Murder Mansion - Herman Landon

THE STORY: Donald Chadmore, newly released from prison for an assault charge has come to his uncle Theodore's home in order to protect him from a possible attack. He takes his uncle to the library at the ancient gloomy Chadmore home known to locals as "Mystery Mansion" and locks both of them inside.  The heavy door is bolted twice and locked from the inside. All windows are barred. There is no way anyone can get inside. And yet spectral music plays from the piano in the corner of the library and a shadowy figure emerges from the darkness. Uncle Theodore cries out to Donald. Donald fires his revolver at the shadowy figure. He goes to the divan where his uncle was sitting but it's empty.  Uncle Theodore is found behind the furniture piece on the floor. He's been shot. Not only shot but stabbed with an antique dirk that Donald had handled only a few hours ago and which was left in the hands of someone now locked upstairs in the attic. Who was the shadowy figure and how did it get in to kill Theodore Chadmore?

HIGHLIGHTS: Murder Mansion (1928) is another Herman Landon pulp extravaganza.  Think of any pulp magazine story trope and its bound to be in this novel.  Several beatings and fistfights, abduction, two locked rooms, a haunted house, a family curse, hidden jewels, strange legacies, disguise and masquerade, ventriloquism, a dying message, and a handful of gangsters all make their appearances in this story. The entire book is surprisingly well written (at times rather literary), cleverly plotted, and often laugh out loud funny.  Landon can't help but pile on the Gothic excesses and melodrama which tend to turn up the moody atmosphere to 11, 12 or even 13 too often. Still it's a helluva story, well told and teeming with fun characters, innovation, exciting incidents, and enough puzzling elements to keep any hardcore GAD fan glued to the pages.

THE CHARACTERS:  This book has a huge cast of characters but even some of the most minor characters have memorable moments. There are too many to list, including six mystery guests who turn up for a secret meeting with Theodore on the night of his murder. Below are the best of the cast.

Donald Chadmore - Our ostensible protagonist and an amateur sleuth of sorts. As the book continues he is more of a victim of circumstance, chosen by the villains of the piece to take the fall for his uncle's death as well as being blamed for several other bizarre activities. His  dancing partner, both literal and figurative is...

Gloria Westcott - The Bright Young Thing of the book. A real Jazz Age girl complete with 1920s lingo she shows off to her "big boy."  One wonders why she  turns up so often too coincidentally in the most unusual locations. All will be explained later in the book. She's an utter delight providing much of the lightheartedness to offset the heavy-handed strum and drang whenever Donald and Gloria exploring dark passages or dealing with yet another thunderstorm. I loved the Jazz era slang she slings around as easily as she does the foxtrot.

Samuel Peterkin - Valet who works at a luxury hotel, on loan to Donald for his stay and travels to Mystery Mansion to help him as not only valet, but personal assistant.  Peterkin can't help but offer up his talents as a detective and comes up with an ingenious idea to solve the locked room murder. He turns out to be the real sleuth of the book despite the presence of police, a D.A. and a private detective working for the prosecutor's office.

Milliken - Investigator for D.A. Mott. Won't have anything to do with ghosts or locked rooms. The whole crime gets his goat.  "It ain't natural!" he continually pronounces. He can't stand anyone who "blows froth" at him.  Some kind of 1920s slang, I gathered, for telling lies or making up stories (a running gag in the last third of the book). He has a few excellent scenes showing off his detective skills. Notably, he proves that the odd placement of Donald's fingerprints found on the dirk show that Donald could not have stabbed his uncle. Almost everything and everyone he encounters in this case is classified as "unnatural." Nevertheless, he's determined to find the real reasons for the murder and dismiss all the claptrap.

Mr. Amicus - A very dead character whose presence is always felt at Mystery Mansion.  Real name Jacob Hamilton Chadmore, he is Donald's great grandfather.  The story behind his self chosen moniker is too involved to explain here. But it is a bronze bust of the dead man and his promise to return from the grave on the anniversary of his death that keeps Theodore and his wife on their toes and often up late at night unable to sleep. They’re especially troubled every October 7, the night he died back in 1800 and something. The novel of course opens on October 7 and Theodore is killed on the anniversary night. Could it be a ghost that did him in?

Groody - A butler with a suitably weird name this servant to the Chadmore household is privy to several secrets that he won't reveal until the final chapter. He's a bit shifty but always answers Donald's questions honestly.  Trouble is Donald never asks the right questions.

