FFB: Murder's Burning - S. H. Courtier

Stewart Hamilton revisits the site of a devastating fire in Murder’s Burning (1967) Several years ago fire raged over an Australian ranch destroying multiple homes, killing livestock, and claiming the lives of eight people including Hamilton’s friend Pete Carruthers. Two bodies were never found in the ruins and Hamilton feels compelled to literally rake over the past in search of clues to the fire’s origin and what happened to the two missing men.

The story is a mix of two first person narratives and follows the style of many epistolary murder mysteries of the 19th and early 20th century. As Hamilton narrates the bulk of the story interspersed are reminisces of letters Carruthers wrote and sent to his friend when Hamilton was living and working in New Guinea. So we have Hamilton in the present revisiting the past via Carruthers’ first-hand accounts in the letters. There is some detection on Hamilton’s part as he digs and rakes through the five year old debris at the site of the fire. But ingeniously many of the clues to the multiple mysteries are to be found in Carruthers’ letters which are filled with richly detailed anecdotes and intensive character studies and psychological probing. Carruthers, who worked as a schoolteacher at the station school, we learn was fascinated with the people he met and lived with and was something of an armchair detective of the soul.

The book gives some insight into how Australian ranches – or stations in the local parlance – are run highlighting the advanced firefighting methods and various escape plans always hovering in the minds of people who live with the threat of wildfire on a daily basis. But was this vast and destructive conflagration really a wildfire? As the story progresses more and more evidence turns up to suggest that the fire was set intentionally. Hamilton is sure he knows the identity of the arsonist but the real mystery, besides what happened to the bodies of Wallace Shelton and Saul Leguier, is why the fire was necessary. He begins to formulate theories and comes up with several conspiracies dominated by an overarching conspiracy of silence about why the fire was set and what happened to the missing men.

A running theme of the book is “Sheltonian madness” a phrase used to describe the eccentric and wild thinking of Wallace Shelton who owned one of the stations. Apparently all the Sheltons had a tinge of madness in them which leads many of the survivors Hamilton talks with to believe that Shelton destroyed his own property. Subplots involve arranged marriages in the Shelton family; crazed criminal Rory Corbett, the local pariah and a scourge on the community; and naïvely flirtatious Lothario, Billy Chad, who has been handing out cheap jewelry with juvenile inscriptions of love to various women. All these stories and people complicate the main plot and lead Hamilton in various directions as he searches for a motive for the arson.

Even more unusual than the Australian setting and the multiple storylines of the many families living in an around the station is the macabre twist that dominates the story around the last third of the novel. Hamilton uncovers a secret passageway behind the ruins of a fireplace hearth on the Shelton property. After descending a small stone staircase Hamilton finds an underground labyrinth where eventually he discovers something that one would expect from a 18th century Gothic horror novelist. Believe me you will not be rolling your eyes or groaning in disbelief but gasping in horror once you learn what Hamilton finds in the cavernous rooms beneath the fire ravaged ranch. All I can add without ruining the novel is that the large one word blurb plastered on the rear cover of my paperback edition -- “Grisly!” New York Times -- is an understatement.

As much as this bizarre touch was completely unexpected and a little over-the-top it made for a truly thrilling finale. I was not only led down the garden path by Courtier and his expertise in employing dual narrators I was more than pleased that the Gothic excesses ultimately all made sense and explained almost all the mysteries that Hamilton uncovered during his dredging up of the past.

The recurring motif of “Sheltonian madness” also comes to dominate the story. We learn that the madness is both figurative and literal. If the reader is wise enough to read everything in the book (as I repeatedly mention one ought to do with any book) ) then the Acknowledgment that serves as a brief foreword to the novel will have prepared the reader for an unusual plot element towards the hair-raising finale. I did read those two sentences that precede the story, but had almost forgotten about it by the end. 

Sidney H. Courtier’s superior debut detective novel The Glass Spear (1950) was previously reviewed here back in 2014 and is very much deserving of a reprint. Murder’s Burning, written 17 years later, is just as good for a variety of reasons, but it does have a rather slow burn until Hamilton discovers the secret passageway. Then it kicks into high gear and makes the trip to the end all the more exciting. I have more reviews of Courtier’s books coming in the fall. I think his books surpass Arthur Upfield’s as some of the best of Australian crime writing in giving readers unfamiliar with the land Down Under excellent insight into Australian culture, climate, geography and sociology.

TRIVIA: Oh! one final note that only true book collectors and rabid mystery fans like me will appreciate.  My paperback copy was previously owned by Edgar award winning American mystery writer Joe Gores (1931-2011).  He signed the book and dated it (see photo at right). The SF, I surmise, means San Francisco where he bought the book. He also lived there much of his life and that noir drenched city of both fiction and real life is where his own private eye character Dan Kearney lived and worked.

FIRST BOOKS: Blood on the Common - Anne Fuller & Marcus Allen

"I got a feeling that I'm goin' to have to arrest one of my neighbors this time, and I never done that. It's hell to be a constable sometimes."

Dan Morgan in Blood on the Common

Small Town, USA.  It's been the setting on thousands of mainstream novels. Placing a story in a small town or village can offer a burgeoning novelist the chance to dissect the stereotypes of Americana by exposing the small-mindedness that usually infects these insular communities.  An outsider enters the town and all hell breaks loose. In their first mystery novel Anne Fuller and Marcus Allen expose not only small-mindedness but the insidious nature of gossip and the havoc it wrecks on the citizens of Small Town, USA.

Interestingly, Blood on the Common (1933) starts with an act of kindness when Pastor Andrew Stevens sees what he believes to be the local town drunk passed out by the Revolutionary War era cannon on the town common.  It's extremely early morning and he figures he'll spare Tug Bailey the embarrassment of being seen yet again as a symbol of alcoholic indigence by rescuing him and taking him somewhere out of sight.  As an afterthought he also is concerned about the dangers of hypothermia and exposure. But really he's most concerned about the townspeople and the ugly rumor mill that will start grinding out gossip if someone sees Tug passed out in plain sight.  He summons the help of Jake Smeed who reluctantly allows himself to be dragged out of his home and together they attempt to move Tug to a safe space indoors. When they move in closer they discover it's not Tug at all.  They have no idea who it is. And he's not drunk. He's dead with a bullet in his chest. 

What follows is an intricately constructed detective novel focusing on first the identity of the corpse, why he was killed, and why he was left out in plain view for anyone to stumble across. As the story unfolds we are introduced to nearly everyone in town. Constable Dan Morgan leads the investigation at first unsure of how exactly to deal with the first murder to occur in the town of Welbourne.  He is assisted by undertaker Pete Hill who also acts as the coroner and later by reporter Larry King from the big city. A bit more sophisticated than Dan, Larry is used to asking subtly intrusive questions in order to elicit the right response. Larry has a gentler way compared to Dan's direct brusque approach, but nevertheless is shrewd and insightful in ways that Dan could never be. 

Luckily, the team of investigators are given a couple of very handy clues to help with identification -- an engraved pocket watch and an initialed ring that reveal the man is Harvey K. Oliver. Another ring seems to have been removed from the man's left hand leaving a bloody scratch below some age old swelling indicating the ring was probably worn for a long time and never taken off. A wedding band perhaps? 

Suspects are numerous of course. But Clara Bisbee, an unrepentant malicious gossip is convinced that Julia Guilford shot Oliver.  She runs to Dan Morgan and reports that she saw Julia leave her house in the middle of the night and didn't return for breakfast.  Clara is Julia's landlady and spends too much time checking up on not only her tenants but everyone in town. Now she says that Julia is in bed suffering from "a cold or pneumonia or something" and that proves she was outside at night in the damp weather for many hours. When Dan questions Julia she is reticent about her activities the night of the murder.  It will be some time before Dan and Larry get Julia to tell all about where she went and who she met late that night.

