FRIGHT FEST #4: The Shadow Guest - Hillary Waugh

In the 1970s there was an explosion of Gothic suspense novels mostly appearing in mass market paperbacks. You didn't have to go to a bookstore to find any of them, you could buy these book in Woolworth's, local drug stores, newsstands and train station book stalls. They were ubiquitous. To some extent they still are as I find them by the dozens at library fundraising sales, used bookstores and estate sales.  The stories were even more formulaic than traditional detective novels with the exception of the addition of supernatural or quasi-supernatural incidents. In the better neo-Gothics the supernatural events are genuine but in the majority of them they are always rationalized.  The formula can be summed up in a quip that is attributed to Donald E. Westlake (or was it Elmore Leonard? or Mike Avallone? or who?) that goes like this: "A gothic is a book where the girl gets the house."

In The Shadow Guest (1971) Hillary Waugh inverts the entire formula by first making the lead character and narrator a man. Howard Whelan, a successful architect, finds himself in charge of a large building project in England. He takes his new bride Angela with him to London. He hopes her odd depressive persona will come to life in a new setting. Back in New York she was under the care of a psychiatrist who approves of a new setting as part of her recuperation. Angela is the woman in peril of the novel, but as she is not the narrator  and we see her only through her husband’s eyes the story is unusual and rises above the standard neo-Gothic.

Waugh even starts his book with an homage to a HIBK narrator. Many sentences in the opening paragraph start "If only I had..." The terrible things we are about to read about might never have occurred if Howard had seen everything the way it really was. I smiled at this opening paragraph and dismissed it as a semi-parody of the entire genre. Big mistake. Howard was telling the truth and the reader really should be paying attention to how the story unfold.

Cliffside home reminiscent 
of the Whelan's house
(© William Dax/SWNS)

Shortly after they arrive in England Howard has a heart attack. His doctor tells him he has been working too hard and stress led to his attack. He loses leadership over his project, is told to take a hiatus from work. It is even suggested that he leave London and find a home far away from hectic urban life. Angela is excited to look for a new home and she finds one in a lonely house built by a forlorn seacoast. With much cajoling and prodding Howard gives in to her desire to move in to Heather Cottage. The girl gets the house, just as we expect, and very early on. But not without a load of trouble.

Because -- of course -- Heather Cottage is a house with a past. Soon Angela is seeing visions, hearing horrible sounds, and is drawn to a ghostly apparition that appears in the yard outside. But Howard also sees the apparition and hears the terrible sounds. He does his best to assuage her fears.  But if he is also seeing and hearing these supposed hallucinations is there a real ghost at work? One night they hear what sounds like a car crash but when they go out to explore they find no sign of a car wreck.  All the more disturbing because they know that a few years ago a car came careening down the hill above their house and smashed through a guardrail plummeting over the cliff and ending in a fiery crash on the rocky shore below. Are the Whelans being haunted by that crash and is the apparition a ghost of one of the crash victims?

Waugh tells a creepily effective and engaging story loaded with suspense.  Nearly everyone they meet has some inside dope on Heather Cottage's previous occupants or something about the horrible car crash. Slowly but surely we are provided with just enough information to keep reading in order to find out what actually happened. Questions were flooding my mind as I tore through this book. Did someone survive that crash? Is there a bizarre vendetta taking place? And why?

Added to the weird haunting and the riddle of the car crash is Beverly Gaines, the Whelan's young housekeeper, who may have a psychic power. The first day at Heather Cottage she is frightened by a vision in the sitting room and flees in terror. It takes some time to calm her down and when she re-enters the house it's as if nothing ever happened. She has no memory of being frightened or seeing anything strange. When Howard questions some of the locals about Beverly he discovers she is shunned because of her deadly premonitions. She had a similar vision on the road where the car crash happened. Howard is warned that if Beverly saw something in their house they should be careful because it is a sure sign that someone will die there soon.