"Doc Locks" - For a while I thought this exceptionally astute expert would turn out to be the detective. But he has only one scene and then he's gone. Neither a physician nor a PhD scholar "Doc Locks" is a nickname given to him by the police and the prosecutor's office. We never know his real name, still Doc is clearly the Gideon Fell of this novel. No locked rook can stump him. Through careful examination of any murder scene deemed a locked room and using his knowledge of criminal tricks and clever illusions he finds any secret passages and all possible means of exit and always proves a locked room is never hermetically sealed. Until this one, that is. Before he tells everyone that it seems impossible for anyone to have entered the locked room tells a few interesting true crime anecdotes like the one about the 19th c. French murderer who managed to infiltrate a locked room with a blazing fire in the hearth by coming down the wide mouthed chimney wearing an asbestos suit and a helmet with built-in oxygen tank!

John Pagan - One of six guests who were to visit Theodore Chadmore on the night of his death. He arrives t dressed in white tie and tails, the only person in such formal attire. He has an unusually deep and theatrical voice that Donald recognizes as belonging to someone he heard plotting his uncle's death. That person calls himself Staglawn.  Much of the book involves characters trying to uncover the true identity of Staglawn. Pagan denies being the murder plot mastermind. He also has a hilarious running gag of sorts that takes the form of an aversion to certain vocabulary and vernacular.  When anyone uses these words he responds with outrage and satirical wit: "Candid? Abominable word! Just as if anyone could be candid in this world of sham and pretense and stupid amenities!" See the quotes section for a couple more of these amusing outbursts.

QUOTES: Gloria: "Secrets should only be told in the moonlight."

Donald: "What do you think, Milliken? Do I look like a murderer?"
Milliken: "You do.  All the murderers I've seen looked innocent."

Pagan: "Hunch? I detest that word. It's a lazy man's designation of an idea he is too indolent to think out clearly."

Pagan: "Kindness? That's another word I detest. What we call kindness is only inverted selfishness." 

"This will be a lesson to me," Don added. "I'll never again trust strange women."
"Poor Don!" Gloria gave a mock sigh. "Everything is a lesson to you, isn't it, Don? But you always forget."

Peterkin: "[Valeting is] the best education in the world. Keep a man waiting two minutes for his trousers before he's had his morning coffee, and you learn as much about human nature as it would take you two years to learn in any other way. To know human nature, you've got to study it in the raw, with the frills off. Sometimes I've found it awfully raw, sir." 

THINGS I LEARNED:  Mr. Amicus is a great devotee of Haydn and remarkably has learned several haunting themes from his opera The Devil on Two Sticks.  Prior to any Mr Amicus manifestation in the library the weird dissonant music from this opera plays on the piano.  I was intrigued by "dissonant" music from Haydn most of whose music I think of as bright and melodious.  Lo and behold!  It is true that he wrote the music for an opera titled Der Krumme Teufel (his first full opera written at the age of 19) based on the 17th century French satirical novel by Alain-René Lesage translated as The Devil on Two Sticks. But how Mr. Amicus can play the music is the ultimate unsolved mystery of Murder Mansion.  According to all accounts I found online Haydn's opera is a lost work and though there are archival copies of the libretto no sheet music nor any recordings are known to exist. The only anecdote I could find connected to the actual composition was told in an 19th century collection of composer biographies. Here it is related that Hadyn and Josef von Kurz, his librettist collaborator, had a discussion on how to capture in music the sound of a thunderstorm.  Haydn could not come up with a suitable musical motif.  In frustration he slammed his hands on the keyboard and his companion exclaimed, "That's it!" Probably someone's vivid imagination at work. Landon certainly makes the music seem creepy in his lush descriptions. Don't know why he didn't use something more immediately recognizable like "Danse Macabre". I guess music that doesn't exist is easier to work with for a novelist; he can make it sound any way he wants it to sound. 

THE AUTHOR:  Herman Landon (1882-1960) was born in Stockholm and came to the United States with his family in 1895. At one time he worked as a journalist for the Washington Herald where he was feature writer and a managing editor. His primary fame, however, is as a pulp magazine short story writer and crime fiction novelist.  Throughout his fiction writing career lasting from 1907 to 1942 he wrote close to 200 short stories and 20 novels. He created several popular series characters for the pulp magazines among them The Gray Phantom (who may have been the inspiration for Batman), The Picaroon, Godfrey Usher, and Kingdon Cole. Some of his Picaroon stories were collected into book format and published in the UK only. Most of his stories were published in Street & Smith magazines with the majority of them (more than two thirds of his total output) appearing in Detective Story Magazine and Detective Fiction Weekly. His stories also appeared in 10 Story Book, The Blue Book, The Smart Set, The Corner Magazine. and The Popular Complete Stories. Some of his stories were adapted into silent movies.

