Psst... Over Here!

Hello, there! Remember me? I think eight month’s hiatus is a little too long to have taken for what I thought was going to be “a little break”. What have I been up to? Oh, this and that…

I came to realize that like many collectors I had gradually turned into a monomaniac of sorts and I didn’t like it. My literary anecdotes were boring people and more importantly I was boring myself. I wanted to avoid vintage detective fiction for a while. It was long time that I returned to reading contemporary fiction of all types, reading non-fiction (!) that led me to seeking out the histories and memoirs that once upon a time I enjoyed even more than mystery novels. As I veered away from detective and crime fiction I rediscovered my passion for supernatural horror from all eras. In the process I learned that there has been a revival of “traditional” supernatural fiction in the past three years similar to the renaissance in detective fiction (both reissues and new writing). Quite an eye-opening surprise and a delightful one for someone like me who has always loved ghost stories, haunted house novels, and metaphoric treatments of the monster hiding under your bed.

And so after eight months I’ve come full circle and I’m ready to share with you some of the unusual and intriguing titles I’ve devoured since December 2022. Like this one…

Flowers for a Dead Witch by Michael Butterworth

Readers of this blog will know that I love a good mystery novel dripping with Gothic elements and accented with witchcraft, hexes, black magic, voodoo, hoodoo or whatever the author is calling it. Butterworth’s third mystery novel is a brilliant example of the first revival of traditional mystery writing that occurred back in the 1970s. In Flowers for a Dead Witch (1971) he gives us what at first seems to be yet another of those Gothic “romances” that filled bookstore shelves and drugstore spinners five decades ago. Polly Lestrange travels from Canada to Suffolk to visit her bedridden ailing great-aunt in a crumbling medieval manor complete with moat surrounding the entrance. She is greeted by Miss Chesham, the great-aunt’s over protective companion who refuses the Polly’s request to visit the old woman. Even the local physician caring for Great Aunt Granchester insists that Polly leave the old woman alone. Well, what Gothic heroine is going to listen to either person? Certainly not this one and Polly determinedly breaks into the old woman’s room one windy and rainy night (of course it rains a lot in this book. It has too!) to discover… Oh, but that would spoil it all. The old woman has a secret of course and it will only be revealed in the final pages.

Before the startling conclusion – which I confess really took me by surprise – our plucky heroine will encounter a ragtag group of rebellious teens, rumors of a witchcraft cult cavorting naked in the moonlight, an ancient cemetery home to a mausoleum containing the corpse of a woman executed for witchcraft 400+ years ago, and literally stumble upon what appears to be the charred remains of that executed witch. But how is that possible? A 400 year old corpse of a woman burned at the stake would be nothing but rotting bones if not a pile of dust in 1971. The body found in the coffin in the mausoleum is freshly dead, and burned beyond recognition. When both the local reverend and his wife go missing whispers of foul play mix with the rumors of witchcraft.

This was the first book I’ve read by Michael Butterworth (1924 – 1986) who prior to turning his hand to bizarre crime and mystery novels was primarily known as a writer of comic books. Oh! A warning: Don’t confuse him with another (still living) writer of the same name who wrote science fiction novels and SF TV show novelizations. I had to notify the Admin of a crime fiction website that he conflated both Butterworths. I advised him to remove all the SF titles from the mystery writer Butterworth’s bibliography. He speedily updated that page on his website.

If Flowers for a Dead Witch is any indication of what Butterworth is capable of then I’m eager to check out as many of his other books that I can find. Most satisfying is that this is a legitimate detective novel with fair play clueing. Assiduous readers may catch onto what I overlooked as I foolishly fell for all of the writer’s rather clever red herrings. Butterworth mixes the formulaic plot of those 70s Gothic romances churned out by writers like Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, and Mary Stewart with genuine mystery novel conventions and thankfully improves on both. Of course with a generous helping of creepy superstition and lurid witchcraft legends the plot is considerably spicier and more intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and completed it in a speedy two days. There are several copies available for sale out there in the vast shopping mall of the internet. I’m sure it ought to turn up in local libraries both in the US and UK. Check it out!

Michael Butterworth Crime & Detective Novels
The Soundless Scream (1967)
Walk Softly in Fear (1968)
Vanishing Act (1970) (US title: The Uneasy Sun)
Flowers for a Dead Witch (1971)
The Black Look (1972)
Villa on the Shore (1973)
The Man in the Sopwith Camel (1974)
Remains to be Seen (1976)
Festival! (1976)
X Marks the Spot (1978)
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (1983)
  -- adapted into a musical: The Lucky Stiff by Ahrens & Flaherty
A Virgin on the Rocks (1985)
The Five Million Dollar Prince (1986)

As by “Sarah Kemp” – all feature Dr. Tina May, a psychiatrist detective
Goodbye Pussy (1978) (US title: Over the Edge)
No Escape (1984)
Lure of Sweet Death (1986)
What Dread Hand (1987)

The Ghost of Thomas Penry – Kenneth O’Hara

Howard Stavey is tasked with creating a treatment for a TV program the subject of which will be Thomas Penry, a Welsh man known for his research into the occult and psychic phenomenon. If it meets with director and production team approval he may be allowed to write the script.

After meeting with one of the Penry’s sole living acquaintances Howard uncovers some intriguing info on Penry’s wife Madeleine who froze to death with her child one winter decades ago. Her death was always thought to be a tragic accident, but Howard’s research reveals she may have been killed and that the child may not have been Penry’s. Madeleine claimed to have psychic abilities her husband was envious of coupled with the fact that letters reveals she most likely was apparently in love with another man who could be the child’s father. Prime motive that signals Penry killed his wife. This murder mystery angle decides the director that the story is worth filming and he orders the script be written and he starts to gather up a production team.

O'Hara does an excellent job in displaying the conflict between writers, actors, director and crew members. We also get unusual insight into dealing with actor’s egos, especially since they are planning to portray real people. Initially reluctant to do a movie about a man who played with spooks Tom, one of the actors, changes his mind when he starts to believe he has psychic ability. He begins to not only believe in The Ghost of Thomas Penry (1977) but that he is the reincarnation of the man he has been hired to play on film.

Gwenillen, owner of the house and distant relative to Penry, after much dilly dallying finally takes the production crew and actors into the basement and reveals the chapel. It’s vast and apparently untouched since the scandalous ritual that ended with the death of Ruthven Douglas back in the WWI era. Chests contain silver, medieval tapestries and ritual wardrobe. Ros who has an eye for lavish clothing is drawn to the purple and gold cloak. Natalya, the production designer, has a fit. “Don’t touch it!” The fabric is of course fragile and it may fall apart in the hands of the careless actress. Tom & Ros go up to a balcony and fight. An enormous vase comes crashing down barely missing Adrian the director. Is it an accident? Or an angry ghost?

Eliphas, a former professional magician, is the production’s magic and occult consultant. He finally speaks on p. 104 with a lengthy discussion of the house, Penry and the group of amateur psychics who gathered in the underground chapel. Howard replies, “I’d like to believe” in a long monologue. Eliphas laughs then offers his opinion of Penry and the chapel. A disagreement of ceremonial magic follows. Howard says there is no proof. Eliphas points out the care given to the chapel and its contents proves otherwise. Harriet (researcher and co-writer) prefers to come straight to the point. “He tried to summon demons.” But Eliphas says there is no proof of any of that. Penry was too evasive in his diaries and notebooks. He thinks Penry had psychic power and was ashamed of it.