Then there is the mysterious painter who lives in a house on the hill above the Whelan’s new home. He is reclusive, distrustful of almost everyone, and won't allow anyone in his home. Howard meets him in an odd scene that leaves the reader thinking something very strange is up with the hermit-like artist.

The rear cover of my paperback edition of The Shadow Guest  quotes a newspaper review that states "...At no point does the enthralled reader have the slightest suspicion about the horrendous climax." For once, that's no exaggeration. When the utterly unexpected twist occurred I shouted aloud, "WHAT?!" It is a near brilliant achievement.  Although the ending seems rushed and overloaded with twists and double twists, all is explained cleverly and succinctly. It was all there if we -- like Howard -- had only been paying attention to what was actually happening.

As the only example I know of a neo-Gothic told from a male viewpoint that simultaneously subverts and pays homage to all the conventions and motifs of this genre The Shadow Guest succeeds magnificently. I was truly impressed with this book. Waugh was so successful with this book he went on to write a small batch of true Gothic novels that were published under his female pseudonym "Elissa Grandower."  I also read The Secret Room of Morgate House (1977) to see if he was as innovative with the genre. Sadly, it's too much of a clone of the hundreds of books that cling to the Gothic suspense formula. The Shadow Guest because it basically is an inversion of a neo-Gothic is far more original, innovative and --dare I say it?-- ingenious in its conception.

FIRST BOOKS: Madam Will Not Dine Tonight - Hillary Waugh

THE STORY: Valerie King is having a dinner party. She's invited eight guests, among them Sheridan Keith Wesley, a private detective. Included in Wesley's invitation is a $100 retainer.  He's being hired to attend the party...and do what, he wonders?  When he arrives he discovers a motley group of people none of whom claim to know one another.  But although all the guests showed up, their hostess did not.  Wesley and his wife Diane decide to do a tour of the grounds and they find Valerie's naked body in a remote forested area, her clothing torn and shredded all around her. She has been brutally stabbed and is very dead.

THE CHARACTERS: Madam Will Not Dine Tonight (1947) ultimately is the story of a blackmailer.  This is no real spoiler for it's discovered rather quickly that Valerie King gathered all her guests at the dinner party to reveal all their secrets. Shortly after the discovery of Valerie's body Wesley and the police open up a safe in her study and find all sorts of thing one wouldn't ordinarily stow away in a locked safe. Among the items are a framed photograph of two young men dating back to the late 1920s, a pile of letters, and a marriage license. Wesley figures that he was hired to make sure Valerie was protected from harm at the party. But someone caught onto to her plans much more quickly than she had thought out.

The suspects are quite a bunch of oddballs with some of them rather reprehensible.  The guests at the party eventually become the prime suspects and include: James Godfrey, a criminal lawyer who loves to talk about classic painters and their work; Gloria Van Ryne, a contemptible young woman living in the fast lane with a rap sheet for public drunkenness and illegal gambling who thinks she's above everyone else in the world; Charley Cromwell,  described as a "22 year -old playboy and heir to millions"; Jimmy Burns, a gossip columnist with zero journalistic ethics who stops at nothing to get the story he wants; the Webbs, husband & wife servants, who claim to know nothing of their employer Valerie King; the Webb’s suicidal son in love with Valerie; and a middle-aged couple, the Hammits — the husband in "big steel",  the wife a complacent theater fan recently having seen Harvey — seem to be completely innocuous until Wesley finds an incriminating photo that uncovers deep dark secrets

Wesley and his wife are a likeable duo and it's clear they are yet another married couple in a long line of cocktail loving, smart aleck husband & wife teams all of whom descend from the movie versions of Nick and Nora Charles.  I couldn't get Myrna Loy out of my head every time Diana was in a scene with her husband. Her obsession with mixing drinks and cracking wise only underscored the Nora Charles analogy. Thankfully, by the midpoint all this nonsense disappears. It's fun and light-hearted to be sure, and Waugh's sense of humor is often bitingly witty, but it's hardly original. By the mid-1940s nearly every husband and wife sleuthing team from Pam and Jerry North to Jeff and Haila Troy to the suburban dullards created by Theodora DuBois (can't even remember their names) were all like this. It was only the final chapter during which Sheridan Wesley shows his intensely creative and thoroughly underhanded ingenuity that rescued this novel from being only mildly entertaining with a handful of interesting scenes.

