IN BRIEF: Man Who Cried All the Way Home – Dolores Hitchens

The Man Who Cried All the Way Home (1966) is a return for Dolores Hitchens to pure detective novel. What makes this novel all the more unusual is the detective. He is Chuck Sadler, a septuagenarian lawyer, slightly crippled who must use a cane to walk, and yet is still sharp as a tack and savvy about criminal procedure. He’s the perfect person to help Dorrie Chenoweth when her husband dies under suspicious circumstances and the police suspect her of possibly causing his death. It helps that Sadler is also her beloved uncle, a cherished friend as well as her elderly relative. Uncle Chuck steps in to help Dorrie identify her husband’s body with battered face found by his wrecked car at the edge of the Borrego Reservoir. Too many odd elements surrounding the man’s death lead Uncle Chuck to believe this is not an accident but a murder and he starts making inquiries on his own to help clear Dorrie’s name.

As he delves into Sargent Chenoweth’s business at his privately accounting firm he discovers the Dorrie’s husband was duping many of his friends and leading a double life. Shady business deals and stock market manipulation are uncovered as well as plans to flee to South America. Uncle Chuck also traces Chenoweth’s secret life to a love nest where he was entertaining a young woman both he and Dorrie knew since the woman was a teen in high school When that young woman now, barely 20 years old, is also found dead Chuck begins to fear that his niece may not be as innocent as she claims to be. The police are beginning to formulate a similar theory as Uncle Chuck, that Dorrie found out about her husband’s infidelity and decided to get rid of both of Sargent and his much younger mistress.

Dogs play a unique role in the story, too. Pete is the Chenoweth’s collie mix that got into trouble and came home injured. Uncle Chuck looks at the dog’s wound and tells Dorrie that its unmistakably a bullet that grazed Pete’s neck and ear causing a furrowed scar. When a variety of suspects turn up at the Chenoweth home as part of Uncle Chuck’s routine Q & A sessions the dog behaves skittishly. There are three separate people the normally friendly dog acts strangely around serving as a clue to the person who probably tried to shoot the dog. But why? Uncle Chuck is certain Pete was around when Sargent was killed. The dog’s odd behavior sets Chuck’s mind imagining an ingenious way to reveal the murderer. He finds a look-alike dog at the local pound and begins an vigorous training program for the quick to learn rescue animal. Ultimately Uncle Chuck’s plan proves to be one of the cleverest and original methods of unmasking a murderer to appear in any detective novel of this era.

Fast paced and a real page turner The Man Who Cried All the Way Home is one of the most engaging books I’ve read from Hitchens’ long career. It’s a definite throwback to her days as D. B. Olsen when she wrote traditional detective novels. The plot is fairly clued and populated with a wide array of colorful suspects all with varied motives. And she delivers the goods here in a rousing action-filled finale that reveals  a totally unexpected culprit.

It’s a shame that this particular title is so hard to find in either its paperback or hardcover editions. Currently, I uncovered only twelve copies for sale in English and some if those are the old Detective Book Club 3-in-1 volumes. Other copies are of French and German translations. I stumbled upon a copy of the ultra-rare Curtis paperback (pictured at the top) with the intention of offering it to Stark House for a possible reprint then learned that the remainder of all of Dolores Hitchens’ reprint rights (including all her books written under her various pen names) were recently outright purchased by Mysterious Press/Open Road Media. Sadly, we won’t be able to get this one in a Stark House reprint. And it may only be a digital version of this book that may turn up in the future…if it ever does.

IN BRIEF: The Bank with the Bamboo Door – Dolores Hitchens

In the introduction to Dolores Hitchens’ The Bank with the Bamboo Door (1965), another knockout reprint from Stark House Press, Curt Evans quotes Anthony Boucher’s book review. Boucher wrote of Hitchens’ seedy exploration of small town California: “It’s a little as if a Lionel White Big-Caper plot had wandered into the midst of Peyton Place.” And a better precis could not have been done in less than twenty words. Those aching for that Big Caper plot will be sorely disappointed, it never gets past the initial planning stages. A past crime plays a bigger part in the story floating over the action like a funereal shroud and taking shape as a ghost of sorts to haunt many of the characters in Hitchens’ novel. There was an attempt at a caper long ago. A bank heist went spectacularly wrong ending in murder of several bank employees and the arrest of nearly all the thieves. Legend has it that $65,000 of the bank’s money went missing and may still be somewhere in the maze of underground tunnels, remnants of an old Chinatown in which the shopkeepers had connected all the buildings with a network of passages in the cellars and basement. But there is plenty of crime, planned or pending or commissioned. And, of course, a murder.