Eliphas tells Howard that Tom had a vision of what the interior of the house looks like just before he entered the building. Tom described to Eliphas in great detail the furniture, the architecture, the layout, and when he enters it is almost exactly what he uttered. Does he have genuine psychic ability? A vase levitates when he mutters some mumbo jumbo near the art object and he is convinced that he has “the gift.”

During a second visit to the chapel another vase falls – or is shoved – and someone is killed. Everyone thinks it’s Ros because the corpse is wearing the purple and gold cloak. But when the body is turned over they discover it is someone else.

Joe, the crew's cameraman and electrician, Howard and Harriet piece together all the accidents and chicanery. The trio turn sleuths to find out who among them is a murderer and why. A major clue in the victim's wallet leads Harriet to uncovering the dead person’s true identity and why he got himself hired onto the crew. The ultimate reveal is a gobsmacking surprise and explains all of the serious psychic moments and mysterious phenomenon in the supposedly haunted chapel.

 This is a highly recommended read for those like me who can't get enough of detective novels that feature supernatural phenomenon -- be it genuine or faked.  There is plenty to admire here, especially the completely unexpected manner in which all events unfold, the identity of the victims, and the unmasking of a devious killer. The background of a TV film crew is 100% authentic, too.  Read on to learn of the author's real name and various professions.

THE AUTHOR: Margaret Jean Morris (1924 - 1996) began her writing career with the mainstream novel Man and Two Gods (1953).  She also penned a handful of plays and several detective and crime novels using the pseudonym Kenneth O'Hara.  Her first mystery novel, A View to a Death (1958), features Dr. Alun Barry, a director of research at an engineering firm, who accidentally becomes a detective while on a vacation.  She is probably best known under her other pen name, "Jean Morris",  as the author of several juvenile fantasy novels starting with A Path of Dragons (1980).   Her young adult books have been compared favorably to Ursula Le Guin's.  Morris also spent much of her life as a TV scriptwriter and notably wrote episode four ("Anne of Cleves") for the BAFTA and Emmy award-winning series The Six Wives of Henry VIII  shown on both BBC and American TV on PBS in the early 1970s.

FFB: Murder's Burning - S. H. Courtier

Stewart Hamilton revisits the site of a devastating fire in Murder’s Burning (1967) Several years ago fire raged over an Australian ranch destroying multiple homes, killing livestock, and claiming the lives of eight people including Hamilton’s friend Pete Carruthers. Two bodies were never found in the ruins and Hamilton feels compelled to literally rake over the past in search of clues to the fire’s origin and what happened to the two missing men.

The story is a mix of two first person narratives and follows the style of many epistolary murder mysteries of the 19th and early 20th century. As Hamilton narrates the bulk of the story interspersed are reminisces of letters Carruthers wrote and sent to his friend when Hamilton was living and working in New Guinea. So we have Hamilton in the present revisiting the past via Carruthers’ first-hand accounts in the letters. There is some detection on Hamilton’s part as he digs and rakes through the five year old debris at the site of the fire. But ingeniously many of the clues to the multiple mysteries are to be found in Carruthers’ letters which are filled with richly detailed anecdotes and intensive character studies and psychological probing. Carruthers, who worked as a schoolteacher at the station school, we learn was fascinated with the people he met and lived with and was something of an armchair detective of the soul.

The book gives some insight into how Australian ranches – or stations in the local parlance – are run highlighting the advanced firefighting methods and various escape plans always hovering in the minds of people who live with the threat of wildfire on a daily basis. But was this vast and destructive conflagration really a wildfire? As the story progresses more and more evidence turns up to suggest that the fire was set intentionally. Hamilton is sure he knows the identity of the arsonist but the real mystery, besides what happened to the bodies of Wallace Shelton and Saul Leguier, is why the fire was necessary. He begins to formulate theories and comes up with several conspiracies dominated by an overarching conspiracy of silence about why the fire was set and what happened to the missing men.

A running theme of the book is “Sheltonian madness” a phrase used to describe the eccentric and wild thinking of Wallace Shelton who owned one of the stations. Apparently all the Sheltons had a tinge of madness in them which leads many of the survivors Hamilton talks with to believe that Shelton destroyed his own property. Subplots involve arranged marriages in the Shelton family; crazed criminal Rory Corbett, the local pariah and a scourge on the community; and naïvely flirtatious Lothario, Billy Chad, who has been handing out cheap jewelry with juvenile inscriptions of love to various women. All these stories and people complicate the main plot and lead Hamilton in various directions as he searches for a motive for the arson.

Even more unusual than the Australian setting and the multiple storylines of the many families living in an around the station is the macabre twist that dominates the story around the last third of the novel. Hamilton uncovers a secret passageway behind the ruins of a fireplace hearth on the Shelton property. After descending a small stone staircase Hamilton finds an underground labyrinth where eventually he discovers something that one would expect from a 18th century Gothic horror novelist. Believe me you will not be rolling your eyes or groaning in disbelief but gasping in horror once you learn what Hamilton finds in the cavernous rooms beneath the fire ravaged ranch. All I can add without ruining the novel is that the large one word blurb plastered on the rear cover of my paperback edition -- “Grisly!” New York Times -- is an understatement.

As much as this bizarre touch was completely unexpected and a little over-the-top it made for a truly thrilling finale. I was not only led down the garden path by Courtier and his expertise in employing dual narrators I was more than pleased that the Gothic excesses ultimately all made sense and explained almost all the mysteries that Hamilton uncovered during his dredging up of the past.

The recurring motif of “Sheltonian madness” also comes to dominate the story. We learn that the madness is both figurative and literal. If the reader is wise enough to read everything in the book (as I repeatedly mention one ought to do with any book) ) then the Acknowledgment that serves as a brief foreword to the novel will have prepared the reader for an unusual plot element towards the hair-raising finale. I did read those two sentences that precede the story, but had almost forgotten about it by the end. 

Sidney H. Courtier’s superior debut detective novel The Glass Spear (1950) was previously reviewed here back in 2014 and is very much deserving of a reprint. Murder’s Burning, written 17 years later, is just as good for a variety of reasons, but it does have a rather slow burn until Hamilton discovers the secret passageway. Then it kicks into high gear and makes the trip to the end all the more exciting. I have more reviews of Courtier’s books coming in the fall. I think his books surpass Arthur Upfield’s as some of the best of Australian crime writing in giving readers unfamiliar with the land Down Under excellent insight into Australian culture, climate, geography and sociology.

TRIVIA: Oh! one final note that only true book collectors and rabid mystery fans like me will appreciate.  My paperback copy was previously owned by Edgar award winning American mystery writer Joe Gores (1931-2011).  He signed the book and dated it (see photo at right). The SF, I surmise, means San Francisco where he bought the book. He also lived there much of his life and that noir drenched city of both fiction and real life is where his own private eye character Dan Kearney lived and worked.

