HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 1: The Women Swore Revenge - Inez Haynes Irwin

THE STORY:  Four women make a pact to bring to justice the murderer of their dear friend Lizbeth More who stabbed on Halloween after a terrifying night of a poltergeist encounter and a visit by a bizarrely masked individual peering in through the windows of More's home.  Years before Lizbeth's fiance Arthur was also stabbed to death, on the night before they were to be married. As there was little evidence Arthur's murder was never solved and his killer is is still at large. Are the two deaths related and were they committed by the same person?  Chief of Police Patrick O'Brien investigates and receives more than ample help from a trio of amateur sleuths.

THE CHARACTERS:  The Women Swore Revenge (1946) is divided into multiple sections in which the story is told from one character's view point, either in first person (Mary and her policeman husband) or third person (amateur sleuths Malo Wrenshurst and Patience Wilbor).  Although the title and blurb on the US edition's dustjacket imply that the four women who make their pact will turn sleuth it really is only two of them who become amateur detectives even going to extremes by assuming alternate identities. Mrs. Wrenshurst, a community theater actress, goes so far as donning a wholly unnecessary disguise complete with dowdy wardrobe, turban and wig. They have, as Wilkie Collins coined in The Moonstone caught a "severe case of detective fever." And they do remarkably well in their roles. A third sleuth is Michael Penchard, Lizbeth's gardener, whose flight from town triggers a police search and fuels gossip that he is the killer. Actually Penchard has left town to follow someone he believes is the true murderer. By sheer chance he and Malo Wrenshurst will meet up in a seedy hotel in Boston where the two will trade stories and share evidence they have collected.

The amateur detective scenes are rich with detail. In fact the entire book is overflowing with lush details on how homes are furnished, what the gardens and grounds of those homes look like, lists of the flowers and trees that seem like catalogs, and painstakingly described layouts of how rooms in the houses are arranged. So it's no surprise when Irwin turns her pen to action sequences that they too are elaborately described. Her writing is as exact and focussed as a cinematographer's camera. Malo's keen eye finds a locket embedded in the vines that have covered the doorway to an abandoned icehouse. Mike's eyewitness account tells of a strange "flying creature" swinging from branches in More woods like some kind of Tarzan wannabe. Patience travels to upstate New York and does a thorough search for the true identity of Whiting Vane, a polio crippled antique collector and mystery man who lives near the Mores. All these and more are highlights in this engrossing detective novel.

ATMOSPHERE: The More house has a history of being haunted dating back to the late ninetheeth century.  Legendary and written accounts tell of poltergeist activity with dishes and glasses being smashed, paintings falling from walls and furniture being overturned with no person anywhere in sight. Lately the poltergeist has started up its mischievous destruction again mystifying Lizbeth and frightening her two female servants. The oddest part of this haunting is the appearance of figures dressed in old clothing. They take the shape of four old women on their knees praying. On two separate occasions these figures turn up mysteriously in rooms previously unoccupied. Irwin handles these scenes with a deft hand and manages to pull off a genuinely creepy atmosphere. Most of her misdirection works, but some more astute readers may see through Irwin's deceit.  Still, she succeeds in making it seem as if some supernatural force is at work. The descriptions of the grotesque face at the window turn truly horrific when it is discovered what exactly that mask at the window really was.

As the various detectives delve into the past we learn that some characters have carnival and circus work in their past. Gossip turns to the possibility of a circus performer being the murderer. And the fact that all the victims in the book are stabbed in the back had me immediately thinking of my favorite Golden Age motif - knife throwing.  This coupled with the presence of a crippled character had me spinning an elaborate scheme of how the murders were accomplished and who the killer was. I was close, but there was no way I was going to come up with the truth because I fell for some of Irwin's misdirection that even a novice reader of detective novels might have discounted. Irwin pulls off a genuinely surprising resolution that borrows from the insane ideas of Harry Stephen Keeler coupled with nightmarish plot twists reminiscent of horror writers of the pulp magazines. She won major points with me for her grotesque touches.

If there is anything to fault this highly imaginative, spooky and macabre Halloween mystery it is the unnecessarily lengthy wrapping up of the various mysteries.  For reasons known only to Irwin she has O'Brien gather the survivors and the innocent characters to deliver a typical Golden Age detective novel lecture that explains everything. But over 75% of the lecture has already been told to us by other characters earlier in the story. And those present know everything that O'Brien is telling them!  All that O'Brien needs to tell these characters (and the reader, of course) is the motive for the murders and the explanation of the poltergeist and the thing at the window.  I confess that I skipped over many paragraphs in this irksomely rambling penultimate chapter.  Also the last section is improperly named for one character when it should be named for Patrick because his is the primary point of view not the person for who Part 9 is named. Ah well. Despite these quibbles the book still has a corker of a mystery plot.

