The Lockridges | Kelley Roos | Fay Grissom Stanley | Elizabeth Dean | Jack Iams

A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page

Frances and Richard Lockridge

Death Takes a Bow (1943) (Chapter 1)

Voyage into Violence (1956)

Captain M. L. Heimrich stories

• Death on a Foggy Morning (1955)
• The Accusing Smoke (1959)
• Flair for Murder (1964)

Kelley Roos

The Frightened Stiff (1942)

Sailor, Take Warning! (1943 - 1944)

Ghost of a Chance (1945, 1947) (Chapters 1 - 8)

Murder in Any Language (1948)

Haila and Jeff Troy stories

• Murder Among Ladies (1950)

"The Case of the Hanging Gardens" (1954)

Jack Iams

What Rhymes With Murder? (1950)

The Lockridges

The Lockridges are intuitionist detective writers. Their most famous detectives, the husband and wife team Pam and Jerry North, are classic amateur detectives, people who stumble into crimes and solve them through brain power, in the intuitionist tradition. Their police allies use sheer brain power too, not leg work to solve crimes. Inspector Bill Weigand looks first for discrepancies among suspects' testimony, in the early stage of an investigation. Later, when he has acquired a lot of facts, he tries to find the underlying pattern in the crimes. These methods are profoundly intuitionist. They involve reasoning, analysis, and attempts to shape facts into ideas and structures.

Mr. and Mrs. North books have several features of the Van Dine tradition. They are set in New York City, amid the upper middle classes. The characters are sophisticated. Many of the characters are intellectuals. Their novels feature murder mysteries among the same sort of literati one finds in Ngaio Marsh or Van Dine. Several of the books are set in the theater, always a Van Dine school favorite locale. The Norths have a relationship with a friendly police officer, Bill Wiegand, that recalls many other amateur detective- New York police alliances, such as Philo Vance and the DA, Ellery Queen and Inspector Queen, and Hildegarde Withers' friendship with Inspector Piper in Stuart Palmer's books. There is a continuing cast of police characters that recur from book to book, as in many of the Van Dine school writers. Many of the killings are bizarre, or use unusual murder methods, in the Van Dine school style. There is lots of intensive analysis on the murder scene after a crime, also a favorite Van Dine tradition. "Death on a Foggy Morning" (1955) contains that Ellery Queen favorite, a dying message.

The biggest strength of the North novels are the people in them. Pam and Jerry North are appealing human beings, and so are most of the suspects in the story. Unlike some detective authors, who mainly write about nasty characters, the denizens of a North tale tend to be civilized, intelligent, decent people. They are people whom one would love to know in real life.

The theater atmosphere in Death of an Angel (1955) is probably the closest American equivalent of Ngaio Marsh's theater mysteries. The opening chapters of this book (Chapters 1 - 2) have considerable charm. The Lockridges' characters are considerably less eccentric than Marsh's. They also do a lot more drinking, in the American style - see Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man (1933), and Craig Rice.

Death on the Aisle (1942) is another Lockridge theater novel. While Death of an Angel mainly takes place among the off-stage lives of theater people, observing their contract negotiations and theatrical parties, Death on the Aisle is set in the theater itself, during the rehearsals of a new play. It was published in the same year as another theater novel, Helen McCloy's Cue for Murder (1942), although the Lockridge book seems to be earlier. Both books focus on the entrances and exits of various actors during a play, with much about alibis, time tables, and positions in the theater at the time of the murder.

The theater background is also partially present in Death Takes a Bow (1943), which deals with the lecture circuit and not plays. Still, this subject involves public performances, and has a cast of literati, so it has much in common with the theater books.

There are some similar plot patterns in Death Takes a Bow (1943) and Voyage into Violence (1956). Both stories wind up having two villains, one an amateur who committed the actual murder, the other a professional criminal. This professional commits most of the recurring acts of violence in the tale: searching people's rooms, thefts, and the accompanying assaults and battery of the occupants of the rooms, usually with a blackjack. The amateur who commits the murder is actually far less violent that this professional, who is always stirring up the suspense plot by constantly menacing one character or another in the dark. The amateur has a strong reason to commit the crimes. The crimes are related to family life, and the motivation in each case is related to women's issues: the stories were plotted by Frances Lockridge, and like many woman detective writers of the era, she raised issues of concern to women in her stories. Both novels have a similar puzzle plot: in each the killer is sailing under false pretenses, and turns out to be someone different from whom they appear to be. In each case, the killer's relationships are involved, faked relationships that disguise the truth.

