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.

Double Detection - Belton Cobb

THE STORY: Noel Ross, ex-police sergeant with Scotland Yard, has just ad an operation to remove shrapnel from his head. He and his wife take a vacation for him to recuperate. Ross is distracted and annoyed by his fellow guests at the White Cliffs Hotel on the South Coast of England. When Mr. Griggs, a supposedly amusing and witty man, is found unresponsive in his room the maid jumps to the conclusion that he is dead. A doctor is called who find that Griggs has suffered some sort of respiratory attack and luckily can revive him. Ross later meets Griggs who at first seems friendly and of a like mind. When the other guests show up in the lounge Griggs' humor surfaces. He turns out to be a British Don Rickles belittling and insulting everyone with his brand of nasty humor. Ross seeing that nearly everyone is appalled or enraged by the insults begins to think that the health issue of the previous evening was really a murder attempt. Then Griggs suffers another respiratory attack and dies. Ross is convinced that the murderer struck again and this time he succeeded.

INNOVATIONS: The most intriguing aspect of Double Detection (1945) is that there are two detectives trying to solve the murder.  But each approached the crime from a different angle. Basically, it is the intuitive detective vs. the evidentiary detective. Noel Ross at first surmises and imagines an attempted murder and insists the accidental death Griggs suffers the second night is an actual murder. Inspector Cheviot Burmann shows up at the hotel and Ross ever eager to show his brilliant police work immediately assumes Burmann is there to investigate the murder. He's not. He is acting in an undercover role to ferret out a cook who is involved in a clothing coupon racket. But with his cover instantly blown by the rash ex-copper Burmann is forced to re-think hi strategy. So he begins to investigate as if Griggs was murdered. Slowly the coupon racket case and Ross imaginings blend and when the post-mortem comes out Burmann learns that Griggs was in fact poisoned. 

Ross approaches the crime focusing on HOW it was accomplished.  There is a complicated business with beer bottles recalling the mix-up of cocktail glasess in The Poisoner's Mistake. I was never really clear what was going on with these beer bottles until a very lengthy description which pointed out that some of the guests, including Griggs, had their own stock of beer. The reson for this also involves a complicated revelation about who o actually owned the hotel.

Burmann derided for ignoring the howdunit of the crime by Ross prefers to seek out the WHY. He spends much of his time finding a legitimate motive other than sheer hatred that Ross harps on about. The coupon racket scheme comes into play for a while and Burmann is keen that Griggs death has something to do with cheating his partners out of profits. much to his surprise this sound motive will fall apart when the real culprit behind the coupon is arrested and clears several of the suspects.  once again, Burmann will have to lean in on Ross' ideas in order to solve Grigg's murder.

SUMMARY: Intricately plotted, mostly fair play, and often very funny this was the second detective novel I've read by Belton Cobb and I thought it almost as ingenious as The Poisoner's Mistake. I say mostly fair play due one deeply hidden clue amounting to a bit of minutiae in one character's past that was mentioned exactly once. I thought that bit almost unfair but it was there in the story. Can't really whine. Also one crucial bit of information that seems practically superfluous shows up late in the novel and proves to have a lot to do with the murderer's motive. Therefore, nearly everything in this story will be relevant if the reader wants to match wits with Cobb and his detective characters. I nailed the murderer early in the story due to a psychological quirk that I have come across in other modern detective novels. This unusual aspect, a bonus of sorts to the murderer's motivation, might have come as a shock to Cobb's audience when the book was first published.

QUOTES:  That, of course, thought Cheviot as he put down the receiver, was the worst of doctors: they could always quote to you the case of someone who died in 1776 in a peculiar way and thus had prevented all people who had since died normally from establishing a firm rule. [...] Damn the doctors, thought Cneviot, they always make things harder instead of easier!

 Ross:  "What you need to do now is trace [the poison] from that bathroom to the kitchen where the beer was kept. When you've done that, you'll know who could have taken it there, and you'll have finished the case."

Burmann: "I suppose that would be one way to do it. But it has never been my way to do Sherlock Holmes stuff with a magnifying glass, crawling about carpets. And I don't believe that in this case it would work, if I did it."

EASY TO FIND? Though no modern reprints of this title exist Double Detection is easy to find in the used book market, especially from online sellers.  It was reprinted by Cherry Tree Books around the late 1940s or early 1950s. But be warned:  sometimes those Cherry Tree Books are abridged. I turned up 16 copies, a mix of hardcover and paperback, in one simple search and many come with the typographic DJ. All but two copies are priced sanely and affordably. Happy hunting! 

FIRST BOOKS: The Swan Island Murders - Victoria Lincoln

There is nothing more upsetting than falling for the hype on a book jacket. The Swan Island Murders (1930) with its striking Art Deco influenced illustration of a silhouetted damsel being threatened by claw-like hands and the promise of "mystery, horror and detection" was enough to lure me in. While there is plenty of mystery and a smattering of rudimentary detection on display there is little horror to thrill a 21st century reader.  This is a book of its age when its intended audience surely would've been thrilled by the exotic and bizarre plot elements but which led me to spend time on outside research as I found fault with the author's supposed arcane knowledge of Indian religion and mythology that dominates the story,

The story mostly involves the guests at an impromptu house party hosted by wealthy eccentric Nahum Gould, a collector of Indian esoterica and a variety of Southeast Asian artifacts. The rear of the book jacket leads one to believe that the poor souls stranded on Swan Island are at the mercy of a mad strangler. This is not the case. Two Portuguese immigrant workers are strangled over the course of the novel (so a partial truth) but none of them are major characters at the house party. Instead, the focused crime is that one of the guests is shot dead, a presumed suicide for much of the book. The editorial staff at Farrar & Rinehart seemed more intent on selling the book under false pretenses and playing up to the contemporary demand for sensational popular fiction.  Had they told the truth about the book they would've been "spoiling" the surprises. Of course, I think nothing of diving right and telling you that this book is really about abnormal psychology and monomania related to arcane Indian mythology and its effect on Indian criminal culture.

