MOONLIGHTERS - Lesley Frost, the Poet's Daughter

Part of discovering so-called forgotten writers and their books is that the discovery is actually more of a recovery. These books already exist and the people who wrote them may have been forgotten by the mystery reading public but often they are actually renowned. Witness Lesley Frost, whose only foray into adult mystery writing is Murder at Large. At the time of the book's publication she was known as a former employee of the Publisher's Association, an airplane factory worker during the summer and fall of 1918, and spent six months in the Hampshire Bookshop in Northampton, Massachusetts. All this according to an author bio sketch on the rear flap of the DJ for her first novel.  She also mentions that she opened her own bookstore in Pittsfield (also in Massachusetts) in 1924.  Her only book prior to the murder mystery was Come Christmas (1929), "a delightful anthology of Christmas songs, carols, poetry, prose and drama." But I don't think she was ever forgotten to many.  She was, after all, the eldest surviving child of America's renowned Poet Laureate, four time Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, the one and only Robert Frost.

But let's get to this rather remarkable and utterly forgotten detective novel. Murder at Large (1932) is first and foremost noteworthy for it's eerie similarities to a novel that would not appear for another seven years, one that would dominate mysterydom as a rule breaking, seminal work. Often imitated but never surpassed that book is And Then There Were None (1939).  I was astounded by the similarities in Frost's archly satiric and sophisticated murder mystery which in addition to an innovative plot is chockful of literary allusions from Shakespeare to Kipling, from Euripedes to S. S. Van Dine. She seemed to have prophesied Christie's novel in a completely different fashion as the skeletal framework of Bristow & Manning's The Invisible Host (1930) seemed to prophesy Christie's story of ten murderers who escaped justice and are doomed to be executed while they struggle to survive on a remote island.

Though Frost's host is hardly an anonymous voice imparting doom from a record player there is nevertheless a Judge present in the story. He is, in fact, the host of a similar dinner party. Bertrand Whittaker plans to expose a group of murderers by publishing his private diary in which he details the identities of seven different criminals and the murders they got away with. Shortly after reading out a passage in which he embarrasses one guest by pointing out his connections to gangsters the lights go out and the diary is stolen. Only hours later, someone is found stabbed to death. But surprisingly it is not Judge Whittaker. It is one of the guests. That one murder sets in motion a decimation plot as one by one guests begin to vanish or turn up dead, all done in by an efficient and clever murderer who uses a variety of brutal methods.

Though these guests are not housebound they are on an island -- Long Island, NY to be specific. As the bodies are discovered all over the house and grounds the level of fear and paranoia is handled almost as deftly and frighteningly as the Grand Dame did herself in her own version of a now overused plot motif. Two of the women characters have intriguingly presented solo chapters in which we get to see their nervous breakdowns and the aftermath of dealing with the exposure of their crimes. One of the women spends much of the book regretting her crime (she shot her fiancé because he wouldn't marry her even though she was pregnant), reliving her past and dwelling on it all morbidly.  It's all very similar to the way Vera Claythorne is plagued with guilt over the boy she let drown. 

 
One difference in Frost's book is that the police are summoned and descend upon the house. As they sort out who killed three guests in one hour and try to prevent further deaths (they don't -- three more die and one escapes death through sheer luck by the book's finale) the amateur sleuth Ordway Belknap does his best to guide the seemingly inept policemen headed by Lt. Det. Silas Berry and Sgt. Stebbins to the truth. Belknap is another Philo Vance clone, one of many who pop up in mystery fiction throughout the 1930s when Vance was the dominating amateur sleuth in popular culture. Erudite, condescending and inappropriately flippant in the face of violent death we are told in the very first sentence that Belknap is himself a former judge. Well, actually an ex-magistrate. He and Whitakker have not only a history in and out of the courtrooms they have a couple of secrets that several of the accused murderers are trying to uncover.

Though it may come across as a nightmarish thriller Murder at Large really does turn out to be a detective novel. Some fair play clueing turns up in some cleverly done passages and the book ends with a requisite twist in the finale, one perhaps that may not be too difficult to figure out by diehard detective novel fans.  Still, Frost manages to pull off the finale with panache and sardonic wit. The ultimate similarity to And Then There Were None will be found in the final pages which just like Christie's book comes from the writing of the judge character.  It is uncanny how much this book has in common with Agatha Christie's masterpiece. While not exactly on the same par for there are a couple of histrionic scenes, some stilted dialogue, and hand-wringing melodrama from the more hysterical characters, Murder at Large ought to be read by anyone who considers oneself a devotee of the Golden Age. I think it ought to be recognized for being more of a forerunner to Christie's seminal mystery than all the attention lavished on The Invisible Host which only has the anonymous host's voice on the record and several bizarre murders in common.  It's possible that Agatha read both books and took bits and pieces from both to come up with her own inimitable version.

Lesley Frost Francis Ballantine (1899-1983) was the oldest daughter of Robert Frost. Of his five children Lesley lived the longest. After the publication of her Christmas anthology and this murder mystery she turned to writing children's books and often lectured on English literature. Among her children's books are Digging Down to China, Not Really, and Going on Two. In 1969 she also published a memoir entitled New Hampshire's Child: The Derry Journals of Lesley Frost.  During WW2 she was named head of the U.S. Information Library in Madrid and 20 years later founded a Spanish language and culture school in La Granja where she had a home.  Most interestingly, in 1952 she co-founded a third national political party, the American Women's Party, meant to get women elected into policy-making positions in federal government. That same year she married her second husband Joseph Ballantine who was involved in foreign affairs in Asia. With her first husband she had two daughters: Elinor Wilber, a Connecticut state representative, and Dr. Lesley Francis. Lesley Frost died in Fairfield, CT at the age of 82.

EASY TO FIND?  There are several POD editions of Murder at Large offered for sale online.  I cannot vouch for any of these copies, most seem to be from Create Space, Amazon's POD service. One has an anime style illustration on the cover (rolling my eyes).  Three US 1st editions are offered online and priced a bit high despite the book's scarcity.

FIRST BOOKS: The Swan Island Murders - Victoria Lincoln

There is nothing more upsetting than falling for the hype on a book jacket. The Swan Island Murders (1930) with its striking Art Deco influenced illustration of a silhouetted damsel being threatened by claw-like hands and the promise of "mystery, horror and detection" was enough to lure me in. While there is plenty of mystery and a smattering of rudimentary detection on display there is little horror to thrill a 21st century reader.  This is a book of its age when its intended audience surely would've been thrilled by the exotic and bizarre plot elements but which led me to spend time on outside research as I found fault with the author's supposed arcane knowledge of Indian religion and mythology that dominates the story,

The story mostly involves the guests at an impromptu house party hosted by wealthy eccentric Nahum Gould, a collector of Indian esoterica and a variety of Southeast Asian artifacts. The rear of the book jacket leads one to believe that the poor souls stranded on Swan Island are at the mercy of a mad strangler. This is not the case. Two Portuguese immigrant workers are strangled over the course of the novel (so a partial truth) but none of them are major characters at the house party. Instead, the focused crime is that one of the guests is shot dead, a presumed suicide for much of the book. The editorial staff at Farrar & Rinehart seemed more intent on selling the book under false pretenses and playing up to the contemporary demand for sensational popular fiction.  Had they told the truth about the book they would've been "spoiling" the surprises. Of course, I think nothing of diving right and telling you that this book is really about abnormal psychology and monomania related to arcane Indian mythology and its effect on Indian criminal culture.

