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) 

 

Notice to Quit - James Quince

THE STORY: William Yolland gets some news from a physician who has given him a mandatory exam for an insurance policy Yolland is hoping will help out his dire financial position. And it's not good news. The doctor informs William that he has a cardiac condition and may experience a fatal heart attack in a matter of months. William now finds it necessary to find alternative method to save his beloved home and estate which will be subject to death taxes that he will not be able to afford. He comes up with a bizarre plan -- switch identities with his look-alike son and give the illusion that he is still alive should he die suddenly. His son John can make sure that finances are in order and the house can be saved even though William Yolland will be gone. But the masquerade comes with several unexpected complications not the least of which is hoping that no one will see through the elaborate scheme.

THE CHARACTERS: Quince spends a lot of time setting up the switcheroo by having several characters mention that William, age 48, and John, age 24, are often mistaken for one another. It's only when William whose hair has gone prematurely white is seen up close that anyone realizes the error.  The disguises seem ridiculously simple: William dyes his hair blond and wears more youthful clothes while John is fitted for an expensive white wig and adds a few crow's feet to his face using theatrical make-up. It's a bit hard to swallow, but I went along for the ride. Luckily, Quince recognizes the outlandishness of the role playing. Though on the surface everyone seems to accept William for his son and son for father not everyone falls for the charade. By the midpoint William Yolland's first person narrative gives way to another first person narrative in the person of Molly Montauben, John's very close friend, who lets us know that she saw through his disguise almost immediately. Later another character catches on to the switch due to John's lack of fluency in Spanish. Thank heaven for these clever and observant characters!

William and John are immensely likable and Quince's witty style of writing in William's voice allows for the reader to further accept the disguises and scheming. On the first day of the switch William in the person of his son attends a tennis party where he meets John's friends and associates from a not-for-proft organization called the Youth Movement which is devoted to social work and health equity 1930s style.  Later, William learns from his son that the Youth Movement is actually a front for a revolutionary political party intent on shaking up the current British parliamentary troubles . John confesses he was roped into a kidnapping plot but never followed though. Now Dad must carry out the plan in a hastily restructured scheme that becomes even more complicated when it overlaps with his past life as diplomat in the fictional South American country called Bochilia (apparently meant to be a stand-in for Argentina).

William lived in Bochilia over twenty years ago where he worked for Pablo Poolo, a dignitary close to the Bochilian President. William got to know Poolo's daughter Amatista, they eventually married, she bore him his son, but died days later from a complicated delivery.  Some of the Bochilian wheelers and dealers have now come to the UK and are target of the Youth Movement plot that John has been involved with. But due to the switch John - now the fake William - finds himself facing people he should know and recognize and being utterly ignorant of his relationship to them. And so the farce begins!

But is it really a farce?  Quince tries to mix a kind of low comedy that dates back to Roman and Elizabethan theater with sophisticated satire pointing out generational differences in the advance of parliamentarian government, post World War One. The farcical elements seem utterly out of place with the almost lofty satire he is trying to insert about international trade laws and the end of the Victorian monarchy, two decades after the queen's death. The contrast made for a schizoid identity in itself for the book as a whole. Despite great character work from the supporting players -- a mix of Bochilian baddies, notably Felix Barzon, aka "the Ferret" who knew William two decades ago, and the Youth Movement idealists especially Estelle, their imposing intellectual leader, and Molly, the second narrator pining for John Yolland (the real one!) from afar -- the constant wavering between political satire and low comedy was a distraction.  Personally, I do not like suspense thrillers that deal with government policies and foreign powers looking to upset global economics. I avoid them as I would hearts-and-flowers romance novels.  Unfortunately, my mind drifted away when the plot focused on the politics.

INNOVATIONS: Surprisingly, I found that this crime novel (for there are indeed aspects of crime, and even detective novel on display) succeeded more when it stuck to the farce. Quince parodies abduction action sequences and sinister villain masterminds so familiar to readers of Edgar Wallace and other thriller writers of the 1920s and 1930s. At times this felt like a "thriller comedy of manners" a la The Secret of Chimneys or The Seven Dials Mystery. Perhaps the biggest surprise in Notice to Quit (1932) is the element of masquerade and role playing because ultimately that is what the novel is really about. As the story resolves its various plot threads and conflicts -- including among other things a dispute over the Falkland Islands to an apparently worthless mine in Bochilia -- Quince turns his attention to contemplation on generational frictions and disparities. Basically, he is always commenting on the timeworn dichotomy of youth vs. age. William regrets his foolishness, his retreat into boyish attractions and indulgences while playing the part of his son.  Some of the writing occasionally reveals pithy insights on this topic:

I cursed Youth and its silly movements and its way of managing the middle-aged by falling back on the appeal to courtesy when its bullying failed.

"Youth is led by fear. Did you know that? All the great leaders have been feared. If love goes with the fear so much more the comfortable for all concerned, but it does not greatly matter. In the eyes of the young there are no half-tints; you must be black or white, right or wrong, feared or despised."

Ultimately, the plot comes full circle with a wonderfully delightful twist in the penultimate chapter.  I found myself marveling at how much Notice to Quit resembles not so much a satirical crime novel as it does a Shakespearean comedy with its fascination with masquerade, the farcical elements arising out of the identity switch, role playing of all types, and the uplifting finale with two weddings. A happy ending indeed arrives despite all the political skulduggery.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The frequent mention of the Falkland Islands and Barzon's interest in purchasing them for Bochilia (hence my thought that it is supposed to be Argentina) led me to look at early 20th century skirmishes and conflicts located in that part of South America. I discovered that it was British military stronghold for decades dating back to the late 19th century. There was also an early battle there during World War 1. Argentina's struggle for sovereignty of the islands is as age-old as the military forts constructed there. 

EASY TO FIND?  This one is a true rarity. I found my copy back in 2014 and I've never seen one since.  Currently there are zero copies offered for sale from the triumvirate of online antiquarian booksellers. I successfully sold my copy -- sorry for no early announcement -- shortly after I finished reading it for this post. Who knows when another will ever turn up again? Your only resort seems to be academic libraries: three copies are in libraries in the UK, one in Dublin, and one in Canada at the University of Alberta.