EASY TO FIND?  Nearly impossible these days I'm sorry to report.  I found one copy available for an cheap price due to its poor condition. Looks beat to hell, but if you don't mind reading copies (I certainly don't when the book is extremely hard to find) then it's waiting for you. Two copies (maybe only one listed at two different sites) translated into French also turned up for sale. My copy in VG condition, pictured at top of this post, was sold within 12 hours of the post appearing. Sorry to anyone who was looking for it earlier. 

UPDATE:  Remarkably, three days after this review was posted I checked for copies of Murder Mansion and discovered all were sold. Even the French translated copies! Also sold were two copies of The Forbidden Door (before I even mentioned it in the comment below). Oddly, another copy of Murder Mansion has turned up. That one final copy is the Liveright 1st edition and is priced exorbitantly. It will cost you well over $300 including shipping and taxes if you live in the US. Even more if you live outside of the US. But the copy has four torn pages. In pieces! Still, I am sure that someone will buy that book soon. That and a roll of Scotch tape. 

Murder at the World's Fair - Mary Plum

THE STORY:  Charles Graham makes a visit to Chicago's Century of Progress exposition and while passing through the Belgravian Pavilion he sees a man open a doorway. The man's hand is covered with blood and he immediately closes the door.  Charles follows him into the room and sees another man stabbed lying on the floor.  He is clearly dead. A shattered vase is nearby. Charles says they must call the police. The bloody-handed man, Paul Melitti, refuses and instead calls the expo's security chief, Gordon Taylor. While Melitti leaves the room for a brief time Charles calls his friend John Smith, a private detective. And the chase is on to solve the crime!

THE CHARACTERS:  John Smith appears in four of Mary Plum's detective novels; this was his last appearance. Within a few sentences it's clear he is yet another in a long line of Philo Vance imitations -- flippant, arrogant, insensitive, dispassionate and ridiculously knowledgeable about all sorts of minutiae.  Around the midpoint his snooty persona is toned down a bit, he seems more tolerant and slightly likeable, but he still seems to know way too much about what's going on and does much of his detective work offstage similar to all those know-it-all Vance wannabes back in the late 1920s.  The final chapters are overloaded with character monologues revealing some of the work and research Smith did far away from Graham who acts as the primary protagaonist and amateur detective.

Initially, the case is about the stabbed man, Stepan Trino, and the search for a killer and motive.  The shattered vase is involved in his death and there is a twin vase that also figures in the story.  Two women, Jenny Dale and Rita Hathaway were invited by Trino to visit him in his office. Jenny is supposedly a dead ringer for Trino's dead daughter Madelon and while I thought this intriguing detail would be instrumental in the plot it's merely a red herring. However, Trino presents Jenny with the twin vase, some kind of Asian artifact with dragons painted in yellow on blue porcelain and this gift will be very important. She leaves his office the day he is murdered with the vase hastily wrapped in a wad of newspaper. Her pal Rita ridicules her for carrying the sloppily wrapped package and kids that they won't be admitted to their swank hotel by the officious and snobby doorman Dmitry. Charles is distracted by all these details. Smith takes this all in stride and focuses instead on the two men with Jenny and Rita who were seen by Graham at a dance hall. Smith is sure he knows one of them -- Dan Harlow, the man who seemed to be Jenny's date for the late afternoon.

Shortly after the murder investigation begins Jenny is abducted from her hotel room and the story suddenly shifts into a pursuit thriller. The mystery of who killed Trino all but vanishes. All energy is devoted to finding out who took Jenny, where she is being held, and why the second vase ended up shattered in her hotel bathroom.

Plum has a deft hand at creating unusual characters. Her woman characters tend to be more interesting.  Rita Hathaway, an utter smart aleck, proves to be a handful for both Graham and Smith. She is an expert at sarcasm and ridicule and it takes some effort to break through her coolly aloof facade. Slowly, Graham realizes that she may have orchestrated the abduction.  He begins to follow her doggedly using taxis, cars and several times pursuing her on foot. A key sequence takes place in a seedy part of Chicago's south side near 23rd Street.  The novel reaches its climax at this location.