Connie Steel is our narrator very much modeled on a Mary Roberts Rinehart amateur female detective easily affected by eerie atmosphere and with a tendency to talk about madness far too often. Swan Island, as you might predict, is a fog enshrouded lonely place and Gould's mansion is an imposing and dreary, shadow-filled haven well suited for a reclusive eccentric obsessed with the Mysterious And Inscrutable East. Victoria Lincoln does an admirable job of laying on thick this atmosphere of dread signalling "horrible things to come" with typical HIBK prose like "...but that boat was to come and go again without carrying any one of us away from Swan Island." More typical are Lincoln's florid stylistic touches like this: "How dreadfully right I had been...when I had thought that all our proportions were chemically incorrect, and that some cataclysmic reaction was bound to take place."  This odd chemistry metaphor pops up two times later in the book. She heightens the mystery and terror when we learn that Nahum Gould is so fearful and paranoid he has turned the house into an impenetrable fortress. All the windows have steel frames, there is only a single key for every door lock in the place with no copies and only the butler Gomez or Gould's secretary Torres are allowed to keep these original keys. Gould himself keeps only the key to his bedroom which has a heavy oak and steel door, steel enmeshed windows and other security overkill enhancements making his bedroom more of a prison cell. He speaks in a hushed voice of keeping "It" out and is constantly on guard, especially at night .

Needless to say someone manages to kill the playwright John Parsons and as Connie and her fiance Edward Benedict soon discover the murderer can only be one of the four remaining guests, Gould, or one of his employees. Gomez has a son Joe with developmental delay who in true period fashion is referred to as "the idiot" throughout the novel. Though he is slow to comprehend anything asked of him Joe's father says the boy can have days when he is perfectly lucid. Joe is the first one suspected of being the mad strangler and also the shooter until the stunningly beautiful (she has to be, right?) Nana Moeller, a German actress about to appear in Parsons' latest play, insists that she knows John committed suicide. There is evidence to disprove this suicide theory and that the death is a cleverly covered up murder. Not the least of these clues is a blood stained book written in Urdu that has vanished from the library when Parsons was shot.

A blood stained book written in Urdu?!

This is the single most interesting facet of the novel. Not to mention Lincoln's most macabre and original touch. It will prove key to the solution of all that is baffling about the strangling murders as well as John Parsons' death. Unfortunately, the revelation in the final chapters is so far removed from a fair play traditional detective novel that it called to mind the most popular American detective of the era -- Philo Vance.  I'm sure Victoria Lincoln read her fair share of both Rinehart and Van Dine prior to writing her first mystery novel because apart from the Rinehart style narration, and the Rinehart-like emphasis on terror and madness infecting everyone, ultimately the book is an esoteric treatise much like a Philo Vance detective novel. Thankfully Lincoln spares us pedantic footnotes, but the final chapter is overloaded with arcane trivia about a criminal subculture that thrived in 19th century India. Sadly, the finale is also littered with misinformation and poorly Anglicized spellings of terms and mythological figures and haphazardly mixes fact and legend. I had to sort it all out in about 90 minutes of internet searches and reading up on the incarnations of Kali until I found Bhawani which is the modern spelling of what Lincoln renders in her novel as B'wannee. She also seems to believe that T'huggee (once again her odd spelling) is an actual religion rather than a criminal class.

Victoria Lincoln, age 26 (circa 1930)

THE AUTHOR: Victoria Lincoln (1904 - 1981) was born in Fall River, Massachusetts and claims (on her author bio on the DJ for this mystery novel) that as a child she managed to make the acquaintance of that town's most famous resident Lizzie Borden. She attended Radcliffe College and graduated in 1926. The same year she married her first husband Isaac Watkins who was a graduate student in fine art at Harvard. She had her first child, Penelope, with him. A few years after her first novel was published she divorced Watkins and in 1933 married Victor Lowe, professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.

Her New York Times obituary mentions only her mainstream novels and her non-fiction but not her debut novel, The Swan Island Murders, her first and only foray into mystery and thriller fiction. Among her other works are February Hill (1934) adapted for the stage by George Abbot under its new title The Primrose Path. In 1940 The Primrose Path was made into a movie starring Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea and Marjorie Rambeau who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as a mother who turns to prostitution to support her family. Lincoln's other fiction includes Grandmother & the Comet (1944), The Wind at My Back: Three Short Novels (1946), Celia Amberley (1949) and Out from Eden (1951). Notable among her non-fiction works are the Edgar Award winning biography/true crime work A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight (1967) and her last book on the life of St. Theresa of Avila. She lived with her husband Victor Lowe and her family in Baltimore until her death in 1981. 

MOONLIGHTERS: Collin Brooks - Journalist, Broadcaster, Writer of "Shockers"

Reporters always seem to be the best crime fiction writers. Collin Brooks is one of better journalists turned detective novelists that I've encountered in my vast reading of the genre.  His first "shocker" (as he preferred to call them) Mr. X was published in 1927. He joins the ranks of fellow Brits and former reports B.L. Farjeon and Edgar Wallace along with a slew of Americans like Lawrence Blochman, Daniel Mainwaring (aka "Geoffrey Holmes"), Dorothy B Hughes, and Deloris Stanton Forbes. The tradition of journalists who become successful crime fiction writers has continued to the present day with a slew of them often topping best seller lists like Laura Lippman and Michael Connelly. The combination of discipline for deadlines and interview skills must come in very handy when plotting a crime novel. And of course many of these journalists were crime reporters giving them insight into the workings of police procedure and the court system.

Found Dead (1930) was Brooks' sixth crime novel, a true detective novel unlike many of his earlier thrillers and introduced Oswald Swete McTavish, punningly referred to as "Oh Sweet McTavish" throughout the story. McTavish has many similarities to early 20th century amateur detectives and yet both adheres to and defies all traditions of the typical fictional sleuth of the era. He is independently wealthy, has held a variety jobs, and is highly eccentric in manner and speech.  The front cover of my reprint edition likens him to Sherlock Holmes, but McTavish is far from the egocentric dispassionate icon of detective fiction. On the contrary, McTavish is immensely likeable, witty, warm and generous in spirit. He is not without his moments of arrogance but they are infrequent and often tinged with a ironic humor.  One of the most unique aspects of this book is that McTavish discovers his skill in sleuthing in the moment and it develops over the course of this first book.  He is not an established inquiry agent, he decides to become one and enlists the help of two witnesses to a crime as his colleagues.