All of these plot patterns are better handled in Voyage into Violence (1956) than in the earlier novel. In Death Takes a Bow (1943) the professional criminal and the amateur have nothing to do with one another; their common presence in the story is just a coincidence. In Voyage into Violence, the two are linked by a logical plot construction. The puzzle plot in Voyage is more elaborate and more imaginative.

Voyage into Violence (1956) is especially vividly written. The story of a cruise from New York City to pre-Castro Havana, the tale is remarkably atmospheric.

Murder by the Book (1963) was the last Mr. and Mrs. North novel. It takes place in the Florida Keys, near Key West. Much of it deals with alibis of the different characters; its plotting technique recalls that of the Realist school. There is also much medical detail in the book. Such intricate medical detail also served as an interesting element in the early chapters of Death Takes a Bow (1943).

"The Accusing Smoke" (1959) is a pleasant mystery story. The story is not fair play - the reader does not have enough facts to deduce the murderer - nor do the police actually solve the crime through their detective work. Rather, the murderer makes a Fatal Mistake that trips him up at the end of the story. In this, the tale resembles the version of Inverted Crime story that was popular in both the pulps and the slicks in the US, ones in which some miscalculation by the killer exposes an otherwise perfect crime. This miscalculation is supposed to be ingenious, and is often based on science: both of these are true in the Lockridges' tale. Unlike these inverted tales, in "The Accusing Smoke" we do not see the crime committed or know who the killer is in advance - the story has the format of a standard whodunit mystery tale. All of this is mixed in with the sort of milieu we expect in a Van Dine school tale, with a setting among art world people living upper middle class lives near New York City.

Kelley Roos

Kelley Roos is among the intuitionist writers who emerged in America around 1940. These include Craig Rice, Lillian de la Torre, the Lockridges, James Yaffee and Anthony Boucher. All of these writers seem to have adopted the intuitionist paradigm for detective fiction almost as a matter of course - it is clearly part of their basic view of what a detective story should be. Like the Lockridges, the couple behind the "Kelley Roos" pseudonym were a husband and wife writing team, Audrey Kelley and William Roos. Also like the Lockridges, they wrote about a husband and wife team of amateur detectives, as did Craig Rice, as well. Both couples' detectives live not just in New York City, but in Greenwich Village, then a haven for intellectuals and the chic.

The Novels

Made Up To Kill (1940) is the first novel about Jeff Troy and Haila Rodgers: the couple is not married yet. This tale refers to such detectives as S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe. It is pretty easy to guess which detective writers the authors value: these are all members of the Van Dine school! This is a back stage story, set during the run of a Broadway play in which aspiring actress Haila is appearing. This theatrical setting is typical of Van Dine school writers. Made Up To Kill is a minor novel, compared to many later works of Kelly Roos. It is readable, but the murder plot is not inspired, and the people are less likable than in later Roos novels. The book is full of disconnected subplots, in which the various suspects are immersed. Some of these are pretty trivial, but one, the Lee Gray subplot, is fairly clever.

Jeff Troy is a photographer for an ad agency. He is on vacation when the murder occurs, and decides he would like to be a detective. In this tale, and subsequent ones, he accepts a fee as a private eye to work on the case; but Jeff and Haila are clearly in the tradition of amateur sleuths, and are treated as such by the friendly policeman in this novel. There is some nice satire on the concept of the amateur detective in Chapter 2 of Murder in Any Language (1948). Roos also satirizes the "wife who is always walking in on murder" gambit (Chapter 5). However, this is only a cliché of the 1940's, whereas the amateur detective is one of the key concepts of mystery fiction.