MOONLIGHTERS: Victor Wolfson - A Playwright Dabbles in Gothic Dread

A little digging is a dangerous thing, to paraphrase Alexander Pope.  His original quote about a little learning continues: "Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."  Often I find that my digging into the past lives of these obscure authors unearths a treasure trove of information that I hit that spring and before I can sample it I find I'm drowning in it.  Buried in data about the writer's lives I try to sort it out and assemble it and then I forget about writing about their books. In the case of Victor Wolfson, a prolific writer of plays, television scripts and a handful novels, there are just a couple of crime novels to his name.  So it should be easy to toss off a brief review of this one before I unleash the torrent of info on his other writing. I think he was a little embarrassed by this one book for he hides behind the androgynously odd pseudonym of Langdon Dodge.  Perhaps a signal that he was planning to dodge metaphorical bullets fired from the typewriters of harsh or indifferent book reviewers.

Midsummer Madness (1950) is the one of two books Wolfson left fans of crime novels and it's as odd as his choice of pseudonym (the source, inspiration or meaning of which I was unable to determine in my digital shovelling through his past).  I've tagged this as a "badass biddy" suspense novel but truthfully the two women battling each other for the affection of the Byronic hero and possibly the wealth he is due to inherit are far from biddy age.  Selena our protagonist and heroine is barely forty years old while her antagonist the extremely unbalanced and duplicitous Zilla is just entering her middle aged years.  And Zilla's no biddy in the looks department.  Described by Dodge as a sort of Jayne Mansfield type gone off the deep end Zilla is Rubenesque, blond and deeply disturbed. Still, at its core Midsummer Madness is very much in the tradition of what I like to call "badass biddy" novels in which two women go to great lengths to do each other in, or drive one or the other to the brink of madness. Selena is not really the target here but her charge is -- the young son of Gayden Goodale.  Wolfson's early playwriting days betray him here in his use of awkwardly and groan inducing alliterative names as odd as the consonance of his pen name.

In a nutshell this is Jane Eyre redux with an overdose of nasty cruelty and murderous avarice.  Selena is cast in the role of Jane, Gayden is Rochester, and instead of Adele as the governess' charge we have Bobby, Gayden's asthmatic son.  While there is no real counterpart for the crazed ex-wife kept hidden away in an attic Wolfson does offer up an invalid mother in the person of Mrs. Goodale, the specter of a long dead wife named Lucy who may have been murdered, and of course the nasty villainess Zilla.  So Mrs. Rochester's spirit at least is present albeit divided into three different characters.  The structure is Jane Eyre no matter how you look at it. But the conflict is pure badass biddy crime novel.  Zilla is out for the Goodale money and she is intent on eliminating every one of the Goodale family starting first with Bobby whose respiratory ailments and frail physique make him a prime target for Zilla's devilry.  And she has some extremely cruel and nasty methods of attempting to do in the poor boy. One of which involves trapping Bobby on a speedy roller coaster at a local carnival and preventing him from leaving as they repeatedly ride the coaster as he screams to be let off.

Rounding out the cast of characters are Zilla's bullying son Allan; a sinister butler named Collins who seems to know more than anyone at Hawk's End; a Polish handyman who speaks no English; Millie, an easily intimidated simpleton of a maid who attempts to become Selena's ally and fails, and Mrs. Goodale the archtype of the imperious invalid matriarch confined to her bedroom who is policed and tended to by an overly protective matron nurse.

French paperback edition.
That can only be Zilla on the cover!

The Gothic elements continue into the marvelous setting. Thornfield Hall is replaced by Hawk's Head, a rambling estate near oceanfront cliffs in northeastern United States, perhaps somewhere in New England. The house is ironically claustrophobic in its immensity and the typical brooding atmosphere of dread and paranoia infects the place. Two key scenes take place at a summerhouse situated on the precipice of the seaside cliffs. It is a place that the boys were warned to avoid because of its rickety wooden railings and a porch in disrepair. You just know that something awful its going to happen there. And it does. Twice! 

Midsummer Madness for all its stereotypical trappings and familiar character types makes for an interesting read.  The battle of wits and two hand-to-hand battles --these are tough women!-- between Selena and Zilla hold the reader's attention for the most part even if the filler story is easily guessable.  Zilla is never meant to be ambiguous as the villain of the novel.  Though Wolfson tries to make Gayden seem like he may be a baddie he's too steeped in the Gothic traditions to be anything but a requisite Byronic hero. Selena is smart, strong willed, outspoken and athletic.  A refreshing change from the guileless nitwits one usually finds in neo-Gothics.

Best of all -- the climax of the book, the ultimate reveal of what happened to Lucy, and the revelation of Zilla in all her malevolence includes a neat surprise in the person of the sinister Collins who turns out to be not so sinister after all. And whose knowledge of the household is matched by his knowledge of foreign languages. I'll say no more. There are plenty of copies of Midsummer Madness out there to be found and you will have to discover the thrilling escapades and nasty schemes of Zilla, her tortured victim Bobby, and the resourceful heroine Selena all on your own.  You can find it in both hardcover editions under the Langdon Dodge pseudonym and paperback editions under Wolfson's real name.

Victor Wolfson (1909 - 1990) began his professional career "organizing acting clubs for striking miners in West Virginia" according to his New York Times obituary. Theater was apparently his first love and from 1926 through 1955 he worked as an actor, assistant stage manager, director and producer in addition to his seven contributions as a playwright.

Though his career as a playwright did not yield many memorable or long running plays despite the star power of Shirley Booth in the shipboard comedy Excursion (1937) or Gloria DeHaven, Ricardo Montalban and Bea Arthur in Seventh Heaven (1955), a musical for which he supplied the book, Wolfson would go on to become highly successful as a television script writer. He wrote for several anthology series throughout the 1950s when such shows were at the height of popularity. Among his TV credits are scripts for Suspense (14 episodes!), Kraft Theater and Climax. The episode "No Right to Kill" on Climax (Aug 9, 1956), starring John Cassavetes and Terry Moore, was based on Wolfson's own stage adaptation of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment which had been on Broadway at the Biltmore Theater in 1935. Most notably Wolfson wrote six scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The Hitchcock TV scripts include some of the best of that series, some of which were based on well known short stories by master crime fiction writers.  Wolfson wrote the scripts for "The Specialty of the House" and "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby" both based on the stories by Stanley Ellin, "Malice Domestic" based on Philip MacDonald's story and "The Perfect Murder" taken from the story of the same name by Stacy Aumonier, an underrated crime writer of short stories whose work was made more famous thanks to at least three episodes on the Hitchcock TV series.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of Wolfson's years in TV came in 1961 when he won an Emmy for his work on ABC-TV's 26 part mini-series "Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years."  

Some of his mainstream novels all published under his real name are The Lonely Steeple (1945), reprinted as The Passionate Season (1966);  The Eagle on the Plain (1945); and Cabral (1972), his second crime novel. My Prince! My King! (1962), a novel based on several of his autobiographical stories, focuses on his days as a child of Russian immigrants. The stories originally appeared in The New Yorker back in the 1940s told, amongst other things, the story of his mother's grief following the death of Wolfson's father. His nonfiction works include The Man Who Cared (1966), a biography of Harry S Truman; and The Mayerling Murder (1969), in which he examines the legends and myths surrounding the still unsolved apparent murder–suicide pact of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, and his lover, Mary Freiin von Vetsera.

