Murder at the World's Fair - Mary Plum

THE STORY:  Charles Graham makes a visit to Chicago's Century of Progress exposition and while passing through the Belgravian Pavilion he sees a man open a doorway. The man's hand is covered with blood and he immediately closes the door.  Charles follows him into the room and sees another man stabbed lying on the floor.  He is clearly dead. A shattered vase is nearby. Charles says they must call the police. The bloody-handed man, Paul Melitti, refuses and instead calls the expo's security chief, Gordon Taylor. While Melitti leaves the room for a brief time Charles calls his friend John Smith, a private detective. And the chase is on to solve the crime!

THE CHARACTERS:  John Smith appears in four of Mary Plum's detective novels; this was his last appearance. Within a few sentences it's clear he is yet another in a long line of Philo Vance imitations -- flippant, arrogant, insensitive, dispassionate and ridiculously knowledgeable about all sorts of minutiae.  Around the midpoint his snooty persona is toned down a bit, he seems more tolerant and slightly likeable, but he still seems to know way too much about what's going on and does much of his detective work offstage similar to all those know-it-all Vance wannabes back in the late 1920s.  The final chapters are overloaded with character monologues revealing some of the work and research Smith did far away from Graham who acts as the primary protagaonist and amateur detective.

Initially, the case is about the stabbed man, Stepan Trino, and the search for a killer and motive.  The shattered vase is involved in his death and there is a twin vase that also figures in the story.  Two women, Jenny Dale and Rita Hathaway were invited by Trino to visit him in his office. Jenny is supposedly a dead ringer for Trino's dead daughter Madelon and while I thought this intriguing detail would be instrumental in the plot it's merely a red herring. However, Trino presents Jenny with the twin vase, some kind of Asian artifact with dragons painted in yellow on blue porcelain and this gift will be very important. She leaves his office the day he is murdered with the vase hastily wrapped in a wad of newspaper. Her pal Rita ridicules her for carrying the sloppily wrapped package and kids that they won't be admitted to their swank hotel by the officious and snobby doorman Dmitry. Charles is distracted by all these details. Smith takes this all in stride and focuses instead on the two men with Jenny and Rita who were seen by Graham at a dance hall. Smith is sure he knows one of them -- Dan Harlow, the man who seemed to be Jenny's date for the late afternoon.

Shortly after the murder investigation begins Jenny is abducted from her hotel room and the story suddenly shifts into a pursuit thriller. The mystery of who killed Trino all but vanishes. All energy is devoted to finding out who took Jenny, where she is being held, and why the second vase ended up shattered in her hotel bathroom.

Plum has a deft hand at creating unusual characters. Her woman characters tend to be more interesting.  Rita Hathaway, an utter smart aleck, proves to be a handful for both Graham and Smith. She is an expert at sarcasm and ridicule and it takes some effort to break through her coolly aloof facade. Slowly, Graham realizes that she may have orchestrated the abduction.  He begins to follow her doggedly using taxis, cars and several times pursuing her on foot. A key sequence takes place in a seedy part of Chicago's south side near 23rd Street.  The novel reaches its climax at this location.

I liked the chapter where Smith visits Trino's apartment and questions the no-nonsense landlady, Mrs. Bord. Smith notices a kind of fortress built in her outdoor garden filled with booby-traps. She explains she devised them to keep vandalizing teens and marauding dogs out of her vegetables. She's a great character. She also refuses to allow anyone into Trino's room. In fact she can't let anyone in because she gave him the only key. We learn all about Trino's highly secret life and that Mrs. Bord asked no questions as long as he paid his bill on time which he did well in advance. She Aldi liked that Trini was neat and private, never had any guests. In her opinion he was the best kind of tenant.

Another intriguing scene with an unusual period historical detail takes place at the hotel after the abduction. Most of the guests are anxious about letting police into their rooms, several of the guests protesting heatedly. The cops expect these protests, they're used to them. Those guests, they tell Smith, need time to get rid of their bootleg booze. Happens all the time in hotel searches.

