FFB: Something about Midnight - D. B. Olsen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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