In May 1990 Wolfson died tragically in a fire in his home a Wellfleet, Massachusetts. He was 81 years old.

NEW STUFF: The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne – Elsa Hart

Collector mania. Why have I read yet another book about an aspect of my own life? Am I really that self-obsessed? Must I read about collecting in order to understand my own obsession with obscure genre fiction and my almost pathological acquisition of hundreds of these books? Do I really need to read one more novelist’s ideas about the psychology of monomania? Yes to all questions! And after all this book is set in the 18th century. (OK, that was just a feeble excuse to look the other way when faced with answering those questions I posed) But guess what? This was quite a page turner. And the best part? The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne (2020) is a legitimate detective novel.

Until I stumbled across Elsa Hart’s fourth novel in the library I knew nothing of her or her books. According to the jacket blurb and her bio she has written three other mystery novels featuring Li Du, a librarian of 18th century China living in exile near the Tibetan border who accidentally becomes a detective. The subject matter of each of those books seemed a bit eggheady to me and would not have appealed to me. But The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne despite its possibly dreary 18th century setting and a self-consciously decorous writing style won me over almost immediately. Hart knows how to tell an engaging story, creates lively and flawed characters, is masterful with her plotting and actually employs fair play detective novel conventions. I devoured this book the way a mad collector goes after a rare specimen to complete a set of wondrous objects.

Cecily Kay travels from her ex-patriated home in Smyrna where her husband is a diplomat to London in order to study the collection of plants in the awe-inspiring and vast collection of oddities in the museum like home of Barnaby Mayne. While conducting a tour of his home for Cecily and other like-minded collectors there to marvel at the shells, plants, insects, taxidermized animals and esoteric artwork Mayne is distracted by an urgent message. He excuses himself allowing his guests to wander his home on their own. Shortly afterward he is found brutally murdered in his private study. His assistant is found in the room holding a knife in his hand and screams out “I killed him!” and then flees.

Is it all over before it has even begun? Oh no, my friends. Cecily has noticed things that just don’t add up. She disbelieves the confession from the meek assistant and is convinced he is protecting someone. She and her friend Meacan, a talented illustrator hired to do some drawings of Mayne’s collection, turn amateur detectives to ferret out the truth. When Lady Mayne arrives to take care of her dead husband’s estate she is encouraged to have the collection catalogued. Meacan and Cecily are quickly appointed to undertake the daunting project. Their presence is the house then allows them opportunity to investigate the murder site. They can also pore over the rooms without being questioned as they simultaneously carry out the cataloguing task and hunt for evidence the police might have overlooked since they have in custody the confessor and think the case is closed.

The suspects are numerous but mostly confined to the men and one woman who were present in the house during the tour. Over the course of their sleuthing and probing Cecily and Meacan uncover an investment project that is financing the search for sunken treasure at a shipwreck, a cabal of occultists who may have been involved in secret rituals, and meet with a sinister coffee house owner who is part con man and part vigilante. Hart gives us an abundance of thriller conventions like abduction and eleventh hour rescues in addition to the requisite, sometimes slyly underhanded, questioning as part of the murder investigation.

And while there are some well-placed clues that I missed the book suffers from one of the cardinal sins of this type of adventure thriller – a not so well hidden villain.  I immediately suspected one character the moment he first appeared and was proven correct. I didn’t have to examine his motives or behavior, My targeting him was based solely on the fact that he exemplifies a certain archetype found in Gothic and neo-Gothic novels from which The Cabinet of Barnaby Mayne has most definitely evolved whether Hart is conscious of it or not. When I see that type of character in a novel of this sort I always expect the worst outcome, underhanded manipulations of even seemingly good actions.

On the final page Cecily mentions she has received a letter about the current tenants fleeing her home that she and her husband leased while they were in Smyrna. The letter writer implies something rather mysterious was going on. She offers Meacan a chance to travel with her and investigate the reason why the family left. This most likely indicates a sequel in the works. Perhaps the second book of another trilogy? I’ll be sure to check out the next adventure of Cecily Kay and Meacan. Even with its obvious villain this was one entertaining contemporary mystery novel -- well written with a couple of excellent lead characters and a cast of eccentric people who hide unexpected secrets and so detailed and steeped in its milieu that I felt I was reading a book written centuries ago rather than only last year. Elsa Hart is worth watching. I may even try one of the Li Du mystery novels now.

FRIDAY FRIGHT NIGHT: London After Midnight - Marie Coolidge-Rask

London After Midnight – the stuff of legends. For those of you not in the know let me fill you in. It’s one of those “lost films” from the silent era, meaning that no known prints exist today. The negative was destroyed in a warehouse fire back in the 1960s. The hunt continues for anyone on the planet who might have a copy of the movie. Interest in this supposed horror movie – one of many from Tod Browning, the child of the night who gave us macabre silent movies like The Unholy Three (1925) and The Unknown (1927), the notorious circus thriller Freaks (1932), and the first movie version of Dracula (1930) – was so obsessive that back in 2002 a movie maven “reconstructed” the film using photo stills and a copy of the screenplay. I’ve never seen it, it’s been called everything from "a brilliant video evocation" to "a huge waste of time and energy." All this leads me to my own fascination with the movie. I had hoped one day I would see it after learning about it in a book on movie monsters I read when I was about 13 years old. But later around my college years when I discovered its legendary status as a lost film I all but gave up hope. Then sometime around 1999 or 2000 I stumbled upon a copy of the Photoplay Edition of London After Midnight through sheer serendipity at an antique mall. And when I discovered it was only $8 I could barely contain my excitement. As I paid that ludicrously cheap price I felt as if I were stealing it.

Photoplay Editions of silent movies are considered collector’s items to the cognoscenti who are drawn to books adapted for the movies. Photoplay Editions are the actual novels the movies were based on or novelizations of movie screenplays that contain photo stills of the movie. A select few of these Photoplay Editions are considered crown jewel of sorts to bibliophiles and movieholics. London After Midnight is one of them. Of course finding a Photoplay Edition with the remarkable color photo dust jackets would make it even more of a treasure. Mine is unsurprisingly lacking the dust jacket. But all of the eight photographs are intact and unharmed.

All this brings me to the actual book and story of London After Midnight. Marie Coolidge Rask, working from Tod Browning’s screen story and the scenario of Browning's frequent co-collaborator Waldemar Young, penned the novelization of the movie. This is all we have to go by as to the film’s story and content. That and, of course, the myriad movie stills that have been reproduced for decades. Some of the eight stills from the Photoplay Edition are featured as illustrations for this post. I was hoping for an eerie tale of madness, murder and vampires and a few good frights. After all Lon Chaney, the Man of 1000 Faces, was the star of the movie. He was terrifying as the first screen Phantom of the Opera and still, IMO, the best non-singing performer in that role. Based on photos in the book he played two roles in the movie. But as is the case with many of these longed for reading experiences that finally come to fruition reading the story was a huge let down. London After Midnight – at least the novelized version of the story – is a messy and transparent murder mystery couched in Gothic excesses and weird or supernatural incidents that all turn out to be rationalized.