The book opens with a young women fixing her broken suspender (a stocking garter for us Yankees) on a sidewalk.  Our narrator, Armistead (no first name given) freezes on the sidewalk just behind her to admire the young woman's leg and her provocative pose.  As Armistead is eyeing the woman McTavish comes rushing out of a building and collides with him.  Just then the woman screams and come rushing at the the two men recovering from their crash and she grips both of them crying out "A dead man!" As she was adjusting her garter she has seen a dead body through the window of the basement.  This all happens within the first chapter and the action is non-stop from then on.

Amy Renton, the young woman, eventually is hired to be McTavish's secretary in his instant decision to become a private detective and Armistead is enlisted as his Watson. Both of them will have fine moments to show off their innate talents at detection.  Both are intelligently drawn characters with keen insights and understanding of criminal motives. Interestingly, Brooks has Armistead take over at the climax of the novel and travel to Barfield, a small town in Yorkshire, where many of the puzzling mysteries will finally be explained. Armistead has about four chapters of adventures on his own in which he meets a variety of people who speak openly and frankly ranging from a cheerful and garrulous travelling salesman to a stock in trade gossipy hotel maid.  He also meets and befriends a tobacconist, a barmaid, a junior reporter at the town's local newspaper and finally Amy Renton's mother.

It is, however, McTavish who is the star of the novel. His physical appearance is most striking, especially his large head and unusual facial features consisting of high forehead, long nose and jutting chin leading to a weird comparison to Punch from the famed puppet show. Later we learn that Inspector Ipps enjoys a relaxing hobby of making puppets. Allusions to Punch and his trickster ways involving the hangman puppet in the Punch and Judy shows crop up often.

One of McTavish's many side hustles is writing detective novels. He has published a handful of them using the pen name "Alfred Bruce."  His books are often referred to over the course of the novel. At one point Amy decides to read one and is appalled at the lurid and gruesome nature of the story making her wonder about the turn nature of O. Swete McTavish.  McTavish loves to ruminate about a case while wearing a fez (his thinking cap or sorts) and puffing on a porcelain pipe. He pontificates on a variety of topics -- often in an odd stream of conscience -- and somehow makes it all seem relevant to the strange murder of the man found garrotted in the basement.

Much of the first half of the novel is spent trying to ID the corpse who had no identification on him nor any laundry marks on his clothes. McTavish, to the surprise of everyone, predicts a second murder and when it happens not far from his home the police begin to suspect the eccentric detective as masterminding all the crimes. Amy even begins to suspect him and voices her fears to Armistead in a scene where she lucidly and logically explains exactly how all evidence seems to indicate McTavish is the killer. Inspector Ipps of Scotland Yard in charge of the case is also on the trail of McTavish.  Could our affable detective hero actually be a cruel and sadistic villain?

Found Dead is a corker of a novel. From the bizarre murder weapon to the highly unusual motive for the murders this book is teeming with innovation and excellent writing. Brooks has created vibrant characters, sparkling, often witty, dialogue and filled the book with action and unusual settings. One of the most outre scenes takes place in a Turkish bath just before Armistead sets out for Barfield. At the bath he is approached by a man who seems to be following him. The dialogue exchange is sprinkled with sinister innuendoes and the two men clad only in towels and sweltering in a sauna begin to see each other as adversaries. The stranger even hints to Armistead that a sauna is an excellent setting for the perfect murder -- isolated location, limited exits, steam acting a fog to obscure one's vision. It's the creepiest set piece of the novel. 

photo by Howard Coster, 1935
Courtesy of National
Portrait Gallery website

THE AUTHOR:  William Collin Brooks (1893-1959) was born and raised in north of England. After brief early careers in accounting and as a commercial traveller he took to journalism. In 1913 he founded the Manchester Press Agency and two years later joined the British Army. After his service in World War 1 he wrote for various newspapers in Liverpool, Yorkshire and London ending up as editor at the Financial Times. In 1933 he began working for the Sunday Dispatch where he eventually became Editor.  Between 1927 and 1951 Brooks wrote about 14 novels a mix of thriller, horror and detective novels. He also used the pseudonym “Barnaby Brook” for nine mainstream novels, usually of a romantic nature. In addition to fiction Brooks wrote several non-fiction books covering everything from journalism to economics. He even published two volumes of poetry.  Eventually he became involved in radio broadcasting appearing regularly on Any Questions? and The Brain Trust for BBC Radio. Of his five children, his youngest daughter Vivian Collin Brooks (1922–2003) also became a crime fiction writer and published books under the pseudonym "Osmington Mills", the name taken from a coastal village in Dorset. 

THINGS I LEARNED: When McTavish learns that one of the suspects is named Pedro he describes the name as transpontine. I thought: "Does that mean between the bridges?"  I was close. The dictionary definition is "on or form the other side of a bridge". How on earth does that apply to a First names, you may wonder (as did I)? In the late 19th century transpontine was often used to denigrate melodramatic and sensational theatrical productions which were located on the other side of the Thames, hence the other side of the bridges. McTavish's bit of ambiguous dialogue runs: "He apparently rejoiced in the commonplace and transpontine name of Pedro. Half the faithful muleteers in popular melodrama are called Pedro." Context is not too clear here and I was forced to look up the word to figure out what seemed like two non sequiturs.

Another odd word crops up during the steam bath scene when Armistead calls the sinister gent valetudinarian after he remarks that it's not a good idea to sip water while in a hot room because of the possibility of getting a stomach cramp. (Never heard that one before!) The multi-syllabic word describes  a person who is anxious about their health. A pompous and antiquarian synonym for germophobe, I gather. 

QUOTES: Inspector Ipps on McTavish's stream of conscience style monologues: "You ought to have been a dutch-auction merchant or a camp meeting peanut seller. As a tracer of lost persons your verbal flow is wasted."

McTavish to Armistead: "...when I suggested that I was keen upon finding the murderer of that poor fellow you said that amateur detecting wouldn't work outside the pages of a seven-and-sixpenny thriller, because life is too sane and humdrum. And I replied that it is the novelist's fictional world which is sane and humdrum, because no novelist dares to suggest one tithe of the oddities of life or to use a first-rate coincidence for you. Well, here's a first rate coincidence for you!"

McTavish on his intuition: "I only guessed. I have medals and cups and shields and things for successful guessing. My two hobbies as a boy -- guessing and floating. The modern worship of athletics. The cult of strenuous life. When I wasn't guessing, I was floating. Sometimes as I floated I guessed whether if I turned over I'd be able to swim. Fortunately I never tried."

