THE CHARACTERS: Cy Hatch is our unwilling sleuth in this story. He doesn't want to get involved but having saved Marcia and being confronted with the odd suicide note that he is sure was forced out of her by the mystery man they saw fleeing the bedroom he ever so reluctantly finds himself drawn into a complex case. As he proceeds in his sleuthing he will locate a missing person and have a gruesome discovery of where the body was hidden. But Cy is also the son of Police Commissioner Mark Hatch who is fed up with his son interfering in the city's most unusual murder cases. He was already nearly killed in the first case (Coffins for Three) and was tampering with evidence in another. Mark warns his son he will not hesitate to arrest him and throw him in jail if Cy insists on playing detective or obstructing justice in this case.
Everywhere Cy goes he's accompanied by Danny Delavan, his bodyguard who was initially hired by Cy's father. Since then they've become friends of sorts and Danny does his best to give his two cents worth on the many puzzling aspects of the case. For a former boxer I thought he was rather inept as a bodyguard. Cy tends to throw the punches first and Danny ends up at the mercy of some of the more talented assailants. At one point a woman with expert fencing skills holds Danny at bay at the end of her épée! Speaking of boxing Danny will be competing in a comeback match at Madison Square Garden defending his title as welterweight champion. He never ceases to talk about how he will knock out his opponent in the first round. He also has a seemingly endless supply of comp ringside tickets and he hands these out to anyone who will accept them. By the evening of the actual fight all of the primary suspects will show up at the Garden for a boxing match that will end in a bizarre bit of spontaneous violence and a confession from the murderer.
As for the rest of the cast we have:
Richard Clay - theater producer, husband to Marcia, in love with Elspeth and primary suspect. His photography darkroom includes a variety of chemicals including cyanide that turn up to have been used in several crimes. The lover's tetrahedron of Richard-Elspeth-Marcia-Ronald (Elspeth's husband) serves as a one of the most obvious motives for Marcia's attempted poisoning murder by cyanide.
Marcia Clay - Poisoning victim and the victim of what Cy believes to be a complex frame-up to get her accused of the murder of...
Ronald Dexter - husband to Elspeth Burridge. He is a failed actor whose most notable a role was as Yorick, in a burlesque of Hamlet. The skull was not a prop in that production. Instead, Ronald played the deceased clown wearing a full skeleton outfit. It was supposed to be a silent comic role but he literally fainted onstage in his debut and gave up a stage career immediately after. Marcia has fallen in love with Ronald and was planning to leave her husband for him. In giving up the stage Ronald turned to financial chicanery and has a reputation for con artistry and double crossing his investors.
Philip Carden - a professional adventurer obsessed with treasure hunting which requires a lot of money to pull off. Consequently he's always looking for investors. Ronald and Richard were primary investors in Carden's latest project to recover treasure from a shipwreck off the coast of Florida. Carden is also in love with Elspeth. They did the fall in love at first sight malarkey and Richard Clay was well aware of their instant attraction for each other.
Nelson Sayre - president of the elite Domino Club which charges an initiation fee of $1000 and then $500 annual dues. Cy thinks the place is a front for card playing gamblers. Ronald Dexter was involved in a scheme at the club for finding new members and for each new member he acquired he got a kickback. Dexter has his fingers in everyone's bank accounts. He also was very vocal with Sayre about not receiving his fair share of those "incentives" for new members. Sayre was threatened repeatedly by Dexter who was planning to expose the club for what it really was.
Ted Pella - ridiculously handsome aide to Sayre. Cy feels Pella has sinister side based on a supercilious smirk that never disappears from his face. Danny thinks Pella one of those pretty boy hitmen and he's more than just Nelson's aide.
Gail Reynolds - I was never sure of this woman. She appears at every scene as if she was employed everywhere at once. Did she work for Clay at the theater or for Sayre at the Club? I hadn't a clue. But her primary role by midpoint was as a romantic foil. She was pursuing Philip Carden making it clear she wanted him and would possibly stop at nothign to get him.
Agatha Burridge - Elspeth's mother. Typical imperious matron found in murder mysteries of this era. She's also a zealous stage mother who does everything in her power to get Elspeth on stage. Trying her best to orchestrate a marriage between Richard and her daughter. She's not above exploitation, manipulation and possibly criminal behavior to make the match a reality. But could she actually have murdered Ronald Dexter and hidden his body?