If the Shroud Fits (1941) takes place among Jeff Troy's professional world of photography for advertising, with most of the suspects being models brought together for a shoot. It is also less successful than later Roos novels. It has two main problems. One is the tone of grim anxiety, even horror sometimes, that dominates this book. It is not fun to read. Most of the later Troy novels are full of comedy and joie de vivre. Kelley Roos has not found the right tone yet for their books. Secondly, the book lacks a brilliant puzzle plot idea for its events, although the second murder that occurs late in the book shows some ingenuity. Roos instead has labored endlessly to marshal dozens of small details into mystery patterns. The book is full of small, insignificant clues, tiny plot threads and small bits of business that the authors try to weave into a solution at the end. This solution is almost as complicated and large as a solution to an ultra-complex Carr or Ellery Queen novel. But while those authors' solutions were made up of brilliant puzzle plot ideas of substance, here we just get mountains of trivia all sewn together. If sheer labor or effort could make a mystery tale plot worthwhile, this book would qualify. It unfortunately lacks the ingenuity required for good puzzle plot fiction.

The Frightened Stiff (1942) is the first novel in which the characters are married, and the novel in which they move into their Greenwich Village apartment, which promptly becomes the scene of a crime. This is a nicely done detective novel, by any standards. It starts out conventionally, if a bit wackily, with the discovery of a corpse and the introduction of a bunch of suspects. But then the mysteries start piling up, and the book becomes quite imaginative in its twists, and in linking everything together in its plot. The dialogue is full of humor, and there is a good take off on the HIBK school, in the scene where the heroine wanders all alone in the spooky cellar (Chapter 5).

Roos often conceals clues around rooms. We see a character's rooms and all their belongings; later the detective deduces a hidden significance from some object in the room. There is a nice dovetailing quality to Roos' plots. If there is an odd, unexplained detail, or some strange aspect to someone's behavior, it is bound to link up with some other aspect of the mystery plot later on in some unexpected way. This sort of dovetailing always gives pleasure to the true mystery fan. Roos loves clues, and sprinkles them liberally throughout the books.

There is an evolutionary quality to Roos' puzzle plots. First we have a surprising revelation of part of the truth. Later, we will have a second revelation that builds on the first, and so on. Oftentimes, this twists the original idea into some new shape. These ideas can involve a series of characters: we will find a character in the series of people that is behaving in an anomalous way, different from the others, that is not sharing in their common behavior or structural position in the plot. This character looks at first glance as if they were just another member of the series, but they are not. Among Roos' fiction, The Frightened Stiff matches up in mystery plot technique with "Murder Among Ladies" (1950), being tales about series of people.

Sailor, Take Warning! (1943-1944) is an impossible crime novel, and more. It falls into the Chesterton tradition, from which most of the impossible crime writing by intuitionist writers derives. The authors show considerable ingenuity in the non-impossible crime aspects of the plot, as well. These are full of the hidden significances to actions that the Kelley Roos team loved. The characters in the story are the kind of eccentric hobbyists we are familiar with from S. S. Van Dine and his followers Ellery Queen and Rex Stout. This imaginative work stands with The Frightened Stiff as the best of the Roos' detective novels.

There Was a Crooked Man (1945) is an expanded version of an American Magazine novella called "Murder by Degrees" (1944), which is a better and more appropriate title. This story is in the tradition of The Frightened Stiff, concentrating on the characters who live in a single rooming house. This time the house is near Columbia University; both of the stories' main subplots have an academic slant. The story is pleasant but it lacks the ingenuity of the earlier novel. The main murder plot recalls that of The Frightened Stiff; the main subplot anticipates events in Murder in Any Language (1948). This subplot has plenty of charm. In fact the whole book is fun to read. I enjoy intuitionist mysteries; the authors are in there trying, and a "nice" mystery is not to be sneezed at.

Ghost of a Chance (1945, 1947) is a thriller. Puzzle plot elements are downplayed. The whole book has the Troys traipsing around New York and environs, tracking down leads. The early chapters (1 - 8) are quite good, with the Troys doing solid detective work in their tracking. It is very pleasant to read this book in its old "map-back" paperback: one can follow the Troys in their march around New York City easily using the map on the rear cover. This story is in the tradition of such suspense novels as Cornell Woolrich's Phantom Lady (1944) and Helen McCloy's Do Not Disturb (1943), both of which also involve much tracking around New York City. The tale's "a couple tries to prevent the assassination" plot also recalls Hitchcock's film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Roos' New York City settings are often leftovers from previous eras. The Troys' apartment, site of a former speakeasy; the many old residential buildings in what are now industrial areas; boarded up old mansions and the like are the nostalgic locales of the tales. During the war years of the 1940's there was a moratorium on new building in the United States, so probably there were a lot of such old areas that were making do until construction could be resumed.

