NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Amy Brewster, Larger than Life Lawyer/Detective

The first words Amy Brewster utters in her debut mystery novel are: "Of course he didn't you quibbling corporation jackanapes!" All 300 pounds of her barges into the room chomping on a Havana cigar then demands with the cigar's cellophane wrapper still in her hand "Where do I put this?" Here is one of mysterydom's least well known but most fabulous creations. We can thank forgotten writer Sam Merwin, Jr for giving her to us.  She appears in only three full length novels and three novellas, far too few, but all worth tracking down.

In Knife in My Back (1945) Merwin gives us a colorfully detailed outrageous past for Amelia Winslow Brewster. He starts with her physical description: "a woman of indeterminate years, of vast corpulence and even greater ugliness" with an outdated hair style that he describes as "cut in the old Dutch style of the suffragettes of 1916."  We learn that she was educated at Radcliffe, graduated Phi Beta kappa and was "admitted to the Massachusetts bar before she was twenty." Coming from a wealthy family helped her no doubt, but her shrewd financial skill turned her modest bank account into eight figures then she gave most of it away. She also has a talent for "gambling prodigiously" and managed to rake in more millions in casinos all over the country. Merwin ends this financial history with this comment: " A confirmed advocate of the redistribution of wealth, she had done her best to live up to it--but couldn't seem to unload [it] as fast as she made it."

Knife in My Back combines puzzle elements of traditional detective novel with hard-boiled characterization in the person of Brewster.  A woman comes to the Dumonat mansion to deliver a message to 28 year old Chris Horton. She is waiting impatiently for him in the study and when he finally arrives at the house he finds her stabbed. Police immediately suspect Joe Horton, Chris' brother, who apart from the butler Gordon was the only person in the house at the time. Joe calls Amy Brewster to defend him and keep him out of jail.

Though the culprit may be easy to spot in this debut mystery that doesn't diminish the all around fun factor of this yarn. It's fast paced, witty, and filled with the arcane history of glass making artisans, paperweights and the origin of those objects as art collectibles. It's the only mystery I've read to deal with this arcane hobby and the tidbits of history make for were fascinating reading.

Brewster returns in Message from a Corpse (1945),  a more hardboiled mystery dealing with professional criminals, a missing biographical manuscript with secrets about a dead millionaire, and a murdered retired judge. The mysteries all culminate in the uncovering of a cache of hidden jewels. Brewster displays her knack for cryptography and codebreaking in this book.

The final book in the trio of novel length adventures is A Matter of Policy (1946).  Insurance fraud brings two strangers together as they attempt to discover who used their names as claimant and beneficiary on a $500,000 life insurance policy. Jim Leavitt, an inept investment counselor, has no knowledge of the policy in his name or the beneficiary a night club singer names Tosta Kaaren, stage name for Toots Carlisle who is actually from Carnarsie and not Sweden. We got a lot of barroom fights, face bashing and a few scenes of our protagonists being tied up.  When a bodyguard assigned to Jim ends up dead in a trap intended to kill Jim Amy Brewster is called in to ehlp put an end to the fraud and possible future attacks on Jim.

I enjoyed this last book just as much as Knife in My Back for all the sarcastic banter from Amy Brewster, his usual wise remarks and hilarious insults. it's a lot more action oriented betraying Merwin's love of pulpy thrills like the stories the wrote or magazines like Dime Detective, Thrilling Detective and Popular Detective to name just three of the dozens of magazines he was published in over his 30+ year career.

Knife in My Back (the first, but I think the best of the trio) is the most common of these books in the used book market. It was reprinted by Handi-Books and I found over 50 copies of that vintage paperback edition for sale on various booksellign sites. Matter of Policy and Message from a Corpse are also out there but fewer copies of each turned up.

For those of you who prefer digital books you're in luck because the three novellas (for decades only found in the original pulp magazines) are available from Deerstalker Mysteries in a single eBook entitled Meet Amy Brewster. This digital book includes: "The Corpse Comes Ashore," "Amy Stops the Clock" and "The Maestro's Secret." And of course -- I had to force myself to look -- the other novels turn up in digital formats as well.