Ingredients: one haunted house, a suspicious suicide, a murder made to look like the work of a vampire, two creepy and kooky neighbors who put on a spook show for the police investigating the murder, a plethora of mysterious incidents and a ridiculous number of characters in disguise or using alter egos. It all reminded me of early 20th century French detective novels with their fascination with policemen in disguise and fantastical plot elements. Browning who concocted the story may well have been a fan of not only Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe but Maurice LeBlanc, Gaston Leroux and Marcel Allain, creator of master criminal Fantomas, the English translations of those books were still selling well in the US in the late 1920s.

 

Pictured left to right: Conrad Nagel as Lucy's lover Jerry Hibbs,
Henry A. Walthall as Sir James and Lon Chaney in his
second role as Prof. Burke(called Colonel Yates in the novelization)

Chaney as the Man in the Beaver Hat

Much of the novel’s mystery involves uncovering the identity of the Man in the Beaver Hat and his sidekick, an unnamed female character referred to only as the Bat Girl. We are led to believe that they are vampires, that they can transform into bats which fly about the rooms of Balfour House and roost in the rafters of that reputedly haunted house. Five years ago Balfour House was the site of former owner Roger Balfour's suicide who may be the Man in the Beaver Hat come back to life as a vampire. How else could his name in his exact handwriting appear on a new lease for Balfour House when only the Man in the Beaver Hat signed the contract?

And what of the mysterious appearance of Colonel Yates, straight from India, who claims to be a former military comrade of Sir James Hamlin, whose ward is Lucy Balfour, Roger’s beautiful daughter? Why did the Colonel show up so conveniently just as Balfour House was leased by the Man in the Beaver Hat? Why does Yates know so much about the occult, and vampires in particular?

Rask's storytelling is modeled on a cumbersome Edwardian prose style infused with stilted dialogue, overly complex sentence structure, antiquated vocabulary, and an abundance of histrionics and melodrama. She gives away the fact that the suicide is a murder almost immediately and is clumsy in trying to create suspense and surprise revelations. It is very obvious from the start who killed Roger Balfour and his son Harry. Even the motive is obvious. And that perhaps is the creepiest part of the book. In the book’s denouement the killer has been hypnotized into recreating Roger Balfour's murder. Reading the killer’s pronouncement of his love for a 15 year-old girl and his “covetousness of her since she was an infant" was nauseating and gave me chills in a manner completely unintended by the writer. Not exactly the kind of thing that reads well at all in the 21st century.

For those readers who absolutely must read London After Midnight to have their curiosity satisfied you are in luck. Couch Pumpkin Classics, a POD outfit, released a reprint of this Photoplay Edition in both paperback and Kindle digital versions. A hardcover is also available in the used book market for a hefty price. I know nothing about Couch Pumpkin's other works (if there are any), but this reprint does contain an informative introduction outlining the history of the movie’s legendary status as a lost film and goes into greater detail about the “reconstruction” of the movie done in 2002 for Turner Movie Classics. But be warned: the story is less than thrilling, a tepid variation of a Scooby-Doo cartoon plot, and I guarantee major disappointment. Better to look at the stills and let your own imagination conjure up your own private version of a fine example of macabre moviemaking with genuine frights and thrills.

Next week’s Friday Fright Night episode will be a vast improvement on this offering.

FFB: The Triple Bite - Brian Flynn

THE STORY: A riddle in rhyme and a complicated alpha-numeric code are the key to a hidden treasure that lifelong criminal Sam Trout has left to two lucky people. One of them is Nigel Strachan, a lawyer who defended Trout in his last criminal trial, and whose kindness and decency is being rewarded by Trout with the chance of finding the treasure. Trout is leaving it up to “the best brain” among the two lucky recipients to solve the riddle and code and find the hidden riches. Nigel brings the code to the Cameron household and hopes his friends will be able to help him find the mystery location by breaking the code. Murder and mayhem follow when a group of crooks learn of the hidden treasure and stop at nothing to get to the treasure first.

THE CHARACTERS: The Triple Bite (1931) is another of Brian Flynn’s experiments in narrative structure. Once again we have a first person narrator – this time a woman in the person of Cecilia Cameron – who finds it necessary to step into the shoes of other people in order to tell portions of the story. Cecilia like Rector Parry-Probyn in Murder En Route (and apparently other Flynn mystery novels according to Steve Barge’s introductory material in the Dean Street Press reprint edition) will often write entire chapters in the third person to tell us of portions of the story when she was not present herself. She later explains that these were told to her afterwards by the people who actually experienced those parts of the action. Usually these scenes feature Bathurst alone muddling over some odd piece of the puzzle or the police interviewing suspects. I wonder what the point of this is. When it would be just as easy to write the whole book in third person. I thought that this was a peculiarity of Brian Flynn, but recently quite by accident while I was reviewing a few of my old posts I discovered that this very mixing of first and third person occurs in Catt Out of Bag (1939) by Clifford Witting. Was it a trend in popular fiction then? Was everyone mimicking one another?

The novel starts out like a dime novel thriller with good guys and bad guys clearly delineated and no real mystery as to who might be the villain of the piece. “Flame” Lampard and his gang of thugs infiltrate the Cameron household, intimidate and threaten, abduct and even bind and gag the housekeeper. A shootout occurs one night as the crooks do their best to get the heroes and heroines to give in to their demands. When Cecilia’s uncle is found dead outside a nearby home, seemingly from natural causes, she finds it necessary to call in Anthony Bathurst. Only then does the plot morph into a genuine detective novel.

Flynn does a good job of sprinkling the gruesome and bizarre events with a healthy dose of lively humor. Cecilia’s Aunt Elspeth is on hand for some moments of comic relief with her supercilious comments and derisive put-downs and Bathurst is always willing to lighten the impending darkness with a quip or two.

INNOVATIONS: In addition to being a nifty genre blending mystery incorporating aspects of a crime thriller and a detective novel with a soupcon of Gothic chills The Triple Bite is a homage to Victorian and Edwardian detective fiction, the kind of stories that seem to have greatly influenced Brian Flynn in his mystery writing. The first and most obvious homage is to Sherlock Holmes. In the brief introductory note that precedes the novel Flynn tells us himself that he was inspired to write his book based on “one line of a [Holmes] short story” by Arthur Conan Doyle. We are not told from which story this one line comes until the final chapter. The line refers to one of the many unchronicled cases of Holmes and Watson, some of them too gruesome or sensational to be told to the general public. The one line appears in an entire paragraph of case references – six in total – found in the short story “The Adventure of The Golden Pince-Nez.” I see no need to hold back that piece of info since Flynn and Bathurst hold back too much already, not only in this novel but in almost every one of his adventures. Even if you look up the paragraph (or know it by heart) it is doubtful you will be able to tell exactly which case inspired the writing of this book.

