IN BRIEF: A Silver Spade - Louisa Revell

Julia Tyler is reluctant to accept the job as teacher of Latin at Camp Pirate Island in Maine. She’s been approached by the camp’s founder and owner, Mrs. Turner, to fill in for the previous Latin teacher who’s unexpectedly up and quit. Was it the exceptionally intelligent girl, one with an IQ of 140, that scared away the teacher? No, it was the rash of strange anonymous letters with hints of violence that sent her packing. Anonymous letters? Julia asks for more details and once she has been filled in she can’t pack quickly enough and find the first plane from Virginia to Maine. Retirement can wait. Her inner detective smells a mystery that needs to be solved. A Silver Spade (1950) is Julia's third adventure and perhaps the most satisfying of the entire series.

The title takes as its inspiration a song lyric. In the setting of the summer camp Revell indulges us with frequent scenes in which the girls let loose in a rousing chorus of a campfire song. One of these songs is adapted from a blues tune with a variety of lyric alterations. Julia Tyler hears the words “You can dig my grave with a silver spade/Cause I ain’t gonna be here no longer” and is chilled to the bone. The melody is quite pretty but the macabre lyrics and sentiment leave a lot to be desired and will foreshadow the deadly events to come. Digging has indeed been going on in secret at night

Accusations of Nazi sympathies, covert nighttime activities that suggest espionage, a member of the staff who was a member of the French resistance -- all play a part in the exciting plot. No one is spared scrutiny, no one is ever considered off limits. At one point a group of girls are considered as having committed murder. This is the kind of mystery novel I truly enjoy and the kind that is all too rare.

As I chronologically work my way through the Julia Tyler detective novels by Louisa Revell I find that each book improves upon the previous one. By the time I got to this third title I found the one that I will heartily recommend if you are interested in reading this writer. Everything about it surpasses the previous two. From the highly unusual setting of an academic summer camp for girls to the exciting finale reminiscent of a Christianna Brand novel. As in most of Brand's mysteries, and sometimes Ellery Queen, several suspects are accused of being the culprit until someone who played an exceedingly minor role in the book reveals all in a solution that makes such perfect sense it should have been obvious from the start to any astute reader.

FFB: The Woman in Black - Leslie Ford

THE STORY: Grace Latham is invited to a Washington dinner hosted by Dorothy and Theodore Hallet. Theodore is grooming his employer Enoch B. Stubblefield, a millionaire industrialist, for candidacy for President. At the dinner is young Susan Kent who just the night before had approached Grace for help in a predicament. She has been unwisely accepting money as a "subsidy" for her husband's chemical research into synthetic rubber after she gave two influential businessmen some of her husband's papers meant to be destroyed. Among other guests at the dinner party is Mrs. Lawrence Taylor, the mysterious woman in black of the title. She has been stalking Stubblefield and harassing him for a wrong done to her in the past. The next day Mrs. Taylor is found murdered in a boarding house. More death follows as secrets are revealed, Susan Kent's compromising of her husband's research looms large over the story, and misguided good intentions turn very deadly.

THE CHARACTERS: Grace Latham is on her own in The Woman in Black (1947). I believe it is her only solo adventure. Colonel Primrose, her usual cohort in crime solving, is recuperating from the measles. Sergeant Buck, however, is there as Grace's substitute Watson, doling out advice and keeping her posted on the Colonel's recovery. The supporting cast of suspects and victims is a lively lot ranging from Milton Minor, an arrogant writer working on Stubblefield's biography; Dorothy Hallet, the epitome of a Washington society hostess; Freddie Mollinson, an ugly depiction of a vicious old queen who plies his trade in gossip and rumor; Susan Kent who at first seems like a vapid wife with no sense at all, but in the end proves to be a sympathetic portrait of a woman who loves not too wisely but too well; and Stubblefield himself. He's an interesting depiction of a megalomaniac businessman with his eyes on everyone's prize and whose charm and unflappable persona are a façade for ruthless ambition and self-interest. I couldn't help but draw comparisons between Stubblefield and a certain member of the current US Presidential candidate race. I wonder if Ford based him on some prominent industrialist of the post WW2 era. The complications involving Susan's indiscreet handling of her husband's not so well guarded research into synthetic rubber polymers, the politics of a pre-presidential campaign, and the more familiar subplot of Mrs. Taylor, her daughter and their ruined life that Stubblefield was responsible for all blend into a fine mystery novel with some very good detection.

INFLUENCE & INNOVATION: The story for me was unexpectedly engaging for its depiction of the Washington social scene. It's also a good example of how Ford's style and choice of subject matter influenced Ellen Hart Smith who wrote under the pseudonym Louisa Revell, a writer I've just discovered and have been writing about on this blog. Julia Tyler, Smith's character, is almost a clone of Grace Latham (albeit a much older Grace) in attitude, speech, and narrative voice. This is only the second Ford novel I've read and it vastly differs in tone and treatment from The Clue of the Judas Tree, the first book of hers I read. That other book, a very early non-series mystery, resembles more of a woman in peril mystery along the lines of Mignon Eberhart. Apparently the early Ford mystery novels are more in line with the HIBK subgenre. Not so in the case of this well done, smart and humanistic detective novel.

There is some business with a gun disappearing and reappearing that reminded me of the literal gunplay in the Perry Mason novels. No real knowledge of ballistics or guns is needed as in Gardner's books. But it got to be a bit ridiculous with finding the gun, hiding the gun, retrieving the gun, and trying to get rid of it by dumping it on other suspects.