I liked the chapter where Smith visits Trino's apartment and questions the no-nonsense landlady, Mrs. Bord. Smith notices a kind of fortress built in her outdoor garden filled with booby-traps. She explains she devised them to keep vandalizing teens and marauding dogs out of her vegetables. She's a great character. She also refuses to allow anyone into Trino's room. In fact she can't let anyone in because she gave him the only key. We learn all about Trino's highly secret life and that Mrs. Bord asked no questions as long as he paid his bill on time which he did well in advance. She Aldi liked that Trini was neat and private, never had any guests. In her opinion he was the best kind of tenant.

Another intriguing scene with an unusual period historical detail takes place at the hotel after the abduction. Most of the guests are anxious about letting police into their rooms, several of the guests protesting heatedly. The cops expect these protests, they're used to them. Those guests, they tell Smith, need time to get rid of their bootleg booze. Happens all the time in hotel searches.

THE SETTING: Much of the Chicago settings are accurately described even to the old time reference of Michigan Boulevard instead of Michigan Avenue which though renamed in 1910 didn't come into regular usage until after WW2. A reference to the "near north" surprised me. One of the standard terms for the neighborhood north of the Loop and south of North Avenue I thought this was a fairly recent label, but clearly was in use back in Prohibition era. I get the feeling Mary Plum was a real Chicagoan although on occasion some odd British syntax and phrases slip into the writing like the use of "stopping in" a hotel instead of "staying in" which is the usual American phrase.

Seems the south side was already becoming rundown in the early 1930s. Plum enjoys writing about dilapidated buildings like a boarding house where Dan Harlow and his friend Pete Johnson are staying which is contrasted with the luxury hotel where Smith and Graham have rooms. There's another scene in a depressing, sparsely frequented, restaurant with a sad clientele that is particularly well done too. Finally, Johnson is followed to a ramshackle converted farmhouse that seems to date to the 19th century.  Charles spies on Johnson and Rita from an ancient barn on this property and hides out in what he thinks is the former hayloft.  He is startled by a gun toting visitor and the story takes a huge twist during this sequence.

As for the Century of Progress only a few pages are devoted to the exposition. We get some nice detail about where the fair takes place, the architecture and how its bright colors and varied buildings are contrasted to the huge Columbian Exposition and its "White Palaces" of the previous century.  Later in the book Plum adds some more details about the attractions, mentioning the famous Skyride, the lagoon and some other buildings. But that's it for the Century of Progress. The fair itself serves only as a setting and nothing in the action really relates back to anything about the actual Century of Progress. Instead, the fictitious Belgravian Pavilion will feature in the plot and the entirely fictional political intrigue  of Belgravia will reveal the motive for all the various crimes including the murder of Stepan Trino.

THINGS I LEARNED: The Century of Progress actually had two seasons. The first big exposition ran from May 27 - November 1, 1933.  The second season began on June 1, 1934 and ran through Halloween of that year.  I was confused when Plum writes that the fair will end on October 1, assuming 1933 since that's the date of publication of the book. Maybe some editor failed to catch the error. 

A strange neologism occurs twice in the story:  one-idead.  This is an adjective that Charles uses to describe Pete Johnson's obsession with Rita. The word looks very weird to me. Plum means "one idea-ed" or more accurately monomania.  Either monomaniacal or obsessive would have been a better choice, I think. I've never seen that word spelled that way nor have I heard it used in everyday speech.

EASY TO FIND?  Not at all.  I found my copy several years ago on eBay and it's an ugly, beat up reading copy. There is only one other copy for sale from a reputable antiquarian dealer who specializes in vintage books in period dust jackets. He has a much better copy of the book with the attractive DJ as seen at the top of this post. My poor copy is up on my eBay listings for an affordable price if you are interested in reading the book. The UK edition was published as The Broken Vase Mystery (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933) but I found no copies under that title on any online bookselling sites. Neither did any free copies at internet archives, but I don't really look too hard for them. There may be one somewhere out there.

John Smith Detective Novels
The Killing of Judge McFarlane (1930)
Dead Man's Secret (1931)
Murder at the Hunting Club (1932)
Murder at the World's Fair (1933) 

 

FIRST BOOKS: The Seven Sisters - Jean Lilly

Mr. Spencer, a gemologist, visits newlywed Nancy and Stanley Kent at the famed Prentice mansion. He informs them that he is doing research on the renowned Prentice Dowry Chain, an elaborate jeweled necklace made up of seven star sapphires known as the Seven Sisters. Much to Mr. Spencer’s dismay Nancy, Mrs. Prentice’s granddaughter, has never heard of the Prentice Dowry Chain and knows nothing about its existence among the many valuables in the house. Stanley, however, a clever young man if there ever was one, leads Spencer to a portrait of one of the Prentice ancestors. It’s Nancy’s great grandmother who is wearing an elaborate necklace and Spencer stands in awe of the painting sighing almost inaudibly, “The Seven Sisters!” Spencer allows the family to try and locate the necklace and he promises to return at a later date hopefully to examine the jewels in person. Thus begins a strange and macabre adventure involving buried secrets, stolen jewels, and murder.