EASY TO FIND?  Of all of Collin Brooks’ crime novels Found Dead was apparently the most popular.  It was published in three separate editions between 1930 and 1950.  The 1950 hardcover reprint with pictorial covers (shown in the middle of this post) is still offered for sale and at affordable prices. I turned up about eight copies from various online sellers and I'm sure a copy or two may turn up in libraries in the UK, Australia or in used bookstores. It most definitely ought to be reprinted. Innovative, intelligent, and well plotted Found Dead is highly original on so many levels for a GAD book published in 1930.  Happy hunting! 

 

MOONLIGHTERS: E. L. Withers - The Man Who Used His Wife’s Name

Pseudonyms are a funny thing. In mysterydom we often find women hiding behind androgynous or obvious male names. Anthony Gilbert, Leslie Ford, Craig Rice and John Stephen Strange are all women using such names. The opposite tactic – men employing women’s names – is less common but still prevalent if you read enough genre fiction. Prolific author John Creasey, the Emperor of Crime Fiction Pen Names, used Margaret Cook and Elise Fecamps when he wrote romance novels. Michael Avallone, as much a pracitcal joker as a mystery writer, used a feminized version of his private eye character Ed Noone when he invented Edwina Noone, his alter ego when he wrote a brief series of outlandish Gothic and horror novels. The Golden Age mystery writer John Haslette Vahey (aka Vernon Loder, et al.) we now know was the real man behind the “Henrietta Clandon” mystery novels. That’s just a sampling. But using your wife’s name as your pseudonym? That’s an odd choice even if it's meant as a sign of affection and admiration. Bill Potter did just that when he used the pen name E. L. Withers, the actual initials and maiden name of his wife Emily Louise Withers.

George William Potter, Jr.  (1930 – 2010) was born and raised in Missouri and lived most of his life in Kansas City in that state. Of all the writers I’ve so far highlighted in my "Moonlighters" feature Potter earns the title of genuine Renaissance man. He studied music at Kansas City University where he met his wife Emily and the two married in 1956. An accomplished piano composer Potter was also an artist. He exhibited pen and ink drawings in the US and the Netherlands and was a notable supporter of the arts in his home state having served on the board of directors for The Kansas City Ballet, Elizabeth Post Memorial Art Reference Library and was a trustee of his alma mater UMKC Conservatory of Music from 1988 – 2000.

His love of fine art encompassed a wide range from Renaissance paintings to Faberge to antique English oak furniture. Over his lifetime he amassed a fine collection of antique furniture, paintings and scuplture. According to his New York Times obituary “the breadth and scope of [Potter’s] understanding of fine arts was unparalleled." The obituary goes on to describe how he and his wife traveled the world collecting art and furniture pieces to add to his Missouri home. This massive collection was auctioned off after his death inside his Kansas City showplace home that Potter himself transformed into a replica of a Tudor Style castle.

Potter wrote six crime novels each as different as the other in his brief novelist career as "E. L.Withers." I own three of these books (and read two book so far) and was struck by how unusual each one is. From the suspense novel about a 11 year-old girl trying to outwit her murderous stepfather to a crime novel about murder at a uranium mine to the decimation plot in his best known whodunnit Diminishing Returns Potter was as unique an experimenter in post WW2 era crime fiction as were his predecessors in the Golden Age. Like Jefferson Farjeon Potter employed narrative tricks and unusual shifts in point of view. He loved arcane subject matter like many of the Golden Age detective fiction authors and reveled in creating wickedly amoral characters like the hardboiled writers of 1940s American crime fiction. None of Potter’s crime novels is similar in any way.

The House on the Beach (1957) tells a fairly simple story of a young girl at the mercy of her amoral and avaricious stepfather. I thought I was going to get a variation of Let’s Kill Uncle combined with the terror and dread of Potter's popular contemporaries Ursula Curtiss and Doris Miles Disney who in 1957 were at the height of their powers. The fear and dread are there but the cat-and-mouse aspect I was expecting is fairly absent. What we get instead is a sort of Perils of Pauline with a pre-teen cast in the role of imperiled heroine.

The novel takes place over a mere three days and during that short time Katherine is caught in three near deathtraps and must extricate herself from those almost entirely on her own. She spends the last third of the book trying to convince the one adult she trusts to believe what sounds like a preposterous story: “Paul is trying to kill me!” But like the boy who cried "Wolf!" she comes across like a child with a wild imagination. Does Mr Wetherby believe her?  And will he call the police? It doesn't seem as if he does. Then Katherine is forced to run away and hide for a third time.

The cast of characters is limited to Katherine, her aloof but frighteningly unhinged stepfather Paul, her Aunt Millicent (apparently her mother’s sister), an elderly and not too bright housekeeper and two neighbors who live in the small, isolated beach community somewhere on the west Coast. Interestingly Potter tells the entire novel from the viewpoint of Katherine. The narrative voice is a mature one, often far too mature for Katherine’s life experience. Her thoughts are expressed in inappropriately sophisticated vocabulary that was jarring. On rare occasions Potter succeeds in coming up with some understanding of an 11 year old’s thinking and expresses it perfectly as in the sequence when Katherine is stuck on the roof and expects her Aunt Millicent to know exactly how to get her down. But instead Katherine must explain to her aunt where to find a ladder, how to place it and to hurry up about the whole thing. Her exasperation would be funny if it weren’t for the rainstorm that clearly makes her rescue a real emergency. However, too often the third person narrative voice is like an omniscient being watching Katherine and acting as a doom-filled voice judging the girl’s every movement and thought. She’s certainly plucky and brave given all she has to endure before the literally breathtaking final pages.

Potter followed up this pure suspense thriller with The Salazar Grant (1959). Hendrick Van Doorn, a Dutch mining engineer, travels to the "arid wastes and abandoned mining towns of the Southwest and into a delirium of brutal and vicious murder" according to the dustjacket blurb on the first American edition.  Van Doorn is investigating a lead on undetected uranium deposits but instead finds a corpse on the "long-unworked mines of the Salazar Estate."  I've not read the copy I purchased, but it seems to be a legitimate detective novel employing Potter's extensive knowledge of his primary career as president of Ortiz Mines, Inc.  Despite being published in both the US and the UK that there were no paperback reprints of The Salazar Grant (unlike his first and third novels) seems to suggest that the book did not sell well. Hopefully, this will prove to be a fascinating read and an enlightening one as well because I know about as much about uranium mining as the average mystery reader.  I'll be writing it up in a separate post later in the summer.

His third novel Diminishing Returns (1960) apparently was his most popular book. According to contemporary reviews used to help sell the book it seemed to better received than The House on the Beach.  The abundance of copies available for sale in the used book market underscores the book's popularity as it must have been bought and read by many people, at least in its paperback reprint edition.