Ghost of a Chance was filmed as Scent of Mystery (1960). The location was changed to Spain, and the film was scripted by William Rose. The stories' tracking and trailing made Rose a logical choice of screenwriter, as he is the author of such road and chase comedies as Genevieve, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!. The Roos team also did a novelization of the film. The movie was made in a scent added process called Smell-O-Vision, a process later burlesqued by John Waters in his film Polyester (1980).

Murder in Any Language (1948) is a return to the pure puzzle plot mystery. Made Up to Kill and Murder in Any Language both deal with mysterious women (Lee Gray and Mary Connors, respectively) who threaten the characters, but whom nobody has apparently ever seen. The resolution of these "mysterious women" plots are also related, although they are distinctly different, as well. They are variations on a common set of ideas. In Made Up to Kill, this is just a subplot, even though it is the best thing in the book, but in Murder in Any Language, Roos has wisely placed this situation at the center of the murder mystery.

There are other similarities in the two novels. Both have a multiple subplot construction. Both of these books start with an interruption to a regular pattern: people going on stage in the first, people going to a weekly class in the second. Both deal with "sophisticated" characters who are self-indulgent, and who are carrying on numerous affairs. There is a running theme in Murder in Any Language of the dangers of giving into temptation. Whether pursing an affair, or buying a lot of expensive stuff, the characters regularly get into deep trouble. These people are contrasted to the Troys, who resist temptation and who live in a modest apartment, and the Delores Lagret character, who lives a simple life style.

Murder in Any Language has a step by step construction. A subplot mystery is not elucidated all at once; rather, the facts behind it are revealed one step at a time. One chapter might show what was done, another, what a character's motivation was. This gives a web work effect, as details of a subplot stretch across the book and several characters. Following this effect can be quite pleasant, especially in the later parts of the book, as the design begins to grow in complexity and the details fill in.

It is hard to know whether to recommend Murder in Any Language or not. It is not a great classic of mystery fiction, and it is not as clever as some of Roos' other writings. But I enjoyed reading it, and it has some pleasant ideas.

The Blonde Died Dancing (1956) is an expansion of the American Magazine novella "Dancing Death" (1948). The novella featured the Troys; the couple in the book have new names, but are otherwise extremely similar to Jeff and Haila. This minor novel has the most perfunctory puzzle plot of any Roos novel I've read. It is readable, and has the Roos' storytelling charm. Ladies man Wendell Kipp is a nice character, and his small subplot shows some ingenuity. The Rooses deserve credit for their cheerfulness. Like Agatha Christie, there is plenty of affectionate spoofing of typical social types in their books.

Like Murder in Any Language (1948) of the same year, it is set in a specialized New York City school that teaches adults, this time a dancing academy. Murder in Any Language take place at a school for foreign languages, while Roos' third work of the year, the novella "Beauty Marks the Spot" (1948), is set at a charm school. Such stories continue the Van Dine tradition of giving all the characters a common intellectual interest. There is a certain formal similarity between these stories and Roos' rooming house tales. Both kinds of works take place in a single large building, filled with a group of disparate suspects, all of whom know each other through a long common history and interact. There are many different rooms, classrooms and offices in the school tales, the characters' bedrooms in the rooming house stories. Roos makes a big deal of the history when and how the characters entered this environment - when they joined the school as teachers, and when they moved into the rooming house. There are often secret alliances and connections among the denizens. There is a character who runs the building - either the head of the school, or the manager of the rooming house. The Roos team also favored other settings. Bars are frequent in their stories. Elevator scenes typically involve suspense. We get a look inside some of the characters' apartments.

The Shorter Works

"Two Over Par" (1949) is a short story about the Troys that shows several features of Kelly Roos' writing. There are multiple murders, even in a story as short as this one. There is great ambiguity though most of the story about the basic direction of those murders. In "Two Over Par", the detectives investigate if the first person was the intended victim, and the second person was killed as a witness to the first crime, or vice versa. The detectives and the reader are kept guessing about the basic pattern or structure underlying the killings, right up till the end of the tale. This sort of ambiguity is fairly open-ended: in "Murder Among Ladies", numerous different basic patterns for the story are discussed and evaluated throughout the tale. In longer works like Sailor, Take Warning!, not just the central crimes, but several other episodes in the story are capable of ambiguous interpretation. This sort of ambiguity recalls Ellery Queen.