Original illustration from "The Adventure of
the Flitterbat Lancers" (Windsor Magazine, 1896)

In his introduction Steve Barge, our resident Flynn maven, makes some conjectures about this particular Holmes case and its use in The Triple Bite, but I’m surprised he completely overlooked the other detective fiction allusion in the novel. In attempting to solve the riddle/code in Sam Trout’s note Bathurst is reminded of a similar use of jargon in a case solved by Martin Hewitt, Arthur Morrison’s consulting detective whose adventures were published in The Strand and Windsor Magazine the same years as the Holmes stories. There is an unfortunate typo when the case is mentioned in this reprint edition. Whether the error was in the original text used to create this edition I do not know, but someone ought to have corrected it. The case is “The Adventure of the Flitterbat Lancers”-- rendered as Dancers in this edition. Anyone acquainted with that tale will know that it features a discussion of criminal underworld argot. You learn the meaning of slang terms like horney which means a street musician who plays the cornet, and an unusual use of the word dancer. This truly arcane term is wholly unfair to the reader unless he happens to be a veteran of Victorian era crime or a diehard fan of Martin Hewitt’s exploits. Luckily, Flynn explains the peculiar meaning both in Morrison’s story and as it applies to the case Bathurst is trying to solve.

My only complaint was the endless talk in monologue form. Bathurst does go on at length too often. Conversations are dominated by one character who drones on and on, rather than making the scenes more dynamic with input from all the characters. And Flynn has a regrettable habit of letting his paragraphs run on interminably for entire page lengths when in fact they are made up of multiple paragraphs. He needed a real editor back in the day. With this new edition there was an opportunity to improve ease of reading by breaking up those long paragraphs into smaller ones. A minor quibble and a personal taste of mine when it comes to reprinting older works.

Though this novel may owe too much to century old detective stories it was overall one of the better Brian Flynn mystery novels I’ve read. The bizarre murder means, the inclusion of a code and riddle (one easy to solve, one overly complicated) and the general good humor expressed throughout the novel all made it well worth reading. Still it’s no Murder En Route. I’m hoping that soon I’ll read one of Flynn’s mystery novels that lives up to the ingenuity and high entertainment quality of that book.

FFB: The Crowing Hen - Reginald Davis

THE STORY: "Whistling women and crowing hen/Are neither good for God nor men." This rhyme serves as epigraph to this intensely Gothic, very creepy story of a village plagued by fears and superstition and menaced by a ghastly creature with a strange crowing call and claw-like hands they've dubbed The Crowing Hen (1936). Danes Priory is to be sold to a young couple about to be married but they might be changing their minds when one of the estate agents falls to his death out of a second story window supposedly at the hands (claws?) of The Crowing Hen. Is the house haunted by the 15th century ghost of this horrible creature or is a sinister human behind all the horrors?

THE CHARACTERS: The book is populated with a coterie of Dickensian characters who sport odd names that might have been lifted from a late 19th century sensation novel. There is the vicar Melton Fellnoakes, an antiquarian and bibliophile whose avocation is studying the legends of the Fitz Dane family and keeping up on superstitious beliefs. The vicar has a wizened snoop of a housekeeper named Harriet Weevil. Bob Scotcher is the local antiques dealer who has a sideline in stolen goods made known to us in the very first scene. A travelling pedlar (Davis' preferred spelling) is hawking his lucky charms to anyone foolish or superstitious enough to buy them. The estate agents intent on getting rid of the white elephant property Danes Priory are named Vowles and Sprigge. And a local pub haunt named Smarty Wiffen seems to be in cahoots with Bob Scotcher, both of them are responsible for the theft of Lady Herdley's diamonds -- which will feature in a subplot throughout the telling of the story. Some of this motley crew will fall victim to the Crowing Hen and no one will escape the watchful eyes of the police inspector who eventually reveals himself after taking off his disguise just like a supersleuth out of a dime novel of days gone by.

Terry Hyland and his fiancee Shirley Esdale are much taken with Danes Priory and want to make it their home after their wedding. They know little about its storied past. But when Fellnoakes lectures Terry about the Fitz Dane dynasty, the bizarre birth of a monstrous child and the madness that befell its mother Terry is certain that someone is exploiting the village legends in order to keep curious minds away from the house. Davis makes no secret that Dane Priory is being used for criminal purposes, showing us the criminals hiding out in its dusky rooms and stowing their stolen goods in secret compartments. But could they too be victims? It appears that a mad killer is after anyone that goes near or enters the house.

There is yet another character, more of a narrative device I suppose, that is definitely reminiscent of 19th century fiction. That is our omniscient narrator who often directly addresses the reader, taking us on detours out of one scene and directing us to another part of the village to eavesdrop on a conversation, or watch one character take up some amateur sleuthing on the grounds of Danes Priory, or follow someone into a secret passageway. Davis manages to construct simultaneous scenes that resemble parallel editing in a movie -- two scenes in different locations playing out simultaneously  -- and uses his narrator's voice to guide us by the hand as it were from one location to another. Thankfully we are spared the Gentle Reader address but that doesn't stop Davis from indulging himself in sentences like this one: "But there is ample time, while P.C. Westerner is telling Terry about the one or two things noticed by him that enabled him to put two and two together, for us to hurry down the hill after [the] Detective Inspector."

ATMOSPHERE: The Crowing Hen (1938) is teeming with Gothic excesses and a macabre set pieces. There is even an impossible problem. After the first victim has been placed into a coffin inside the church while awaiting burial, bloody footprints are found on the floor encircling the coffin. And a statue known as "Flat Face" which has a habit of teetering from its pedestal is missing. Somehow all this was done while the church was completely locked and no one was seen leaving while it was under watch. The statue eventually turns up in an unexpected location that may recall a plot device used by John Dickson Carr.

Michelham Priory, one of England's most haunted places.
Possible inspiration for Danes Priory?

Davis draws from a litany of Gothic romances from the past piling on as many plot conventions and features as he can. In addition to the omnipresent bloody footprints and the non-stop eerie crowing of the bird-like creature haunting Hayes Coombe we get premature burial, an animated statue, deaths from sheer fright, talking and reanimated corpses, a voice from beyond the grave that makes telephone calls, and dead chickens found in locked chests.

UK Edition (Bles, 1936)
(courtesy of Andrew Parry)

INNOVATIONS: The theft of the diamonds seems to be the only crime amid this abundance of mysteries. No one can really explain how Sprigge fell from the window and the death is labeled an accident though it seems like it might be murder. Still, even with this questionable death and the obvious identity from the start of the diamond thieves The Crowing Hen is very much a traditional detective novel with a crafty policeman and a couple of clever amateur sleuths who unravel all the tangled webs and solve the myriad riddles.

The cinematic touches mentioned above in the narrative structure (parallel editing with words so to speak) and a talent for using dialogue in place of description make me think that Davis might have been involved in either radio scripts or screenplay writing. Maybe both? I was unfortunately unable to prove either surmise.

THE AUTHOR: Reginald Davis wrote three detective novels, the first two of which were published by the estimable Doubleday Crime Club in the US. On the dust jacket blurb for The Crowing Hen, his first novel, he is described as "a young English writer who seems destined to become a figure of importance in the field of mystery fiction." Based solely on this novel he most definitely was a promising talent of the bizarre and outre styled fantastic detective novel. But no one seems to know a thing about him. All of my diligent internet searching came up with nothing. An email to Bill Pronzini (who was kind enough to send me a photo of the extremely scarce dust jacket) was otherwise fruitless in gathering information about Davis. He told me that even Robert Adey, noted detective fiction collector, locked room mystery novel enthusiast and scholar, could dig up little about Davis. If anyone knows anything about Reginald Davis, the mystery writer, any bit of biographical data would be most be appreciated.