Potter starts with an enticing premise – someone is killing off a group of friends and managing to make all the deaths seem like accidents. The catch is the deaths only occur when all members of the group are together in one place. The initial death occurred at a post-dinner cocktail party where all members were poisoned from the same tainted bottle of liquor. And the gimmick (which I really shouldn’t reveal but will) is that what should have been a simple murder plan failed at that cocktail party and the culprit must improvise in order to kill the intended target for the remainder of the novel. But a series of genuine accidents that result in death are also mixed into the murder plot and the story devolves into a messy and disappointing finale.

A neat surprise is that Mr. Wetherby, the kindly lawyer from The House on the Beach, shows up as the detective of sorts in Diminishing Returns. He manages to see through the elaborate scheme using a combination of keen observation and – towards the latter portion of the novel – a very odd reenactment of the events leading up to one of the fatal accidents on a penthouse terrace. He’s a likeable character, a bit more shifty than he appeared in his debut, but he’s no great shakes as a detective when it’s all over and done with.

Potter tries for a sort of variation on And Then There Were None and borrows heavily from the Mignon Eberhart school of suspense and terror. He slips in some ballsy rule breaking plotting, but I found the whole thing utterly preposterous. The murder plot has to be improvised as the story continues and it becomes increasingly over-the-top and stretches the limits of anyone’s suspension of disbelief. When the finale comes and the motive is explained there is too much conjecture and guesswork on Wetherby’s part. Some highly questionable tactics that were employed in committing the final murders come off as ludicrously improbable. One involves the apparent murder of complete strangers just to come up with corpses! No explanation of who they were or where they came from is given and that omission taints the story just like the poisoned cocktails that started the whole mad scheme. I can’t really recommend a book that leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

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.

FIRST BOOKS: Bedeviled - Libbie Block

THE STORY: The malicious, exploitative and deeply disturbed wife of Willem Himbert, symphony conductor, becomes the target of Elizabeth Beel's undying animosity when the wife begins to concoct a fantasy in which she is the object of John Maicey's desire.  John is Elizabeth's boyfriend, perhaps soon-to-be husband, but Coca has other plans for the promising composer. Elizabeth's deep seated hatred is further fueled by the fact that she knows that Coca has infiltrated herself into the romantic lives of other musicians who at one time were Himbert's proteges.  She will not see John's chances at fame in the music world destroyed by Coca's petty and devious scheming.  She plans Coca's murder in her head almost nightly, various methods and means, until she doesn't know the difference between her fantasies and reality.  When Coca ends up dead Elizabeth is unsure if she carried out her murderous plan and turns detective to find out if it was she --or someone else -- who put a permanent end to Coca's twisted soap opera-like machinations.

THE CHARACTERS: Bedeviled (1947) consists of a relatively small cast of characters which allows for a claustrophobic atmosphere to build up in this melodramatic microcosm of musical composition and performance. Two couples --  Willem/Coca and Elizabeth/John -- are almost all we need in this story. Elizabeth, our narrator for much of the novel, provides  us with detailed but often skewed perceptions of the other characters for we can only "see" what she sees and reports to us.  Consequently, Coca appears to be a wily vixen reminiscent of the kind of villainesses you love to hate from the bygone era of night time soaps. The archetype of this superbitch is probably Alexis Carrington from the US TV show Dynasty.  Block's talent is in presenting us Coca as seen only through Elizabeth's eyes -- eyes that may be hateful but also part of a troubled mind. As much as Elizabeth wants to believe that Coca is some sort of female demon we never really know if she is exaggerating the truth  There are scenes with John in which he defends the conductor's wife and dismisses her attentions as juvenile flirting. So we are left to decide for ourselves whether or not Coca is the truly wicked woman Elizabeth would have us think she is.

Part of Elizabeth's trouble is that her love for John is intertwined with her desire to see him succeed as the "new discovery" of modern symphonic music.  The conflict arises out of the fact that Himbert can bring John much needed exposure by performing his works but Coca is included as part of that package.  Elizabeth cannot break John's relationship with Himbert and therefore she cannot break his relationship with Coca; the two are inextricable. She allows everything to take place simply because she wants John to succeed in his career.  This is the kind of supposed self-sacrifice done in the name of love that we keep finding in post-WW2 mainstream bestselling novels like the infuriating soap opera plot in Stella Dallas, the stereotype of the martyr mother, and crime infused melodramas like Mildred Pierce. 

We also get Elizabeth's perceptions that Willem Himbert is surreally devoted to Coca, in love with her in a way that seems to defy common sense. She finds it hard to believe that Himbert cannot see through his wife's scheming and deceit and her dangerous manipulation of his own love for her.  But is Coca really as thoroughly bad as Elizabeth sees her? Despite all the examples she reports of Coca's destructive plots and the careful construction of possible secret love affairs with Himbert's proteges and his intense jealousy of men who show the slightest interest in his younger,  strikingly beautiful wife we never really know if what Elizabeth is telling us is truth or a twisted interpretation of the truth.  Not until the introduction of a character late in the novel do we see Coca for what she truly is.

INNOVATIONS: Intriguingly, Block has inserted non-first person narrative sections into the story in which we are allowed to view the cast from a distant omniscient observer.  The sections with Elizabeth as narrator are labeled with the chapter heading "Inside" while the other sections are labeled "Outside" and there is one transitional chapter titled "Wayside" in which we get to see the murder happen. What appears at first to be a cleverly constructed inverted detective novel following the murderer's thoughts and deeds unexpectedly shifts in this pivotal "Wayside" section into a whodunnit. Then Elizabeth slowly adopts the role of a very reluctant sleuth when she tries to prove that she is not the killer.

Similar to The Evil Wish by Jean Potts Bedeviled is a fascinating portrait of a woman with a desire to murder who is left with a criminal plan that is unfulfilled. Those who have read Pott's brilliant book know that the characters who had a plan to kill ended up carrying out far worse criminal deeds having been infected with the mark of Cain, so to speak. But what happens to that murderous drive in Elizabeth's case in this book written more than a decade earlier?  She is tortured for much of the book truly believing that she did stab Coca to death but has no memory of the act. Even her sole confessor (who is also her employer) finds it hard to believe that she is anything but guilty.  She is so confused by the haunting blend of reality and fantasy that she often refers to herself in the third person, a classic example of dissociative behavior, perhaps the product of a guilty conscience, and one of the more compelling and prescient devices Block employs to add a sophisticated level of psychological insight to her gripping story.

QUOTES:  "How does one solve a murder? All the clue hunting and the rationalization seem so easy when I read mystery books [...] But this is a strange murder to solve. As though a bloodhound were sent to follow a long weary, and devious trail, with the full expectation that at the end he would tree -- himself!"

"I don't want to be different. I don't want to be a murderer. In this strange new afterward which will cost me my life and which has already cost me John, who is the very reason for my life, I can no longer understand the woman I used to be, the woman who fondled the idea of murder like a doll, dressing it in one bizarre scheme after another until the plaything took life and destroyed its keeper."