Connie Steel is our narrator very much modeled on a Mary Roberts Rinehart amateur female detective easily affected by eerie atmosphere and with a tendency to talk about madness far too often. Swan Island, as you might predict, is a fog enshrouded lonely place and Gould's mansion is an imposing and dreary, shadow-filled haven well suited for a reclusive eccentric obsessed with the Mysterious And Inscrutable East. Victoria Lincoln does an admirable job of laying on thick this atmosphere of dread signalling "horrible things to come" with typical HIBK prose like "...but that boat was to come and go again without carrying any one of us away from Swan Island." More typical are Lincoln's florid stylistic touches like this: "How dreadfully right I had been...when I had thought that all our proportions were chemically incorrect, and that some cataclysmic reaction was bound to take place."  This odd chemistry metaphor pops up two times later in the book. She heightens the mystery and terror when we learn that Nahum Gould is so fearful and paranoid he has turned the house into an impenetrable fortress. All the windows have steel frames, there is only a single key for every door lock in the place with no copies and only the butler Gomez or Gould's secretary Torres are allowed to keep these original keys. Gould himself keeps only the key to his bedroom which has a heavy oak and steel door, steel enmeshed windows and other security overkill enhancements making his bedroom more of a prison cell. He speaks in a hushed voice of keeping "It" out and is constantly on guard, especially at night .

Needless to say someone manages to kill the playwright John Parsons and as Connie and her fiance Edward Benedict soon discover the murderer can only be one of the four remaining guests, Gould, or one of his employees. Gomez has a son Joe with developmental delay who in true period fashion is referred to as "the idiot" throughout the novel. Though he is slow to comprehend anything asked of him Joe's father says the boy can have days when he is perfectly lucid. Joe is the first one suspected of being the mad strangler and also the shooter until the stunningly beautiful (she has to be, right?) Nana Moeller, a German actress about to appear in Parsons' latest play, insists that she knows John committed suicide. There is evidence to disprove this suicide theory and that the death is a cleverly covered up murder. Not the least of these clues is a blood stained book written in Urdu that has vanished from the library when Parsons was shot.

A blood stained book written in Urdu?!

This is the single most interesting facet of the novel. Not to mention Lincoln's most macabre and original touch. It will prove key to the solution of all that is baffling about the strangling murders as well as John Parsons' death. Unfortunately, the revelation in the final chapters is so far removed from a fair play traditional detective novel that it called to mind the most popular American detective of the era -- Philo Vance.  I'm sure Victoria Lincoln read her fair share of both Rinehart and Van Dine prior to writing her first mystery novel because apart from the Rinehart style narration, and the Rinehart-like emphasis on terror and madness infecting everyone, ultimately the book is an esoteric treatise much like a Philo Vance detective novel. Thankfully Lincoln spares us pedantic footnotes, but the final chapter is overloaded with arcane trivia about a criminal subculture that thrived in 19th century India. Sadly, the finale is also littered with misinformation and poorly Anglicized spellings of terms and mythological figures and haphazardly mixes fact and legend. I had to sort it all out in about 90 minutes of internet searches and reading up on the incarnations of Kali until I found Bhawani which is the modern spelling of what Lincoln renders in her novel as B'wannee. She also seems to believe that T'huggee (once again her odd spelling) is an actual religion rather than a criminal class.

Victoria Lincoln, age 26 (circa 1930)

THE AUTHOR: Victoria Lincoln (1904 - 1981) was born in Fall River, Massachusetts and claims (on her author bio on the DJ for this mystery novel) that as a child she managed to make the acquaintance of that town's most famous resident Lizzie Borden. She attended Radcliffe College and graduated in 1926. The same year she married her first husband Isaac Watkins who was a graduate student in fine art at Harvard. She had her first child, Penelope, with him. A few years after her first novel was published she divorced Watkins and in 1933 married Victor Lowe, professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.

Her New York Times obituary mentions only her mainstream novels and her non-fiction but not her debut novel, The Swan Island Murders, her first and only foray into mystery and thriller fiction. Among her other works are February Hill (1934) adapted for the stage by George Abbot under its new title The Primrose Path. In 1940 The Primrose Path was made into a movie starring Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea and Marjorie Rambeau who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as a mother who turns to prostitution to support her family. Lincoln's other fiction includes Grandmother & the Comet (1944), The Wind at My Back: Three Short Novels (1946), Celia Amberley (1949) and Out from Eden (1951). Notable among her non-fiction works are the Edgar Award winning biography/true crime work A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight (1967) and her last book on the life of St. Theresa of Avila. She lived with her husband Victor Lowe and her family in Baltimore until her death in 1981. 

Foreign Affairs - Hugh Fleetwood

Paolo Levin, concert pianist living in Rome, is being followed by an emaciated and crippled young man.  He stands outside Paolo's apartment and watches the pianist. For weeks the young man shadows Paolo. He starts to show up dressed exactly like Paolo. After several failed attempts to get the stalker to explain himself the young man speaks: "I wish you would speak in English. I don't understand a damn word of Italian." Everything changes when Paolo tracks the young man to an apartment building in the Via Francesco Crispi. Shortly after the young man enters Paolo knocks on the door. He is taken aback when a young woman answers. Paolo soon discovers this is the young man's sister. From then on the terror truly begins.

What begins as an early stalker novel (before such things dominated crime fiction) soon turns into a devilish tale of control, obsessive love, bizarre torture, and mind games. Paolo is hardly a protagonist we want to root for.  On page one of the novel we discover he is vain man, the first paragraph is devoted to the decor of his apartment which is mostly made up of framed photographs of himself, both clothed and nude. The first pages continue to reveal a deluded and above average musician who while technically proficient is a slouch at artistic expression according to the classical music reviews in Italian newspapers. Nevertheless, Paolo sees himself as a great artist. It's difficult to care about Paolo until he falls under the spell of his stalker and then his sister. But are their intentions truly in Paolo's best interests?  

Though the story is primarily about Paolo he is hardly the most interesting character. Ralph, the 21 year old disabled man, is the more magnetic and fascinating of this doomed duo. Ralph confesses he fell in love with Paolo after watching him play his last concert. Ralph seems to have some kind of psychic connection with Paolo; he knows entirely too much about his private life. Also he cannot help but tell Paolo that he is not a great musician, not quite yet. If Paolo would only give himself over to Ralph and his sister he could make him what he wants to become. What is Paolo willing to give up in order to become that truly great artist?  

While this all plays out the sudden death by suicide of Paolo's friend Christopher haunts the pianist. As Paolo develops a friendship with Maggie, Ralph's sister, and comes to recognize both brother and sister as friends interested in his career Fleetwood drops hints that Christopher's death will connect all three people in a strange pact. In a truly shocking scene Paolo, after a night of carousing, finds himself waking handcuffed to his bed. What follows is one of Fleetwood's signature bizarre scenes of incomprehensible violence and cruelty ending with Paolo making a promise to his captor that will transform his life forever.