THE AUTHOR:  Inez Haynes (1873-1970) was an active member of the women's suffragette movement and an avowed feminist her whole life.  She is best known for her early 20th century non-fiction writing on women's rights, women's biography as well as some feminist novels notably Gertrude Haviland's Divorce (1925). Her first works were published under Inez Haynes Gillmore her name when she was married to Rufus Gillmore, journalist and mystery writer who diehard fans may know for his Van Dine pastiche The Ebony Bed Murders (1932).

Haynes divorced Gillmore shortly before the onset of World War 1 but continued to write under her married name.  In 1916 she married Will Irwin, another journalist and sometime novelist, who astonishingly also wrote murder mysteries. His two detective novels star Rosalie La Grange, a medium/con artist turned sleuth. Irwin used these novels as a vehicle to voice his distrust and skepticism of the spiritualist movement. The Irwins lived in Europe during WW1 and both were war correspondents for English language newspapers.

In addition to her feminist works Haynes wrote Angel Island (1908), an allegorical feminist fantasy (some call it science fiction but there's little science to it); a series of children's books about Little Maida, a girl who is raised by her wealthy father after her mother dies; and the five detective novels featuring Chief of Police Patrick O'Brien. Interestingly, her detective novels are set in the fictional town of Satuit, based on her life in Scituate, Massachusetts where she and Irwin spent most of their summers and where Haynes settled after her husband died in 1948.

THE SERIES:  The Women Swore Revenge (1946) is the fifth and final detective novel Irwin wrote featuring Patrick O' Brien and his wife Mary. Once again, I chose to read the author's last book first at some cost.  Two previous cases are mentioned in passing, one was getting so detailed a I skipped over the entire section for fear that Irwin would reveal too much. I'm discovering more and more that some writers never thought over this particularity bad habit of possibly spoiling previous books as they continued to add to their characters' adventures.  So a warning that anyone interested in tracking down Irwin's mystery novels that it would be a good idea to read the others first before you get to this final book. However, be warned:  Murder Masquerade (1935), the first in the series, is a very young and naive book completely different from The Women Swore Revenge which in comparison is highly sophisticated. The difference in tone and writing is remarkable. I can only surmise that Bennett Cerf who was editor at Random House shaped up Irwin as a writer when she was under contract to his publishing house. But more on Irwin's early mystery novels and her books as a children's author which seem to have influenced Murder Masquerade when I review that book next month.

Patrick O'Brien Detective Novels
by Inez Haynes Irwin
Murder Masquerade (1935)
   published in the UK as Murder in Fancy Dress (1935)

The Poison Cross Mystery (1936)

A Body Rolled Downstairs (1938)

Many Murders (1941)

The Women Swore Revenge (1946)

FFB: Norman Pink - Neglected Detective

Norman Pink is not your average private detective. He's not chasing after shapely women clients, sneaking pulls on a whiskey bottle hidden in his desk drawer or stumbling into a fistfight every ten pages or so. More likely he's stumbling over the rocky terrain of the English countryside, puffing on his asthma cigarettes, and making excuses for not being home to his very tolerant wife. On occasion he'll indulge in his never-ending work in progress -- a short story parody of Doyle's Great Detective who he has dubbed Sherbolt Houses (his partner is Dr. Tylersdad and housekeeper Mrs. Thames).  It's pure silliness and Norman knows it will probably never be published. Norman is in his mid sixties, a semi-retired ex-policeman, and happily married to a Beth who affectionately calls him Dad. Employed by Peerless Private Inquiry Agents, Ltd, Pink is passing his semi-retired life doing routine work mostly consisting of dreary and sordid divorce cases. But he has an obsession and it is this obsession that serves as the foundation of his first adventure in The Girl Nobody Knows (1965) by Mark McShane.

Years ago he was one of many who witnessed a horrific train wreck. Among the many victims was a young girl Norman had been watching prior to the crash. True to his policeman's instincts he had been wondering who she was, where she was going and why a 12 year old was on a train platform unaccompanied by any adult. When her body remains unclaimed after several days Norman saves her the ignominy of a potter's field burial by paying for her funeral and having a gravestone marking the site with "The Girl Nobody Knows" followed by the number 27 signifying her death statistic in the train wreck.

