The Case of the Missing Sandals - Nancy Barr Mavity

THE STORY:  James "Peter" Piper, bespectacled, lanky reporter "with an ugly face" working for the Herald somewhere in northern California, is allowed access to the murder scene at a religious cult's colony. The victim, the domineering cult leader who calls herself Luna, claimed to be a witch in league with Satan. She is found both stabbed and shot, her hands bound in a strange fashion with the cord taken from a green and red bathrobe. Even more peculiar is she is found barefoot.  Earlier the same day she was killed Piper had a brief interview with Luna related to an accusation of the theft of $10,000 from one of her followers, He had seen her striking black satin sandals and knows she would never be caught dead without them. And yet she was. What happened to the shoes?  And why was she both shot and stabbed?

THE CHARACTERS:  The first half of The Case of the Missing Sandals (1930) deals too heavily with Earl Vincent who wrote some love letters found on Luna's body. He is the prime suspect for the police and the fact that he fled California on a freighter further underscores his probable guilt.  Several chapters are devoted to finding Vincent. Piper and police pursue the freighter and try to intercept it with a tug boat but Captain Marquand refuses to stop for the tug radioing the police that they will have to wait for the freighter to pull into port in Los Angeles.  When the ship arrives and the crew depart they discover that Vincent has vanished from the ship.  After another protracted pursuit Piper tracks down the young man and forces him to tell an elaborate story that convinces Piper that the lovelorn boy, supposedly in love with the murdered cult leader, is innocent of the crime. The police, however, refuse to look further than Vincent.

Once Piper turns his attention on the Luna Colony, the book becomes interesting, less laden down with monologues and overwriting, and focuses on detective work. Piper uncovers multiple suspects each with their own peculiar motives. Among the more fascinating characters are:

Ruth Morgan - Earl Vincent's girlfriend who serves as a foil for Piper.  She is determined to clear her beau's name announcing she is willing to do anything to find the real murderer.  In a chapter well past the midpoint she and Piper engage in the requisite tabulation scene in which Piper reviews all suspects, their motives and opportunities while Ruth listens patiently sorting out the probable from the preposterous and often ending each summation with her verdict of "not proven."

Frances "Frank" Hodgson - of all the suspects Frank is the most unique.  She dresses in men's clothes, professes an obsessive love for Luna and is caught by Piper at the murder scene long after police have left searching for what she claims is a special perfume Luna used to make for her. Based on her frantic behavior and twitchy nerves Piper sees through her lies, immediately coaxes a confession from her. She is a drug addict looking for her fix. Turns out Luna was not only a cult leader but a drug dealer. The more we learn about Frank the more we discover that she is a lesbian. Mavity is never daring enough to come right out and use that term however, but couches it all in euphemism and baroque phrases: "But this woman was patently one of Nature's tragic misfits, a victim of the warping fate that had veered her life away from its normal channels." Mavity goes on to describe Piper's assessment of Frank's personality (who he insists on calling Frances though she prefers Frank) with great empathy and feeling. When he sees that Frank is using her left hand due to an injured right hand he starts to formulate a theory that she could have killed Luna. The murderer stabbed Luna in such a manner that reveals a left handed assailant. And still listening to her story and seeing how she left behind a vase of cut flowers for her crush Piper confesses he is "somewhat more sympathetic to the murderer than to the victim." It is a poignant sequence in the book -- one of many such sympathetic musings for a misfit suspect. Still as is often the case in early 20th century fiction Frank is yet another gay character painted as disturbed and doomed: "Just how far toward madness her jealous obsession might have carried her he could not guess."

Albert Jackson - the blind caretaker and gatekeeper at Luna Colony.  Jackson, a Black man, is no stereotype or comic figure, thankfully.  He has two dignified scenes of gravitas with Piper towards the end of the book during which he likens himself to Piper. Both manage to see the truth, he tells Piper, while others live in darkness. There are interesting contrasts between real faith and spirituality and the pursuit of false idols also mentioned in these scenes. Mavity manages to pull off these scenes with a sophisticated touch using simple language and metaphor, never resorting to heavy handed preaching. Albert is a finely drawn character, perhaps the wisest of all people Piper meets and interviews.

Charlie Russell - A young cult member sent to the Luna Colony by his mother to be cured of a so-called bewitchment she feels has cursed her boy. Piper knows this is all superstition for it is obvious that Charlie, in both physiognomy and behavior is mentally deficient. His facial feature are described in such a manner as to match those of children born with what was once called Down's syndrome, now known as trisomy 21. When some new details about the case are revealed Charlie becomes the new lead suspect in the eyes of the police.  Charlie's presence, yet another outlier in this myriad cast, allows for Piper once again to show his emotional side.

Carey - Apart from Mrs. Russell Carey is Charlie's only ally and protector.  Described by Piper as a colorless, bland man not much older than Charlie he is something of an enigma. He appears to be one of the "true believers" of the Luna Colony. Later he refers to himself as an occult researcher.

Oscar Miller - One of Luna's many lovers and the object of envy and jealousy among many of the male members of the Colony.  He is seen hiding something of great importance in the hole of a tree trunk.  Piper later retrieves this object and confronts Miller.  He also owns a rifle that matches the caliber of the bullet used.  In fact, many of the characters own rifles that could be the murder weapon.

Amos Perkins - a mystery man who hires Harrison, a hire-powered lawyer to represent Earl Vincent. A handwritten note is sent to Harrison asking that he prove Vincent is not guilty of the murder.  Enclosed with the note is $1000 in cash.