Meanwhile Geoffrey Wayne, an invalid septuagenarian sits at home mulling over the events as he knows them. He has been visited by Dan's wife Ginevra who often stops in to check on Wayne and read to him.  Wayne is the town eccentric, a collector of antiquarian books, an intellectual at odds with the rest of the townspeople.  Wayne has a marvelous scene where he mocks Clara Bisbee as the local nosy Parker. His verbal assault is both well deserved an d hilarious. The book collector unsurprisingly has a rich and varied vocabulary and his tirades read like some of the best insult exchanges from in a Shakespearean comedy.  Clara of course thinks she's doing everyone an immense favor by being such a busybody but her malicious nature seeps out every time she opens her mouth.  Wayne lets her and many others have it with lines like: "Go pollute the air somewhere else!" And "Hell is too good for you. You're not fit to associate with the residents of hell." And "...you inimitable cross between Judas Iscariot and the Marquis De Sade, you have the temerity to call Tug Bailey the scum of the earth? My dear Mr. Smeed, in comparison with you, Tug Bailey is not only an impeccable gentleman, but an illustrious scholar." In the end Wayne does some sleuthing of his own and is instrumental in providing some of the best evidence to Dan and Larry.  He's an armchair detective of the best type, but with his wheelchair serving as the requisite seat.  Geoffrey Wayne is perhaps the only reason to read Blood on the Common.  While at first Wayne seems to be pompous and cantankerous he proves to be a delightful mixture of sarcastic wit, outrage and wisdom.

Wayne has a housekeeper and cook named Birdie, not too smart and yet another closed-mouth woman unwilling to talk about what she has been up to.  Eventually we learn she's been providing shelter and food for Tug Bailey in a temporary home they've cobbled together in a tool shed out in the back of Wayne's property.  She and Tug have a couple of secrets that will also take Dan and Larry quite some time to uncover.

High on the suspect list is Arthur Shelby, the owner of the only hotel in town.  Oliver was supposedly staying there according to a laundry delivery service but Shelby denies that Oliver was registered at the Inn.  In fact, he denies having any guest for the past couple of days. If that is the case, Dan asks Shelby, then how does he explain a bagful of Oliver's clothes that were to be delivered to the man this morning at the Inn? Typical of almost everyone in Welbourne Shelby remains tight lipped. Who if anyone will be willing to talk to Dan and Larry?

Well, Jake Smeed has a lot say.  Belligerent and volatile Smeed has been at war with Tug Bailey for years. His antipathy for the drunk is well known and openly expressed with hostility. Tug had a farm that everyone in town knows Jake stole from him. When Tug lost his land he lost his soul and it drove him to the bottle. Smeed refuses to call his "business deal," a shady manipulation of real estate law and bribery with a highway construction company, stealing Tug's farm. Dan has theory that Oliver was involved in that "business deal" that bordered on fraud and killed him then framed Tug. Larry is unsure if Jake could be that clever or vindictive. But it certainly looks bad for Jake when Tug goes missing.

There is a second murder, one not too surprising and brought about by the behavior of the victim.  It's a neat twist that complicates the case of Oliver's death. And ultimately it's a daring rule breaker for a traditional detective novel written in the early 1930s.  I thought it gutsy for this first time writing duo to add a unexpected twist to an already rather complex plot.

For a mystery novel this shows a real love of the genre, a respect for fair play rules while at the same time flouting them with the second murder.  It's well above average for a detective novel of any era and rather advanced for one in the heyday of the Golden Age, especially from a team of supposed novice writers. Many readers may cavil at the reveal of the villain as it seems rather arbitrary and takes the concept of the least likely suspect to extremes.  Yet all the clues are there pointing to who Fuller & Allen intended to be their murderer from the outset.

Anne Fuller and Marcus Allen wrote only two mystery novels together.  I am sure they were involved in the movie business possibly having contributed to screenplays but I've been unlucky in obtaining any proof.  Despite the fact that I have received many emails from a variety of relatives all saying they are related to Marcus Allen I still have little to offer up about the lives of these two writers. One of these relatives was kind enough to send me a photo (shown above) of an autographed copy of one of their books. So at least we have their signatures and sentiments along with Fuller's husband (or is it brother?) who drew the map in that second novel.

Blood on the Common is much easier to find in used bookstores, but it is Fuller & Allen's Death on the Outer Shoal that is the far superior book of the two.  Both explore small mindedness and insularity in New England villages but the second book adds a thrilling dimension of vigilantism and self-preservation of a community into the mix.

Murder at Deer Lick - A.B. Cunningham

THE STORY:  Powerfully built, intimidating but respected physician John Bruce is found stabbed. His pistol still in its holster, his fierce and equally intimidating horse is roaming nearby a bit confused. How could the man have been knocked from his horse and killed? The horse was known to be "as savage as a boar hog." No one could have approached the doctor while on the animal without major difficulties. Yet Dr. Bruce was discovered off the horse, contusions on his arms, his throat cut and multiple stab wounds to his body. Even more remarkable, the pistol still in its holster proves the doctor never had a chance to defend himself. It was some sort of surprise attack but from where? The body was found on an open roadway beneath an old tree. Nowhere for anyone to hide. Sheriff Jess Roden is faced with this puzzling murder and some surprising additional mysteries in the aftermath Dr. Bruce's brutal killing.

THE CHARACTERS:  Murder at Deer Lick (1939) is the first detective novel in a long series featuring Sheriff Jess Roden, the sole law official in the fictional county of Deer Lick in Kentucky. Roden, as I've discussed previously here and here, follows in a long line of rural fictional detective who use their knowledge of animals and plants to help gather evidence and solve the crimes. Tracking of footprints in these books is very often not so much about human feet as it is about animal tracks. In the case of Dr Bruce's murder someone has cleverly obliterated all traces of tracks and yet in the end this obliteration turns out to be a dead giveaway as to the identity of the murderer when Roden witnesses exactly the same pattern being made somewhere else while investigating the crime.

In one of the opening chapters we get an elaborately detailed biographical sketch on just how Roden has used his knowledge of the woods, streams and fields of Kentucky. It's a brilliant example of what sets a country detective apart from his urban colleagues and is as eye opening as the first glance of a meteor shower. His talents include identifying fish with only a single clue ("a pike by a single tooth, a bass by the anal fin, a perch by one scale...); secrets of mammal life ("..the difference between the smell of muskrat and mink, the shape of a gray squirrel's teeth,...the deep-heeled track of a polecat..."), reptiles ("the size of turtle eggs..., the smell of a copperhead..."), and birds ("how a [heron] made its nest"). He knows the tastes and scent and texture of dozens of trees by touching, smelling or tasting their leaves, nuts and roots. All these observational skills of the natural world only serve to fuel his observation of humans: "He was aware that Ed Lefferton held his cud of tobacco in his right jaw, ...that Mun Lee was left-handed, that little Bo Strange talked to himself, that Potbelly Losee always wore an asafetida bag suspended from a dirty twine string around his great fat neck."

That last fact is crucial in solving the murder of Dr. Bruce. When Losee is singled out by the townspeople as a possible suspect Roden learns that the treasured asafetida bag went missing and Potbelly was beside himself with worry. Later, that bag is found clenched in Doc's hand and things look bleak for the poor mentally retarded young man. Mute since birth and feeble minded Potbelly can barely understand simple sentences, but his mother has a special way she can communicate with him and calm him where all others fail. She asks Roden to do his best to prove that her son is innocent. Mrs. Losee knows in her heart that her dear son could never have killed anyone though he certainly has the strength to harm grown men.

Other suspects include Mun Lee, a young man with a secret who wants desperately to leave town with his girl and is adamant that Roden has no business knowing why he wants to flee. Roden prevents Mun's flight on several occasions, once resulting in a fist fight. Perhaps the most suspicious of the lot is Ezekiel Stout, a crazed preacher, who had a disagreement with Doc Bruce over the way to treat Middy Wily's smallpox. Stout took Middy out of the physician's care, very much against Doc's direct orders, to a prayer meeting trying to save the isck woman. She died in the makeshift church surrounded by Stout's zealous followers; prayer no aid against the ravages of disease. It doesn't help matters that Roden is prejudiced against the preacher who he views as a hypocrite who he knows is a wife beater and sadist.