Another kind of ambiguity is also found in Kelly Roos' fiction. This is an incident, watched by outside observers, that looks one way on the surface, but whose truth is very different. These incidents form little mini-mysteries in the text. Often times they are quite ingenious. This sort of ambiguity recalls G.K. Chesterton, and writers in the Chesterton tradition, such as Agatha Christie. These events do not appear to be ambiguous; they look straightforward. But eventually a surprise interpretation of them is sprung on the reader.

"Murder Among Ladies" (1950) shows the influence of the two greatest intuitionist authors, Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen. The plot pleasantly recalls in general terms such Christie stories of multiple murders as The ABC Murders (1936) and And Then there Were None (1939). Also Christie like: the search through backgrounds of the characters for clues to the present crimes. Ellery Queen like features include the box of curios delivered to one of the suspects, the gathering of the women and the plot changes rung therein, and the way much of the plot turns on the possession of knowledge: what different people knew when. There is always a search for hidden meaning in striking but obscure events: what do these curios mean? what is the significance of Mady's resistance to meeting the Troys? The gathering of women is full of an EQ technique: small but significant changes are explored in a pattern, always reaching for meaningful but hard to see variations in what at first looks like a fixed pattern. "Murder Among Ladies" is one of the numerous novellas Roos wrote for American Magazine. It is reprinted in American Murders (1986), edited by Jon L. Breen and Rita A. Breen, which also contains a detailed bibliography of Roos' work for the magazine.

The last of their American Magazine novellas to feature the Troys was "Final Performance" (1951). This was later expanded into the book Requiem for a Blonde (1958) also known as Murder, Noon and Night. The original novella title is something of a pun. The story is about a reunion of actresses, and does indeed involve a character's final performance. It is also the farewell appearance of the Troys, until their return in One False Move (1966). This tale is quite conventional in its plotting.

The remaining four novellas Roos wrote for the American Magazine have non-series characters. "Deadly Detour" (1952) and "One Victim Too Many" (1953) are relatively minor works. They get Roos out of their familiar New York City territory, into small towns and rural areas. Both take place during festive events, "Deadly Detour" during an antique car rally, "One Victim Too Many" during the Centennial celebration of an Ohio town. Both stories show Roos' fidelity to the puzzle plot mystery, with finales that bring disparate facts together into a unified pattern. "Deadly Detour" also includes an antique car museum. It reflects the interest of the Van Dine school in collectors. "One Victim Too Many" includes the staging of a historical pageant. This too recalls the show business and theater background of previous Roos books, as well as the Van Dine school as a whole. The pageant also recalls the tableaux staged by advertising photographer Jeff Troy in If the Shroud Fits.

"The Case of the Hanging Gardens" (1954) is the last of the novellas Kelley Roos wrote for the American Magazine. It shows terrific storytelling, with a well realized setting of underground caves. The story recalls in its basic approach "Deadly Detour" (1952). Both take place at an intellectually appealing tourist attraction in the countryside, a car museum and caverns, respectively. Both tales weave the history and development of the attraction into their puzzle plot; this is similar to the historical look at institutions in Roos novels. Both have suspense scenes in the dark at the attraction. Both contain clues to the mystery that develop from the attraction. In both, the people who own the attraction play a major role, as do their neighbors, and their complex personal and business relationships are one of the mainsprings of the plot. Both stories have romance subplots, with the heroine/ point of view character attracted to a man in the story, one of the suspects who may or may not be attracted to her. Both stories have a bittersweet look at marriage and its problems. In both the heroine finds key clues, but their interpretation is done by a relatively colorless local policeman, who serves as the story's official sleuth. Both stories have a lot of subplots, that gradually emerge in the course of the tale. Both stories have an appealingly romantic feel, with a sense of adventure at an interesting place and romance in store for the heroine. The tales cast a romantic glow over everything. They have a sustained mood.

Audrey Kelley and William Roos and were a married couple, and their stories show events equally from the point of view of male and female characters. This multiple consciousness is sometimes embedded right in the structure of the story. In "The Case of the Hanging Gardens", a series of events in the caverns happens first to a male character in the tale, and is vividly narrated by him; later, a series of nearly identical events happens to the heroine of the story. This replay is the key event in the puzzle plot; it allows the mystery to be solved. The fact that events are seen both by a male and a female consciousness is most absorbing and unusual. The events seem deeply similar to both characters, and one is seeing the triumph of mental activity over gender. Also notable: the early narration by the man is made to be part of a rebuttal by him to another man's challenge to his masculinity. So the story is linked to gender identity, right from the start. It eventually comes to seem more important than any conventional ideas on gender.