Fleetwood successfully subverts all expectations, eschews formula each time the story seems to be fumbling into routine and mundane events. He reverses the reader's sympathies on nearly every other page.  Paolo, at first an arrogant deluded wannabe, becomes a victim one feels empathy for. Ralph is sinister and sociopathic in one section, tender in loving in another. Paolo shifts into a vengeful would-be murderer while both Maggie and Ralph seem to become victims. Maggie at first a kind and sweet girlfriend morphs into a harridan that Paolo ought to abandon all while Ralph once again takes the upper hand. It is never clear whose side we should be on. Are they all at each other's throats plotting and exploiting one another without ever letting on what each of the three truly wants? Each time I thought I had figured out where the story was headed I literally gasped at the reversals and jarring plot pivots.

The blurb on the paperback edition I own quotes a Library Journal review describing this book as "insidiously hypnotizing." That's not hyperbole. When I reviewed Fleetwood's The Girl Who Passed for Normal last year in November I mentioned that the writer had technique in plotting and psychological suspense comparable to the best of Patricia Highsmith. Once again I will raise that worthy comparison. Though at times Foreign Affairs (1974) meanders into repetitive character monologues with obvious revelations Fleetwood will subvert expectations and twist the story around on itself. The climax involving a foot race along a cliffside pathway is truly a spine-tingling sequence that includes such reversals three times in a matter of four paragraphs culminating in a final gasp inducing sentence. It's beyond clever for a crime writer, it's a master stroke of ingenuity. 

There are some bothersome intrusions that threaten to undermine the entire plot like Paolo's antipathy towards marriage rendered in the cliched metaphor that it is a trap that will rob him of his freedom. Paolo's friendship with a superficial American ex-pat, Elaine, who thankfully disappears well before the midpoint is intended as either comic relief or an indication that Paolo can develop close relationships and yet adds little to the real story of the intertwined trio of Paolo, Ralph and Maggie. And the tendency for Ralph and Maggie to deliver lengthy monologues bogged down in reiteration could've been more powerfully conveyed with the help of an editor's blue pencil. 

Fleetwood continually surprises with paradoxical moments in this highly unusual tale of emotional blackmail that ultimately leads to self-discovery. Violence explodes out of tenderness. Lust gives way to devotion which gives way to mutual respect. And if in the end it seems that some form of contentment has been achieved, that love can be a learned behavior, it all comes at a terrible price. Secrets and sacrifices lead to an oddly fulfilled happiness for only two of these three characters who all seemed doomed from the start.

QUOTES:  And suddenly he felt that what was happening no longer concerned him. As if it wasn't he who was threatened, but someone called Paolo who had been invented by the brother and sister. A mere image of Paolo.

Ralph:  "She thinks that if you really got to love the music you played, instead of just yourself playing it --if you really understood what you were playing--then you would start to love her." 

He wanted to laugh. The world was marvelous when greed was the only proof of sincerity.

Maggie:  "[Ralph's] been the whole of my life. In a way he's almost me, and I'm almost him.  But in spite of it -- or because of that" --she hesitated-- "I'd love to be free of him."

He walked along with the cripple on his arm, and felt almost proud of the boy; as if he were leading an obscene bride to a sacrificial pyre.

EASY TO FIND?  Foreign Affairs was reprinted by Valancourt Books several years ago. Used and new copies of this trade paperback reprint are easily obtainable on various bookselling sites. Copies of both hardcover (mostly US editions) and paperback editions (a mix of UK and US) also turn up at the usual used book websites. Happy hunting! 

FIRST BOOKS: A Man Died Here - Gina Dessart

THE STORY:  Liz & Bob Macklin purchase an old home in Marshall, Massachusetts and begin an extensive rehab project transforming the gloomy, dark paneled, house into a bright, livable home. Liz is curious about the former owner, Seton Williams, who died in the house several years ago. Cancer she's told was the cause. A lonely old man dying alone, she thinks. But who was he? One day at the post office the gossipy Postmistress Mrs. Moore asks Liz, "Why did you buy the Williams house?  A house where that man killed himself?" Liz is shocked by this news. Why did the estate agent lie to her about Mr. Williams' death? She begins a subverted investigation making her way through the neighborhood ostensibly getting to know her neighbors when in fact she is slyly inserting questions about the house and the man who died there. Some townspeople offer up tidbits but clam up when Liz presses on with specific questions. Why is it no one wants to talk about Seton Williams, his death, or his family? Fighting common sense Liz and Bob keep digging and soon learn that perhaps the past is better left untouched.

THE CHARACTERS: A Man Died Here (1947) has an abundant cast of characters apart from the husband and wife amateur sleuths.  The novel is also written in the author omniscient voice allowing the reader to know the private thoughts of every character including the most minor characters like Jacob Kingman whose wife Harriet died by suicide years ago. As the novel progresses Dessart focuses on the Williams family and a handful of Marshall's residents including:

Miss Greeley - The high school principal who is beginning to lose her grip on reality as she spends much time dwelling on the lives of two of her favorite pupils, now grown adults. Her daydreaming and nostalgia lead her to spend too much time thinking about Seton Williams' death when Liz keeps asking prying questions.

Mrs. Moore - an inveterate gossip the local postmistress is responsible for re-opening the past with her casual but intrusive question to Liz about why she moved into the Williams house. Each time Liz runs into Mrs. Moore she gets more unusual info about the Williams family.

Prentiss Williams - the only member of the Williams family who left town for a successful life. Now a general practitioner with several patients in neighboring Colby, Prentiss is still troubled by what happened to his father. He and his brother seem to have a secret between them. When Liz uncovers a trove of letters hidden away in books left in the Williams’ library we learn that Prentiss had a violent argument with his father a few months before he died.

Henry Williams - youngest member of the Williams family and a rather sad man. He took over the family hardware store begrudgingly and never really seemed to get along with anyone let alone his father.  Luckily, he and his brother are close, but Henry can't understand why Prentiss was so antagonistic to the old man. He is sure Prentiss had something to do with their father's death.

Dr. Kilander - was at the Williams house to pronounce the old man dead.  One of the few witnesses to see exactly how the body was found he relates some crucial info to Bob & Liz when they hound him for details about the night Seton died. 

Mrs. Chmielewski, the Williams housekeeper; her daughter Agnes; and Blanche Milliman, a girl who died in a drowning accident also feature prominently in the plot.  Liz and Bob begin to wonder why so many young women who crossed paths with Seton Williams die violently. The more they uncover about this supposedly lonely old man they more they learn he was malevolent, licentious, cruel and cared little for anyone but himself.