INNOVATIONS: When Mavity finally gets down to brass tacks after the Earl Vincent section is disposed of The Case of the Missing Sandals is truly an intriguing, complex and engrossing mystery novel.  Piper is very much in line with the many reporter sleuths of early 20th century detective fiction. Ostensibly passing himself off as a cynic he is, in fact, a humanitarian with an open mind and a skill at abstract, often wildly imaginative, thinking.  In the tabulation sequence Piper finally reveals to Ruth Morgan that he is convinced that the solution of the case lies not in factual analysis but to put oneself into the mindset of someone wholly devoted to the world of superstition. The murder is almost ritualistic what with the strangely colored cord used to bind the victim and the outrageous use of two murder methods to kill Luna. The placement of love letters on her breast after she was dead and -- most importantly -- the removal of her shoes both seem to underscore a kind of supernatural ritual, or a curse placed upon her. Ruth Morgan tries to accept  Piper's theory as a possibility but it all sounds too outlandish to her practical mind.

Of course, Piper is on the right track. For in the end it all really comes back to the title of the novel.  While perusing a non-fiction work called Witches Still Live -- an actual book by Theda Kenyon published in 1926 by Ives Washburn (see photo) -- Piper stumbles across the reason Luna's shoes were stolen. Armed with this arcane trivia and with the help of Andrews, his photographer colleague at the Herald, he sets a trap for the murderer in a well done, somewhat stunning, finale.

QUOTES: Piper: "The story isn't dead, even temporarily. [...] There are angles to it -- angles and angles. And while the other reporters are all enjoying the lull and concentrating on Vincent, I'll be out angling the angles -- a regular complete angler I'll be."

Piper: "When you try to figure [all these motives] together, its enough to make you dizzy. And as for proof-- say, if I saw one single little sold fact that didn't change its shape while I was looking at it, I'd faint from sheer amazement!" 

Jackson: "There's two kinds of darkness. There's them that walks in darkness because they can't see their way ahead, and there's them that have eyes and see not. It ain't your fault if it's still dark. You used your eyes as good as you could. That's how I know you're him that was sent. The spirit of darkness is on this place. The spirit of fear is on it. You can't see it, and you can't touch it, but you can feel it. Because you can feel the thing that can't be seen, you'll use your eyes to see when the light comes. That's why you were sent."

 Jackson: "Facts are dangerous things to throw around when you don't know the meaning of 'em."

THE AUTHOR:  Much to my surprise Nancy Barr Mavity (1890-1959) has an entire Wikipedia page devoted to her life and work as a journalist, novelist and author of non-fiction works.  I won't bother to repeat any of it here.  But I will draw your attention to her book Sister Aimee (1931) published one year after this novel was released by Doubleday Doran's Crime Club.  Sister Aimee was the first full biography on Aimee Semple McPherson and it's not too coincidental to draw comparison between that charismatic evangelist (possibely a criminal and fraud as well) to the power mad, exploitative and cruelly Satanic Luna who dies so horribly in this detective novel. Apparently many of Mavity's crime novels are based on true crime cases.  Further details on which cases inspires ner novels can be found in an introduction written by Randal Brandt, research librarian and curator of a crime fiction library at UC/Berkeley that appears in the Penzler American Mystery Classics reprint of The Tule Marsh Mystery, Mavity's debut novel as a detective fiction writer.

EASY TO FIND? Several copies of the US edition available for sale from a variety of online bookseller with prices ranging from  $14 for a reading copy to $48 fro a VG copy.  There is one copy with a VG+ dust jacket for sale priced at $425.  I found no UK editions for sale.  I did not look for copies in internet archives but there may be one out there. I have a copy of this book myself, but will not sell it as it is signed by the author and inscribed to her fellow California journalist Alma Whitaker.  In the brief inscription Mavity calls Alma "Best of the Good Scouts", a term Piper also uses to describe his co-worker Andrews, the photographer. Neat touch!

Pretty Sinister in Translation

Just a quick note for any of the Spanish language readers out there.  There is a new translation of Wild Justice by George A Birmingham.  Espuela de Plata based in Seville has been translating into Spanish then reprinting many English language Golden Age detective novels and thrillers since around 2017.  Some of the books have been reviewed here including The Medbury Fort Murder,  The Colfax Book-plate and Wild Justice. I've been in correspondence with the translator Antonio Gonzalez Lejarraga several times over the past four years helping him locate copies of books and providing information on authors. Most recently he asked permission to translate and include my blog review of Wild Justice in his newly translated reprint released as Justicia Salvaje (Espuela de Plata, 2026). The entire blog post was translated into Spanish and appears as an afterword in the new edition.

For those of you who read Spanish I highly recommend checking out their translated mystery novels. Among them are two classics with Inspector Hanaud by A.E.W. Mason,  The Hymn Tune Mystery (La partituta misterioso) also by Birmingham,  Fast Company (Libros peligrosos) by Marco Page, The Colfax Book-plate (El Exlibris de Colfax) by Agnes Miller --a very scarce book in its original English version, BTW-- and all three detective novels by George Limnelius, all of which are also extremely scarce in the original English editions. You can find all eleven detective novels and thrillers released by this publisher at their website: Editorial Renacimiento.

The link above will take you to what I thought was all the mysteries in translation but I couldn't make the search button pull those up on one page because some of the mystery novels are not tagged as "policiaca" but rather "narrativa".  You'll have to enter those author names individually in the search bar to pull up the other books. The remaining authors are:  R.T.M. Scott, A.E.W. Mason, Agnes Miller, Miles Burton, and Marco Page. Birmingham's other book is tagged as "narrativa" also.

I received two copies of the book and I'm willing to send out one of those copies to anyone who asks for it. No contest this time.  UPDATE: The copy was claimed very quickly! Mailing it today (Aug. 28). Please do not email or ask for it in the comments. 

Murder at the World's Fair - Mary Plum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Death Film - P. R. Shore

"Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!