For much of the book it was hard to shake the Peyton Place mood. Perhaps Edge of Night is the more apt analogy if soap operas must be mentioned. For this is a town mostly plagued by criminal impulses and a bank robbery no one can forget. In the episodic narrative we learn a lot about a large assortment of people fairly quickly. Unhappy marriages, terminal illness, all manner of emotional problems --the stuff of soap opera melodrama -- are par for the course. While many of the local social club’s women dish the dirt about the “horrifying” possibility of a Jewish woman among their membership and a doctor’s wife mulls over an ambiguous medical diagnosis, crime festers beneath the town’s surface. A bitter doctor plots a permanent end to the blackmailer draining his finances, a woman ponders how and where to get an abortion without anyone finding out, a drug addicted nympho craves morphine while shiftily gathering the latest hush money payment from her victim, the co-owner of a pet shop cum garden supply store is drawn to the mysterious new customer interested in the basement of her store, and that mysterious man soon reveals he’s planning on searching for the missing bank money no matter what it takes.

Chance plays a cruel part in the outcome and the most tenuous of threads will result in deadly connections. Despite the tendency to lean heavily towards episodic melodrama, Hitchens does an admirable job of interweaving the various storylines with some startling intersections of lives and unexpected crossed paths. The finale is as noirish as her fine private eye novel Sleep with Slander and some of her other equally nightmarish suspense novels.

As is their usual practice Stark House Press has paired The Bank with the Bamboo Door  with another Dolores Hitchens suspense novel, The Abductor.  The two-in-one trade paperback was released in March 2021 and is now available from the usual online bookselling sites.

FFB: Something about Midnight - D. B. Olsen

THE STORY: By day she's Ernestine Hollister, dedicated English literature student at Clarendon College, but at night she transforms herself into Ernestine Hall, sultry dance hall girl flirting with every young naïve sailor she can find. Her motives are founded on bitter revenge but she's not talking about her past with anyone. Not even Freddy Nixon who's been trying to get her to notice him for weeks at her regular haunt at the amusement pier. He finally gets up enough nerve to talk to her, she relents out of boredom, and accepts his invitation to visit Mrs. Lacoste, an elderly woman who has been his weekend companion for several weeks now. This strange trio of characters drink, laugh and discuss Mrs. Lacoste's missing grandson who has gone AWOL from the army or is MIA. It's all very ambiguous. Mrs. Lacoste isn't offering any real details, she'd rather drop a few sleeping pills in her beer creating a "goofball cocktail" and get deliriously drunk. Freddy and Ernestine notice the abuse of drugs and alcohol but keep it to themselves. That night Ernestine vanishes along with her sporty convertible Packard. Professor Pennyfeather is asked to find the missing Ernestine by her seriously frightened cousin Rae Caradyne who also happens to be one of his students. Four hours later he finds the missing student at the foot of a cliff. A typewritten note left in her car indicates suicide. Or did something far more sinister happen?

THE CHARACTERS: Something about Midnight (1950) is the fourth mystery novel featuring D. B. Olsen's (aka Dolores Hitchens) inquisitive English professor Mr. Pennyfeather. Hitchens has once again dreamed up a cast of fully human often complicated characters. It's almost a shame that poor Ernestine gets knocked off so early in the book because she is one of the most fascinating young women I've encountered in Hitchens' mystery novels. Intelligent yet petty, Ernestine's sardonic hipster attitude masks a deep-seated anger mixed with sorrow. Only after she's dead do we fully realize what motivated her to adopt the alter ego of Ernestine Hall who teased and exploited the young sailors looking for female companionship at the dance halls. The opening chapter with its strange visit to the home of Mrs. Lacoste is at the heart of the mystery and the numerous violent deaths. Mrs. Lacoste herself is an odd character, but compared to others she seems relatively sane even in her choice to live in an alcoholic stupor.

There's Rae Caradyne, an all too somber, rather humorless college student who first brings Mr. Pennyfeather into the case. She comes off as a near caricature of the ugly duckling, bespectacled loner. But her seriousness rings false to Mr. Pennyfeather. He is sure Miss Caradyne is hiding her real self behind the mask of a dull Plain Jane.

The most colorful of the cast is Ernestine's uncle Stephen Dunne. He too is a loner, but of an entirely different sort. He lives the life of a reclusive artist in a seaside ramshackle house where he collects driftwood and seaweed for his unusual mix of sculpture and painting in the weird landscapes he creates on mesh frameworks. He has a deep love for his niece and cannot accept that she killed herself which is how the police want to deal with her death and thus avoid any type of real investigation. Uncle Stephen waxes poetic with some nicely done monologues in his discussions with Pennyfeather. Hitchens does a fine job with Stephen in reminding us how violence brings out a person's deep philosophical side, how it makes us reflect on the fragility of life, what we value most and how often we never realize that worth until it is taken from us. Stephen Dunne is cantankerous, witty and often profound. He was my favorite of this well-rounded group of intriguing characters.