For the past twelve years Norman has been visiting the cemetery on the anniversary of the train wreck always alone, always seemingly the only person who cares about this anonymous girl. Until the day that opens this book when he chances upon another visitor at the girl's grave site. It's a woman dressed all in brown who seems oblivious to Norman's presence a few feet away. He approaches and gets close enough to see her face but she rushes away. In that brief moment Norman's policeman's training registers the woman's most telling feature -- she has one blue eye and one brown eye.

And so he begins his search for the drably dressed woman with an optical abnormality. With the aid of personal ads, clever role playing and some phone calls to eye doctors he comes up with a list of suitable women from which he begins the painstaking process of elimination until he quite by chance stumbles upon the cemetery visitor. Much to his surprise the woman played a small part in a case he had as a policeman many years ago. And slowly that case proves to be linked to the "Girl Nobody Knows."

This first outing is a real page turner. Pink is one of the most unusual private detectives I've ever encountered and his concern for the dead girl is at times heart wrenching. One night after a long night of searching and questioning Beth asks him, "You don't care too much, do you?" He asks what she means. "That we never had children." "I never even think about it," he assures here. They clasp hands and turn their attention to the TV. But the reader knows better. Norman has created an identity for the girl in the anonymous grave calling her Violette in honor of the color of the dress he last saw her wearing and imagines all sorts of possibilities for what her life was and could have been. He is determined to learn who she is so both he and the girl can finally have some peace.

Norman's second outing Night's Evil (1966) is as far removed in tone and subject matter as his first adventure. The story starts with a typical private eye opening: a wife wants to learn the truth about her husband's death. Elaine Bland hires Norman to find out why her husband Otis was visiting a carnival where he ended up stabbed to death. Strangely, she doesn't care who killed him. She want to know if he had been seeing another woman. She had suspicions about him for months and his violent end seems fitting to her. She only wants her suspicions proven or disproved. Norman first has to track down the location of the traveling carnival and then infiltrate the tightly knit world of its performers and employees.  Secretly he is also interested in finding out the identity of the murderer but he keeps that as close to himself as he did his relationship with Violette in the first book.

The group of primary suspects at the hyperbolically named Blegg's International Shows is quite a motley crew. From the belligerent owner Alfred Bleggs who has a lot of shady business deals he would rather not be discovered to the lonely dwarf Scurly Steeves, an ex-performer who has become the carnival's self-described PR agent, a job that is really no more than a sign painter and poster hanger. Scurly is secretly in love with the sexy young Molly, step-daughter to one of the amusement ride operators who has a dark secret all her own. She spends most of her time practicing knife throwing and earning a few extra shillings taking photographs of the customers then developing them in her makeshift photo lab in her family's tent.

There's also Charles Meek who shows up looking for work and a mystery woman named Carla.  Meek we soon learn is a former physician. Norman is curious why a well-to-do doctor would give up his career for the life of a carnival handyman who does nothing but fix faulty wiring and mend broken electrical sockets. Meek isn't talking. Carla seems to be the reason he stays on at the carnival yet no one has heard of the woman, let alone seen her. Like all the others Meek has a terrible secret, perhaps the scariest part of the book is when Norman learns the truth about this very mysterious man.

Rounding out the crew is Rosa, the gypsy fortune teller who seems to have a genuine knack for seeing into the future. Her visions of a hellish doom will have an eerie resonance in the cinematically rendered climax.

Because this story is confined to a small group of suspects who rarely leave the grounds of the carnival I found it less engaging than The Girl Nobody Knows. McShane creates some mystery in slowly revealing the secret lives of these troubled people but the overall mystery of who killed Otis Bland never seems to have any urgency or importance. Norman is more intrigued by the odd behavior of Charles Meek, the constant lying of the others and the shifty business practices of Bleggs. It's only in the final thirty or so pages that the book becomes exciting. McShane abandons his wishy-washy psychological suspense and transforms the story into a Grand Guignol revenge scheme gone haywire. The solution to the murder comes quite by accident amid a flurry of flying knives, smoke and fire, and hysterics from a trio of characters.

1st US Edition, Doubleday Crime Club (1966)

The final novel in this trilogy is The Way to Nowhere. It's pretty darn scarce. It was not published in the US making it all that more hard to find. My attempt to find an affordable copy failed miserably.  I have no idea what the book is about as I also failed to find any newspaper or magazine reviews of the book.  Maybe one of you lucky enough to live in the UK or Canada might find it in a local library.