No comment on the section of Deer Lick
located on the left side of this map

This last bit is an excellent touch in direct contrast to contemporary novels set in the South in which most law officials back up the local preacher and are devout Christians. Roden has an intolerance for fake religion and disdains blood and thunder style fearmongering in the guise of teaching the Lord's ways. Cunningham seems to be voicing his own opinions about zealotry and religious hypocrisy in addition to adding another dimension to Roden's character as this lengthy section vehemently denounces Stout's methods and his foolish, unquestioning followers.

Roden is assisted by his deputy Cary Davis, a coffinmaker named Ed Lefferton, and the local coroner, who is yet another of those forerunners to the cynical medical examiner with a deep black humor, a now common character type. Cunningham foreshadows another convention of crime fiction series novels in that many of the supporting characters have mini-dramas of their own to deal with. Apart from Mrs. Losee's fear of Potbelly being arrested, tried and hanged for the physician's murder there is the drama of Ed Lefferton's ailing wife Molly, the rivalry between local midwife Aunt Minervy and Rev. Stout, and Mayme, a housekeeper formerly employed by Doc Bruce, who makes several attempts to seduce Roden even managing to inveigle her way into his home with the promise of skilled cleaning and delicious cooking.

INNOVATIONS: Cunningham has invented a rather bizarre method of murder in the death of Doc Bruce. This will prove to be an ongoing feature in the Sheriff Roden series like an accidental death that is actually an cleverly engineered poisoning or in another book a death trap of mechanical ingenuity that rivals the imaginative murder means in the John Rhode detective novels. The manner in which Roden stumbles across the actual method of Doc Bruce's murder is both gruesome and efficient. Witnessing this unexpected episode forces Roden to re-evaluate nearly all the evidence he has at hand.

THE AUTHOR:  Albert Benjamin Cunningham (1888-1962) was born in Linden, West Virginia. He was a educated at Muskingum College in Ohio, did graduate work at New York University where he also received a PhD in sociology and psychology. After serving in World War I Cunningham taught English at Texas Tech University from 1930 to 1945. In addition to the 21 detective novels featuring Jess Roden he wrote one crime novel under the pseudonym "Estil Dale" and several mainstream novels as "Garth Hale." During the late 1920s Cunningham also wrote some mainstream novels under his own name prior to turning exclusively detective fiction in 1939.

MOONLIGHTERS: Burton Keirstead, The Economist & the R.C.M.P.

What a surprise it was to learn that this excellent detective novel was the work of a young economics professor who was teaching at the University of New Brunswick when it was published. Burton Keirstead (writing as B. S. Keirstead) co-authored his first and only novel with D. Frederick Campbell, who apparently was also working at the university though I was unable to uncover anything about him. The Brownsville Murders (1933) is an engaging and fascinating blend of police procedural, a novel of rural Canadian life, a satire of naive thinking, and an eye-opening account of the RCMP in 1930s Canada. Keirstead seems to draw from American pulp writers and the nascent detective novels just beginning to become popular as million copy bestsellers. Well reviewed in the American press The Brownsville Murders showed promise for the young man who wrote only one other detective fiction work published only in serial format, but would go on to make a name for himself as one of Canada's leading economists of the early 20th century.

The Brownsville Murders is set in the titular Canadian farming village sandwiched between Woodstock and Fredericton in the province of New Brunswick. In the opening pages we meet a young couple engaged to be married who while driving to Fredericton come across a body in the middle of the road. Upon close inspection they see it is a man who has been shot in the head. When they go for help and return to the accident scene the body has disappeared. A search ensues and soon another person is dead. And then another!  Only 35 pages have passed and already we have three bodies, one missing, and two young people terrified to have been caught up in a true murder mystery.

Brian Woodworth, the young man driving the car that night, we soon learn is a law student finishing his studies and employed in the office of Lawyer MacPherson whose first name is never mentioned. Macpherson is our narrator and the unofficial detective of the novel. This is a blend of both amateur and professional detective work. Inspector Eccles of the RCMP will eventually take charge of the investigation aided by MacPherson and Sgt. LaTour. Interestingly, MacPherson notes that the young sergeant is the more capable of the two policemen. He describes LaTour as a man of "sheer native wit and shrewdness and insight." In contrast Eccles is an an impulsive and fanciful thinker who MacPherson believes relies too much on imaginative ideas "full of bad psychology." Eccles is certain that two people were responsible for the three murders and the vanishing of two corpses. He cannot envision that one person could carry out all the activity necessary in killing three people and moving the bodies.

The man found dead in the road is identified after painstaking questioning and turns out to be a local named MacLeod with a reputation as a womanizer. In one of the most intriguing fictional inquests I've ever read the Brownsville murder case reveals a torrid lover's triangle heightened by impassioned jealousies and rampant cruelty. We meet a sadistic Fundamentalist Christian farmer who according to gossip beats his daughter. A feeble minded "half-wit" confesses his love for MacLeod's wife and talks of his passion for late night salmon fishing. Finally, we learn of the life and work of the stranger in town, a writer and illustrator named Stephen Jamieson.

Canadian law allows for a police counsel to question witnesses at a coroner's inquest.  In The Brownsville Murders the police counsel is Mr. Des Barres who is determined to implicate Albert Denton, the "half-wit fisherman" who was seen wandering near the site of the shootings. This eyewitness is Mrs. MacLeod, the object of Albert's obsessive affection and also the wife of the murdered man in the road. As MacPherson watches the inquest unfold from the gallery he is suspicious of every word uttered by Mrs. MacLeod. Is it possible that she is perjuring herself in order to escape suspicion and help Des Barres build his case against Albert?

Poor Brian Woodward is also badgered on the witness stand during the inquest. He is advised by MacPherson to keep his temper under control and not allow himself to be bullied into an outburst. MacPherson is sure that Brian will be manipulated and exploited by the shrewd and controlling police counsel. It's all Brian can do to keep from criticizing Des Barres' methods rather than simply answering his questions. At times he cannot speak, rather he sits seething in the witness stand.

The inquest ends with a circumstantial case built against Albert who has been painted as an obsessive stalker angry with MacLeod and protective of his "love" for Mrs. MacLeod. Albert's father is worried that the police will soon arrest Albert and hires MacPherson as his lawyer. The case becomes one of MacPherson trying to save Albert from trial and determined to help Eccles and LaTour find the true murderer of the three shooting victims.

I was completely enthralled with this novel. It's an impressive debut work and all the moreso because the writing duo managed to fool me.  The James M. Cain-like atmosphere of jealous lovers and volatile extramarital affairs was so convincing and so neatly laid out with multiple suspects I was completely taken in. But all the while Keirstead and Campbell had another angle with clues cleverly planted so off-handedly that I dismissed them entirely as red herrings. Much to my embarrassment (and later delight) these supposed red herrings were the real clues leading to the solution. In fact, one bit of investigation about a shack on one of the farms near the initial murder and roadside accident should have been so obvious to me that I was kicking myself for overlooking it.

Young Burton Keirstead, circa late 1930s.

Burton Seely Keirstead (1907-1973) was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick and was the son of Dr. Wilfrid Currier Keirstead, a pastor for the United Baptist Church and a noted professor himself. Dr. Keirstead taught philosophy and social sciences at University of New Brunswick where his son would eventually study and teach.

Burton would choose economics over religion and philosophy and his studies included a stint as a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford where he was involved in the Adelphi Club, the Dialectical Society and the Lotus Club. While at Oxford he often entertained students in a salon in his private rooms. One of the most famous salons he arranged included a talk by fellow student E. M. Forster, famed novelist of A Passage to India, A Room with a View, Howard's End and Maurice.