Similarly, in the Troy novels there is a parity between Jeff Troy's profession as an advertising photographer, and Haila Troy's work as an actress. Both are careers in the New York arts. Neither is essentially different from the other.

One can find other doubles in "The Case of the Hanging Gardens". The two sisters, one married and the other single, both experience difficulties with their romantic careers. These events seem to echo each other. Similarly, in "Final Performance", the lives and loves of the six chorus girls who make up the main suspects all have subtle echoes and contrasts with each other.

The caverns in "The Case of the Hanging Gardens" contain many chambers and passageways. In this, they are somewhat similar to the many roomed buildings that show up in the novels, such as the apartment houses in The Frightened Stiff and There Was a Crooked Man, and the school buildings in Murder in Any Language and The Blonde Died Dancing. Oddly, none of these stories contain a floor plan, and the details of architecture that are so popular in other Golden Age writers do not show up in Roos. Still, such interest in large buildings with many diverse occupants is part of the Van Dine School tradition. "The Case of the Hanging Gardens" shows an interest in phone calls; these also played a role in the second murder subplot in If the Shroud Fits, which was the cleverest part of that novel. The ambiguity of phone calls - who made them, where do they come from, what might be said on them unheard - is typical of Roos' puzzle plot interest in ambiguous situations.

The tour guide at the caverns is named Walt Carr; this is perhaps a little homage to mystery writer John Dickson Carr. Carr was originally from Pennsylvania, and "The Case of the Hanging Gardens" is set in that state. Kelley Roos also worked as scriptwriters, and the Roos team would go on to win an Edgar in 1960 for their TV version of Carr's The Burning Court (1937).

Films

Two high quality film versions of Roos novels are rarely mentioned in detective fiction reference books. The Frightened Stiff (1941) was filmed as A Night to Remember (1943), with Haila and Jeff portrayed by Loretta Young and Brian Aherne, a delightfully civilized couple. And To Save His Life (1968) was made into an absorbing TV-Movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales (1971). The Blonde Died Dancing (1956) was filmed in France as Do You Want to Dance With Me? (1959). It starred Brigitte Bardot; not many literary characters have been played by Loretta Young at her most sophisticated, and by Brigitte Bardot.

Fay Grissom Stanley

Fay Grissom Stanley only published two mystery novels. The first is notable for its zany title. The book deals with a body discovered in a bath tub, and is called Murder Leaves a Ring (1950). Murder Leaves a Ring as an novel does not live up to its title, however. The murder takes place in a basement apartment in chic Greenwich Village in New York City, just like Kelly Roos' The Frightened Stiff (1942). And like Roos and other members of the Van Dine school, the book is set against a background of New York intelligentsia, theater people, writers and models. The first half of the book (Chapters 1 -9), describing the crime and the original murder investigation, is not bad at all. There is a floor plan, and we follow the movements of the characters around the crime scene with it, in the pleasant Van Dine school tradition. These scenes are logically constructed, and show moments of invention. Stanley also does a reasonable job evoking New York City cultural figures, and the book's first half is readable and interesting. But then the book goes downhill into grimness. There is also no Great Detective here, something that is sorely missed, and no clever puzzle plot ideas in the finale. This reader was also disappointed that the book largely lacks the humor present in its title. Instead, the book is often soap opera like in its tone. The policeman hero of the book, Captain Steele, is intelligent, but mainly he exists as a romantic foil for the narrator heroine of the novel. A book like this is a mixed bag. It is not good enough, or successful as a whole, to recommend reading to anyone; yet it is not illiterate junk, either.

The 1950's Dell paperback has a good cover, showing a man of distinction all dressed up in white tie and tails. This certainly conveys the atmosphere of New York City sophistication, that was of such appeal in that era.