INNOVATIONS: The most exciting part of this mystery novel can't be discussed in a review. Well, not in too much detail. Waugh inserted one of his most obvious clues early in the novel, but never returns to it until the final chapter.  He drops this clue in a casual manner but the action described is so obvious to any diehard mystery fan that it sticks out blatantly. This casual action of Sheridan Wesley's while he is examining the murdered woman's study clearly signifies an oft-used mystery novel plot motif.  I made a note of it immediately and kept waiting for the bomb to drop.  It never does until the final chapter.

The plot motif was already a cliche by the time Waugh's novel was published having turned up multiple times throughout the 1920s and 1930s in now classic mystery novels by such people as Ellery Queen (several times in both novels and stories), John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh.  I'm sure there are dozens of books by obscure writers that employed this plot gimmick, too. What makes Waugh's usage of such a cliche so innovative is the sly manner in which he has Wesley broach the topic while he is questioning all the suspects. Without ever once mentioning this aspect (basically a personality trait) he manages through clever questions to eliminate all but one person as the culprit. In the final chapter Wesley explains how he managed to bring up the topic and do it uniquely and subtly in each of his shared interrogations with Captain Slocum. I was flabbergasted at how this was accomplished using the "fair play" technique, completely unaware that Wesley, throughout the entire book, was very busy rooting out the one person with this trait. Waugh deserves a standing ovation for this aspect alone. For a writer's first detective novel it displays a truly stunning example of clever detective work.

THE AUTHOR:  Hillary Waugh (1920-2008) was born in Connecticut where he lived for most of his life. He graduated from Yale with a degree in art and upon graduation served in the Naval Air Corps during the final three years of WW2. While in the Navy he wrote and published Madam Will Not Dine Tonight. He went on to write two more private eye mystery novels featuring Sheridan Wesley then slowly moved away from standard P.I. mystery novels to suspense and police procedurals usually set in the suburbs of Connecticut, New York and other East Coast states. All of his books employ fair play techniques and some are stunningly plotted. His other best known series detective is Fred Fellows, a chief of police in a mythical Connecticut town, who appeared in eleven mystery novels. Waugh’s stand-alone detective novel Last Seen Wearing is considered a cornerstone in 20th century detective fiction.  It has been named as #12 of the best police procedurals ever written by the Crime Writer's Association and #6 in best police procedurals by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Last Seen Wearing was recently reprinted in the Library of Congress Crime Classics imprint series. While his fiction was never once nominated for an Edgar nevertheless Waugh received an Edgar nomination for non-fiction writing in 1991 for his textbook Hillary Waugh's Guide to Mysteries and Mystery Writing. He won the Grand Master Award from the MWA in 1989. Waugh was also the President of the MWA during 1969. And from 1971-1973 he served as First Selectman in his chosen hometown of Guilford, CT.  

IN BRIEF: Last Seen Wearing…- Hillary Waugh

College Girl Missing!

Three simple words that will turn many a head whether it be on a flyer taped to a street sign or emblazoned in 36 pt. type on a newspaper headline. It’s all too familiar to watchers of the nightly news and serves as tempting bait for TV producers looking to spike their ratings. A Massachusetts college girl goes missing in Last Seen Wearing… (1952) the novel that made book reviewers and crime fiction fans take notice of Hillary Waugh whose work previously consisted of a handful of private eye programmers and a couple of suspense novels.

Tired of books populated with dumb cops who are shown up by clever amateur sleuths and wisecracking private eyes Waugh set out to tell a realistic crime story that would reveal an accurate portrayal of how police collaborate. The result is a perfect blend of the traditional detective novel and the contemporary police procedural. Surprisingly, the book still holds up well probably due to Waugh’s choice to focus on a missing person case and setting his story in a college town.

