to corporate warfare ...I mean, seriously, it was hard to keep track of what was actually going on here. Then everything is all muddled with the two students, one of whom, it seems, is trying to keep a lid on the fact that he comes from wealthy parents, not that his ancestry has anything to do with the actual storyline. For a novel that starts out so strongly, it certainly takes a nose dive once the clues start falling into place, a very unusual phenomenon in my experience. Normally it's the other way around -- here, I felt the author was sort of confused and couldn't piece things together in a coherent way. In short -- this book takes the reader sort of all over the map and the experience just wasn't pleasant. 

I'd be willing to try another novel by Mary Kelly, but probably one of her later ones.  This one -- well, it just didn't do anything for me. I was rather disappointed, actually, but considering it's her first novel, chances are it's  most likely a case of author inexperience in this case. 

Harriet, by Elizabeth Jenkins

9781941147719
Valancourt Books, 2015
197 pp

paperback

My hat is off to Valancourt for bringing this book back into print. Originally written in 1934, Harriet is based on an actual British murder case from the 1870s known as  "The Penge Murder Mystery." It is  one of the more disturbing books I've read, although I must say it is also one of the best historical crime novels I've had in my hands in a very long time.  While information is widely available online about the Penge Murders or The Staunton Case (the real name of the fictional title character), I held off reading the facts of the actual case until I finished the novel, because I didn't want to have any expectations at all going into this book.

The titular Harriet is an only child and still living at home at age 32. She is rather simple, as the novel says, what would have been called "a natural," which in an afterword by Catherine Pope is explained as "having learning difficulties." Harriet's  "continued presence in any household was a strain."  After her mother remarried,  Harriet was often sent to stay for a time with "various relations," who were paid to have her at their homes.  As the novel opens, Harriet has been sent to stay with her mother's cousin Mrs. Hoppner, who has two daughters. Unlike Harriet's family, which is very well off, with Harriet having her own money and a future inheritance, Mrs. Hoppner and her daughter Alice have need for the eight pounds a month they'll get from having Harriet stay there. She shows up just after the arrival of Mrs. Hoppner's daughter Elizabeth and her husband Patrick Oman, who are on the verge of moving to the country for both economic reasons and because living there would be "more suited to the pursuing of Patrick's profession" as an artist. Patrick, "made scarcely a penny and kept Elizabeth in a poor way."   Patrick's brother Lewis, who is particularly fond of Alice, is also at chez Hoppner, and is warned by Alice to be nice to Harriet because they don't want Harriet complaining to her mother and going home.  Once Lewis finds out exactly how much Harriet's worth he is beyond nice to her and it is not long before he comes up with a plan to marry her for her money.  A rift forms between Harriet and her mother over marriage plans because Mamma has seen right through him, and eventually, without her family there with her, Harriet becomes Mrs. Lewis Oman. And that's when the trouble begins.

At this point, I found myself totally  unprepared for what happens next, and I'm not just talking in terms of  events.  Here I am sitting at my breakfast table, reading in between bread risings, and I was so taken aback that when the timer beeped I literally could not move from the chair.  It's bad enough that the principals take advantage of Harriet for her money; even worse is how conscience, compassion  and basic morality fall by the wayside when self interest is involved. It's absolutely frightening how these seemingly ordinary people can sink to a subhuman level, all the while able to  justify their actions to  themselves. The author's strength in this novel is showing exactly how this sort of thing can happen -- how festering resentments,  lack of money, a need for control  and other factors can easily change seemingly decent people into monsters.  She employs the use of contrast and irony to great effect, she spends a great deal of time in her characters' heads  so that the reader can see exactly how such behavior is justified, and through it all, she never has to resort to graphic detail to get Harriet's horrific situation across to the reader.

To say I walked away from this novel completely floored is an understatement.  One the one hand, it was extremely disturbing in the sense that it's amazing how anyone could do what these people did for the sake of money without ever batting an eye.  On the other, this book was so well done that even without knowing anything about the case, I could see it all happening right in front of me.

I love these old books and I am in awe that Valancourt continues to find such great works to bring back into print. I highly, highly recommend this novel to anyone who is appreciative of good writing, to anyone who reads and enjoys writers of the Interwar period, and to anyone who wants something far above ordinary crime fiction. It's also a great choice for people who enjoy crime fiction based on real cases.  Oh my god, people, this is one of the best historically-based novels ever.

a double blast from the past: The Punt Murder, by Aceituna Griffin and Miasma, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Back to exploring more obscure women crime writers, I ran across two books that have luckily been reprinted to make them widely available to modern readers.  One, The Punt Murder, is set in Britain's interwar period and  Miasma takes us to America in at the end of the 1920s. They are as different as night and day, and while both made for enjoyable reading, Miasma has that dark edge that I absolutely love to find in a crime or mystery novel.

9781906288013
Ostara Publishing, 2007
192 pp

originally published 1936
paperback

Sadly, I can't find much about this woman except for a) the fact that she was born in 1876 and died in 1949 and b) the list of the dozen books she's written, which can be found here. Otherwise, her life (to me anyway) is as mysterious as the identity of the killer in this book.  The Punt Murder takes a while to get to the actual crime; in the meantime the author does a great job establishing the scene and more importantly, the characters. It is, like many of the books I've read so far that have come out of the interwar novels, an English country house murder set in a small village.  I am really interested in this phenomenon of the English country house murder, especially those set in rural villages -- and I recently ran across an article written by Peter Dickinson that touches on why these were so popular.  You can read it in full here; one of the most interesting things he states is that

"... the ideal setting for the mystery novel is the imaginary world of the country house. There, supposed balance and harmony is broken by the act of violence, just as in the real world it had been broken by the war. That is why the ideal murderee is the nouveau riche millionaire, the embodiment of the economic upheavals, contrasted with the dwindling resources that had kept the grand old families going". 