Over his lengthy career as an academic and economist Keirstead taught at University of New Brunswick, Dalhousie University's Institute of Public Affairs, McGill University and University of Toronto. He was a visiting lecturer at MIT, University of Arizona and The University of West Indies in Jamaica where he studied and eventually published a book on freight rates and the federal shipping service. He published several books on economics throughout his life notably The Economic Effects of the War on the Maritime Provinces of Canada (1944), The Theory of Economic Change (1948), Canada in World Affairs, Vol. VI (1956), and Capital, Interest and Profit (1958).

While The Brownsville Murders is Keirstead's only published detective novel it is not his only contribution to crime fiction. The editor of Maclean's magazine after reading an enthusiastic review of Keirstead's debut mystery novel in a New York newspaper met Keirstead in person to discuss his fiction. Together they came up with a plan to publish Keirstead's second idea for a detective novel as a serial. The first part of Murder in the Police Station appeared in the January 15, 1934 issue. MacPherson, Brian Woodward (now a partner in MacPherson's firm), Inspector Eccles and LaTour all appear in this second work. A nice surprise is that after his success with the Brownsville case LaTour has been promoted to the rank of Inspector in the RCMP. Murder in the Police Station was published in six bi-monthly installments from January through April 1934. The entire serial is available to read at the Maclean's website. I hope to read the whole thing and write a review of that obscure fiction work soon.

FFB: Murder R.F.D. - Herman Petersen

THE STORY: In the first chapter of Murder R.F.D. a runaway bull is captured just after goring a farmhand. This leads to an investigation as to who let loose the bull and if it was a bizarre act of revenge. While all the bitter relationships on the local farm are sorted out Tom Wykeham is found dead - a bullet to his head. Now the police have both a weird farm accident and a murder to contend with. Or are they two murders? And are the deaths related? Doc Miller, local coroner, Ben Wayne, new to the farm town and new to farming, and D.A. Paul Burns team up to sort out the evidence and determine who the angry killer is.

THE CHARACTERS: Murder R.F.D. (1942) is the second novel to feature Doc Miller, Wayne and Burns. The setting as with the other books by Petersen is upstate rural New York. Ben Wayne is our narrator and the first case he and Miller were involved with -- Murder in the Making (1940) -- is alluded to a couple of times. Ben does some interesting detective work on his own, but it is mostly Miller who sorts through the evidence, discarding one theory after another, then pretty much uncovering the killer.

Doc Miller is a cantankerous man, wise but impatient. He seems friendly with Wayne and Burns but he definitely has an ego. Though Burns at first seems to be in charge, Miller takes over given the opportunity or not. State troopers are present but are mere background characters. The police seem unimportant here and there may not be a police force at all in this upstate New York farm village. The Petersen novels seem inspired by Queen and Van Dine with the presence of a District Attorney and an amateur sleuth.

The murder investigation primarily targets Orville and Agatha Deuel, the wealthy farmer gentleman and his wife, who have a rocky marriage. Agatha was allowed a friendship with Tom Wykeham, a man considerably younger than her, and it seems to have developed into something deeper and romantic though she denies anything physical between the two. Their intimate meetings suggest otherwise. Agatha visited Wykeham frequently at his ramshackle cottage. Her bathing suit is found hanging out to dry in his shack. And she was seen cradling his dead body moments after he was shot. Clues like a woman's white slipper, a burned dress, and blood stained clothing all suggest that one or both of the Deuels are involved in Wykeham's murder. Later some evidence about the use of a boathouse near the murder scene will add another layer of deceit and lies.

Other suspects include Jim Kinney and Pat Gordon, two farmhands who work on Deuel's land. Kinney seems to have been responsible for letting the bull loose as revenge on another farmhand he disliked. Kinney comes off as a passive aggressive whiner, a weak man with a juvenile temper, who couldn't possibly be a killer. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Gordon, a hulking savage, with an intimidating physique and a sadistic personality. He will feature in one of the strangest action sequences in the final third of the book.

Louis Telford is the man who saved the day by single-handedly capturing the rampaging bull. A former cattle rancher from out west, Telford is described as "a wealthy bachelor who liked the bottle and was a connoisseur of women." Ben is mistrustful of Telford. Despite the playboy personality Telford seems eager to help the trio of detectives track down the killer.

Christine Nelson, is Agatha's niece, and she turns up about midway in the book arriving by bus from the big city. She has a few moments of sleuthing on her own and serves as the requisite damsel in distress late in the novel.

INNOVATIONS: It's mostly the rural setting that makes this book and all the other in the brief series so intriguing. It's wartime yet there is little talk of anything outside of the farming community. The characters have plenty to worry about among themselves without thinking of fighting overseas. In essence this is almost like James M. Cain on a farm with a plot heavily focused on a strange affair between an older woman and a younger man that apparently does not involve sex, and jealousies and highly charged emotions.

The detection mostly consists of the usual American countryside mystery fare. Farming routine, property rights, care of animals are always at the forefront. The clues are heavy on tracking footprints and discovering items left behind in tall grasses. A half-wit farmhand named Willie obsessed with American Indians often imagines himself in pursuit of wild men. Of all the characters Willie is the most skilled at following footprints and pathways through the grasslands. All Doc Miller and Ben need do to goad him into helping them is tell him is that they are after an Indian and Willie is set into motion.

Apart from the extensive tracking sequences there are other subtle clues like the discovery of a party line phone in Wykeham's riverside shack and the previously mentioned boathouse and the borrowed boat. But whether or not this can be considered entirely fair play is a matter of debate. A clever reader might be able to piece together all the clues, but the motive barely suggested in some brief theorizing and dialogue on Wayne and Miller's part is not fully brought out into the open until the killer explains his motivations himself in the final pages.

THE AUTHOR: Herman Petersen (1893-1973) spent his entire life in upstate New York. Born in Utica he worked for several newspapers there and eventually settled in the small town of Poolville. For many years he was the postmaster in that village. From 1922 through 1939 he wrote dozens of short stories sand novellas for pulp detective magazines. His affintiy for that action oriented story telling is evident in his novels of the 1940s. Most of his stories appeared in The Black Mask during its heyday when the work of Hammett, Gardner and Chandler appeared in its pages. On occasion Petersen made the cover of a magazine issue so he must have been popular with readers. Other stories were published in Detective Fiction Weekly, Dime Detective, Bulls-Eye Detective and Soldier Stories. His final novel published first in the the pulp magazine Two Complete Detective Books (June 1948) was promised to be appear as a full length book from Lippincott but that never actually happened. I managed to score a copy of that issue and will be reviewing his final Gothic sounding novel Night on Castle Hill later this year.

Herman Petersen's Detective Novels (all with Miller, Wayne & Burns except those noted)
Murder in the Making (1940)
Murder R.F.D. (1942)
Old Bones (1943)
The D.A.'s Daughter (1943) - no series characters
Night on Castle Hill (948) - magazine publication only

FFB: The Devil Must - Tom Wicker

US paperback edition
Popular Library G291 (Dec. 1958)

THE STORY: The murder of a farmer appears to be the work of a disgruntled hired hand who happens to be Black. Reporter Sandy Martin and his editor Al Harris are given the privilege to review the crime scene by Sheriff Tyree Long. They are asked to handle the news story with discretion as this is an election year and Long wants to avoid unnecessary racial disputes. When the suspect is arrested and thrown in jail he begins to exhibit unusual trance-like behaviors, becomes withdrawn and nearly catatonic. Another Black man in a nearby cell tells Sandy that old Jumbo is hexed. And the murder starts to take on a sinister aspect when Sandy hears stories of witchcraft, spell casting and the power exerted over the superstitious denizens in the Black community.