College educated Sgt. Cameron taunts his superior officer Chief Frank Ford by tossing off "three dollar words" like picayune and clairvoyant just to aggravate his boss. Ford is an old school cop who firmly believes there is a boy at the bottom of Lowell Mitchell’s disappearance. Ford is also reminded of an unsolved case of a missing college girl dating back to 1937. Never found Ford believed she went to see a doctor for an abortion, she died on the table, and he disposed of the body. Ford spent a lot of time trying to prove his suspicions but never got enough physical evidence to arrest the doctor.

Still haunted by the case Ford can only think of the worst about young Lowell. Her wealthy and overly protective father insists she’s a good girl who never had a steady boyfriend and can’t imagine she was having sex with the few young men she dated. He has put out a reward for any information that will lead to finding her. Then her body is found washed up in some bushes along the shores of a river running through the campus. An autopsy shows that she was a few months pregnant. Turns out no one really knew Lowell as well as they thought -- not her family, not her roommates, nor the young men she dated. Only Lowell’s cryptic words written in her very frank diary will reveal the truth about her. Just as Chief Ford feared there is a man at the cause of it all. But which one of the many names mentioned in Lowell’s diary belongs to the man responsible?

This is one of those books that shows up on a lot of "Best of " lists and is highly regarded as a landmark novel in the history of the genre. Though writers like Helen Reilly in the US and Nigel Morland in the UK had been writing excellent examples of the police procedural during the 1930s and 1940s apparently it was Hilary Waugh who had readers and critics alike take notice of a new kind of detective novel that would appeal to modern readers. Last Seen Wearing… is indeed one of the best examples and while there isn't as much interesting detail about the relationships between the cops nor the dull bureaucracy that are both hallmarks of Jonathan Craig's 6th Precinct series Waugh still shows that police can be just as clever and insightful as the brilliant amateurs who dominated the genre in the pre-World War 2 era of the Golden Age. This is a highly recommended book for serious fans of the genre. And I think many seasoned writers being published today might learn a thing or two by studying this lean and trenchant book.

IN BRIEF: The Eighth Mrs. Bluebeard – Hillary Waugh

The Eighth Mrs. Bluebeard (1958) is a crime novel that mixes a suspense novel with a caper novel. Basically it tells of a sting operation set up to trap a murderer defrauding a company out of thousands of dollars in life insurance policies. J .B. Stanford, president of his own insurance agency, begins to suspect multiple instances of insurance fraud when he sees a series of claims being paid out on the wives of different men all of whom are named Andrew. The big red flag, besides the highly unlikely coincidence of the first name, is that five of the six wives of these various Andrews died from accidental deaths in the great outdoors, and the repetition of the types of accidents (drowning in a canoe accident, falls from cliff sides) further sets off alarm bells.

Stanford arranges a mindboggling scheme involving Jack Graham, a top salesman; Charles Miles, a private detective; and Gene Taylor, the woman hired to catch Andrew Fisher’s eye as his next wife and future victim. A prized stamp collection is also part of the bait when the team discover that Fisher is a rabid philatelist eager to acquire rare stamps. They arrange that Miss Taylor play the part of a recently widowed woman who inherited her husband’s extremely valuable stamp collection to entice Fisher into meeting her. From there the story becomes a game of cat and mouse between the insurance agency team versus the wily wife killer.

How likely this would happen in the real world is debatable. To me all sorts of ethical issues arise, not the least of which is corporate vigilantism, 1950s style. But as a dramatic treatment of crime Waugh pulls off a couple of neat tricks in what might otherwise have been a routine B movie plot. I also liked that Gene Taylor was not an actress for hire as one might expect, but a desperate woman who needed money fast and was sort of a thrill-seeking tough broad who didn’t mind the element of danger involved. The showdown at a lakeside resort offers up a couple of unexpected twists when it appears the Andrew Fisher is not the only villain Jack Graham has to contend with.