INNOVATIONS: Of all Hitchen's mid-career books this one seems to mark her transition from the traditional mystery to her darker crime novels that border on genuine noir. The story of Ernestine and her past are reminiscent of the plots that Ross Macdonald revelled in with his corrupt, well-to-do California families. Hitchens' noir touches will be fully realized in her brief series featuring private eye Jim Sader who appeared in Sleep with Slander (1960) and one other novel. That's not to say that this still isn't a intricately constructed and subtly clued detective novel because it is. The academic setting for once is intrinsically intertwined in the story of Ernestine's violent death. Her insightful study of literature and love of poetry manifest themselves in quotes from "The Garden of Proserpine" by Algernon Swinburne which will be of great help in leading Pennyfeather to the truth. Also, a rather Christie-like bit of clueing comes in the letter Freddy Nixon sends to his secretary alerting her to his possible murder. He reports an overheard conversation and quotes some dialogue that appears to be college slang but will turn out to have a completely different meaning.

The novel tends to veer into thriller territory in the final third when Mr. Pennyfeather is abducted and the story shifts into high gear with one action set piece after another. Highlights include a climactic fire in a California forest and an unusual hand-to-hand fight between the middle-aged man and the very surprising villain of the piece. Still with all these action sequences Something about Midnight rightly belongs in the traditional detective novel category.

QUOTES: Dunne looked gloomily out upon the sea. "So damned lonely...as lonely as death itself. Would she have come up here in the middle of the night to jump off into the roaring black surf? I don't think she would have. Not at midnight. There's something about midnight, something gruesome."

There were no lights, and the fog concealed the gleaming radiator until it was too late. The car was there, a juggernaut, and [he] was there, its victim. And Death was there, too, waiting for the not unhandsome fellow who had liked to linger on the beach to pick up girls.

Mr. Pennyfeather turned over and over in his mind the circumstances of the case, the outright, miraculously lucky breaks that had seemed to occur one after the other, making everything seem so smooth, logical and easy; and he was aware, as before, of an uncomfortable hunch that there was a ghastly hitch in it all somewhere, and that under the whole reasonable tightly knit structure of his solution some demon of the perverse was laughing at him.

EASY TO FIND? Looks pretty good, gang. As usual it's the paperback reprint that tends to be available for sale more than any other edition. The book was published in the UK and the US, but US editions are more plentiful on the internet. There are approximately 30 or so copies available all at reasonable prices. Only two copies of the first US edition hardcover (a Doubleday Crime Club book) show up for sale. One with the scarce DJ is $25 and the other without is $20. Both are real bargains, I say. The Pocket Book paperback is your best bet. Sadly, none of Hitchens' books under her D. B. Olsen moniker have been reprinted in modern editions. Someone ought to rectify that soon.

1960 BOOK: Sleep with Slander - Dolores Hitchens

Private eye Jim Sader deals with a lot of missing persons cases, but his latest is pretty odd to say the least. Seems that his new client, Hale Gibbings, wants Sader to locate a child who is apparently being abused by his latest foster parents. The odd part? The child is his grandchild who was given up for adoption five years ago, but the Champlains his adopted parents are dead, father died in plane crash, mother drowned and her body was never recovered. Gibbings has no idea who became the child's guardian, some relative of the Champlains he guesses. He also doesn't want his name involved in the case at all. No mention of the adoption, his daughter's terrible past, or his name must ever be given out during his investigation. Think this is going to be missing person case? Think again. Before Sader finally locates the boy in the home of a long dead sculptor located in the northern California forests there will be a couple of murders and several attempts on his life.

Sleep with Slander (1960) has been touted repeatedly as "the best private eye novel written by a woman". The quote comes from a review by Bill Pronzini in 1001 Midnights and shows up on the UK paperback reissue from 1989 as well as many reviews all over the internet. While it may not be the "best" private eye novel written by a woman it certainly captures an authentic tone and feel reminiscent of a traditional hardboiled crime novel of the mid-1940s. It also has a uniquely feminine take on a missing persons case. Rather than a missing persons case that deals with two timing lovers or a con artist who has good reason to want to disappear Hitchens focusses on a missing child. As one might expect where the search for a missing child is the impetus for a crime plot the role of mothers, married or otherwise, plays a crucial part in the story. Though it starts with a brief prologue in which the reader knows that the child is being mistreated cruelly there is never any sense that the book exists solely as a social critique on unwed motherhood, adoption, or child abuse. The situations all grow out of a carefully constructed crime plot that has all the grit and sizzle and deftly handled twists of any story penned by Hitchens' male colleagues.