INNOVATIONS: Dessart starts off her novel in a dreary outline of Liz and Bob house hunting, some pedestrian small town interactions almost as if the book will be a soap opera-like litany of mundane observations.  But it's a sly move because this seemingly prosaic beginning slowly gives way to the timeworn exploration of a town's populace haunted by violent death. The narrative voice Dessart adopts allows her to leak into the story, in a mixture of subtle and overt clues from a variety of character viewpoints, just exactly what took place the night Seton Williams died. Though the detective work is minimal and largely relegated to Q&A and the discovery of letters which are rendered in full into the narrative, there are a couple a notable scenes.

Liz decides to visit the local cemetery and almost by accident finds the gravestone of Blanche Milliman whose drowning death also seems to hold some of the townspeople under a spell. She spends much of this scene wondering if Seton Williams' grave is also in the cemetery. Eventually she finds it in a far corner of the yard in the dark shade of a hemlock tree. It's an eerily conceived scene and adds some much needed atmosphere to a novel that tends to skirt around the edges of mystery and violence.

Perhaps the highlight of the book (maybe the purpose that Dessart wrote the book) comes when Bob and Liz have a debate about whether they should continue with uncovering the truth about Williams' death which by this point they realize is a cleverly covered up murder. They have a dilemma: do they report what they've discovered? Do they leave it alone? Liz argues for a murder committed by a vigilante Good Samaritan and that perhaps the murder of Williams brought more good than bad. Let that person get away with it.  Bob tells her murder is murder no matter the motive. He cannot justify letting the culprit escape no matter if the end result was beneficial for many people.

By this penultimate chapter it becomes clear that Dessart has been exploring something resonant with our time of podcasts obsessed with true crime, the resurrection of cold cases and the desire to seek justice for unsolved crimes. Should a criminal be sought out after decades have passed? Is vengeance a moral solution? Where does forgiveness enter the picture? If a murder occurred that brought about good and happiness was the crime a just murder and was the killer a hero? All these idea float around the periphery of the story until Liz and Bob finally voice them in their at times heavy-handed conversation.

QUOTES:  Bob: "So--having detected to the extent of discovering the murder, I guess it's up to us to go on detecting until we find the murderer. Only God knows where we begin."

Liz: "But if Mr. X is a truly fine person, would you agree that it might be a special case, sort of?"

Bob: "...I thought it was all nicely set up with black is black and white is white. Damn it all, how can I tell at this stage of the game?"

THE AUTHOR: Georgine Belle Dessart (1912-1979) was born in Chicago but spent her youth in and around Long Island, Brooklyn, and Syracuse, NY as well as a brief stay in Germany. She attended Smith College but was compelled to end her studies after her second year.  She and Phillip Hildreth (soon to be her husband) borrowed $50 and went into business doing silkscreen printing and display advertising. They quit the business after about five years and moved to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. In the mid-1940s she began writing as a "retirement venture."

She credits becoming a mystery writer with the bizarre educational experience of learning French while in a German school while she was still mastering the German language. "Any child lost in three languages simultaneously is apt to be marked for life and end up as a mystery story writer," she wrote on her biographical sketch on the rear DJ panel of A Man Died Here.  

Dessart had a story published in Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine ("Counterpoint" in the Nov. 1965 issue) as well as other stories published in several noteworthy literary journals like The Virginia Quarterly and The Literary Review. Her three crime novels were written and published between 1947 and 1959. While her first, A Man Died Here, is heavily inspired by detective fiction the later works are more geared toward domestic suspense. Her third novel, Cry for the Lost (1959), takes place in a desert town called San Paulus no doubt based on Tucson, Arizona where she and her husband settled and where she was lecturer in English and a creative writing teacher at the University of Arizona in the mid-1970s.

LEFT INSIDE: Another Bookshop Receipt

This bookshop receipt was Left Inside a copy of The Wallet of Kai Lung that I purchased many moons ago from John Chandler's long-lived but sadly now defunct bookstore Bookman's Corner on Broadway and Wellington in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago.  I've mentioned this mess of a bookstore that I dearly loved visiting a couple of times on this blog. I bought both books listed on this receipt as they were shelved one right next to each other in John's store.  Amazing that the receipt dated Dec 19, 1955 stayed inside that book for over 50 years. And that both books and the ancient receipt traveled from Seattle to San Francisco, then to a warehouse in Chicago, and finally transferred from John's warehouse to his book crammed store sometime in 2007 where a few weeks later I bought both of those books by Ernest Bramah. Click on the photo to enlarge. Those who can read cursive will be able to read the book titles Wallet of Kai Ling and Kai Lung's Golden Hours as well as the customer’s name and address. He paid a total of $5.20 for two used reprint editions that were published in 1929 and 1932. The book I found the receipt inside is shown below. 

The customer's name is Tony Marks who lived in the Geary-Taylor Apartments in San Francisco in 1955. I did a search on that building and real estate sites list the address as on Geary Street, but Google Maps has the current address as 501 Taylor St and shows the awning with a painted 501 as the entrance on that street. The Geary side has no entrance that I could discern from the Google photos. The entire building, built in 1920, is listed for sale at Zillow for a cool $15 million. Looks like it's completely vacant and intense rehabbing was going on at one time. Have no idea if it ever was completed.

But the bookstore is much more interesting.  Shorey Book Store was at one time "The Northwest's Largest" and I have feeling it was probably the oldest when it ended business in 2000. Established in 1890 it came into life first as a magazine and cigar store. Original address was 701 Third Ave near Cherry Street.  According to a brief history I found online the store moved several times in its 110 year existence. The address on the receipt states 815 Third Ave (its third location) which is now the Flamingo Terrace Apartments. The bookstore's final location in 1995 was on Fremont.  It closed five years later.

There are several photographs of the store that pop up all over the internet. The earliest, taken circa 1895, can be found at the MOHAI photo archive site.  I found one rather good one (at left) on the Seattle Public Library Digital Collections. Seems to around the same time as the date on the receipt. Not only are there many photographs at various stages in the store's life, but there are several newspaper articles and Facebook posts devoted to the store.  It was clearly a beloved store.  One article details how a customer's want list item submitted in 1971 was fulfilled in 1990. That's dedication! Such devotion to customers simply does not exist in our world anymore.

The Snare of Circumstance - Edith E. Buckley

THE STORY  Elmer Bliss, reporter, is hired by a mysterious gentleman called Philander Summerfield to look into a recent Peter Somhers murder case that he believes was never solved. Bliss has been fascinated by the case because Somhers' nephew, Harrison Milbrath, was tried twice for the murder. In the first trial he was found guilty then he and his lawyer appealed due to an abundance of circumstantial evidence that should not have led to a guilty verdict. In Milbrath's second trial he is acquitted. Summerfield offers Bliss $20,000 to find the actual murderer. With such a sizeable reward Bliss is keen to turn detective and discover the real murderer of Peter Somhers.