The first book is definitely worth reading. If you like Norman enough you may want to move onto the second title to see a new side of him. Both titles were published in the US and UK and both received paperback reprints in the US. If nothing else Night's Evil gives you a few more silly paragraphs from Norman's ongoing Sherbolt Houses story.  That at least will bring you a smile or a chuckle or two. It certainly made Norman laugh.

The Norman Pink Trilogy
The Girl Nobody Knows (1965)
Night's Evil (1966)
The Way to Nowhere (1967)

*   *   *
 

Reading Challenge Update: Silver Age Bingo space S6 "Book with professional detective" and
Silver Age Bingo space I5 "Book with spooky title"

Death on a Ferris Wheel - Aylwin Lee Martin

Here's a pop quiz, class. What do you think is the most overused plot gimmick in the world of vintage detective novels?

A. The secret passageway
B. Oxalic acid as a murder weapon
C. A twin or triplet is revealed to be the murderer
D. Knife throwing in a suspect's past life

Ten points if you answered D. Even though the others show up time after time, knife throwing is easily the most tiresome, the one that will get me rolling my eyes and uttering "Oh please, not again" more than the others. In the past two years alone I have read seven books that include knife throwing in the plot. Three of those books were locked room or impossible crime novels and the solution to the impossibility relied on the murderer's expert handling of kitchen utensils. But I bet not many of you have ever read the prizewinner in all of mysterydom dealing with knife throwing. I award the blue ribbon in knife throwing to Aylwin Lee Martin's Death on a Ferris Wheel (1951). Why? Because there are four – count 'em four! – knife throwing suspects in this book. Two of them are women! That makes for a potentially lethal group of suspects, doesn't it? You don't want to be upsetting these people at a dinner party or in a butcher shop.

The book opens with the discovery of the murder victim descending from his fatal ride in the titular amusement park ride. His throat is gashed terribly and it is determined that the only way he could've been killed was by a knife thrown at him as he was making his way down in the Ferris Wheel. That's some very expert knife throwing if you ask me, but as the sharp witted Captain Homer Aselin notes it wasn’t necessarily the throat that was the target. Anywhere on the body would have served the killer's purpose. Throat, chest, back -- he would've been dead no matter where the knife landed.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that there are so many knife throwers in the book. After all, the setting for the crime is a travelling carnival and two of the suspects happen to be in show business. Or were at one time. As luck would have it both of the women who also at one time tossed a few blades back in the day were also former wives of Floyd Anthony, the murder victim and an ex-vaudeville performer who worked carnivals as a would-be comic, knife thrower and the handsome male half of a dance duo.

One of the highlights of the book is learning a lot of carny slang.

He was tossin' broads when he wasn’t grindin' for a G-String act.

is translated as

He was dealing a three card monte game when he wasn't talking to the crowd about a striptease act.

A "skinned mush" is the cane a barker uses as a prop to draw attention to himself and the acts. "Mitt camp" is a palm reading tent. Classic stuff! I also found out that "fuzz" as slang for a policeman comes from carny lingo. Reading paperback originals is a real crash course in fading aspects of American pop culture.

The 2nd Matt Hughes novel

At first the murder seems to be tied to the apparent theft of a diamond ring valued at $15,000 and Matt Hughes, our lawyer/sleuth, is hired by Arnold Kent to represent his wife who he suspects of aiding in the theft of the ring. But while uncovering the truth behind the disappearance of the ring (which eventually turns up in Anthony's personal effects) Hughes gets in over his head. Anthony turns out to be a former husband of Mrs. Kent who used to be his dancing partner under her stage name of Nola Barrett. And the theft might have been a cover-up for a blackmail payoff. This is all quickly learned within the first three chapters.

But that's only the beginning of the complicated plot. Soon the story becomes an overly involved tale incorporating a crooked casino and drug operation, bigamous marriage, elaborate blackmail schemes, two-timing lovers and murderous revenge. It's all pulp magazine rehash, not badly told, with some pretty good dialog, heavy on incident and with a few colorful characters including one of my favorite period un-PC stereotypes -- the gay pretty boy sadist. Oliver St. Julian is his name. (What else could it be?) He is, of course, often called a fruit, a pansy, or a nance but is always ready to smash someone in the face when called a name. Is he a knife thrower, too? You bet your gleamin' shiv edge he is!

In the end it's all a bit too excessive. The finale is a cumbersome and talky revelation of multiple secrets delivered in the old-fashioned B movie method with Hughes making page length monologues while the various villains throw tantrums punctuated with a healthy dose of swear words or collapse into confessional hysterical outbursts. "Yes, I killed him," says one character. "And I'd do it again and again." Or until there were no knives left to fling.