THE CHARACTERS: The Devil Must (1957) contains a huge cast encompassing nearly every single person in the small North Carolina town of Marion. We follow the actions and thoughts of protagonist Sandy Martin, a cub reporter who hasn’t left his hometown since birth. He is disgruntled with his broken family: a devil-may-care brother has left the state to make a name for himself up North, his sister who he still loves dearly has fled the town, supposedly living with a man she chased. He’s not heard from her since she left town years ago. Sandy is carrying the torch for his high school sweetheart, now working as everyone’s favorite waitress in a whites joint aptly named Purity Café. Not too surprisingly given her name is Honey she has a reputation for being flirtatious and indiscreet with her affections. This family baggage and frustrated romance help to color the way Sandy views his boss, Al, and the rest of the people he comes in contact with. His many grudges, hidden prejudices and misperceptions of characters will be put to the test when he must willingly accept that the motivations of the murderer seem to be grounded in superstition and an insidious use of mind control in the form of actual witchcraft and hexes.

Marion is riddled with Southern prejudice against Negroes. The 1950s PC term and the ugly slur are used with equal frequency by all characters. Those who use Negro we know are supposedly the good guys, those who throw around the other N word are the baddies. Or so it seems.

The Sheriff wants the case of Carl Roger’s bludgeoning murder wrapped up quickly and is eager to fit evidence to the primary suspect poor, weak minded, and barely literate Jumbo James who protests his innocence until he can literally not speak a word and curls up into an immovable ball on his jail cell cot. Sandy openly listens to Nathaniel, Jumbo’s much older brother, relate horrific stories of how Mrs. Rogers, the real town tramp, has been caught having sex in public places and then threatened Nathaniel with her weird powers. He tells a bizarre tale of how she performed a frightening ritual involving fire and convinced Nathaniel that he was in her power. It is this unnervingly effective story that gives Sandy the idea that deeply held superstitious beliefs are as profound as deeply held religious faith. That the capacity for profound faith in either belief system can subvert common sense. That one human being literally can be in the hands of another who is savvy enough and perverse enough to exploit the talent of sympathetic understanding into tyranny of the mind.

Ironically, it is John the Baptist Jones, the incarcerated minister arrested on suspicion of raping one of his own parishioners, who explains to Sandy the importance of the belief in hexing and its dire effects on his community. There are many cultural lessons Sandy learns from people like Nathaniel and John the Baptist. Once he has in his hands a piece of surprise evidence in the form of a letter written by the murder victim and sent to a respected lawyer Sandy begins to formulate a plan that will redeem Jumbo, save the town of Marion from further harm, and deal with the true killer in a satisfyingly retributive manner.

INNOVATIONS: The Devil Must explores race relations in the dawn of the civil rights movement by examining superstition and its powerful effect on the Black community of the American South. Wicker has managed to use the exploitation of superstition in order to explore the prejudice and subjugation. He does so with an incisive, angry intelligent prose. The climax of the novel becomes nearly allegorical with the villain of the story serving as a symbol of all the iniquitous treatment of not just Black people, but everyone ignorant and foolish enough to give themselves over to hollow cant and vicious threats. After a story that at times seems to drown in Sandy’s romantic entanglements, his personal prejudices against all those he sees as threats to his pure love for Honey (all of this clearly meant to mirror the superstition of Jumbo and Nathaniel) the novel pays off big time with its true message of the treacherous nature of empty belief systems that have no foundation in genuine truth. And yet that truly terrifying finale is evidence to all the characters (and the reader) that witchcraft can be a real and useful tool for those immersed so deeply in its rituals and curses as to bring about healing change. The novel ends in an authentic conflagration in which fire purifies and allows for a phoenix-like rebirth for those lucky enough to survive.

QUOTES: Mrs. Rogers was not pretty; she was too dark and too hard and too worn out. But that night hate brought her close to beauty. Hate flashed in her eyes and stiffened her figure. She stood straight, seeming taller and slimmer than she was: and I was glad it wasn’t me that she hated.

…he clapped his hat on his head and, as if it were a crown, it made him the old Tyree Long, the powerful politician who shaped Jasper County with his shrewd plump hands.

US 1st edition, Harper & Row (1957)

I thought about Carl Rogers. I couldn’t place him out of all the milling half-glimpsed Saturday gallery of farmers’ faces. But he had been a human being; and where now was all that laughter and all that sorrow and all that hope that ought to have filled his life—anybody’s life? It seemed there ought to have been at least a trumpet blowing to mark the passage of so much humanity.

A Southerner – that is, a man who lives in what used to be the Confederate States of America – has to condone segregation of the races. He has no choice. It doesn’t matter what he believes; it doesn’t even matter if he is a learned man to whom people listen or pretend to listen, what he says on the radio or writes in the newspaper. Every day of his life in the South he gives tacit approval to segregation. He does this when he eats in a restaurant. He does it when he attends a motion picture or travels by public conveyance or stops at a hotel or motel or sits in a doctor’s waiting room or joins a civic club or sends his children to school.

Al Harris, the editor of the town newspaper, to Sandy: "You and Street [a lawyer] are doing just what you claim Tyree did, building up something that could have happened into something that did happen. I have always thought that it was just as bad to be blind in one eye as in the other."

Flanking the French doors was a pair of oil paintings of some earlier Kirby men, statesmen or educators or wielders of vast private influence, such as Kirbys had always been. … That room stood for order, for permanence, for security. It spoke for men of property and pride and it sheltered their affairs. It would brook no new light under its gloomy ceiling. … And, in its own way, its spell was as profound as that of any witch. It’s grip on the minds of those who lingered here would be as unshakable.

Nathaniel blinked, secretively, wisely, suddenly he seemed old and profound and powerful. Sitting there …amid his poverty, and in his ignorance, he still knew more than either of us; a party to dark deeds we feared to credit he dwarfed our rational assurance with his secrets.

courtesy of New York Times, 1976

THE AUTHOR: Tom Wicker (1926-2011) was one of the nation’s leading sociologically observant reporters for much of the later 20th century. He first made name for himself writing up his eyewitness account of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He wrote an Edgar award-winning nonfiction book about the Attica prison riot. He was involved in a lifelong quest to speak up for the maligned and ostracized portions of American society, and was hugely involved in the civil rights and equal rights movements of the late 60s and early 70s. In addition to several non-fiction works Wicker penned a handful of pulp thrillers as equally affecting as The Devil Must. These were all published under the pseudonym Paul Connolly. I’ll be reviewing one of those books, reissued by Stark House this month, in a few days. Wicker’s fascinating and important life as journalist, novelist, analyst and activist is captured in his laudatory obituary available for all to read (without subscription!) on the New York Times website.

FFB: Death at "The Bottoms" - A. B. Cunningham (a repeat)

Busy planning a vacation and tending to our rooftop garden (splendiferous photos coming tomorrow!) so I've little time for a new post. Here's a rerun for you instead, a review originally posted back in 2011. This is one of my favorites by Cunningham, a sorely underappreciated American mystery writer who wrote about crime in rural Kentucky.

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Here's an odd cast of characters for you: Snotnose Kale, Bigfoot Paden, Dummy Axling, Carlyn Aljor, Wib Turner, Butch Thord, Keb Folden, and Rod Kloth. Are we in Harry Stephen Keeler territory here? Maybe some kind of Damon Runyon tale with quaintly dubbed gangsters? Could it be some Lil Abner style murder mystery? The last guess isn't too far off. These are the people of A.B. Cunningham's WW2 era Kentucky in his fourth novel Death at "The Bottoms."

This is the first book by Cunningham I've read and I'm glad I chose this one as my introduction to his work. It's one of those old-fashioned backwoods detective novels that has echoes of the kind of detection done by Hesketh Pritchard's November Joe and not a little bit of Sherlock Holmes.

The victim is Vivian Beck and she appears to have been attacked by a pack of dogs that has been roaming and attacking livestock. Her body has been found in deep snow with several sets of dog tracks surrounding the immediate area. Farmers in town have been keeping their shotguns by their doors in case they hear the marauding canines. Sheriff Jess Roden, Cunningham's series detective, almost immediately sees that the wounds that caused her death could not have been made by dogs or any other animal. Why? Because many of them contain rust stains and flecks of corroded metal. Roden's investigation of the crime scene is only the first instance of some interesting fundamental detective work.