"I planned murder so many times, that like an automaton, I committed it. I have destroyed myself. And, my God, I am afraid. I am a coward. I don't want to die."

THE AUTHOR: Libbie Block (1910-1972) was born in Colorado, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Her father was a dentist who practiced in Denver.  She met her husband, an executive at Samuel Goldwyn Pictures, in Los Angeles, California where she lived for much of her life and where her two children were born. The author of over 250 short stories and three novels many of Block's writings were adapted into movies or TV shows.  

Labelling this post "First Books" maybe a misnomer and certainly a bit misleading for Bedeviled was her first crime novel, but not her debut as a novelist.  Her real debut book, Wild Calendar (1945) with a soap opera-like plot of a girl from Denver who marries a rich man, moves to New York, then leaves him to raise her child on her own, was made into the movie Caught starring Barbara Bel Geddes in one of her first starring roles opposite James Mason and Robert Ryan as the men in her life. One of her short stories was made into Pin-Up Girl as a vehicle for Betty Grable to show off the dancer/singer's talents. Two other stories were adapted for a couple of television anthology series:  "The Night the Doorbell Rang" appeared in season eight on The Loretta Young Show and "Last Concerto" was on Cosmopolitan Theatre in 1951. Several of her short stories were collected and edited by her husband Patrick Duggan and published under the title No Man Tells Everything (1959).

MOONLIGHTERS: Helen Knowland - Senator’s Wife with a Dark Imagination

Madame Baltimore (1949) received quite a bit attention when it was first published. First, its author is Helen Knowland, wife of a prominent California senator at the time. Second, the book itself was one of the darkest studies of marriages gone awry in crime fiction to date. Had Knowland been more talented and dedicated as a writer she probably wouldn’t be the one hit wonder she became. Her personal life, however, interfered (more on that later). Still, one book is more than enough from Helen Knowland. She manages to cram a lot into her twisted portrait of infidelity and betrayal.

Madame Baltimore is quite a first novel and a signal for a type of suspense novel that would dominate crime fiction in the decades to come. Knowland was way ahead of her colleagues, the veterans of mysterydom, who were just beginning to acknowledge the transformation of the traditional detective novel into the novel of crime as psychological character study. In many ways Madame Baltimore looks back to the pioneering work of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding in the late 1930s and Margaret Millar’s early novels on the early 1940s as well as prophesizing the school of domestic suspense that would thrive in the 1950s and 1960s.

Our narrator is disillusioned Harriet Berkeley who has become completely obsessed with Washington DC wonder boy Foster Ford. In the first chapter she reveals her extramarital affair with Ford now lasting for over a year and that has been paying him $500 every month for the past four months. Initially, it seems as if she was paying Foster to remain her lover, but as the story progresses in its unique structure that travels backward in time we find out the money is for an entirely different reason, one that Harriet herself is responsible for having created. Harriet is not a nice person. The more we read about her the more we discover that she has allowed her desire for Foster to ruin her life and all those she thought she loved.

From the start we know that Foster himself is a cad because very soon into the story Harriet tells us she is being blackmailed. Foster demands he continue handing over $500 or he will tell her husband that she is not only cheating but that she is paying him and let Bob, her husband, draw his own conclusions about the money. There is an air of doom about them. Someone is going to pay dearly and Harriet will decide who that person is.

A discussion about a letter from an anonymous woman Harriet insultingly terms “Madame Baltimore” comes up in conversation. Harriet is incensed that Foster appears to have another lover. She wants to end their affair but Foster threatens blackmail. Then we learn that the letter is written by Harriet in an elaborate scheme to create another fictitious mistress so that she can break up Foster’s marriage. It all begins to seem like some dreadful soap opera plot. But things turn deadly very quickly.

As with all simplistic fantasizers Harriet gives no thought to possible consequences such as Drucie, Foster Ford’s wife, not willing to act according to Harriet’s plan despite her having confided that she is more than attracted to charming Charles McAllister. Funny how people have minds of their own, and often act out of a character. In her naïve imagination where Foster belongs only to her Harriet consistently fails to see that the people she ought she know well – her friends, her husband and even Foster himself – can make their own decisions and do so in ways that repeatedly backfire.

Ultimately, Madame Baltimore is modeled on a classic inverted detective novel. We know that Harriet is a schemer, a faithless wife and deceitful friend and is planning to murder Ford. Like many of these classic forms of the subgenre the reader is waiting for Harriet to discover her fatal mistake that will reveal her as the guilty murderer. The unusual aspect of this inverted novel, in addition to its rather ingenious construction of shuttling between past and present in order to build suspense, is that Harriet has not made one fatal error but a series of mistakes, all of them illogical and stupid, all of them because she fails to think clearly in her moments of madness. It’s the study of an obsessed mind slowly crumbling under pressure. A fantasy of a silly love letter from a fake person leads to more lies and betrayal.

Knowland has written her novel from Harriet’s point of view and yet as Harriet’s state of mind builds from worry to fear to paranoia each of the other characters becomes more and more distrusting. What about that other letter on pink paper, the letter Harriet didn’t write? Who wrote that one? Is there really another mistress in Ford’s life? Or has Drucie caught on to Harriet and playing mind games with her? There is an element of Gaslight that pervades the novel. Even though we know that Harriet is a nasty warped woman we wonder if her friends and husband are just as nasty. Who really knows what’s going on? Is everyone lying?

Knowland loads her story with plenty of unexpected twists. At one point there is an incident that almost makes this an impossible crime mystery. But that mysterious incident is readily explained within a few pages. If anyone ever finds a copy of this with the dustjacket I suggest you not read the spoiler-laden front flap. Not only does the blurb make the story seem as if the book is a whodunnit – and it most certainly is not – it ruins one of the most shocking surprises, a scene that occurs close to the book’s climax, well past the halfway mark! Very poor decision from the marketing team.

That this kind of novel of deceit, lies and betrayal is set in Washington DC is telling. Helen Knowland was married to one her era’s leading and most prominent Republican senators and clearly had inside dope on the movers and shakers in Washington. Foster Ford is supposed to be representative of the smarmier opportunists . She describes Foster as a man who “made a profession of his hobbies, without pay.” While he may not be making much money he is earning plenty of prestige and building a reputation as 1940s style influencer.

Helen Herrick met her husband William Knowland in grade school. Against parental advice stating they were too young to marry, Bill and Helen eloped on New Year's Eve 1926; Helen was 19 and Bill only 18. After a brief stint as a California state senator and following service in the US Army during WW2 Knowland was elected to the US Senate in 1945. He and his wife moved to Washington DC. While a US Senator Knowland served as leader on various committees eventually becoming Senate Majority Leader in the Eisenhower years.  He remained a US Senator from 1945 through 1959.