Even more striking is the way in which setting and locales reflect the characters in the story. It's almost as if Hitchens had a set designer who whipped up multiple lush interiors that give us an idea of who we are about to meet and what Sader should expect from each of the people he questions. There is a cinematic quality to the descriptions of the many apartment rooms, bars, and richly decorated homes that appear throughout the story. Each one is described in meticulous detail with deft touches like the Asian motif recurrent in one home's decor that give an idea of who Wanda Nevins is and what she dreams of, how Sader notices the abundance of exotic figurines and "dustcatchers" in the sculptor's house in which the harrowing climax takes place (shown on the DJ of the UK edition at the top of this post. Those Easter Island like stone heads really are in the story!)

Another of the more intriguing bits of detection takes place in an infant clothing store. Sader finds a box marked "Betty's Baby Shoppe" at the fire-ruined home of Tina Champlain and takes it to the store. He wants the owner to look over the items hoping that something might jog her memory about who bought them. Inside she finds a hand knit baby mitten among the scraps of fabric and silk ribbons. The mitten is the work of a woman who did hand knit items for the store and whose work is utterly distinctive and easily identified by the pattern used. The knitter also happens to be the shopowner's mother. You would never find something like that scene in a book by Hammett, Chandler or any of their imitators.

Sleep with Slander is teeming with similar unusual, womanly touches and yet the hardboiled atmosphere never once veers into the realm of cutesy or cozy. Each subtle detail betrays the work of a woman writer who has cleverly woven commentary on the nature of motherhood and the care of children into what is very much a tale of violence and cruelty. When tenderness arises out of this admittedly very tough story it is arresting and provides a welcome respite from the fights and bloodletting.

We also get a sense of a private eye whose business is his entire life. Sader is doing a favor for his partner Scarborough (away in San Francisco) by housesitting at Scarborough's aunt's house where he must also care for an overly friendly, attention starved Irish setter and an irascible parrot. We see a domestic responsible side to this single guy that might never appear in a private eye book written by a male, I would guess. These brief scenes comment on his seemingly empty private life and show a devoted friendship that complements his business partnership.

QUOTES: The dog cocked his head as if something in his mistress' voice puzzled him--perhaps the effort to sound honest.

There was some whole item like a screw loose in a crippled machine, that was fouling it all. He couldn't find it but he could sense it. He could sense the lack of orientation in himself, the failure to come to grips, the fumbling with chaos like a puzzle that didn't fit and wouldn't fit until the pieces that didn't belong had been tossed out. Where was the screw loose? "I'm damned if I know," he told the windowpane. "I'm full as hell of similes but I can't figure worth a hoot."

1960s CULTURE: There's a timeless feel to this story. Even if today Sader would be resorting to the internet to do the majority of his investigating his many face-to-face encounters with the colorful supporting characters in the large cast don't seem strictly a part of the sixties. Language is modern, sharp, often witty, and never rings false. There are no topical references that often seem like commercial breaks as in other books of this era. Only occasionally does the year 1960 come into view but ever so quietly.

1. Sader periodically checks in with his answering service, a type of business that seems as redundant as answering machines these days.

2. Our private eye hero has a habit of pulling into drive-in restaurants for a burger every chapter or so. In one scene Sader is in such a rush to pay his bill and motor away he disregards drive-in etiquette by blaring his horn instead of politely blinking his headlights. I liked this offhand aside that closes one of his many food pitstops: "The carhop came and thanked him for the tip and took the tray away. As she walked into the light her legs shone like silk below the fluffy skirt, and Sader yawned, and the thought, My God, I really must be beat. I don't even want a second look."

Is this really "the best private eye novel written by a woman"? I always hesitate to comment on superlatives that seem so limiting and final. I find it hard to make lists of the best of anything, frankly. But as for the second half of that quote often left off "--and one of the best written by anybody" I will wholeheartedly agree. Sleep with Slander is well worth your time. You may, however, run into trouble locating an affordable copy now that it's become something of a cult classic in private eye literature. But such is the price of fame -- and superior writing.

*   *   *

This is my first of two (maybe three) novels published in 1960 for December's "Crimes of the Century" blog meme hosted by Rich Westwood at his blog Past Offenses. Make sure to check out the rest of the reviews and essays on 1960's crime fiction.

FFB: Gallows for the Groom - D. B. Olsen

THE STORY: Professor Pennyfeather is summoned by Fatty Enheart, a long lost cousin, to a bird sanctuary in southern California where the cousin is employed. Enheart has a dilemma and it involves a collection of antique spoons with the figures of the twelve apostles on the handles. When he arrives he learns that Jo Fontyne, daughter of Fatty's employer, is planning on having a scavenger hunt for the apostle spoons which are not only a family heirloom but extremely valuable. The participants in the hunt are three men vying for Jo's attention and their relatives. As an added incentive in the hunt Jo has promised that she will marry the man who finds the spoon collection. But arson, murder, and the discovery of a skeleton on the estate turn the scavenger hunt into a criminal investigation.