In a surprisingly violent scene early in the book a group of overgrown delinquents bent on ending the dog pack attacks go on a killing spree savagely and sadistically doing in a number of pets unfortunately running loose in the area. When Roden gets word of the dog killing spree he and a friend set out to avenge the town's pets. Roden sets his own dogs (he owns five) on the men with a hidden agenda in mind. He wants to have a few of the men incur dog attack wounds so that he can compare them with the wounds in the corpse of Vivian Beck. This is how the law works in rural Kentucky in the early 1940s.

As the book progresses it becomes increasingly odd. It seems to be suffering from a schizoid identity. While it is definitely a detective novel, the characters, the extreme violence and the dark tone make me want to treat it differently. It's almost as if Cunningham managed to create his own version of country noir not unlike the plots found in Daniel Woodrell's crime novels which were written more than forty years after this book. Although there is no real doomed obsessive love story here as in noir, there is a love triangle of sorts. Also, the characters are grotesque enough to have been created for a typical noir story.

Bigfoot Paden is a moonshine maker with a still hidden away in an abandoned mine. Carlyn Aljor is a femme fatale of a nurse taking care of Ivy Martin, an ungrateful invalid, but spends her time seducing Chas Beck, the victim's handsome husband, whenever she has a chance. Then there's Dummy Axling, a deaf mute who is a key witness but whose communication skills are almost completely absent. His wild gesticulating and grunting lead only to more confusion rather than clearing up the strange circumstances surrounding the murder of Vivian Beck.  Finally, there's Big Nig, the token stereotyped black character complete with insulting phonetic dialect.  He's deputized by a US marshal in order to persuade moonshiner Bigfoot Paden to cooperate with the law. Big Nig's major scene is a Kentucky duel of sorts with the moonshiner. Bigfoot is armed with a fish gig and the giant black man threatens to cut Paden to ribbons with his straight razor he conveniently carries on a string around his neck. You don't find these kinds of characters in Agatha Christie, do you?

The finale has a few nice twists in store and I was genuinely taken by surprise when the murderer was unmasked. There's the usual summing up in the final chapter in the manner of a typical detective novel and all the odd angles of the story suddenly are revealed in their true light. The grotesqueness of some of the characters is what serves as the main form of misdirection in this book. The reader spends so much time appalled by their actions and words that he fails (as does Roden) to see what is really going on. Cunningham must be given credit for putting a very American spin on his mystery novels.

FFB: Death on the Outer Shoal - Anne Fuller & Marcus Allen

THE STORY: Hammerhead Island, pop. 27. This community of fishermen, their wives and children, have no official organized government nor any police force to ward off crime. When the gruesome accidental death of one of their most beloved citizens, kindly “Preacher” Phineas Benson, turns out to be murder they find themselves with a dilemma. Do they call in the police from the mainland or deal with the crime themselves? It’s up to Jeremiah Corbett, the oldest and most respected leader, to investigate and decide whether the islanders’ “eye for an eye” philosophy should be instituted in meting out Justice.

THE CHARACTERS: Death on the Outer Shoal (1934) is another surprising discovery in a subgenre I like to call country noir. The rural community on Hammerhead Island is perfectly rendered in every detail from the rigorous descriptions of trawl fishing to the finely tuned ear for New England regionalisms and speech patterns that accent the characters’ dialogue. Jeremiah (Uncle Jerry) Corbett is ostensibly the protagonist but this novel seems more like an ensemble theater piece with each of the supporting character getting their moment to shine. Jean McKenzie, a young nurse who as the only medical professional on Hammerhead acts as the surrogate coroner to help Corbett. Jean verifies that the wounds in Benson's neck are not made by the fisherman's gaff stuck there but by a knife because the stab marks have clean edges and go deeper than the gaff's pronged hook. She also finds contusions on his scalp that prove he was stunned by a blunt object in order that Benson could be arranged in the nets near the gaff and then stabbed to give the appearance of an accident. There are gossipy women spying on the Committee men, Otto Wolfe the irascible lighthouse keeper with grudges aplenty, and Hank Thomas, the local alcoholic and wife beater all who have riveting scenes with Corbett.

Widow Grimshaw is perhaps the remarkable figure among the many supporting players. Following the death of her husband Captain Grimshaw she has gone into a permanent state of grief dressing only in black, disappearing into a huge hooded cloak, sporting a scowl cemented into her wizened face. As far as most people are concerned her interminable grieving and anger led to a spiraling descent into madness. The way Fuller and Allen describe her she might as well have stepped out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. If her appearance were not foreboding enough Widow Grimshaw points her accusing crone’s finger and lets loose with regular tirades denouncing everyone in sight. She is like some Puritanical witchfinder with a fervent desire for vicious retribution. She has a habit of heaping her curse on anyone who dares antagonize her.

Her antipathy to all allows for the introduction of another sinister influence – the collective hatred toward the Portuguese fishermen who live in nearby mainland town of Byport. While the Widow’s is the ugliest of bigotry expressed in dialogue, for her niece married one of the immigrants, none of the others on Hammerhead are too fond of the Portuguese either. Nick Dianno and his family tend to be singled out by name regularly. Nick is viewed as an opportunistic wheeler-dealer looking for his chance to buy up land. In the estimation of the citizens that will only ruin the heritage and life of Hammerhead Island and everyone is determined to keep the Portuguese off the island.

INNOVATIONS: The idea that an entire community needs to turn detective to root out an evil scourge is something that you usually find in horror fiction. The preservation of the land's purity, their insular lifestyle, and the inhabitants' desire to keep out foreigners and "outsiders" smacks of the kind of secrets that made fictional places like Cornwall Coombe, Summerisle and Crowhaven Farm the kind of town you'd never call home. And though most likely unintended it was hard to dismiss the vigilante mentality of how Justice prevails on Hammerhead Island. Too often someone quotes the Biblical "eye for an eye" concept that serves as the citizens' primary code of morality.  There are shades of not only Hawthorne here, but eerily prescient hints of the plots of modern thrillers like Harvest Home, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and even Death Wish.

When Hank Thomas is brought before the Committee for drunkenness and wife beating then punished with a beating by a leather thronged scourge I cannot help but think that the authors intended this to be taken as a scene of appalling horror, especially considering that Hank is lashed five times by each of the five Committee members. It's an unexpectedly brutal scene that had me gasping. When it's all over and Hank is about to leave the tavern backroom where he received his beating he breaks down and weeps uncontrollably. It's a mix of horror and sympathy that I was both unprepared for and a bit awed by.

Death on the Outer Shoal was published by E. P. Dutton as part of their "Dutton Clue" imprint.  Included in this book is one of the standard "Stop!" pages that challenge the reader to pause, collect up all their notes (if they made any), think over all the clues presented and try to solve the mystery.  This is, in fact, a rare example of a very fairly clued mystery from Dutton. Some clues are subtle, others blatant and it might be rather easy for a veteran detective novel reader to weed out the correct killer from all the suspects. But the full truth may also come as a real surprise when all is revealed. The ultimate Justice is even a bit ironic with a subversive rather than an Old Testament touch.

Click to enlarge

QUOTES:  Widow Grimshaw: "Am I the only one who speaks to the [Portuguese]? Is Hammerhead the only spot for meeting and talking--and planning? The world is wide. Thieves find straight paths to each other."

"If I but knew [who killed my husband]!" Her old face became hideous with hate. "On him I would heap my curses--curses, not of words, but of blood--and Death!"

Soon the little harbor echoed with the throb of engines, and the Hammerhead fleet of trawlers was once more on its straggling way toward the fishing grounds. In each boat was a man dreading the night, whose dark, uncertain hours stretched ahead of him, and yet glad that here, at last, was work to be done.

