Exit Screaming - Christopher Hale

THE STORY:  It's 3:00 AM in Avondale, Michigan and Jill Trent has been awakened by a bloodcurdling scream followed by the sound of four gun shots. Against her better judgment she goes outside to investigate and meets up with her neighbors Gene Ramsay and Mr & Mrs Truax.  They find blood on the cement terrace of the home belonging to Mrs. Warner.  But there is no sign of any person anywhere near these bloodstains.  Two more pools of blood are found near a barn.  And inside a feed barrel covered with glass bottles they find the body of Mrs. Warner.  Soon Sheriff Perry Simmons, ill equipped to handle a murder investigation and too busy with some cattle thieves, is forced to call in help from the Michigan State Police. Lt. Bill French shows up in his Rolls Royce coupe dressed in smartly tailored clothes and gets to serious work very quickly. Before the killer is revealed there will be an attack on a dog, an escaped cottonmouth snake, a missing chauffeur, numerous rifles as possible murder weapons, several phony identities and two more murders.

THE CHARACTERS: The action of Exit Screaming (1942) is mostly confined to Avondale, a small town mixing wealthy Michiganders with cattle farmers and country folk. The primary characters consist of:

Jill Trent - our intrepid heroine with a violent secret in her past. She seems like she might have tiptoed out of a Mignon Eberhart "woman in peril" mystery novel because she is always at the mercy of insane dangers. She survives several shooting attempts and the attack from the escaped venomous snake mentioned above. Though she may have a bandaged head wound for most of the book she proves to be not only intrepid but pretty damn smart unlike the often foolhardy heroines found in neo-HIBK novels.

Gene Ramsay - the requisite dark and handsome man with a mysterious past. No one really knows what he is doing in the cottage on the grounds of Mrs. Warner's estate. Rumor has it he's writing a book. Others claim he is a doctor who gave up his profession. But Gene isn't revealing what he does for a living or what he's settled in Avondale. He does have a rifle that matches the caliber of the bullets found in Mrs. Warner's body and that makes him Suspect # 1 in the eyes of Sheriff Simmons. Jill wavers in and out of suspecting him. Gene proves to be her savior on more than one occasion. Can he possible have murdered his landlady? And if so, why?

Randolph & Ivabell Truax - Mrs. Truax is more of a bogey character as far as I'm concerned and appears in only two scenes. Let's just skip over her. It's Mr. Truax who is of interest. A lawyer, another rifle owner and innately suspicious of Mrs. Warner, her mother Mrs. Lynch and the shifty chauffeur he seems to know too much about medicine to be a real professional driver.  Lt. French thinks Mr. Truax has too much of a lawyer's mind, but spurred by TRuax's seemingly outrageous ideas begins to dig into Mrs. Warner's past and uncovers some intriguing details. Notably that her mother died more than 30 years ago. Then who is the elderly woman living in the house?  Mrs. Warner claimed that Mrs. Lynch was her mother.  And what happened to Mrs. Lynch? No one can be found inside the Warner house since the night of the gun shots, the scream and Mrs. Warner's murder.

Minnie MacDuff - What would one of these mystery novels be without the garrulous, foolish town gossip. Minnie fills this role extremely well. A dress designer and seamstress by profession she makes it a habit of visiting her customers in their homes for frequent dress fittings and alterations. A convenience for her customers but also an opportunity for Minnie to pick up free lunches and snacks at tea time while dishing the dirt about everyone in Avondale and the surrounding area.  Her thirst for info on everyone makes her a target...or is that just a clever ploy?  I was sure she was involved in something. Hale paints Minnie as such a scatterbrain I was convinced this was a cover for a shrewd and devious women with revenge in her blood.

Mark Macduff - Minnie's invalid brother who is also a ham radio enthusiast constantly broadcasting from his bedroom. Minnie is overprotective of her brother. Anyone who reads mystery novels ought to be immediately suspicious of an invalid.  When Gene and Jill find mud-stained shoes in Mark's closet and burrs on his trousers it seems to indicate that Mark is shamming his inability to walk.

There are also a variety of dimwitted gossipy servants who supply Hale with an unfortunate opportunity to make fun of "stupid farm girls" but also an intriguing way to reveal the small-minded prejudices of privileged wealthy "upper class" types who make up the majority of the characters. I felt sorry for the Lamb women, Jennie and her niece Alma, the butt of insults and jokes, but who also are rather observant and catch things that their snobby employers dismiss as irrelevant.

ATMOSPHERE: Hale does a good job of setting a scene of a sinister countryside in the town of Avondale.  Though the residents think of it as quiet farm country where the wealthy can escape their past and start life anew, from the very first page violence intrudes and never leaves. Mrs. Warner turns out to have alternate life and identity and her chauffeur, as suspected by Mr Truax, turns out not to be a chauffeur at all.  The story is replete with violent attacks. Rifle shots going off constantly. Jill and Gene are shot at many times , windows are shattered on an almost nightly basis, and even a birdhouse becomes a symbol for criminal activity.  For a book set in the WW2 era this story resonates with our 21st century world of constant gunfire and random acts of violence. 

QUOTES:  Hale has a wry sense of humor and often she can dish out some acerbic wit. Here's a single sentence summing up the bigoted, not too smart, deputy who helps Sheriff Simmons: 

Verne Hoskins' well-weathered face looked as if he had been expecting the worst for years and hadn't been disappointed.

When French accuses Gene Ramsay of not being trustworthy because he has both lied and withheld vital information, Gene retorts: 

"But, damn it all, I'm not guilty of anything but being an ass, and they aren't arresting people for that yet or the jails would be full."

THINGS I LEARNED:  During none of Minnie's  gluttonous visits while she is chowing down on more free food she spiolls grvy on her silk dress.  She says, "Dear me, best silk, too. Guess I ought to try a little Energine..." I figured this was some type of detergent.  Actually Energine was a dry cleaning fluid made with naphtha, highly flammable, that was apparently in many homes. It was still being made as late at the early 1960s much to my surprise. The popularity of commercial dry cleaning operations that became all the rage in the 1970s eventually replaced the need for private individuals taking care of their stained clothing. In looking for photographs of this defunct product I was a bit horrified to learn that vintage bottles (some still full!) are being sold on eBay. Bizarre.

At the start of chapter 17 Jill is served some coffee and ginger  flavored cookies by one of the young policeman. She refuses the coffee but samples the cookies while waiting for French to question her.  Hale writes: "Jill went on nibbling at the gingery cooky. It was rectangular, with MARY ANN stamped on it. She felt she'd never again taste ginger without thinking of this moment."  I wanted to know if these were also real, but all attempts at internet searching for "Mary Ann Ginger Snaps" yielded absolutely nothing. I know that Lorna Doone shortbread cookies are still made with the name stamped on them. That's a very old cookie, kids! Introduced in 1912, the same year as Oreos, another cookie with the name stamped on it. I figured if a Mary Ann ginger snap existed it must've been from Nabisco, the company that sells both Oreos and Lorna Doones. Sadly, I failed to find anything about a ginger snap with ANY name stamped on them. Ah well.  Anyone out there have any clue?

EASY TO FIND?  Only a few of Hale's books were reprinted in cheap editions outside of the original Doubleday Doran Crime Club hardcover.  Exit Screaming was one of them. Alas, both hardcover and paperback digest (see photo above at right) are difficult to find these days. I located three copies out there for sale at various online bookselling sites. Hurry if you want one.