In 1972, four years shy of their 50th wedding anniversary, the story of Madame Baltimore sadly came true for Helen Knowland. Her husband had left politics to run his father’s newspaper in Oakland but also had been cheating on Helen for decades, the first occurring in 1958 and lasting nearly three years before the woman, Ruth Moody, died of a stroke in 1961. While in Oakland Bill got involved in real estate deals to help cover gambling debts. The mob was involved and his life began to unravel. Helen divorced him in 1972 after his second affair with Ann Dickson was uncovered.  Knowland married Ann but two years later in 1974, overburdened with debt, shame and guilt, he committed suicide. His rise to political power, his years as Republican Majority Leader during the height of the Eisenhower era, his eventual fall from grace in Washington, and his ruinous final years in Oakland are all detailed in the biography One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland by Gayle B. Montgomery & James W. Johnson.

Though Anthony Boucher mentions in his introduction to the digest reprint retitled Baltimore Madame that Helen had several books in the works, including another mystery novel, none of them were ever published. She had dabbled in writing, a few articles and short stories made it to print, but not one of her planned three books  -- a mainstream novel about Washington DC life, a historical western, and a mystery novel. The digest reprint appeared in 1957 during the heyday of her husband's political career. At the time of the reprint's publication William Knowland was Senate Majority leader, at age 45 the youngest senator ever to hold that position, and his dalliances were already surfacing. Perhaps real life was far too dramatic and demanding to ever compete with Helen's dark and criminal imaginings on paper.

MOONLIGHTERS: Herbert Best, A British Civil Servant in Africa

This may be the first, but not the last, Moonlighter who is also a one hit wonder mystery writer. And it may also be one of the best novels to read about pre-WW2 era Africa in these days of diversity programs dominating arts institutions, academia and municipal government as well as the anti-racism worldview. The Mystery of the Flaming Hut (1932) is a fine detective novel that not only enlightens about Colonial Britain in West Africa it sheds light on a culture of dignity, respect and humanity.

Though the book opens on Christmas Day this is far from a typical holiday detective novel. Gift giving and celebrations are mentioned only in passing as the story opens with the gruesome death of Culver, a mining company accountant who apparently through his own negligence dies in a fire that engulfs his home. The newly installed District Officer John Balance is put in charge as both an investigator and coroner due to the lack of British police in the Nigerian village of Mafun. The suspicious death of a white man automatically falls to British authority and the local African government can do nothing but stand by and assist with what little they can offer. In such a rural area lacking in police presence, modern equipment and modern techniques Balance is forced to resort to good old-fashioned common sense, observation and logic. Readers will be reminded of Holmes and other Victorian and Edwardian era fictional detectives as Balance examines the ash of the destroyed hut for clues, even to point of examining in detail some cigarettes and tobacco as Sherlock himself would do. Often Balance calls on the innate skills of villagers like Shamaki who is an excellent tracker, superb at reading the meaning of broken twigs and gnawed on leaves, but by his own confession at a loss to understand the importance of a white man clue like cigarette tobacco.

Ropp Tin Mines, Nigeria (circa 1930)

From the African elders Balance learns that Culver was a libertine, not at all the respectable man that make up most of the workers at the Mafun Mining Company. Though he was supposed to leave the village to travel south to meet his fiancée for a Christmas Day wedding Culver was known to frequent the brothels on the outskirts of Mafun. He was also seen beating his servants and a stray dog he supposedly adopted as a pet. Balance—once again like Holmes who he is surely modeled after – dons a disguise and infiltrates the brothel in order to slyly question Mariamu, the prostitute Culver was last seen with She provide some further insight into the truly dark character of Culver who more and more is looking like a person that several people wished dead -- both Africans and white men.

In one of the novels more original twists Best has provided John Balance with one the most unusual of Watsons – Hatasu, an orphaned teenage girl who acted as one of Culver’s servants but was viewed more like a foster daughter by most of those in the mining company and small set of wise observers among the native villagers. She offers some sharp observations of her own and fills in a character portrait of Culver that conflicts with what Balance hears from the men. Seems that Culver was a complicated man with many faces and personas.

Adding to the mystery of Culver’s strange death – he was possibly shot and then the house set on fire to cover up the murder – is the fact that Culver’s servant John of Asaba (aka Dan Boyi) has fled apparently with a large amount of money that was either given to him or stolen. When John is finally caught through some expert detective work the reader gets to see how African justice works in the most fascinating part of the book – a tribunal run by the village government headed by Al Kari, the overlord of Mafun.

The book is dominated by Balance and his interactions with mostly African characters, but there are two telling scenes with British characters. One is with Mrs. Winchester who came running to Culver’s hut while it was on fire shouting to save him. She undergoes an intriguing questioning in which she plays cat and mouse with Balance dropping hints but never giving away her secrets. The other scene is with Paige-Thomas, a tall, elegant “star prospector and mining engineer.” Both of these sequences are key to Balance proving murder did occur, the motive for the murder and the identity of the killer.

Best succeeds in modelling his novel on the finest Holmesian style of detection, but fails to hide his murderer from plain sight. A lengthy section in which one character delivers a heavy handed philosophical monologue on honor and discipline not only reveals the motive for Culver’s murder but gives away the ending of the entire mystery. I made a note that this had to be the solution and I was correct.

Best crushes myths about the noble savage and the subjugation of Black native peoples in a colonial government. The Nigerian characters in some respects are more complex and better delineated than some of the British characters, many of whom come off as stock characters and archetypes. Best, I think, is trying to dispel the romantic exoticism of Africa by showing these people to be human and flawed. Their culture comes through clearly without patronizing the people, their laws emphasize truth and justice, and he adds a variety of Hausa words translated within the text and dialogue to enhance the flavor of an authentic Nigeria of the 1930s.

Oswald Herbert Best (1894-1980) held a degree in arts and law from Queens’ College of Cambridge University. After serving in World War 1 he lived for twelve years in West Africa working in the British Civil Service. There he met his wife Alenna Champlin when she was working as a journalist. Prior to the publication of The Mystery of the Flaming Hut, his only detective novel aimed at an adult audience, he had written a children’s book Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes (1931), about a boy living in Nigeria. For that book he was nominated for the Newberry Award. Urged on by his wife, a successful children's writer herself, Best continued writing for children often collaborating with Alenna who sometimes illustrated his books using her artist's pseudonym Erick Berry. Best wrote only three novels for adults and devoted most of career to children’s non-fiction and juvenile novels. He and his wife settled in upstate New York near Lake Champlain where they eventually ran a dairy farm and small apiary that produced honey. He ended his writing in the 1960s with a short series of four juvenile mysteries featuring Desmond the Dog Detective.