THE CHARACTERS  In the second chapter Buckley introduces Murray Kilbourne, "by predilection a sleuth of no mean ability."  We learn he turned to criminal detection after leaving college. He inherited a fortune from an uncle and in order to claim that money the will had a proviso that Kilbourne was instructed to give up detective work and "devote his energies to the cultivation of his literary talents."  Kilbourne pops up at various points in the early portion of the novel,  but then leaves the country. To me his inclusion is utterly superfluous. Buckley makes it seem that Bliss and Kilbourne will be a team similar to Holmes and Watson, but Kilbourne is actually the worst kind of bogey character.  He serves absolutely no purpose. It was the only irritating part of the book.

Elmer Bliss is, in fact, the real sleuth and he proves to be far superior to Kilbourne who allows his libido to intrude and cloud his judgment in the detective work.  The real sleuthing team tuns out to be Bliss and Harrison Milbrath. The two join forces at the midpoint when Bliss uncovers a secret that Milbrath was hoping no one would learn. The revelation of this secret binds them in a friendship and strengthens Bliss's resolve to repair Harrison's reputation damaged after being found both guilty and not guilty of a single crime.  Together they are sure that once the "snare of circumstance" is finally lifted the young man will be able to carry on with his life both professionally and personally without shame or ignominy.

Philander Summerfield is indeed a mystery man making his first appearance in the first chapter and then vanishing for the remainder of the book. Or has he?  An elderly bearded man matching Summerfield's description and behavior is frequently seen around the Somhers estate by several witnesses that Bliss questions during his investigation.  Is Summerfield spying on Bliss?  Or is this a Summerfield look-alike?

Dolores "Dolly" McClure is the mystery "woman in white" (an obvious nod to Wilkie Collins) that BLiss follows for several days before he discovers who she really is. This young beauty stirs the hearts of all young men who meet her and is rather obviously involved with Harrison though it takes both Bliss and Kilbourne several days to figure this out. Her scenes are some of the strongest in the first half of the book when Buckley is setting up her intricate plot and layering multiple secrets and ambiguities into the story. She is willful, forthright, witty, a bit of a tease, and on the verge of heartbreak. When she learns that Bliss is intent on clearing Harrison's name she becomes one of his closest allies.

Chauncey McClure, Dolores' grandfather, lives nearby the Somhers estate and swears he has seen the ghost of Somhers wandering the grounds late at night. There are some very eerie sequences related to this eyewitness account.  Chauncey also provides a bit of gentle humor prior to his confession of ghost sighting.

Hutton, the station master for the local train depot, is one of Elmer's best sources. Hutton is a born gossip and a fine raconteur.  Elmer Bliss learns more than he ever hoped for from the many stories Hutton cannot help but share.  The most intriguing of his tales is the past history of Somhers building a wing onto his library, a retreat from noise, servant gossip and other intrusions and distractions.  Bliss believes there is also a hidden room (possible influence of Carolyn Wells?) somewhere within this building addition. Hutton also reveals he has seen an old man with a gray beard frequently visiting in town and that he arrives and departs on the train headed fro Boston. Bliss is sure this proves that Summerfield is indeed following him and keeping tabs on his investigation.

Jim Arms and Horsford seem to be the two primary antagonists. Each man lives on the Somhers estate and while Horsford, a caretaker of sorts, has a wife and daughter, Arms is a single man. Arms is the more villainous of the two men holding a grudge against Harrison for years and responsible for testimony that led to the first trial finding Harrison guilty. Bliss suspects that Horsford has secrets and knows more than he is willing to tell. Certainly Horsford's daughter has a piece of information that she is holding close and Bliss suspects she is protecting her father. Ultimately, Bliss will gain one of these men as an ally in an unexpected turn of events around the novel's midpoint. 

INFLUENCES  The Snare of Circumstance (1910) was published at a time when Conan Doyle and all his Holmesian tricks were still the primary influence of neophyte detective novelists. Buckley's novel is one of the finest examples from this nascent period of detective fiction in America. It's all the more remarkable for being her only detective novel and having received numerous rave reviews ranging from H. L. Mencken in the May 1910 issue of The Smart Set ("...well worth the money asked for it.") to the unsigned review in The New York Times March 19, 1910 ("...one of the few [detective novels] which...carries the reader without a hitch. The plot is...most ingeniously carried out. At no point can the reader guess the surprise finally sprung upon him.")  She has clearly drawn from several of the Holmes stories (alluded to by both reviewers, BTW) and in particular borrowed one iconic scene from The Hound of the Baskervilles where Holmes tries to prove a person's identity using a portrait painting. In Buckley's case it is not a painting but a photograph that proves the identification. Bliss does exactly what Holmes did:  he covers up a beard to leave only the eyes and face.

There is another novel that has major influence on the plot, too. Buckley mentions the book outright in the final chapter, but neither the title nor the author can be named, lest I giveaway the crème de la crème surprise.  Let me only remark that this influential novel held sway over several detective fiction and thriller writers from the 1930s through the 1960s who were keen on introducing psychological terror into their plots. Prior to this novel I had thought the earliest use of this familiar motif was in a book published in 1933. Always eyebrow raising to find yet another example and one so early in the 20th century. Buckley's may be, if not the first, one of the first American detective novels to employ this particular psychological plot motif.  For contemporary audiences in Buckley's day it must certainly have been a shocking finale.

THINGS I LEARNED  I was certain that the book took place around 1908 but automobiles are rarely encountered.  Instead there is a type of vehicle I'd never heard of. Bliss employs an early form of taxi called the herdic. As more and more herdics pop up in the story, I was starting to reassess the time as the late 1890s.  At one point there is a herdic chase and Bliss actually says, "Follow that cab!"  In any case, a herdic is a horse drawn taxi with side seats and a rear entrance. The vehicle is named for its inventor Peter Herdic who designed the carriage in 1881.  I found several photographs and drawings of them and chose the best example to include in this post.  There is an excellent history of the herdic and its Pennsylvanian inventor with several illustrations and photos here.

QUOTES Bliss:  "[Horsford] implied that there is a 'real ghost,' but it was to the atmosphere of mystery and danger that he referred. I dare say this man of yours has seen the ghost!"