THE TITLE: Gallows for the Groom (1947) is a bit of a misnomer for a title. None of the men is married though one is widowed. Neither is anyone hanged. Maybe I'm being too literal minded, but I can't even see it as an apt metaphor. I haven't a clue why the title was chosen or whether its an allusion to a poem or other work of literature. There's no epigram to indicate that it's a quote from anything. Perhaps Dolores Hitchens (the true identity of "D. B. Olsen") chose it because the first Pennyfeather book is titled Bring the Bride a Shroud and she felt having a title about a groom would signify this book was a sequel. But it could just as easily have been an editorial decision for that very reason and not Hitchens' choice at all.

THE CHARACTERS: Professor Pennyfeather is an accidental sleuth of sorts. This is only his second appearance and he reluctantly travels to Willow Cove to help his cousin who he barely remembers from his childhood because a letter that was supposed to alert him of Fatty's phone call was stolen from his mail slot, ripped to shreds, and the pieces scattered throughout his yard and neighborhood. That was enough to arouse his curiosity and send him off on the long journey from the outskirts of Los Angeles to the bird sanctuary located somewhere on "the peninsula". Once again there are several murders as well as attempts made on Pennyfeather's life. The grisly discovery of the skeleton of a Fontyne relative adds to the escalating mysteries.

The three suitors show up with their mothers, and in one case a teenage daughter, in tow. All of them turn out to have secrets of one sort of another and all of them are considered possibly dangerous by Professor Pennyfeather. From the drop dead gorgeous southern boy named Rebel to the affable father Ted Thacker and his daughter Marjorie, Pennyfeather has his work cut out for him. Friendliness and good looks cannot keep him from suspecting anyone of the insane crimes committed over the three day weekend. He has his fair share of conks to the head and a near strangling as well.

I also should mention that the guessing game of Pennyfeather's unusual first name inspired by Greek mythology once again becomes a running gag. And just as in the first book we learn his embarrassing first name on the final page. I wonder if eventually Hitchens gave up on this gag in later books.

INNOVATIONS: Despite what may seem like a quaint "cozy" style mystery based solely on the plot synopsis I gave at the top of this post this is a violent and creepy story. The murders are gruesome which tends to be a hallmark of Olsen's detective fiction. Yet again there's an ax -- or rather hatchet -- wielding killer on the prowl. (Hitchens and Mary Roberts Rinehart seemed to be obsessed with axe murders.) And this killer enjoys setting places and people on fire, too. The culprit of Gallows for the Groom is not only ruthless but clearly crazed; prime material for the loony bin. As in other Olsen books animals and pets are targeted and suffer violent attacks. I seem to have a real knack for uncovering the Golden Age mysteries that share the bizarre trend of enraged killers who will stop at nothing to get what they want including doing in a pet or two.

The apostle spoons are not just the MacGuffin of the plot, they provide the obvious motive for all the crimes. There is an element of that weird serial killer plot gimmickry where murderers leave notes or symbols beside the corpse. In this case, at the scene of each crime the killer leaves behind one of the apostle spoons tying each violent death to the martyrdom of a particular apostle depicted on the spoon. That's a clue to the mindset of the killer. Like the lead character in Hive of Glass this is a collector whose desire to possess objects of beauty has transformed into the madness of monomania.

THINGS I LEARNED: While I was well aware of the odd hobby of collecting spoons, whether antique or not, I'd never heard of apostle spoons before reading this book. Most sets consist of all twelve of Jesus' disciples. The handles of each spoon can either be miniature busts of each apostle or full figures. The set of apostle spoons in Gallows for the Groom consists of thirteen spoons, the last being a spoon with the figure of Judas. The Judas spoon has some added significance in the final chapter.

EASY TO FIND? Bad news this time. This title is very hard to come by. Though Gallows for the Groom was published in both the UK and the US there is currently one single copy of the Crime Club edition (no DJ, sadly) offered for sale. That's it. One copy. There was a reprint in the pulp magazine Two Complete Detective Books (September 1948), but I rarely see those pulps offered or sale anywhere, not even on eBay. There was no paperback reprint reissued between 1947 and 1980 nor do I think there are any current reprints or digital versions available.

Things I Learned While Reading Detective Fiction, part 3

For a quasi Luddite like myself a smart phone was one of the last things I ever wanted to purchase. Begrudgingly I have come to recognize how handy the phone can be. Like satisfying my never waning curiosity. In the "pre smart phone" days if I came across some arcane tidbit while reading I would make a note of it and then wait until I had computer access to look it up. Now I just pull out the phone and get the answer immediately. Odd names, unfamiliar places, historical events, mythological creatures, even foreign words and phrases are no longer mysteries that remain to be solved along with who did in Lady Gertrude Horsey-Ridingsworth in the locked, sealed and unusually hot conservatory. All my questions are answered instantaneously with a few simple keystrokes.