Elizabeth Dean

Elizabeth Dean's Murder is a Collector's Item (1939) resembles the 1940's "couple" stories to come in that its sleuths are a pair of bright young amateur detectives, who work with a policeman friend. The policeman in the couples books tends to be a social equal of the couple, and considerably less intimidating than say, Thatcher Colt or Inspector Queen. Unlike some of their successors, Emma Marsh and Hank Fairbanks are still just dating, and are not yet a married couple. Like the other couples tales, a good deal of liquor seems to be consumed: a legacy not of Van Dine or his immediate followers, most of whom tend to be relatively sober, but of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man (1934). Like many of the couples tales, and the Van Dine school in general, the story takes place against an intellectual background, in this case, the world of antiques. Like many other Van Dine school works, this one is full of collectors and dealers. There are also some theater people mildly involved, another Van Dine characteristic. The tale breaks with Van Dine tradition by being set in Boston, not New York City, although both are large cities in the North East, and the treatment of urban sophistication is very similar. The story contains that Van Dine school cliché of a decade before, two men who have switched hats: see Rufus King's Murder by the Clock (1928-1929), Ellery Queen's The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) and Stuart Palmer's The Penguin Pool Murder (1931). All of these books are the debut works of their authors' series sleuths, and here we have Emma Marsh's debut as well: probably just a coincidence.

Dean spends much time following trails of missing people or objects. These trails are often unexpectedly absorbing, full of surprising twists. They tend to lead all over Boston, and Dean paints a vivid picture of the city, one similar to the more familiar portraits of different neighborhoods of New York.

Most of the interiors of the book take place either where the heroine works, or her apartment. Both of these locations seem very real. Both have a sort of genteel poverty. The characters in the book are a rung below those in many Van Dine school books, having trouble making ends meet in the Depression. There are quite a few working class characters, including the police and a taxi driver.

Although Anne Nash's Said With Flowers (1943) is part of the HIBK school, her portrait of a florist's shop is quite similar to that of the antique store in this novel. Both deal with small businesses whose employees interact intensively with a demanding clientele. Both have to custom prepare the objects sold, and both require deliveries. Both buildings are small, non-glitzy, and filled with stock; both have a small and even more ramshackle office area. In both books we mainly see female employees, giving a window into the world of female work of the period.

The detective work and plotting of the first two thirds of this novel (Chapters 1 - 12) are very good. This makes the finale all the more disappointing. Dean drags in motivations for the killer that we have never seen; there is a lack of fair play. Also, many of the events we have been trying to find meaning in throughout the book turn out to be simple accidents without significance. This is certainly possible in real life: but it is disappointing in a detective story.

Jack Iams

Jack Iams' What Rhymes With Murder? (1950) is an intuitionist detective novel. In the intuitionist tradition, it has an amateur detective, and a solution developed by the detective through pure thinking. Many of its basic approaches recall those of Ngaio Marsh. The tone of sophisticated social comedy resembles Marsh, as does the witty, verbally adroit dialogue. The subject - a prestigious but badly behaved literary figure swooping down on a bunch of ordinary people in a remote location, followed by comic pandemonium breaking loose, reminds one of such Marsh books as Colour Scheme (1943). Also Marsh like: the way the murder takes place in the middle of a social event.

There are also structural features in the novel that recall Marsh. There is a disconnect between the sections of the novel. The first third describes the events leading up to the murder. These are leisurely paced, and not too detection oriented. They are full of social satire, dealing with a wide variety of issues affecting 1950's America. After the murder, the final two thirds of the novel are an almost pure detective story. Most of this later section book looks at formal patterns of the puzzle plot. There is only a little bit about the social issues of the first third. This architecture is fairly similar to those in Ngaio Marsh's books, which begin with social comedy, then move on to a serious investigation after the murder.

The puzzle plot and detection also recall Marsh's techniques. There is much concern about the movements of the characters around the crime scene, which is architecturally described. The crime is constantly seen from new perspectives, as various witnesses describe their participation in the key events of the murder. There are sometimes surprising revelations about events we have already seen. This recalls such Marsh books as Death in a White Tie (1938), which repeatedly revisits key events of the story, suggesting new insight and significance to the events. A favorite Marsh theme is also involved in the revelation of the killer, but I cannot be more specific without giving away the solution.

The characters in Iams' book are less sophisticated than in Marsh's writings, deliberately so, probably. We see a cross section of American business people, some refined, some average, some sleazy. All of them have a much more earthy tone that Marsh's theater people. The comedy is much more raucous, as well. There are some hoods in this novel, and some occasional rough stuff, but this seems more a desire to add some variety to the book, than the result of any deep affinity between Iams and the hard-boiled school.