McClure: "It is only recently that I have indulged in speculation of [unpopular thoughts], but I have had an experience that sent my thoughts in channels quite out of their usual run. Wild as the statement may sound to you, it is a fact that I, too, this summer, nearly two years after his death, have seen the spirit of my old friend, Peter Somhers!"

McClure: "But Mr. Bliss, the figure was not an illusion. Phantom or man it was real, and individual, and if it was not a 'materialization' some one on earth has a wish to give color to the sentiment against the place." 

Dolly: "You know what Tennyson says...? 'But a lie that is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.' That was the case with the testimony of Jim Arms; only the truthful part was so exceedingly small. Now that he has convicted Harry to a living death he is not content. He dares to sneer at him..."

EASY TO FIND?  Having been out of copyright for the past 16 years The Snare of Circumstance has been snatched up by the POD People. Several affordable paperback copies are available from a couple of print-on-demand outfits like Forgotten Books. I'm sure a copy has been uploaded to one of the many internet archives as well. Those seeking out the handsomely designed hardcover from Little, Brown & Company (shown throughout this post) with four original illustrations by Arthur E. Becher can pick from six different copies offered from online sellers. Prices range from $17 - $75 in various states of condition from reading copy to very good. I also found one Canadian edition, one of the better copies, priced at only $20. Happy hunting!

LEFT INSIDE: Ancient Sherlockiana & German Post Card

These bits of ephemera are rather remarkable for both being well over 100 years old. Both post card and newspaper story were Left Inside my extremely scarce copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Harper & Brothers, 1894. Revised 2nd edition).  I have to brag a little about this book because my partner Joe found it at a book sale in Libertyville, Illinois many moons ago. I paid one buck for the book! I was astounded that no one had snagged it prior to us showing up. Vaguely I recall it was the last day of the sale. The book is in beautiful condition for a 19th century book with the only problems being a minor stain on the spine of the book, an offset stain on the prelims from the acidic newsprint reacting to the paper in the book, and some discoloration to the illustrated front board (photo at left). Definitely one of the treasures in the Norris Collection of Detective Fiction Rarities. Probably will never sell it until I contact an auction house about five years into the future, a plan I have been devising for a while now.

Onto the items. First is a German postcard.

 Translation of the caption on the front is "Official Post Card from the International Exhibition of Culinary Arts for the Hotel and Hospitality Trades/combined with a wine market in Frankfurt-Main." The caption is followed by the dates of the exhibition: "Sept. 30 through Oct 11, 1905." Unusual that even in the early 20th century German typesetters were still using the odd F-like letter to indicate the letter S, but in a word that ends in S the typesetter would use an actual S character. I thought that F-like letter was out of use by 1905. American typesetters used that F shape  for an S in 18th century typesetting in the USA, but it fell out of favor by the middle of the 19th century.

The postcard was mailed from the exhibition which had its own post office as can be seen on the postmark on the stamp.  Another postmark obliterates a portion of the lightly penciled message and is dated Oct 8, 1905, the date It was received by the post office in Barmen, a town in Wuppertal about 140 miles northwest of Frankfurt. I can make out the message as With hearty greetings ("aus [?] grüsst herzlich.") but I have no idea what the signature says.  The card is addressed to a man named Paul Kraft (maybe Kraus?) who lived in Barmen. But I can't read the street or whatever is on the last line of the address area that ends with the number 18. Also, it looks as if the writer wrote 19 first then corrected it to 18. 

The second bit of ephemera is a short story written by Frank Marshall White which first appeared in Life, Oct 18, 1894. Later it was picked up by syndicated news services and appeared in The Brooklyn Eagle in Oct 24, 1894. The reverse side of the first half of the story luckily shows a portion of the left hand side of the front page. Based on what I found from online resources, the newspaper is definitely an issue of The Brooklyn Eagle in the year 1894 (vol. 54).  Whether it is the actual October issue I didn't bother to further research. Both the layout of the front page of a November 1894 issue and the fonts of their masthead match exactly. This story was one of the earliest Sherlock Holmes parodies, probably also one of the shortest. You can find the full text of "The Recrudescence of Sherlock Holmes" online at the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia.  My newspaper copy has a portion of some lines missing due to a fold that eventually broke in half. The poorly trimmed edge of the second half cuts off the final two sentences: "This contemptible trick I can never forgive. Sherlock Holmes is again dead to me. — Life."

Giveaway Results Are In

The results of the Cecil M. Wills book giveaway are in.  After a highly scientific method that I left to one of the many Random Number Generators on the internet a winner was selected at random by a machine.  How fitting for our new age of omnipresent AI and robots.

And now for the Lucky Stiff...uh, lucky winner --

Comment #5 assigned to jdf21 was selected.  Congrats to jdf21!  You are the winner of one copy of the Ramble House reprint of Author in Distress.

Got the address. Thanks, JDF!  Book is in the mail. 

 Thanks to those who participated and for the mentions of all your favorite detective novels and mystery books you thought deserved a reprint. Perhaps one or two may soon see the light of day!

 

LEFT INSIDE: "Thank you for arranging the Madrigal Singers..."

On rare occasions  I find a letter still in its envelope inside a book. This one dated January 29, 1976 and mailed on Jan 30 of that year was Left Inside my rare copy of Call Mr. Fortune (Dutton, 1921) by H. C. Bailey. I uncovered a wealth of information about the letter's writer, her husband and the photographer who took the photo on the stationery.

First, the photographer.  Sally Savage has had her work shown in galleries and museums in her native Nyack, NY.  She specialized in "documenting just about every aspect of life and change in [Rockland] county since the late 1960s" according to the New York Heritage website of the Nyack Library.  Her photo entitled "reeds on Piermont pier" was apparently sold in a set of stationery that Ruth Brawner bought sometime in the 1970s. A large collection of Savage's photographs is in the New York Heritage Digital Collections held in the Nyack Library. 

The letter itself is a quaint "thank you" written by Ruth Brawner to Mrs. Paul (Charlotte) Bardwell. I'm not including a photo of the envelope because of the street address on the return address label and the street address of Mrs. Bardwell.

  

 

For those of you who cannot decipher American cursive handwriting the letter reads:

Dear Charalate [sic], 

  Thank you for arranging the Madrigal Singers to take part in our BiCentennial [sic] dinner.

  Everyone without exception has said how much they enjoyed the singing and the fine menu.