MOONLIGHTERS: Will Oursler, Son of a Mystery Writer

The first novel Will Oursler wrote was also his first detective novel. The Trial of Vincent Doon (1941) is presented as if it were an actual murder case and consists entirely of a facsimile of the court transcript accompanied by drawings, house plans, photographs and a full set of People’s Exhibits. No doubt this was inspired by the latest fad -- solve-them-yourself murder puzzles like those in the Baffle Books published by Doubleday Crime Club and the crime dossiers created by Dennis Wheatley and J. G. Links with titles like Murder Off Miami and Who Killed Robert Prentice? These dossiers included not just photographs of the evidence as in Oursler’s novel, but the actual evidence: pieces of threads, real fingerprint sheets, and in one case a cellophane envelope containing real hair. The Trial of Vincent Doon is unique as a first novel in its structure and gimmickry, but as a novel it is not very original nor even thrilling.

Philip Strong, is the criminal defense lawyer for Doon and is clearly modeled on Perry Mason. His partner James Matthew acts as the narrator/compiler and periodically makes commentary on Strong and the case in footnotes a la the Van Dine detective novels. The story involves a lover’s triangle that leads to a stabbing murder of strait-laced Edwin Hallet. The accused is a jealous painter, Vincent Doon, who was working on a portrait of Betty Van Eyck. Hallet was to marry Betty but Doon claims she never loved her fiancée, that she was really in love with him.

Though Oursler may think he was being clever and original l this book is heavily reminiscent of Gardner’s Perry Mason series, especially the later books which contain lengthy courtroom scenes designed mostly to live up to the formulaic TV series. Like the Perry Mason TV series and most of the books the most interesting parts of Oursler’s story are not the complicated plot, unusual motivations and surprise confessions on the stand, but the quirky trivia-laden testimony of expert witnesses. In The Trial of Vincent Doon the most fascinating part of the book, the most interesting to read, is the testimony of a telephone repairman!

He answers a series of seemingly irrelevant questions which are objected to by the prosecution but are allowed by the judge. Strong insists that the phone repair and the ringing of a phone at a certain time on the night of the murder is crucial to understanding the apparent alibis of people other than Doon. And so the reader is treated to some intriguing and true telephone repair tricks like a special code that repairmen can dial into any phone that will make the phone ring after hanging up. This is definitely true. As a teen back in the 1970s I was given that special code (which changed over the years and was different depending on where you lived in the US) by some savvy friend of mine whose father was in telecommunications. I would play tricks on my brothers and my mother all the time by dialing the three digit code, hanging up and leaving the house.

Apart from the telephone repairman’s testimony and frequent displays of Strong’s devious methods in getting witnesses to reveal their true character on the stand the book consists entirely of a run-of-the mill courtroom drama. Oursler even manages to manipulate circumstances so that the killer confesses on the stand. Perhaps one of the few innovations prior to it becoming cliché. And thanks for that can go entirely to the Perry Mason TV series.

Much better is Oursler’s sequel Folio on Florence White (1942) once again with Matthews, this time as full-fledged first person narrator, and Strong as defense attorney cum detective. The gimmick of the casebook forgoes the courtroom transcript and People’s exhibits but as the title tells us it is indeed a folio. Interspersed between narrative chapters we get letters, memos, phone messages, transcripts of depositions all designed with different fonts and illustrated elements to give the illusion that they are actual documents.

The cast of characters is relatively familiar in this story of wealthy businessmen, adultery, corporate malfeasance and the theft of company assets. Florence has been wrongly convicted of theft of securities two years ago and has recently been released from prison. Her rival who testified against her, Evelyn Emory, is killed by cyanide poisoning. Flo is arrested. Later, another witness from the old security theft crime is also killed. His wife thinks it is a heart attack. But autopsy proves poisoning by cyanide. Is someone getting even for Flo’s wrongful imprisonment?

In one of the novel’s most memorable sequences Strong does some actual sleuthing at a potter’s field, based on an actual cemetery with a gruesome history (see THINGS I LEARNED section). A visit to Harlem gives us a scene relatively free of prejudice in which Strong and Matthews feel out of their element when they realize they are treated as outsiders and intruders. While there is an open hostility expressed Oursler does not go the 1940s PC route by making the white people seem like they know everything. Nor are the Blacks turned into ludicrous cartoons for comic effect. Strong and Matthews learn a lot about themselves in this scene and the Black characters are depicted with sympathy and wisdom.

Complicating the story of Flo’s supposed guilt in the murder of Evelyn is the disappearance of Harvey Mason, owner of Mason Aircraft where she and Evelyn worked. A tramp dies with no form of identity found on his body and the after the legal limit of waiting for a relative to claim the body it is sent to a potter’s field. Strong orders an exhumation of the corpse thinking they can prove that the trap is actually Harvey Mason who was put into tramp’s clothing. When the coffin is opened, the body is gone. Shades of John Dickson Carr!

The Potter's Field on Hart Island, 1898
(courtesy of Bowery Boys website)

THINGS I LEARNED: The history of the island is described in detail which led me to check up on the story. Turns out Oursler merely changed the name to Planker’s Island and described it as having once been owned by a rich Dutchman named E. Van Dyrk Planker who after his death bequeathed the island to New York City for use as dumping ground for 'refuse and trashe.'  He based the setting on a cemetery located on Hart Island, written up lately in various online articles as “a place of strangeness and sorrow” and “New York City’s potter’s field.” The New York City Corrections Department maintained and supervised burials for in its earliest life the island was home to a Confederate soldiers’ prison. For decades after the Civil War prisoners were tasked with burying bodies of unclaimed corpses that had been consigned to New York City’s morgue. To this day prisoners still tend to the grounds and bury the dead on Hart Island, but the prisoners come from Riker’s Island as the prison on Hart Island is long since abandoned and fallen into ruins. Hart Island has also been used to bury HIV victims during the AIDS crisis and victims of Hurricane Sandy. Most recently hundreds of people killed by COVID-19 have been buried here. Oddly, these days Hart’s Island is under the direction of the New York Department of Parks and Recreation but the public has never been able to visit. This may be changing soon in light of the consequences of the pandemic.

THE AUTHOR: Will Oursler (1914-1985) whose work was previously featured and discussed here back in 2015 was the son of mystery writer, journalist and Catholic spokesperson Charles Fulton Oursler, better known to vintage mystery fans as “Anthony Abbot.”  Oursler, the son, also made his living in journalism as a war correspondent, appeared on talk radio as a panelist and wrote several books, like his father, on religion or with theological themes. I call him a moonlighter because out of a total of 45 books (fiction and non-fiction) only eight of his novels qualify as detective fiction. Remarkably, I recently discovered he served as Vice President of Mystery Writers of America. So I guess he was very much involved in the crime fiction world and not really a dabbling moonlighter at all. In addition to the two books featuring Strong and Matthews as protagonists Oursler wrote two other novels modeled on these folios without the lawyer duo, two Gale Gallagher books in collaboration with Margaret Scott using the main character, a female skip tracer/private eye, as their pseudonym and as "Nick Marino" an additional two crime novels.