EASY TO FIND? Not at all. What else is new around here? I have managed to locate all three books and will be reading and reviewing them in the coming months. Of the three books only his second, Nine Days' Panic, seems easy to find in the used book market. A few days after I completed reading The Crowing Hen I bought the only copy offered via online dealers of his third novel which few people among detective fiction fans knew existed until the late 1980s. That's how obscure Reginald Davis and his mystery novels are.

Detective Novels of Reginald Davis
The Crowing Hen (1936)
Nine Days' Panic (1937)
Twelve Midnight Street (1938)

FFB: Death on the Outer Shoal - Anne Fuller & Marcus Allen

THE STORY: Hammerhead Island, pop. 27. This community of fishermen, their wives and children, have no official organized government nor any police force to ward off crime. When the gruesome accidental death of one of their most beloved citizens, kindly “Preacher” Phineas Benson, turns out to be murder they find themselves with a dilemma. Do they call in the police from the mainland or deal with the crime themselves? It’s up to Jeremiah Corbett, the oldest and most respected leader, to investigate and decide whether the islanders’ “eye for an eye” philosophy should be instituted in meting out Justice.

THE CHARACTERS: Death on the Outer Shoal (1934) is another surprising discovery in a subgenre I like to call country noir. The rural community on Hammerhead Island is perfectly rendered in every detail from the rigorous descriptions of trawl fishing to the finely tuned ear for New England regionalisms and speech patterns that accent the characters’ dialogue. Jeremiah (Uncle Jerry) Corbett is ostensibly the protagonist but this novel seems more like an ensemble theater piece with each of the supporting character getting their moment to shine. Jean McKenzie, a young nurse who as the only medical professional on Hammerhead acts as the surrogate coroner to help Corbett. Jean verifies that the wounds in Benson's neck are not made by the fisherman's gaff stuck there but by a knife because the stab marks have clean edges and go deeper than the gaff's pronged hook. She also finds contusions on his scalp that prove he was stunned by a blunt object in order that Benson could be arranged in the nets near the gaff and then stabbed to give the appearance of an accident. There are gossipy women spying on the Committee men, Otto Wolfe the irascible lighthouse keeper with grudges aplenty, and Hank Thomas, the local alcoholic and wife beater all who have riveting scenes with Corbett.

Widow Grimshaw is perhaps the remarkable figure among the many supporting players. Following the death of her husband Captain Grimshaw she has gone into a permanent state of grief dressing only in black, disappearing into a huge hooded cloak, sporting a scowl cemented into her wizened face. As far as most people are concerned her interminable grieving and anger led to a spiraling descent into madness. The way Fuller and Allen describe her she might as well have stepped out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. If her appearance were not foreboding enough Widow Grimshaw points her accusing crone’s finger and lets loose with regular tirades denouncing everyone in sight. She is like some Puritanical witchfinder with a fervent desire for vicious retribution. She has a habit of heaping her curse on anyone who dares antagonize her.

Her antipathy to all allows for the introduction of another sinister influence – the collective hatred toward the Portuguese fishermen who live in nearby mainland town of Byport. While the Widow’s is the ugliest of bigotry expressed in dialogue, for her niece married one of the immigrants, none of the others on Hammerhead are too fond of the Portuguese either. Nick Dianno and his family tend to be singled out by name regularly. Nick is viewed as an opportunistic wheeler-dealer looking for his chance to buy up land. In the estimation of the citizens that will only ruin the heritage and life of Hammerhead Island and everyone is determined to keep the Portuguese off the island.

INNOVATIONS: The idea that an entire community needs to turn detective to root out an evil scourge is something that you usually find in horror fiction. The preservation of the land's purity, their insular lifestyle, and the inhabitants' desire to keep out foreigners and "outsiders" smacks of the kind of secrets that made fictional places like Cornwall Coombe, Summerisle and Crowhaven Farm the kind of town you'd never call home. And though most likely unintended it was hard to dismiss the vigilante mentality of how Justice prevails on Hammerhead Island. Too often someone quotes the Biblical "eye for an eye" concept that serves as the citizens' primary code of morality.  There are shades of not only Hawthorne here, but eerily prescient hints of the plots of modern thrillers like Harvest Home, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and even Death Wish.

When Hank Thomas is brought before the Committee for drunkenness and wife beating then punished with a beating by a leather thronged scourge I cannot help but think that the authors intended this to be taken as a scene of appalling horror, especially considering that Hank is lashed five times by each of the five Committee members. It's an unexpectedly brutal scene that had me gasping. When it's all over and Hank is about to leave the tavern backroom where he received his beating he breaks down and weeps uncontrollably. It's a mix of horror and sympathy that I was both unprepared for and a bit awed by.

Death on the Outer Shoal was published by E. P. Dutton as part of their "Dutton Clue" imprint.  Included in this book is one of the standard "Stop!" pages that challenge the reader to pause, collect up all their notes (if they made any), think over all the clues presented and try to solve the mystery.  This is, in fact, a rare example of a very fairly clued mystery from Dutton. Some clues are subtle, others blatant and it might be rather easy for a veteran detective novel reader to weed out the correct killer from all the suspects. But the full truth may also come as a real surprise when all is revealed. The ultimate Justice is even a bit ironic with a subversive rather than an Old Testament touch.

Click to enlarge

QUOTES:  Widow Grimshaw: "Am I the only one who speaks to the [Portuguese]? Is Hammerhead the only spot for meeting and talking--and planning? The world is wide. Thieves find straight paths to each other."

"If I but knew [who killed my husband]!" Her old face became hideous with hate. "On him I would heap my curses--curses, not of words, but of blood--and Death!"

Soon the little harbor echoed with the throb of engines, and the Hammerhead fleet of trawlers was once more on its straggling way toward the fishing grounds. In each boat was a man dreading the night, whose dark, uncertain hours stretched ahead of him, and yet glad that here, at last, was work to be done.

And in each home on the sea-beaten island, an anxious woman wished silently that her man was safe within doors, and prayed that he might come back to her with the next day's sun.

THE AUTHORS:  I could find little biographical data on Anne Fuller and Marcus Allen. I have an inkling that they were perhaps married, but that may not be true at all. My only clues come from the dedication pages in their two mystery novels. Their first mystery Blood on Common Ground (1933) is dedicated to Al Fuller, clearly a relative of Anne's (husband? son? brother?) and also the artist who drew and signed the frontispiece map of Hammerhead Island that illustrates this post. However a bigger clue appears on the dedication page of this novel which reads "To Louise and Richard Connell."  Could that be the same Richard Connell who wrote the iconic short story "The Most Dangerous Game" I asked myself?  Indeed it is.

Richard Connell was married to Louise Herrick Fox in 1919. Louise, like her husband, was a writer and at one time a playwright. Later she became involved in the publishing world first as a proofreader and then a prominent editor for Condé Nast publications. When Connell decided to give up his amazingly prolific career as a short story writer (close to 200 stories appeared between 1929 to 1940) he opted as many writers did for the life of a Hollywood screenwriter. He and Louise eventually settled in Beverly Hills.

Could Fuller and Allen have been part of the movie scene during the 1930s when this book was written? When Connell was just reaching the height of his popularity as a writer of scripts and stories for moviemakers?  Death on the Outer Shoal certainly has a very cinematic feel with its dramatic fishing and boating scenes, the setting of the island itself including the lighthouse and cliffsides, the often heightened dialogue, and an exciting courtroom-like finale. It could've made a gripping movie and might have been written as a scenario prior to it becoming a novel. Anyone who has knowledge about these writing duo your input will be greatly appreciated for filling in the missing details.