QUOTES: This book often had a wicked sense of humor.

"I could imagine what Dorothy must have been feeling just then, as I can imagine how an architect must feel standing by while somebody picks up the foundation of a house he's built and gives the whole thing a heave-ho into the open sea."

"I suppose I have a the all-time low in batting averages on figuring the correct time to open my mouth and the correct time to keep it shut."

"...the advice I was trying to give him didn't have the chance of the proverbial snowball on the steps of Capitol Hill..."

Mrs. Stubblefield (an occultist and astrology nut): "Your aura was a lovely blue last night. Now it's yellow."
Grace: "That's the jaundiced view of life I'm taking at the moment."

EASY TO FIND? Yes, indeed if you like hunting the world of used books. No modern reprints or reissues exist. Thanks to her unfortunate and ill-deserved reputation for being un-PC Leslie Ford will probably never be reprinted unless a real smart and courageous indie press decides to revive her. And I think she should be. There are multiple paperback editions (I counted four) as well as three hardcover editions of this particular title. Prices range from $2 for a reading copy of the later Dell paperback to $40 for a US 1st edition with a dust jacket. All very reasonable prices, I'd say and some are outright steals. I love the dust jacket for the UK edition! I may just buy that copy myself.

This was such a nice surprise after all I've read about Ford and her supposedly snobbish view of life in Washington and all the nonsense of her being racist. True she can't resist having Lilac, Grace's smart as a whip housekeeper talk in that insulting Butterfly McQueen dialect, but there is nothing at all racist about Ford's worldview. Snobby sophistication as well as outrageous hubris goes hand in hand with the Washington elite now as much as it did then. That hasn't changed at all. But her treatment of the middle class and working class characters, in this book at least, comes off more fair minded and compassionate than how she feels about the arrogant and ambitious characters of Washington's upper strata. Milton, Freddie and Stubblefield are actually more villainous to Ford than the murderer! And for me Lilac is a breath of fresh air and a force of common sense in this book - despite her poor grammar.

IN BRIEF: No Pockets in Shrouds - Louisa Revell

THE STORY: Self-confessed murder addict Julia Tyler has been keeping a scrapbook of interesting murder cases. She spies in one of her newspaper clippings a photo of an acquaintance and she takes advantage of that friend's open invitation to visit her and nose around in the murder. The story takes her to Louisville, Kentucky. Seems a butler was poisoned in the household of a wealthy Kentuckian and no one seems to know why he was killed. Julia thinks perhaps the patriarch was the intended target. Sure enough murder happens again while she is doing her Jane Marple impression. Involved inquest, suspicious relatives, plots and stratagems, and Revell's arch humor make for an engaging often very funny detective novel.

QUOTES: “It isn’t that I’m not scared to death; I am. The trip we took to New York scared me so I didn’t think I’d live to get there. But I did, in exactly one hour and seventeen minutes, and it taught me a lesson. You can stand almost anything for an hour and seventeen minutes.”

Her opinion of a tramp committing the butler's murder:
“A tramp on the fourth floor of a Louisville townhouse, especially anno Domini 1945 when -- whatever the other ills of our country -- tramps are as extinct as the American buffalo!”

On taking advantage of her friend’s gift for gab and asking prying questions about the murder:
“Charlotte was like the husbands who never dream their wives have married them for money.”

Real murder vs. fictional murder:
“That’s why for every fantastically reasoned murder book there are a dozen about rich people killed before they can change their wills. Fantasia makes interesting reading sometimes, but the old moth-eaten plots are real.”

Her instant dislike of Dr. Jordan:
“I admitted [I was a friend of the family], and added “Idiot” under my breath. Who did he think I was, the paperboy?”

SOME SOUTHERN IDIOMS: Title of the book comes from a Southern Black aphorism:
“[Gus] thought it was fine for [Breckenridge] to leave money to the church or the university library and the charities he was interested in: ‘There ain’t no pockets in shrouds, and the best pocket to leave your earthly substance in is the pocket of the Lord.’ said Gus to Breckinridge just before someone poisoned him.”

“Aunt Charlotte would have had a duck with lavender feathers if I’d stuck my nose out of the family vault.”

Isn't that bizarre? My parents used to say “Don't have a conniption fit”. In the 70s my friends and I used to say "Don't have a cow, man. Lighten up." I've read similar things like “have kittens” to express the same thing. All versions of a hyperbole for "being upset". But "having a duck with lavender feathers"? That one cracked me up.

THINGS I LEARNED: In my first blog post about Julia Tyler I mentioned the large part of the novel devoted to the toxic properties of sodium fluoride which was alternately fascinating and horrifying. Click here if you missed that post or are interested in knowing about that.

Hattie Carnegie, a popular clothing designer who I had never heard of, apparently is credited with inventing the “head to toe” designer look. She mass produced not only ready-to-wear designer clothing but various accessories meant to go with her clothing. In the long run she became best known for the accessories like her costume jewelry and hats rather than her clothing. Most of her clothes seem to be of the "sensible fashions" variety. But I did find some photos from vintage fashion magazines that seem fairly glamorous for the period like the one over there on the right.

Revell makes a big deal about the Kentucky Derby not being held in May for the first time since 1875. But this is wrong. It *was* held in May; on May 5, 1945 to be precise. There were times when it was held in June but every year during WW2 it was held in May. I have no idea what she was thinking or why she would make a statement so false, especially since this book wasn’t published until 1948.