THE SETTING: Much of the Chicago settings are accurately described even to the old time reference of Michigan Boulevard instead of Michigan Avenue which though renamed in 1910 didn't come into regular usage until after WW2. A reference to the "near north" surprised me. One of the standard terms for the neighborhood north of the Loop and south of North Avenue I thought this was a fairly recent label, but clearly was in use back in Prohibition era. I get the feeling Mary Plum was a real Chicagoan although on occasion some odd British syntax and phrases slip into the writing like the use of "stopping in" a hotel instead of "staying in" which is the usual American phrase.

Seems the south side was already becoming rundown in the early 1930s. Plum enjoys writing about dilapidated buildings like a boarding house where Dan Harlow and his friend Pete Johnson are staying which is contrasted with the luxury hotel where Smith and Graham have rooms. There's another scene in a depressing, sparsely frequented, restaurant with a sad clientele that is particularly well done too. Finally, Johnson is followed to a ramshackle converted farmhouse that seems to date to the 19th century.  Charles spies on Johnson and Rita from an ancient barn on this property and hides out in what he thinks is the former hayloft.  He is startled by a gun toting visitor and the story takes a huge twist during this sequence.

As for the Century of Progress only a few pages are devoted to the exposition. We get some nice detail about where the fair takes place, the architecture and how its bright colors and varied buildings are contrasted to the huge Columbian Exposition and its "White Palaces" of the previous century.  Later in the book Plum adds some more details about the attractions, mentioning the famous Skyride, the lagoon and some other buildings. But that's it for the Century of Progress. The fair itself serves only as a setting and nothing in the action really relates back to anything about the actual Century of Progress. Instead, the fictitious Belgravian Pavilion will feature in the plot and the entirely fictional political intrigue  of Belgravia will reveal the motive for all the various crimes including the murder of Stepan Trino.

THINGS I LEARNED: The Century of Progress actually had two seasons. The first big exposition ran from May 27 - November 1, 1933.  The second season began on June 1, 1934 and ran through Halloween of that year.  I was confused when Plum writes that the fair will end on October 1, assuming 1933 since that's the date of publication of the book. Maybe some editor failed to catch the error. 

A strange neologism occurs twice in the story:  one-idead.  This is an adjective that Charles uses to describe Pete Johnson's obsession with Rita. The word looks very weird to me. Plum means "one idea-ed" or more accurately monomania.  Either monomaniacal or obsessive would have been a better choice, I think. I've never seen that word spelled that way nor have I heard it used in everyday speech.

EASY TO FIND?  Not at all.  I found my copy several years ago on eBay and it's an ugly, beat up reading copy. There is only one other copy for sale from a reputable antiquarian dealer who specializes in vintage books in period dust jackets. He has a much better copy of the book with the attractive DJ as seen at the top of this post. My poor copy is up on my eBay listings for an affordable price if you are interested in reading the book. The UK edition was published as The Broken Vase Mystery (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933) but I found no copies under that title on any online bookselling sites. Neither did any free copies at internet archives, but I don't really look too hard for them. There may be one somewhere out there.

John Smith Detective Novels
The Killing of Judge McFarlane (1930)
Dead Man's Secret (1931)
Murder at the Hunting Club (1932)
Murder at the World's Fair (1933) 

 

The Death Film - P. R. Shore

"Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles!"

This seems to be the year during which half of the books on my want list have turned up for sale. And of course I pounced upon all of them.  Of the final six books on a want list I have on various bookselling websites three turned up this year and I managed to buy two of them.  One of those books is The Death Film (1932), the astonishingly elusive second novel by "P. R. Shore", pseudonym of Helen Madeline Leys.  I forked over the most money I've ever paid for a single book but didn't think twice about it. Was it worth the hefty price tag? Read on, my friends.

Readers of this blog may recall back in 2011, the very first year I entered the world of vintage mystery and supernatural fiction reviewing, I wrote up a brief piece on The Bolt (1929) by P. R. Shore.  This was Leys' first attempt at a detective novel and it was one of the best I've read of its decade.  Seemingly formulaic being set in a quaint English village and focussing on the summer fete The Bolt actually pre-dates most of the well-known village mysteries including Murder at the Vicarage which introduced Jane Marple to the mystery world.  It truly is one of the more original and innovative detective novels of the era. From the bizarre murder weapon employed, an "elf bolt" (basically a prehistoric stone implement), to the unusual characters who act as amateur sleuths The Bolt is one of those books I was hoping some enterprising reprint house would reissue for an eager public. Though I tried to tempt Tom Schantz of Rue Morgue Press back when he and his wife were cranking out delightful reprints he apparently didn't think it was the kind of book for his audience. No reprint ever materialized.