And with that long winded introduction out of the way let’s segue into this year’s annual post dedicated to only a smidgen of the really cool trivia I’ve gleaned in my reading of both long forgotten and contemporary crime and supernatural fiction.

1. Ever hear of the kylin? Probably not. All you sinologists probably prefer qilin, the accepted transliteration of this Chinese word. In fact, it took me a while to find it online since it was spelled kwylin in The Golden Salamander by Victor Canning where I first came across the word. It’s a mythical Chinese creature and according to a Chinese cultural website the qilin (kylin or however you wish to spell it) "is somewhat like a deer, with horns on the head and scales over the body. Its tail is like that of an ox's. The kylin is said to be an animal of longevity that could live for 2,000 years. It is also believed that the beast could spit fire and roar like thunder." Supposedly the kylin appeared to presage the arrival or passing of a wise person or a powerful leader. Its image is used on talismans, art and sculpture to signify good luck, prosperity and intelligence. One of the "Four Divine Creatures" the kylin is second only to the dragon in terms of importance in Chinese mythology. So how come we’ve never heard of it? We’ve certainly seen plenty of them in movies, post cards and Chinese restaurants. Check out the photo used here. Time to start a "Remember the kylin!" movement.

2. British life jackets were made of cork during World War 2 and blackout procedures so well known on land throughout urban England were also in place on ocean liners. This comes to you courtesy of the madcap plot in Nine -- And Death Makes Ten by Carter Dickson , also known as Murder in the Submarine Zone. I also learned all about George Robey (1869-1954), a music hall performer who is mentioned in passing in the novel. He apparently was very popular in the pantomime scene in the early part of the 20th century and was well known for his crazy eyebrows exaggerated and enhanced by make-up.

Thomas Hood

3. I had only heard the name Eugene Aram in the context of an obscure book by Bulwer-Lytton. Little did I know that the man was a real person. Eugene Aram was a resourceful philologist and linguist prior to becoming a notorious murderer. The story of Aram’s crime was made popular one year earlier than Bulwer-Lytton's novel in a lyrical ballad by poet Thomas Hood (1799-1845). Thanks, Joan Fleming, who dropped several allusions to the poem and Eugene’s fate in her crime novel Polly Put the Kettle On.

4. World history has always been lacking in my knowledge. Not much of what I learned decades ago in high school stayed locked in my memory bank. Thanks to my voracious reading, however, I’m always learning something new. In Captain Cut-Throat by John Dickson Carr I received a crash course in the Napoleonic Wars and got more than I ever would want to know about Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s Minister of Police who serves as a leading character in one of Carr’s most successful historical crime novels.

A early Murphy drip
It ain't for brewin' java.

5. Long forgotten medical procedures tend to crop up a lot in vintage crime novels. I learned all about the Murphy drip and proctolysis in The Cat Saw Murder. You know what a proctologist studies and treats, right? Well, back in 1909 Wisconsin surgeon John Benjamin Murphy invented a very early alternative to intravenous and subcutaneous injections that focussed on a human's rear end as an entry. It was primarily used like an enema to administer fluids and drugs when the regular oral method was not viable. Here I thought a colonoscopy was the worst possible medical procedure a human could endure.

6. The Strangler Vine by Miranda Carter was one of the best historical adventure novels I’ve read in recent years. I learned all about the amoral business practices of the East India Company, how they had their own army (!) and how the company operated on its own agenda disregarding all rules, regulations and humanity in their plan to take over India and subjugate its people. Long live imperialism! (That’s sarcasm, gang.) Yes, it’s a novel but Carter used numerous historical texts and diaries as research in order to tell her story. Eye opening and highly recommended.

7. Ancient Egyptian burial practices and the mythology of Egypt served as the background for The Game of Thirty by William Kotzwinkle. The name of an unrecognizable god or goddess appeared about every five pages and their importance in ancient Egyptian beliefs filled those pages. Rather thrilling for a mythology junkie like me. What wasn’t so thrilling was the pedophile subplot that polluted the rest of the pages. Seemed like every other book published in the mid 1990s was about murderous pedophiles. I always avoid these books and was pissed off that Kotzwinkle included one in his plot.

"Vision after the Sermon" by Paul Gaughin is featured
prominently in Death in Brittany by Jean-Luc Bannalec

8. I learned a heck of a lot about Paul Gauguin and (to me at least) the obscure group of artists who made up the Pont-Aven School in the fascinating German crime novel Death in Brittany (originally published as Bretonische Verhältnisse). I thought Gauguin moved to Tahiti and did all his most well known work in the South Pacific. Little did I know that he founded an entire style of painting in the small town of Pont Aven in Western France, that his early work done here is considered by the locals to be the birth of modern painting, and that he is celebrated throughout Brittany. Someday I’d like to visit this part of France which we completely bypassed the first time I travelled there.