And in each home on the sea-beaten island, an anxious woman wished silently that her man was safe within doors, and prayed that he might come back to her with the next day's sun.

THE AUTHORS:  I could find little biographical data on Anne Fuller and Marcus Allen. I have an inkling that they were perhaps married, but that may not be true at all. My only clues come from the dedication pages in their two mystery novels. Their first mystery Blood on Common Ground (1933) is dedicated to Al Fuller, clearly a relative of Anne's (husband? son? brother?) and also the artist who drew and signed the frontispiece map of Hammerhead Island that illustrates this post. However a bigger clue appears on the dedication page of this novel which reads "To Louise and Richard Connell."  Could that be the same Richard Connell who wrote the iconic short story "The Most Dangerous Game" I asked myself?  Indeed it is.

Richard Connell was married to Louise Herrick Fox in 1919. Louise, like her husband, was a writer and at one time a playwright. Later she became involved in the publishing world first as a proofreader and then a prominent editor for Condé Nast publications. When Connell decided to give up his amazingly prolific career as a short story writer (close to 200 stories appeared between 1929 to 1940) he opted as many writers did for the life of a Hollywood screenwriter. He and Louise eventually settled in Beverly Hills.

Could Fuller and Allen have been part of the movie scene during the 1930s when this book was written? When Connell was just reaching the height of his popularity as a writer of scripts and stories for moviemakers?  Death on the Outer Shoal certainly has a very cinematic feel with its dramatic fishing and boating scenes, the setting of the island itself including the lighthouse and cliffsides, the often heightened dialogue, and an exciting courtroom-like finale. It could've made a gripping movie and might have been written as a scenario prior to it becoming a novel. Anyone who has knowledge about these writing duo your input will be greatly appreciated for filling in the missing details.

FFB: The Auctioneer - Joan Samson

THE STORY: Harlowe, New Hampshire has a new resident. Perly Dunsmore set up house in the old Fawkes place and is asked to help raise funds for a new crew of deputies for the town’s meager police force. Perly is a talented auctioneer whose charismatic charm is his primary tool in getting the townspeople to donate their unwanted belongings to the auction that will help raise funds for the deputy’s pay. The success of the first leads to another until the auctions begin to occur almost weekly. With each new fundraiser Perly requires more things to sell. His simple requests for donations become more demanding until people find their homes invaded, their possessions taken away without consent or given up only after violent threats. The Auctioneer (1975) tells the story of a town at the mercy of Perly Dunsmore, his transformation from Good Samaritan to powerful controller of everyone and everything in Harlowe, and the dire effects of giving up and giving in to promises that may never come true.

THE CHARACTERS: Rather than seeing the effect Perly has on the entire town and getting multiple viewpoints and stories of several characters as a contemporary novelist might approach this intriguing set up, Samson focuses her story on the Moore family (John, Mim, daughter Hildie, and John’s mother) who have been farmers in Harlowe for generations. We watch them slowly lose everything they possess, everything they hold dear, including the love they have for each other. On occasion Samson has Mim visit her friends and we get some painful and harrowing vignettes featuring other families. Through Mim’s eyes we see how her friends are dealing with Perly’s sinister command of Harlowe and the treacherous ease with which he simply takes what he wants whenever he wants it.

After having lost her treasured vanity table, a wedding gift from her mother, and watching John’s milking cows taken away for one of the many auctions Mim travels into town to visit Agnes Cogswell, the wife of one of Perly’s chief deputies. Here in a home that the reader thinks may have been spared from Perl’s rapacious collection of furniture and livestock Mim finds just the opposite and worse. Agnes and her husband Mickey have not only given up their belongings, Angie has sacrificed even more – her sanity. Word has travelled fast about the perils of fighting back and refusing Perly’s demands. Some residents have been victims of fatal accidents while others are leaving town taking what little they have left. Agnes fears not for her own life, but for the life of her children. Mim finds Agnes babbling in her kitchen, barely coherent, but clearly not of sound mind. More disturbing is the fact that the Cogswell’s eldest teenage son is patrolling the grounds with a shotgun and two Dobermans to protect the home from unwanted visitors. Mim leaves fearing that she too may succumb to paranoid imaginings and rushes home to make sure that Hildie is unharmed, but deep in her heart praying that her daughter is actually still in the house.

That we never get to know Perly’s thoughts unless he in the company of other characters is Samson’s most effective tool. Everything he does and says is seen through the eyes of the victimized. Perly is rarely seen alone and we never get to know his inner thoughts the way we do those of John and Mim. His dialogue more than his actions is the most terrifying part of the book. His grandiloquent speeches promise a new life for the people of Harlowe – that prosperity is certain the more you spend, that even more riches will follow once you surrender your treasures and prizes that only have sentimental value.

With each sale Perly rewards those who “donate’ their goods with a pittance of a rebate. John’s first check is for $3. By the time he earns $300 for the sale of his own land that brought in $5800 he would rather destroy the money than accept it. Most insidious is the first scene where Perly manages to get Hildie to give away her favorite toy – a red wagon. John is forced to buy it back for $1.50. After that Perly wins the friendship of Hildie who agrees to attend his Sunday school classes. What exactly goes on in those classes we never find out. But it can’t be good.

ATMOSPHERE: Gothic touches come in striking and unexpected sequences as with the omen of poison ivy that slowly encroaches onto the Moore property. John says he will tend to it but he never follows through. Mim sees the aftermath of the ivy infestation when she visits an untended grave in their private family cemetery on the grounds of the farm. With her bare hands she tears out the poison ivy ("It climbed around and around the trunks of the old cheery trees and coiled its way along the branches, like snakes moving toward robins' nests.") and of course suffers the consequences. This leads to a new forced isolation “for fear of starting the plague’ on Hildie and her husband who is already avoiding her and now shuns her in bed.

After telling of her visit with Agnes to John (“She counts her children every night.”) and expressing her fears of farm country being developed into a city of Perly’s imagination John grabs Mim and holds her dearly. Around them the elements seem to rise up and express the dread and fear the Moore’s are feeling:

"John held Mim. The house banged and creaked and clattered as if it were full of secret footsteps. The November wind outside blew over the pond and the pasture and the stand of heavy white pine. It pulled at the shingles of the empty barn and rattled the loose sash, searching out the couple who lay in each other’s arms listening to the warm breath of the child on the floor beside them."

QUOTES: "You see me runnin', Ma?" John asked, jolting to his feet so that Hildie slid to the floor.
"Like a jackrabbit, boy," said Ma. "Where you think it's goin' to get you to?"
"Next time I'll stand up and let him shoot me," John shouted. "Then where'll you be?" He yanked the door open.
Ma took a step toward him. "And that's just another way of runnin'," she shouted back.

Mim stood at the sink scraping carrots. "Could we get ourselves on welfare, do you think?" she asked. "It's hardly shameful nowadays."
"Since when?" Ma said. "Maybe not for folk who ain't got sense enough to hang on to what's theirs."

"Things is things. But they can’t take your flesh and blood. And they can’t take the land because we’re on it."
"Words, John. That’s not stoppin’ them."
"This is still America, Mim. They can’t. There’s limits."

THE AUTHOR: Joan Samson attended Wellesley finished her undergraduate work at University of Chicago, received her M.A. from Tufts and married twice. After an interesting nomadic life (that included a home and job in London) she settled in New Hampshire. She held various teaching positions through the 1960s at elementary schools both in the US and the UK, then later became an editor at a literary journal. In the Viet Nam era she and her second husband Warren Carberg became active in the anti-war movement. Her first published work was a non-fiction book, Watching the New Baby, intended to teach children about what it's like having a new sibling. She also began writing short stories. Encouraged by Carberg she expanded one of the stories into The Auctioneer. It was rather a sensation during its day with a huge marketing campaign, rave reviews, sales of over one million copies and even a screenplay option which sadly never led to a movie. In one of life's cruel twists of Fate five months after the book was published Samson succumbed to a terminal illness and died. She has, however, lived long after achieving a cult status with The Auctioneer, her only novel and one that is well remembered, powerfully affecting anyone who has read it.