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Reading Challenge update:  Golden Age card, space O2 - “Number or quantity in book title”

FFB: The Late Mrs. D - Hillary Waugh

Let's get a few things out the of the way first. 1. Hillary is not a woman. 2. He is not related to that other androgynously named author who wrote Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, The Loved One, etc. He was an American crime fiction writer, winner of the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America and a former president of the same group. None of his books are in print and that's a crime. He's best known for his engaging, well plotted police procedurals like The Late Mrs D (1962). But much to my surprise it also turned out to be a top notch courtroom mystery. It was an excellent starting point to discover this underappreciated and nearly forgotten writer.

I picked the book for it's unusual title and the fact that it got a fairly good write up by Barzun and Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime. I knew only the basic plot taken from this brief blurb inside the Crime Club edition I found: "An anonymous note and $50,000 policy on her life suggested that Celia Donaldson had not died of an abscessed liver, as the medical report indicated. This became a case for Chief Fred C Fellows when the coffin of The Late Mrs. D was exhumed and opened -- and her body wasn't in it." How can you resist that tantalizing hint at a John Dickson Carr style impossible crime? Well, turns out that blurb is a bit misleading. There was a body in the coffin; it just wasn't Celia's. But there's so much more to this well constructed, surprise filled, highly original spin on the well known "suspected wife killer" plot.

From the moment the First Selectmen takes an anonymous letter to Chief Fellows to the legal wizardry displayed in the courtroom climax The Late Mrs. D is one of those rare crime novels that continues to impress and dazzle the reader with unusual characters, unexpected plot developments, and some ingeniously planted clues. On the surface it seems like just another police procedural set in a suburban Connecticut. As the story progresses Waugh reveals some insightful observations about non-urban life in the 1960s. Fellows and his officers work in a small town police station where keeping the peace is largely confined to speeding motorists and teenage vandals. The cops engage in cribbage competitions during the work day to pass the time in the largely crime-free town of Stockford. Then what seems to be a natural death is tainted by murderous suspicions with the arrival of the anonymous letter. And the investigation begins.

The story incorporates the usual ingredients of a police procedural like the bureaucracy involved in running the department and the politics of dealing with a D.A. more interested in his re-election than prosecuting. We get not one but two autopsies, and two inquests due to a bizarre switching of bodies. And the added bonus of a courtroom sequence that rivals anything Erle Stanley Gardner wrote. I suspect Waugh might have been heavily influenced by that famous TV series when he wrote this because the finale had me gasping and laughing in amazement. It seemed as if I suddenly tuned into an episode of Perry Mason with the melodramatic accusations, courtroom trickery and one of the most outrageous courtroom confessions in print.

The characters are insightfully realized portraits of small town Connecticut. They certainly ring true to me as I grew up in a Connecticut town very much like Stockford (we even had a First Selectmen instead of a mayor). The charming Dr. Donaldson who has only female patients can do no wrong. He reminds me of an American version of Dr. Dysert in Joan Fleming's The Deeds of Dr. Deadcert reviewed here last month. There is his mousy maid Kathleen Dunkirk whose closely guarded secret will eventually explode the case; Kathleen's smarmy philandering salesman husband; Miss Barnes, a prim and proper nurse as equally devoted to Dr. Donaldson as she is to her profession. Then there is David Johns, Celia's brother. He and his parents opposed Celia's marriage to the doctor. He has little good to say about the doctor accusing him of being both an abortionist and a wife killer. Donaldson has been married three times in five years, each of his wives dying shortly after he married them.

Though Fellows doesn't care for the acrimonious tone David Johns uses in making his case it's hard for him to ignore what seems obvious. When the evidence is sorted out the police, D.A. and coroner relent and end up agreeing with Johns. Donaldson is arrested and put on trial. His wily defense attorney has a few tricks up his sleeve and it seems as if the doctor may be acquitted. Chief Fellows is troubled, however, by some inconsistencies in the case. One simple sentence uttered on the witness stand gives him the final piece of evidence he needs to unmask the real murderer of Celia Donaldson. And when it comes there is quite a fireworks display.

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Reading Challenge update: Silver Age card, space I6 - "Book with woman in title"