Gratefully,
Ruth & Howard

 

I'm curious what the Bardwells were doing in southeastern New York in January 1976.  According to online obituaries for both people they lived in Texas most of their lives.  Regardless, the more interesting people are the Brawners.  For decades they were actively involved in civic life of Piermont, NY where they were lifelong residents. Ruth Brawner was a big time organizer involved in all sorts of events in her hometown and was known for "sharing her wealth of knowledge pertaining to the history of Piermont, which included her vast collection of photographs."  Howard served in the US Navy as a radio technician, was a member of the local Rotary, a village trustee, and for 66 years was part of the volunteer fire department known as Empire Hose Company #1. He was also president of the volunteer ambulance team for the fire department.  Ruth and Howard were named Outstanding Citizens of Piermont one year after this letter was written. Their photograph was published in a local newsletter in the summer of 1977.  That photo is at the right.

 

Cecil M. Wills New Reprint on Sale & Giveaway!

A couple of years ago I bought a small pile of rare hardcover editions of Cecil M. Wills mystery novels.  These included Author in Distress (his debut as a mystery writer), The Chamois Murder and Death Treads.  I read all of them in quick succession, but only reviewed Author in Distress (1934) on the blog.  Shortly after I posted that review I sent a PDF of the entire book to Gavin O'Keefe as a suggestion for a Ramble House reprint. RH has already reprinted Fatal Accident (1936), Wills' sixth detective novel, and I thought it would be a good idea to have another in their catalog. Gavin liked the idea and asked if I wanted to write a foreword.  I agreed and then promptly dropped the ball. Sad forgetful ol' codger that I am.

Flash forward to March-April 2026.  I emailed Gavin again asking if he still wanted to go ahead with the reprint and I had an intro I could offer based on the blog post I wrote.  We emailed back and forth with interesting ideas about how to assemble and present the book.  And now two and a half months later the finished product is available for sale!  You can purchase the book either by visiting the Ramble House site or accessing their small list of titles at Lulu.com (the book printer for this POD reprint). There may be a slight discount if you buy a copy via Ramble House and use the special email address on the page for Author in Distress. 

I received two copies as a standard benefit and today I'm offering one of those books in a giveaway.  Just leave a comment below mentioning any book you think deserves reprinting.  I'll offer those ideas to the "Powers That Be" at Ramble House. That reprint house which offers POD books is now under new management since Gavin and Fender Tucker (the original founder) have stepped aside from the operation.

CONTEST CLOSED

Next week --around Wednesday or Thursday-- I'll choose one of the comments at random to receive the book. You'll have to send me your physical mailing address in order to get the book. But please! DO NOT leave your address in the comments.  The sinister webcrawlers regularly haunt this blog and I'm afraid they will swallow up your personal information and slam you with unwanted spam and who knows what else. We can arrange a private email exchange to get the necessary info.  This giveaway is open to everyone across the globe.  I will pay either Media Mail rate for within the US or First Class International shipping rate to anywhere outside the USA. Good luck!

LEFT INSIDE: Sales Slip for Used Book

For those among you who were with me from the start of this blog back in 2011 you may recall I had a somewhat regular feature (at one time weekly) in which I share photos of objects, mostly paper ephemera, found in the old books I own. Well, this summer that feature has returned. Huzzah, hurrah and hallelujah! Each Sunday, for the next three or so months, I'll have some little tidbit to share with you. After finding one of these items my insatiably curious geeky side usually takes over so you will also get the results of my research when I went a-Googling to ferret additional info about the object.

Today we have a sales slip for a used book purchased at a antique shop formerly located in Montpelier, Virginia. (I thought the name of the capital of Vermont was unique to that state alone.)  The Lamp Post was apparently some sort of curio shop that was in someone's actual home. I've marked out the address and phone numbers in the stamped info because it is now a private home sold back in 2018. I found all sorts of real estate records for that property indicating its previous life over that past 26 years. Not only was it The Lamp Post but in 2002 the house itself was listed with the National Historic Registry as it is a home built in 1936 and included in the Montpelier Historic District along US 33, aka Mountain Road.

This sales slip was in my copy of Three Dead Men by Paul McGuiire.  I read and reviewed the book back in 2018 and sold it last year.  I wish I had paid the $2.00 that the previous owner paid for the book in 2000.  The profit would have been significantly higher had I only shelled out a mere two bucks. It's astonishing that someone was selling a vintage mystery in 2000 for only $2 which was the original price of the book back in 1931. Insane! But judging by the shaky handwriting I'm guessing the owner of The Lamp Post was an elderly person stuck in the past with no idea how to price antiquarian and rare books.

Interestingly, there is still an antique shop a mere stone's throw from the former location of the old The Lamp Post.  It's called Plum Pickings and appears to be an antique mall with 40+ vendors. Looks like a cafe is attached to it also. Their Facebook page (older owners I'm guessing) was advertising a Big Breakfast event today (June 7), part of the thousands of celebrations across the USA this summer in honor of the 250th anniversary of American Independence.  They also say they are the #1 rated antique shop in the Richmond area.

 

Feedback - Hugh Miller

THE STORY: Matt Galt, Scottish ex-pat and private detective with a middling business, lives and works in Stratford primarily because he is an aficionado of the Bard. At the start of this novel he is hired by antiques dealer Timothy Barton to discover who has been sneaking rats into his shop.  Galt spends the night in the shop, has a frightening encounter with the vandal and a small army of rats. The next day he delivers the news to Barton. Barton is not satisfied. He tells Galt he knows who is responsible but he needs better proof and that means literally catching the culprit. The case leads Galt into the gay subculture where he meets  a coterie of theater people, antique dealers and two shifty owners of a gay S&M leather shop.  His dogged investigations also lead to the discovery of an ugly white supremacist organization that is harassing immigrants. 

THE CHARACTERS: Galt is described as "43 years old going on 50" on the first page of Feedback (1974).  He also has "delicate long hands of an aesthete and the sallow lined face of a ruined saint." We learn Galt is a "sartorial disaster" who once paid close attention to his grooming and his clothes but "abdicated" his enthusiasm when he "came to realize that he had the kind of body to which good clothes did not take kindly."  Miller's sardonic sense of humor is pervasive as his insistence on pointing out Galt's anti-gay sentiments. Well, loathing is the real word. He uses "abomination" a couple of times in the three page rant that comes early in the book. But Galt will soon find himself confronting all his bigotry and biases when he is forced to role play in order to get information from the many gay men he meets.  Nearly all the gay men he meets are either crooks or con men. They are predatory, vain, arrogant or  patronizing -- most are a combination of several of those negative traits. No surprise, right?