EASY TO FIND? After being out of print for over three decades The Auctioneer was reprinted this year by Valancourt Books. In this reissue you get the full novel, plus added bonuses of an informative introduction by horror fiction enthusiast and novelist Grady Hendrix, and afterword titled "Remembering Joan Samson" by Warren Carberg. Valancourt offers their books in paperback, hardcover or digital editions. Those who like the feel and smell of old books are in luck as well. There are dozens of copies of both US and UK editions with the US Avon paperback leading the pack. Most of these copies are extremely cheap, but check their condition before ordering. Vintage paperback editions of Samson's only novel far outnumber the hardcover editions. The US first edition is now rather scarce and those with dust jackets in G to VG condition range from $45 to $110.

FFB: Murder on the Day of Judgment - Virginia Rath

THE STORY: The end of the world is nigh! Or so says self-professed fortune teller, astrologer and psychic Madame Sapphira. She has set up camp in Coon Hollow in northern California followed by a small group of acolytes to wait out the apocalypse. No one really believes the world is ending. They just want to see what will happen. And while cosmic disaster never occurs human disaster does. No one was anticipating three violent deaths nor that someone among them is a vicious murderer. Sheriff Rocky Allan and his wife happen to be among the guests in the campground and together with their friend Theophilus Pope they uncover many secrets, forgotten crimes, sinful behavior and the identity of the killer.

THE CHARACTERS: Murder on the Day of Judgment (1936) is the second appearance of Virginia Rath's series detective Deputy Sheriff Rocky Allan. He first enters the detective fiction world in Death at Dayton's Folly (1935) a case alluded to several times over the course of this story. He is aided by his devoted wife Eleanor. Rath has created a folksy duo who have settled into a comfortable life as husband and wife and her love of these characters is obvious when the story gives way to lots of chatty and humorous conversations. They joke about the perils of cooking at a campground, for example, with instant coffee jibes turning up often. There is a running gag about a Pope's tendency to catch colds easily and he suffers from a bad one with drippy nose and clogged sinuses for much of the book. Rath has a tendency also -- to overburden her novels with this lighthearted domestic touch, here, however, it serves these two well. Their conversations help the reader to understand how much they care not only for each other but their innate empathy for everyone the come in contact with. While Rocky may be the more cantankerous and intolerant of duplicity and cruelty he is balanced out by Eleanor's deep concern and loving care. No surprise when we learn that Eleanor is nurse.

That is not to say that this is an overly cutesy, Pollyanna-ish novel. Rath is writing about con artists, fraud, blackmail and petty jealousies. In the first two victims we see she has the ability to delve into base human motives and the corruption of the human soul.  Sapphira Barlow and Reverend Saul Cheney are two of the most despicable charlatans you may ever come across in this type of crime fiction. Neither of them is as religious as they claim to be and their love of money takes precedence over and displaces any love of God they might have. But it is their hatred for each other that is the root of all evil when violence explodes on the eve of destruction, the day before the supposed apocalypse.

Rath has some interesting tangential commentary on race too. The origins of young handsome Henry Powell, a wannabe movie star who had a singing career in Mexico, and his ancestral roots become a point of inquiry for Allan and Pope.  Why is Henry so desperate to hide his true identity and his parentage? And why is Maggie Corwin, usually so frank and brusquely opinionated, so unwilling to talk about Henry's past?

Two very young characters who feature seemingly as minor characters -- teenage Lisa, Sapphira's adopted ward and David her 11 year-old grandson -- have plenty to do with Sapphira's complicated past which will slowly be revealed as evidence is collected.  Lisa and David slowly take prominence in the novel as the plot reaches its surprising (dare I say shocking?) climax. Hidden letters, secreted newspaper articles, a locket with a photo, a secret inscription encoded with a Biblical reference all eventually tie into a sordid past littered with murder victims, drug dealing, alternate identities, missing relatives and greedy schemes.

INNOVATIONS: On the surface Murder on the Day of Judgment seems to be yet another book typical of the early Doubleday Crime Club mysteries with a husband/wife sleuthing team, the innocuous chit-chat and joking, but the novel takes unexpected turns into darker territory. Set in rural northern California with a cast of fairly sophisticated city dwellers among the campground guests this is a crime novel that rightly belongs in what I call "country noir". Sapphira is a criminal through and through and in her seventieth decade she shows no sign of turning away from a life consisting of getting whatever she wants at whatever cost. Corruption is omnipresent at Coon Hollow, a force of insidious power. One begins to understand why Rocky is so stern and unforgiving with everyone by the novel's finale. We see in the end that Sapphira's influence has tainted everyone or utterly ruined them. Three characters are revealed as pathetic drug addicts, Lisa was being groomed to become a prostitute, David is inculcated into her fortune telling racket and is seen wearing a ridiculous star covered robe and purple turban throughout most of the novel. The finale and the reveal of the murderer is Rath's final touch of subversiveness in what amounts to a Great Depression era version of transgressive fiction. When the chilling denouement comes it's as if she delivered a final slap in the reader's face.

THINGS I LEARNED: On page 141 I came across this: "I seem to be findin' lots of things." Rocky held out a green Eversharp that had been lying on the floor near the door. "Any idea who this belongs to?" I thought maybe it was a fountain pen. I was very close. Invented in 1913 the Eversharp was one of the earliest and most innovative mechanical pencils manufactured in the United States. Called "a truly groundbreaking innovation" by vintage pen expert David Nishimura, the Eversharp was also one of the most popular. He writes: "By 1921, Wahl-Eversharp was turning out 35,000 Eversharps every day, and had sold over 12,000,000 pieces." For all the details on its invention, production and development visit vintagepens.com, Nishimura's fascinating website and catalog of vintage pens for sale.

Rocky also makes this remark: "You been readin' too many stories, sister, where the sheriffs is all dumber'n Dora." And here I though that the "Dumb Dora was so dumb" jokes were the creation of the Match Game writing crew back in the 1970s. Tells you how old the writers were!

THE AUTHOR: Born Virginia McVay in 1905, she taught high school in a mountain railroad town in California, married Carl Rath a railroad telegrapher and worked in a railroad telegraph office during World War II. Virginia Rath was active member of the Northern California chapter of the Mystery Writers of America for nearly all of her career. In addition to Rocky Allan she created Michael Dundas, a fashion designer based in San Francisco who is also an amateur sleuth. Dundas and his wife Valerie appear in eight books published between 1938 and 1947. Her last contribution to mystery writing goes almost entirely unnoticed. It's a chapter in the round robin novel The Marble Forest (1951) published under the odd pseudonym of Theo Durrant, a name Anthony Boucher borrowed from the real life 19th century killer dubbed "The Demon of the Belfry" by San Francisco newspapers of the time.

EASY TO FIND? Like so many writers of her time Virginia Rath has disappeared into the Limbo of Out-of-Printdom. You'll be hard pressed to find any of her books. Other than The Marble Forest none of her books were reprinted in paperback editions in her lifetime making the hunt for her mystery novels all that more difficult. I find nothing in modern reprints or digital books either. Currently there are four copies of Murder on the Day of Judgment offered for sale, but in order to find three of them you need to misspell the last word in the title as Judgement, with the often superfluous E after the G.  (Oh! the perils of online searching.) Try your library, too. Over the years I've managed to acquire nearly all of her books for a pittance. I don't think Rath's books are too cheap these days as paper books become more and more oddities of human civilization and priced as if they were relics of antiquity.

Rocky Allan Detective Novels 
Death at Dayton's Folly (1935)
Murder on the Day of Judgment (1936)
Ferryman, Take Him Across! (1936)
The Anger of the Bells (1937)
An Excellent Night for Murder (1937)
Murder with a Theme Song (1939) - also features Michael Dundas