Elspeth Burridge - a cipher character. Yes, she's an actress. Yes, she's excited many men's libidos. But we never really know her. She exists solely for her relationship to other characters. We only know of her through other people. Elspeth appears in only two brief scenes (both alongside her mother) and she barely speaks. But she is always talked about by the rest of the cast and seems to be involved in the primary motive for Dexter's death
ATMOSPHERE: Frederick C. Davis began his career as short story writer in the pulps and their influence is always notable in his early full length novels. They are action oriented, chock full of fistfights and other violence between men, and include several truly bizarre, over-the-top murders. The discovery of Ronald Dexter's body is straight out of the weird menace pulps. It might even recall the macabre touches of Edgar Allan Poe to well read aficionados of the great writer. Poor, Poor, Yorick (1939) not only has Poe allusions, but a Shakespeare allusion and Gothic elements galore. It also has one of my favorite Golden Age plot motifs -- knife throwing! Check out the illustration on the first edition dust jacket up there at the top of the post. Richard Clay has converted an old wine cellar in his home into a game room including knife throwing targets and a complete set of professional quality knives designed especially for throwing. Four of those knives go missing at one point in the book and they are used inexpertly in several more murder attempts.
The detective novel motifs are also put to good use. Cy and Danny have a lot to contend with besides the strange attempted murder of Marcia and the faked suicide note. Another note turns up supposedly written by Ronald Dexter and fro a while everyone thinks he's alive until Cy proves that note also is a forgery when he points out the discrepancies in the typewriting in the body of the message compared with the greeting and date. It was a note actually written by Ronald long ago and altered to appear to be written two days ago. He later finds the typewriter used to alter that message and it implicates the Sayre's staff at the Domino Club. Which person used the typewriter? Or was it a member who broke into Sayre's office to use it?
Other puzzling aspects of the case: why were two dozen bottles of Chablis stolen from the wine cellar in Richard Clay's home? How did human blood get on a dart gun used to pull darts out of a dart board? Why were the shoes on Ronald Dexter's body put on the wrong feet? And most surprising of all -- quite a shock for me -- was the second murder that occurs late int he novel.
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| Leonarde Keeler and wife with his update of the polygraph machine, circa 1935 |
Philip Carden delivers a four page length monologue on the history of sunken treasures and shipwrecks that goes on for four full pages. He cites historical instance with dates or successes an failures in this risky and dangerous hobby of those looking to get rich quick. The most fascinating was the case of a diver who accidentally came across a legendary shipwreck known to have been carrying gold bullion. He later went back surreptitiously to recover some of the loot but was ignorant of an approaching hurricane. He had to abort the search. After the hurricane subsided he returned only to find the entire wreck was gone. The storm had either moved it or entirely buried it once again.
During one of Cy's criminology classes at Knickerbocker College,
where he is assistant professor in the sociology department, he lectures his students on the concept of the perfect murder and how a large per centage of murders never are prosecuted simply because they are never known to be murders. But, he posits, if you have been arrested on suspicion of murder there are a variety of instances in the inherently flawed American trial by jury system that may allow you to get away with your crime. He then gives multiple examples ranging from jury boredom or indifference (citing several examples from actual court cases) to impartiality from the judge. I didn't make note of all the examples because the lecture goes on five or six pages and was utterly engrossing. This part of the book may have been the most insightful castigation of American justice system I've come across in a popular work of fiction. Nothing seems to have changed in over 70 years. In fact, it's only worsened.
EASY TO FIND? Good luck finding one, my friends. Of all of Davis' detective novels this one seems to be the most elusive. I had a copy sitting on my shelves for almost ten years before I finally decided to read it. And I had to read it quickly because I had just sold it from one of my many listing online. Now it's on its way to a lucky reader/collector. It was the only copy of Poor, Poor Yorick offered since I bought it. There are no copies offered for a sale online as of today's date. And I know of no reprints either. Perhaps someone uploaded the book to an online library. I never bother looking for those. If you come across a copy in the wild, as it were, snap it up. This book though elusive is highly recommended as an imaginative, entertaining, unexpectedly educational, and often surprise-filled example of a traditional Golden Age detective novel.
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