And how does The Death Film measure up to that debut? Well, it's a 180 degree turn from the traditional English village mystery found in the pages of The Bolt.  What we get is a full-on police procedural with a methodically detailed investigation and a lead inspector helped by a savvy sergeant who likes to "theorize."  The story seems simple at first with two primary suspects but soon becomes ever complicated due to deceit and lies. Inspector William Gray and Sgt. Phillips have their hands full trying to sort out truth from cover-ups.  Largely thanks to the insights of a boy who works as a doorman at the Palace Cinema and a teashop owner with a remarkable memory the police are eventually put on the right track of a villain who was hiding in plain sight.

The Death Film of the title is a bizarre science fiction/crime film called The Death of the World. Released as a silent movie in this new era of cinematic sound it has impressively become the local cinema's hit, selling out regularly to large crowds, many of whom return for another viewing. One of the patrons never makes it out of the theater alive.  After the third screening Ethel Jones is found stabbed with one half of a scissors stuck in her. The police are fairly certain based on the wound in her right neck that she was stabbed from behind. Possibly someone seated next to her could've killed her. Audience members and employees are thoroughly questioned.

Gray soon learns that Miss Jones had an odd relationship with her employer Algernon Banks, a married businessman known to be too friendly with single women. She was invited to Banks' home on a few occasions to "finish up work" because the offices got cold late at night. Mrs. Banks suspects her husband of philandering. Smart lady. A few days later Banks' home is burglarized and Mrs. Banks is suspected of faking the break-in to cover up her snooping into her husband's private files which her kept locked at all times.

The other primary suspect is a musician who plays in the orchestra pit at the Palace Cinema. Ronald Mason is a multi-instrumentalist playing both piano and violin and primarily worked when silent movies were being shown. Ethel was attracted to Mason and we learn that she was pathologically jealous of all women who paid even the slightest attention to Mason.  Sgt. Phillips' first "theory" is that Mason and Pansy Stevens, a flirtatious cinema usher, colluded in a plot to kill Ethel Jones.

Then there is the odd box office worker Isobel Warren who raises suspicions due to her sly manner of answering Gray's questions and her many insinuations about the female staff at the Palace. But Isobel also seems to be one of Ronald Mason's many admirers and Gray is certain she is cleverly creating a smokescreen to shield the musician from being arrested. From her colleagues Gray and Phillips learn that Miss Warren was formerly a nurse prior to her job at the cinema.  Her medical knowledge inspires Sgt. Phillips to spin another one of his theories. The more Gray deals with Miss Warren I got some heavy-duty Irene Adler vibes.  She is so wily, so mocking of Gray's police techniques, that she seems to have been inspired by Holmes' memorable rival. In fact, at one point there is this exchange between Gray and Miss Warren:  

Gray: "My dear lady, I suspect everyone."
Isobel Warren: "Quite right. I deserved that, Mr. Holmes." 

Gray, unlike many of the fictional Transcendent Detectives of the early 20th century, is filled with self-doubt and curses himself on every other page. As he interviews suspects Leys allows us to know his thoughts (a bit clumsily rendered as dialogue) especially when he gets the answer he was expecting. This is also one of his flaws. Even though he chides Phillips for his many theories Gray is one of those cops who has his own theories and foolishly tries to fit the evidence to his ideas. Only when he gets the valuable eyewitness testimony from young Henry Bates, the Palace doorman, coupled with Margery Benson's amazing verbatim report of overheard conversations in her tea shop does he begin to learn that the truth is far more useful than any theories.

The Death Film unravels at a brisk pace with multiple surprises as the investigation continues. Ultimately, the plot involves one of my least favorite crime fiction motifs - drug smuggling - but getting to that final revelation makes for engaging, entertaining, and -- on occasion -- suspenseful reading.  Leys may not have been as innovative or witty as she was in The Bolt but her second foray into crime fiction has its moments not the least of which is the unique scene of the crime and the exploration of how an early 20th century British cinema operates.