Galt's old pal Bunny McQuaid is a highlight among the supporting characters and appears late in the book. Only 30 years old, blond, athletically built and much more attractive than dumpy and short Matt Galt, Bunny takes advantage of his physique and good looks in luring several of the more dangerous suspects. A scene between the sinister owners of the leather shop morphs from a faux seduction scene to an all-out brawl. There are a few action sequences in the book but this one is probably the best with the most satisfying conclusion.

Being a pop fiction book of the 1970s there of course is the requisite sex scene. Galt runs into his old flame Margaret who though married still has feelings for Galt.  The reader gets to see exactly how strong those feelings are in a two page romp that goes into great detail describing Margaret's body, her orgasm and her apparent ecstasy.  Galt's body, actions and sexual satisfaction are not described at all. No surprise there either.  These type of censored sex scenes written by straight men always made me laugh when I was a teen in the 1970s.  I still find them utterly hilarious.

The most surprising part of the book comes at the midpoint when Kadija, a 12 year-old Indian girl, is seen sitting outside of Galt's office. She reports how her father was struck down by a car and is recovering from severe injuries in a hospital. She wants Galt to get the man who drove the car arrested and put in jail.  Not so easy, he tells her. It's really a matter for the police. But her story touches him and when she pulls a wad of money out of her pocket (all of her savings for the past three months) he refuses to take it.  He promises he will take her case for free.

Galt eventually meets with Maldur Singh, a Sikh who is the community leader for the small group of Indians living in and around Stratford.  The community has been harassed for months and part of the problem is a rat infestation in their homes and businesses.  Singh cannot understand where so many came form because he knows that the people who live there are meticulously cleaning all the time.  Galt begins to see a connection between the racist organization and the rat problem at Barton's antique shop.  The same person, he figures, must be involved, possibly linked to the organization. It all smells like a conspiracy with the racists behind it all and the end result the complete eradication of the Indian immigrants.

INNOVATIONS: One of Galt's biggest clues is a photograph of three men he steals from Barton's antique shop.  He find it by accident the night of the rat battle when an antique mug falls off a table.  The photo depicts Barton on his knees in front of two naked men displaying themselves. A souvenir of some erotic night of debauchery, Galt figures. But he vaguely recalls seeing the face of one of the naked men. He pockets the photo and shows it to several men and two women over the course of the book. Both naked men will eventually be identified by name and profession, both will figure prominently later in the book especially in the violent finale. 

One of the most original bits of detective work involves Galt's highly developed sense of smell. While doing battle with the mysterious rat vandal and the army of rodents Galt smelled a strange cologne. His memory for that unique scent haunts him and he wants to identify it. He thinks it must be a custom made cologne which he describes as redolent of "dahlias, but heavy, verging on decay."  While attending a play he catches a whiff of the cologne while buying a drink at the theater's bar.  He approaches Dominic Treadworthy, a voice and diction teacher, and starts talking to him about his cologne. Through flattery and elaborate lies Galt discovers that the custom cologne, Gilead Oil, is available only in one place -- a leather shop specializing in S&M costumes and equipment.  The two men who own the store keep popping up in this case. Coincidences and chance are also a running motif in the plot.

I also liked a scene where Galt picks up a prostitute and then reveals he's not interested in sex at all.  Essentially he blackmails her into revealing information on her clients. It is during this scene that Galt learns of the names of the owners of the S&M shop and that Harry Caine, the older nastier man of the two and a pansexual of sorts who will have sex with anyone, has the bizarre hobby of breeding domesticated rats. Rose, the prostitute, begins dishing the dirt not so much out of fear of what Galt will do if she doens't talk, but because she hates the men who run the shop. Anything she can do to bring about their ruin will give her perverse pleasure.

Ultimately, despite the offbeat humor and the likeable personalities of Bunny and Matt Galt, Feedback is a bleak crime novel. For a long time I realized there was no murder. But then... the novel can end only one way. Violent fights, cruel beating and murder finally rears its ugly head. Then comes the saddest of revelations in the final pages. Yes, the villains (all of them reprehensible people and not for their sexual orientation) get their comeuppance. The consequences of all their devilry and cruelty leave lingering scars for several characters. Feedback ends with one of the most downbeat final paragraphs in any book I've read this year. 

QUOTES:  Timothy reveals he is a con artist and he fakes the age of certain ornamental items by battering them in a convoluted manner and then selling them as antiques. When confronted with his fraud he rationalizes: "I'm not the only one who does it, you know. It's a long established practice." Matt nodded. "So is child beating, but I haven't heard anyone try to pass that off as an honourable tradition. Christ."

One day he would have real office with proper heating and decent decor. And one day, he thought wryly...a couple of pigs would go flying past the window.

[Galt] knew without the benefit of a mirror to check, that his dignified, serious face was radiating absolute conviction. A gentlemen to his rubber soles, even if he did come from Glasgow.

If anybody knew that paperwork and questions were the way things got done in England it was an immigrant.

Somewhere, underneath the tendencies and perversions, was there maybe a simply, howling human soul, crying for some clean air, some ordinary decency?

THE AUTHOR:  Hugh Miller (1937 - ) was born in Wishaw, Scotland and now lives in Warwick, England. Apparently he's still alive as I could not locate an obituary. Miller began his novelist’s career in 1973 with New English Library, a British publisher of mass market paperbacks mostly originals. His first crime novel, The Drop Out, was followed quickly by five more in 1974.  Feedback, his third crime novel is his also first private eye novel. He also wrote crime fiction under the pen names John Watts and John Warwick.  

In addition to crime novels Miller wrote a romantic fiction series set in the 1920s-1930s about a nurse, nine biographies of British stage magicians, books on magic and mentalism, and several non-fiction books on forensic medicine. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Miller made his living writing TV tie-ins based on UK TV series, including Eastenders, Ballykissangel and Touching Evil. He returned to crime fiction in1990 with a trio of crime novels about his only series character Det-Insp. Mike Fletcher.

I found an apparently self-written, tongue-in-cheek biography at Lybrary, an online website devoted to selling books on magic, mentalism, sleight of hand, and gambling. Miller had a variety of unusual jobs all of which seem to have popped up in his fiction. Here's the bio he wrote:

Born in Scotland at a time when the British still believed Chamberlain was a shrewd operator, Hugh Miller entered adolescence tainted by social lunacy. With the powerful energy generated by Gaelic despair, he hurtled through a formal education and out into a broad variety of activities. Has been a TV film cameraman and stills photographer, a civil servant, an assistant to a police pathologist, a protegee of the famous Dr. John Grierson, an investigator with an international enquiry organisation, author of several books, editor of a magazine and an active student of dishonest gambling. Took up magic to combat a tendency to bite his nails.