9. Who doesn't learn something arcane when devouring a Christopher Fowler book? Take his latest, The Burning Man. Its pages are chock full of Guy Fawkes facts and legends and the origin of burning effigies that led to the annual celebration of the Gunpowder Plot. But I never need to double check on anything when reading his books because Fowler always gives you *all* the details you'd ever want.  And then some!

10. Even a former Brit Lit student like me needs a refresher in his supposed field of expertise. So when I came across Malbecco in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it allusion in Catherine Aird's excellent impossible crime novel His Burial Too I was not so surprised that he turned out to be a minor character in The Faerie Queen. I wasn’t a fan of Edmund Spenser back in my college days. I tend to forget everything about that epic poem other than the Bower of Bliss section and that I found most of it boring as hell. Turns out that using the name Malbecco is an arcane way to call someone a paranoid jealous husband. He’s in Book III, Canto X (et al.) of Spenser’s seemingly endless poem if you want to read about him. I think an Othello allusion would've sufficed. What a show off that Catherine Aird is. Witty and smart, but a show off.

FFB: Bring the Bride a Shroud - D. B. Olsen

Mr. Pennyfeather (later to become Professor Pennyfeather) is D. B. Olsen’s second series character she created while part of Doubleday Doran’s Crime Club cadre of popular mystery writers. He makes his debut as amateur sleuth in Bring the Bride a Shroud (1945), a book that shares more than a few plot points with Olsen’s first Crime Club published detective novel The Cat Saw Murder (previously reviewed here). The detective is a senior citizen, the setting of the murders is a privately run hotel, and the suspects are primarily made up of the hotel guests. I almost forgot! The murder weapon in Bring the Bride a Shroud is also an ax. Is this the way Dolores Hitchens likes to introduce her sleuths to us? Solving ax murders in hotels? I’ll report on that again later when I delve into her other “first” books written in her early career using other pseudonyms.

The story is just as engaging as The Cat Saw Murder and Pennyfeather, while less active and daring than Miss Murdock, proves himself to be more than capable as a detective in this gruesome premiere. En route to a military base in the fictitious town of Superstition, Arizona the college instructor is planning to visit “Tick” Burrell, a former student. He confides all of this to his seatmate on the bus headed from San Diego to Arizona. She is flabbergasted by this news. She happens to be Martha Andler, Tick’s aunt and sometime guardian who has been advising him on his latest marriage proposal. You see, Tick has a habit of collecting fiancées and then breaking the engagements. So far he’s proposed marriage three times and he hopes that this third time is the charm. Aunt Martha thinks otherwise. She’s on her way to counsel him against marrying his latest.

These various fiancées turn up over the course of the story and two of them coincidentally happen to be staying in the same hotel where Mr. Pennyfeather and Mrs. Andler are staying. When the bus makes a rest stop Mrs. Andler apparently has a run in with a volatile fellow bus passenger in a rest room and sustains an injury. Various suspicious conversations are overheard. Mr. Pennyfeather begins to think that Tick and his women problems may result in something more violent than a cut on the wrist. And his fears come true when Mrs. Andler is found butchered in her bed.

Hitchens does a fine job of presenting a tricky plot involving the various women in Tick’s life and uncovering several deep, dark secrets in the lives of the hotel guests. The story is rife with traditional detective novel motifs and abounds with fair play and puzzling clues. The dust jacket illustration points out many of the pieces of evidence like a button from a sweater, a bloody head bandage and – if you look very closely at the bottom edge of the jacket – a centipede. The centipede is one of those nasty large desert species, the kind with a venomous bite. Our poor hero has a rather nasty encounter with this centipede, a naive but creepy attempt to put an end to his amateur snooping.

The murders are solved with a good old fashioned gathering of the suspects and a lecture provided in tag team style by both Pennyfeather and Sheriff Stacey. But when the savage killer is finally unmasked there is still one more mystery yet to be revealed.

Throughout the book Stacey is perplexed why the college teacher will not volunteer his full name to him, in fact, refusing to do so. Pennyfeather offers a couple of hints as to why he never reveals his first name: it’s classically inspired and it’s wholly unsuitable for him. Stacey plays a sort of guessing game a la “Rumpelstiltskin” but never manages to nail the right mythological moniker. Thankfully, the reader is spared the frustration of never knowing when Hitchens delivers the news in the penultimate sentence.

Bring the Bride a Shroud is definitely worth seeking out even if it is — of course! — another one of those hard to find books. I found a copy in the Chicago Public Library system and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have a copy in your local library, too.