I've been wondering about why so little is put into these novels about  the social/economic upheavals of the time -- and now after reading this (and some other things I've been perusing)  I'm beginning to understand. Anyway, the "nouveau riche millionaire...contrasted with the dwindling resources" of the "grand old families" is at the very heart and soul of The Punt Murder, of which the main character is an incredibly wealthy but very young heiress who marries into a very old but now broke British family.  Her name is Merle Holroyd, wife of the squire of Wissingham.  The family home, naturally called Holroyd, was given over to the family by Henry the Eighth although it had been around long before Henry's time.  It isn't long until fireworks start to fly as the traditional world of village squire collides with the modern, as Merle refuses to conform -- and her greatest weapon is the huge inheritance she's brought with her into the marriage. When she realizes the truth behind her marriage, she looks to another for happiness; sadly, the man she has latched on to is an up and coming MP whose career cannot tolerate any scandal.  Soon, however, there's a murder during a  lavish fete, and while the police are satisfied with their choice of suspect, one person has the wherewithal to ask questions, which upsets everyone in the village. With no shortage of suspects, things start to get ugly very quickly.

Moving backward in time, Miasma was published in 1929 and has (luckily for me) been reprinted by Stark House Press, whose motto is "Bring back the mystery." I stumbled onto this small press quite by accident one day, and their list of reprinted vintage crime novels is impressive.

0966784871
Stark House Press, 2003
269 pp (the full book, which also contains her book Lady Killer)

paperback

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was born in 1889 and died in 1955, and during her lifetime she seems to have been a prolific author. She was the wife of British diplomat George E. Holding, and was the author of 25 novels of which 18 were mysteries; Miasma was her first mystery novel. Her mystery-writing career took off during the Depression when her "serious character novels" stopped selling and she turned to crime writing.   As Greg Shephard notes in his introduction to this edition, she was

"one of the first to write mystery novels that didn't so much ask whodunit, but whydunit,"

and that was the big sell for me in deciding on this author. The whodunits, while fun, are so done to death that I'm much happier finding out the whys rather than the who. Miasma appeals to me on multiple levels -- first, it's one of those stories that I absolutely love where some poor, hapless dope gets caught up in a situation that is much bigger than himself, and only comes to realize very slowly that he's pretty much been painted into a corner and needs to try to find a way out. Here, the main character is a young doctor who is trying to establish himself; he isn't having much luck and is overly frustrated because he will not marry the girl he loves until he can prove himself worthy financially and otherwise.  Second, one of the big questions this book asks is about the nature of justice, a topic I widely explore in my reading.  As the main character asks at one critical point in this story,

"Does it matter? Or can't Justice be satisfied without the whole show -- the judge in the black cap, and the newspaper stories?" 

Third, this book is so claustrophobically dark that it's one I had to put down from time to time just to get out of this very small world in which the main character finds himself -- in this sense, the title is very appropriate. And considering it was written in the late 1920s, it deals with a subject that is of contemporary interest, although I won't say exactly what it is so as to avoid spoilers.

Miasma is the story of Doctor Alex Dennison, who is ready to establish his own medical practice. Before moving to the town of Shayne, he did a lot of careful research to make sure that there "was room for another doctor" there.  He so wants for everything to go right with his career, largely because of Evie, the girl he's planning on marrying, but only after he's made the three thousand a year Evie's decided will be enough for them.  But Dennison's attempt at a practice fails big time and he's virtually on the edge of starving when he decides to take up an offer from another, more well-known physician in town, Dr. Weatherby.  He doesn't have to do much -- see a few patients when Weatherby's busy or away, and he is invited to live in the fine home where Weatherby also houses his practice.  It's a win-win ... he's calculated that he will reach his financial goals easily, and room and board are free.  But as soon as he steps into the house, he has the feeling that something is not exactly right -- that things are a bit off-kilter.  This is a feeling he ignores and when strange things start happening, he goes deep within himself to look for plausible answers, a strategy that works...for a while.

To say that this is a good book is putting it mildly, but then again, I suppose it depends on what "a good book" is to people besides myself. This book has a focus on character much more so than plot -- and although it might feel like it's slow moving, it's one of the better character-based mystery novels I've encountered.   I was impressed with the author's ability to get right inside of Dennison's head from the outset -- nothing, absolutely nothing happens outside of what Dennison sees or more importantly, what he thinks, even though this story is not related as a first-person narrative.  That fact is impressive -- the telling almost reminds me  of something from Patricia Highsmith, although it's not nearly as dark as her work.  Dennison is in a constant battle with himself internally -- and it plays out rather realistically on the page. Frankly, I was hooked on page one and had I not put the book down here and there I easily could have been depressed being so much confined to Dennison's constant headspeak. Then again, that claustrophobia-like atmosphere sets this book apart from the standard crime fare -- a trait that to me, speaks very highly of this author.

So, to recap: there's one whodunit, which is pretty good and which also takes on the intrusion of the modern world into Britain's rigid class system in which appearances are everything, and then there's the "whydunit," my own personal preference in choice of crime/mystery fiction, which immediately immerses the reader inside the mind of a poor, down-on-his-luck guy just looking to do right by everyone, except, possibly, himself.  The Holding is my favorite of the two but both are well worth looking into for anyone who likes vintage crime or mystery.  And one more thing ... Miasma comes in a volume with two complete novels, as do her other works reprinted by Stark House Press, but I'm reading them in chronological order rather than as they appear in the books.