FFB: The Deaths of Lora Karen - Roman McDougald

THE STORY: Philip Cabot, private investigator, has been asked to the home of Charles and Lora Karen at the behest of the wife. She believes that someone is trying to kill her, but is being stubbornly secretive about it all. She promises to reveal everything to Cabot at the dinner party that will take place in the book's first chapter. But before she has a chance to talk about anything the killer strikes -- and with abandon. Lora Karen is poisoned, a maid is strangled, and Dr. Morley, who is called to try and save Mrs. Karen, is bashed on the head. Someone also seems to be hiding somewhere on the Karen estate -- someone who seems to be able to change shape from a large and powerful monstrous size according to the terrified maid to someone who wears shoes the size of a child's like the pair found mysteriously placed in a guest's bathroom. Cabot unravels all the mysteries and uncovers a group of criminals in the Karen household, including the murderer who devised The Deaths of Lora Karen (1944).

THE CHARACTERS: Cabot seems to be modeled on Philip Marlowe but which private eye of the 1940s wasn't? Unlike Marlowe, however, Cabot doesn't go it alone down those mean streets. He has a medium-sized agency in New York with not only a faithful and attractive secretary (Lib Terry), but at least five named operatives who are assigned the footwork to help with the Karen case. It's rare in crime fiction of this Golden Age to come across a private detective who actually runs a real agency with a full staff. Nero Wolfe is probably the best known of this type, but I also know of Carney Wilde created by Bart Spicer who also had a agency that grew in size and reputation over the course of the series. Still, most fictional private eyes go it solo or have only one partner.

In a nod to the Van Dine and Queen books there is also Jefferson Boynton, the Manhattan D.A. who can't resist rushing to the latest murder scene and getting his hands dirty in the police investigation. His wife (who is also Cabot's sister) is always complaining how Boynton is never home, always thinking of the next great case that he can add to his prosecution successes, always speeding away to be first on the scene of a grisly murder. She knows that her husband treats murder as a career stepping stone, and talks of how he hopes the next murder will be sensational enough in the news and can be used as political leverage when elections hit the calendar. We get more of Boynton and Cabot as detective than we do of Captain Kroll and his squad of o policemen. That Boynton is also Cabot's brother-in-law makes for an interesting dynamic with argumentative fireworks enlivening the investigation as the case gets more complicated.

Similar to Chandler novels the Karen family is wealthy and chockful of secrets and deception. Charles Karen is a boxing promoter who married into his first wife's well-to-do family. Lora Karen was his daughter's governess during that first marriage. The house party also sports Maurice Bode, a drop dead gorgeous portrait painter described as looking more like an artist's model than a painter; his girlfriend Avis Searcy, seductive and enigmatic; Felicie Karen, a teen-aged vamp typical of the hardboiled genre; Lora's money grubbing parasite of a cousin Barry Duret; and Roger Niehl, a waspish lawyer who deals with the Karens' legal and financial business. No wealthy household is without its loyal servants either. Jaffre is the butler willing to protect his employer at great risk and Josephine is Lora's easily terrified maid convinced a monster invaded the home and nearly strangled her to death.

Dr. Paul Morley shows up when a doctor is needed to try and save Lora after she is poisoned. The maid thinks Morley is Lora's physician, but it turns out he is her psychoanalyst who gave up his practice as a G.P. when he discovered being a disciple of Freud was more lucrative. When Lora dies Morley is one of the key figures who helps unravel the superstitious, highly imaginative woman's troubled life weeding out her fantasies from the truth. He is instrumental in aiding Cabot uncover the identity of a blackmailing fiend who may have turned killer.

Cabot not only needs to figure out who was threatening and blackmailing Lora Karen, but who eventually succeeded in her poisoning her, who broke into the house attempting to steal her jewelry, who left the tiny shoes in Avis' bathroom, who attacked Josephine and Dr. Morley. Before the case is finally disentangled and all the culprits are un discovered there will be two more violent attacks and one gruesome murder.

INNOVATIONS: Some of you may have heard of or read the new sensation mystery novel The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, a weird fantasy/sci-fi/detective/horror novel mishmash that I don't think much of unlike the rest of the world.  Unlike that book the deaths of the victim here are not fantastically repeated over and over.  In fact the title McDougald invented is more of a metaphor for the attempts made on Lora Karen's life and the other attempts made on the lives of others who knew Lora. Death seemed to haunt this woman, both in the present and the past. Of all these "deaths" it is the demise of the first Mrs. Karen that will figure prominently in the solution of the various mysteries.

McDougald has a good feel for Gothic atmosphere. The opening of the book is notably creepy with a pervading aura of paranoid delusions. Lora is presented as a wildly imaginative woman, ever fearful, and yet canny of her relatives and their underhanded motives. The night of Lora's poisoning is filled with violence and eerie events. Josephine seems to have been infected by her mistress' imagination and rants about the shape and form of her attacker. Evidence of an escape via a vine-covered trellis by a bedroom window with balcony shows that someone descended, but no large "monster" could have done so without tearing the vines from the trellis. No heavy footprints are found on the damp ground either. McDougald does a fine job of creating genuine mystery, adding an element of fantastic horror into the novel. When Cabot starts following leads about the possibility of a dwarf or midget being the criminal the novel enters the realm of the grotesque. Poe would have been proud of those sections.

The most striking and inventive part of the book for me was the number of crimes and the nontraditional aspect of multiple criminals. Gritty hardboiled private eye fiction tends to veer away from the formulae of the traditional detective story in which the finale unveils only one culprit responsible for all the crimes. Realism plays a big part is this subgenre and it shouldn't be too shocking to a reader to discover that the blackmailer and the murderer are not the same person. The sheer number of villains unmasked in this book, nevertheless, was indeed a surprise. Four separate endings follow in quick succession, almost as if each incident was being treated as a short story and then all of them were linked to form a novel.

QUOTES: There was a ghost of a smile on Mrs. Karen's own face [in the photo] as he came nearer, and the vision of that set and lifeless pleasantness was as subtly disturbing to the senses as though the photographer in some strange way had anticipated the embalmer.

"Don't tell me he skipped out! Incredible!" roared Boynton. "How could he have disappeared under the very eyes of your men?"
"You'll have to ask them," [said Captain Kroll]. "All I can say is that I ought to have had better sense than to send three Irishmen to a funeral."

THE AUTHOR: Roman Miller McDougald (1905-1960) wrote six crime novels, three of which feature his private investigator Philip Cabot. According to a living relative who left a comment at the Mystery*File blog, McDougald was known as Miller by his friends and family. He also apparently worked in Hollywood from information I found in a brief newspaper article I dug up on the internet. An attempt to confirm this at imdb.com was fruitless; there is no listing under either name in that database. Perhaps none of the movies or TV shows he worked on gave him credit in the final production. I was unable to find anything else about him.

Philip Cabot Private Eye Novels
The Deaths of Lora Karen (1944)
The Whistling Legs (1945)
The Blushing Monkey (1953)