I was utterly unprepared for what awaited me in the pages of The Seven Sisters (1928), the first mystery novel of Jean Lilly. The rambling narrative meanders through Stanley and Nancy’s courtship, an overview of Prentice genealogy, the setting up of the house, the relegation of the dozens of ancestral portraits that covers the walls, etc. etc. and so forth. This meandering all seemed to be going nowhere for the first 75 pages. Finally when Spencer shows up and delivers his two page monologue on the mineral composition of gemstones, the phenomenon of asterism, the difference between faceted gem cutting and the en cabochon method I started to see this would be yet another mystery novel about a missing item of jewelry and the crimes that follow in the wake of the jewels’ recovery. Little did I know that the story would take a bizarre detour into the land of pulpish gore and macabre thrills.

A star saphhire displaying
the asterism effect

Nancy’s grandmother Penelope, the only occupant in the Prentice home other than the handful of servants, refuses to talk about the Seven Sisters. A few days after Spencer showed up she dies of fright when a different strange man appears and confronts her and her gardener/handyman about the Prentice Dowry Chain. Just before Penelope dies she utters a fragmented message: “Under…oak...next…” Stephen takes the message to be a literal clue to the necklace’s hiding place, most likely beneath one of the oak trees that line the property. He spends one night digging and to his shock (and the reader’s) he uncovers some skeletal remains. Buried with the bones he finds an engraved pocket watch. Only a capital R is legible while the other two letters in the monogram have been worn away.

Increasingly the story becomes like Harry Stephen Keeler webwork concoction. An apt analogy because this is a book from E. P. Dutton, publisher of Keeler’s books from 1927 through 1942. Along with disinterred skulls and skeletons and the engraved pocket watch we get anonymous letters, a mystery woman residing in Room 34 of a hotel on Andover Road, an acrobatic burglar, and another buried body!

Surprisingly, with a small pile of buried corpses and a break-in at the Prentice home there’s not a single policeman in sight. Stephen in trying to protect the family name does call the coroner but tells him as little as he thinks the coroner needs to know. Stephen may be clever with his dying messages and handy with a shovel but he’s extremely foolish not to report the nuttiness going on at the Prentice property. His foolhardy decision to protect his wife’s family reputation leads to more death and violence. Coroner Bailey then takes matters into his own hands. He and Stephen turn sleuth and ultimately, after various wild adventures and more crime, the greedy culprits are tracked down, the necklace is recovered and the secret of the skeleton buried beneath the oak tree is explained.

Jean Lilly is as mysterious as the goings on in this debut novel. I know more about her husband and daughter than I do about her.  Jean McCoy Lilly (1886-1961) was born in Michigan and died in Pennsylvania.  She married Scott Barrett Lilly, well known professor of engineering at Swathmore College,  for whom an endowed scholarship is still named.  Her daughter Mary, born in 1910, graduated from Swathmore in 1933, studied painting at the Philadelphia Art institute and taught art there. Later she spent much of her life as an art teacher at Charlestown Elementary School in Malvern, PA.

Lilly is the author of four mystery novels with the last, Death Thumbs a Ride (1940), the easiest to find and the only other Lilly book that has been written about on the internet. While her first crime novel has no series character another Lilly mystery novel I own but have yet to read -- Death in B Minor (1934) -- features Bruce Perkins, her lawyer-detective who appeared in the last three books.

The Seven Sisters exists only in one US edition and is the scarcest of all the Lilly mystery novels. It was not reprinted in either hardcover or paperback during the author’s lifetime. While I enjoyed this oddity I wouldn’t break my neck (or bankbook) tracking down a copy. Despite its strange turn of macabre events it’s typical of 1920s American mysteries: not really a traditional detective novel but rather an adventure thriller overloaded with preposterous coincidences. Ultimately it all ends in a sadly predictable finale. With its old-fashioned prose style, unusual narrative tricks and creaky plotting it all reminded me of a book that might have been written in the late Victorian or early Edwardian era by either Richard Marsh or Mary Elizabeth Braddon.