Professor Pennyfeather detective novels
(Books reviewed elsewhere on this blog have colored links)
Bring the Bride a Shroud (1945)
Gallows for the Groom (1947)
Devious Design (1948)
Something About Midnight (1950)
Love Me in Death (1951)
Enrollment Cancelled (1952), US paperback title: Dead Babes in the Wood

FFB: The Cat Saw Murder - D. B. Olsen

Well, I've done it. I've read a cat mystery for the first time in my life. And damned if I didn't enjoy it. It's a strange book, one of the earliest cat mysteries if not the utter first. Strange because it is far from what one would expect from a cat mystery. It's in the grand tradition of the Mary Roberts Rinehart school with all the foreshadowing and aggravating hinting at events yet to come that led to the disparaging label of "Had I But Known" plus all the Grand Guignol gruesomeness that was Rinehart's trademark. There's a grisly ax murder, some dismembered body parts, midnight traipsing in secret attic passageways, an attempt on our heroine's life as well as the cat's, and blood everywhere. Literally everywhere. Except on the cat, that is. The only eyewitness to the crime seen popping out of the murder room, the cat is spanking clean and wet as if she'd just been washed. Is it any wonder with all these Gothic trappings and bizarre elements that I lapped up this cat mystery like a saucer of milk?

The Cat Saw Murder (1939) marks the debut of one of those little old lady amateur sleuths that tend to drive me batty now that I'm closely approaching becoming a not-so-little old man myself. But I found Rachel Murdock to be one of the better incarnations of a tired stereotype from the Golden Age. She may be seventy years old, but she's sharp witted, spry and risk taking senior citizen. She fits right into the mold of the Badass Biddy taking on not only a malevolent married couple who indulge in blackmail as a hobby but a crazed and violent murderer who will stop at nothing to cover up the crimes.

The story involves Miss Murdock's niece Lily Stickleman who fears for her life and Samantha, a cat that has inherited a fortune. Miss Murdock makes her way to the beachfront hotel called Surf House, signs on as a guest, and digs into the mysteries of anonymous letters, blackmail and attempted murder.  When her sleuthing does not prevent Lily's murder and nearly leads to her own death Lt. Mayhew steps into the picture.  The two make an unlikely detective duo but each helps the other out, Mayhew saving Miss Murdock's life not once but twice, and together they uncover an involved and very deadly conspiracy.

D.B. Olsen is one of the many pseudonyms for mystery writer Dolores Hitchens who is probably best known for two crime novels written under her own name -- Sleep with Slander, called "the best traditional male private eye novel written by a woman" by Bill Pronzini in 1001 Midnights and Fools' Gold, a juvenile delinquent caper novel that became Godard's cult classic crime movie Bande à part.  In her early books written as Olsen she created two series characters Rachel Murdock and Professor Pennyfeather, most of which follow the template of traditional detective novels.

The Cat Saw Murder is a neatly done up puzzle of a mystery with some deft cluing, excellent characterization in the myriad beach hotel guests all of whom have multiple secrets, some offbeat humor, gory murders and a very neat surprise ending. The major clue that leads to the solution of the crime is not all that well hidden and I suspect veteran mystery readers will catch onto her extremely clever gimmick, one I've never seen used in any detective novel of any era. But for those who miss it the ending will be quite a surprise.  It certainly is one of the best examples of the least likely character as murderer.

There is one very odd thing about this book I want to mention.  It's written in both present and past tenses.  The entire first chapter starts off in the present tense, foreshadows three specific events in the plot, then shifts back in time to start the tale at the beginning and stays in the past tense. But periodically throughout the book Hitchens will shift gears abruptly when she wants to do her Rinehart School bit with more HIBK and foreshadowing and weirdly she decides to write in the present tense. It's really jarring and makes no real sense to me.  This odd writing technique may explain why most of her previous books were published by the low rent houses like Phoenix Press and Bart House.  It just doesn't read smoothly.  I'm trying to find her first three books (all released under other pseudonyms) to see if she did this a lot. Only with this unusual cat mystery with a senior citizen stepping into the lead role did she manage to make it to the "big time" when Doubleday's Crime Club published the book.  She remained with the US Crime Club throughout most of her writing career -- well into the 1950s when she also teamed up with her husband to pen a few railroad police thrillers.

Dolores Hitchens (in a rare photo!)

The Cat Saw Murder is --of course-- rather hard to find. After three years of looking I managed finally to get a cheap copy on eBay but it's beaten to hell and I ended up paying more for it than I would've had I found it in a store in similar condition. The Dell Mapback (my edition) is very scarce and extremely collectible because it's a low number in the series. As you can see above, it sports the giant keyhole logo that was used only on numbers 1 through 49. As of this writing there are exactly five copies for sale in various hardcover, paperback and digest editions.  The one Crime Club edition (without DJ) is only $22.50. A good price, I think, for a copy advertised in "near VG" condition.

Even if you hate the idea of a cat mystery I'd recommend you read this one both for its historical significance and for the story.  It may have started the entire subgenre and it's not at all what would anyone would expect from a cat mystery.