Ngaio Marsh shares many features in common with the Van Dine school, and Iams' novel can certainly be seen as a representative of the Van Dine tradition, or rather its 1940's descendants such as the Lockridges. Like most of the Van Dine school, there is a socially sophisticated setting among people with a creative profession - in this case newspaper reporting. The amateur detectives have a generally friendly relationship with the police - the reporter hero is old friends with the Inspector in charge. This too resembles Van Dine and company. Also in the Van Dine school tradition: the liberal politics and social commentary.

Iams emerged at a time when many Americans thought of Intuitionism as the equal to the detective story itself. Most of the most popular detective story writers in the USA were intuitionists.

What Rhymes With Murder? is hardly a perfect detective novel. It move slowly before Iams gets to the murder. Coincidence is over employed in the plotting, with too many independent events going on at once. Nor does the book rise to an Agatha Christie level of brilliance. However, the clever plot twists and the witty writing have real appeal.

Iams wrote a sequel of sorts to What Rhymes With Murder?. A Shot of Murder (1950) deals with the same detective characters. But, despite the use of "Murder" in the title, this is a spy story, not a murder mystery. The central events of this book have nothing to do with murder or mystery; instead it is largely an spy adventure novel, taking place in Paris and Poland. The book concerns the heroes' attempt to rescue a prisoner held by the Communists in Poland. This was a frequent, almost generic plot of 1950's American spy stories; one can also find it in Holly Roth's The Content Assignment (1953) and Kendell Foster Crossen's The Splintered Man (1955). It probably occurs in other novels, too. Both Iams' and Crossen's also deal with mind-controlling drugs used by the Communists; brain washing was a big concern of people in the early 1950's. In all of these books, the villains and their schemes are treated seriously, while the heroes are treated as the subjects of a light hearted, even comic adventure story. They get to swashbuckle around, have hair raising escapes, and lots of entertaining experiences traveling to exotic climes. The ancestor of all these adventure stories is Alexandre Dumas, and his The Three Musketeers (1844). Dumas had many scenes of prison escapes in his stories, as well. According to Iams' preface, he had actually spent some time in Communist Poland, as a guest of the American Embassy, and the book contains vivid descriptions of what the Communist state looked like in 1950. Iams' book is entertaining throughout; it is a "good read". But it also seems fairly trivial, some of the travel writing excepted. It has little to do with the history of the mystery story proper.

One can see some similarities between What Rhymes With Murder? and A Shot of Murder. Both have many scenes in hotels and on trains. Iams, who apparently spent much time on the road as a reporter, finds such settings congenial to his imagination. People are always moving from one room or train compartment to another, often at night or in early morning. There are elements here of French farce; there are also intricate patterns built up, that play a role in the mystery and adventure plots of the books. There are also many scenes set in hospitals in both books, focusing on the patients much more than the doctors. Hospitals, like hotels, clubs and trains, are places where people live and sleep, but which are not really their permanent homes.

In both books the detective heroes are often dealing with people much more powerful than themselves. The intransigence of these rich goofballs makes for both comedy, and the motive engines of the story. Both novels contain powerful men, who neglect their wives or girl friends, often with drastic consequences. Women play a prominent role in both books; we are remote from the men-only world of many hard-boiled writers. Rich men in the books tend to have henchmen, low brow types who carry out their dirty work. Crime in both books tends to be gun oriented. Both books contain representatives of the US State Department, presented sympathetically, but with much comedy. They tend to represent a bright spot, powerful people who come to the aid of the heroes. The two books also contain a plot reversal. What Rhymes With Murder? deals with a European Communist and his entourage who descend on the Riverside, Ohio home of the detectives; A Shot of Murder sends the detectives on the road, to visit the home of some European Communists in Poland.

The two books Iams had written the year before seem depressingly bad. Death Draws the Line (1949) and Do Not Murder Before Christmas (1949) both mainly turn into diatribes against the rich, evil families who are their central groups of suspects. Iams makes it clear that he thinks the rich are rotten. Both books are murder mysteries. But their is precious little detection in either. The heroes of the books get questioned by the police, are in constant trouble with the law and the bad guys, get tangled up with the suspects in every way, but rarely do anything purposeful to actually solve the crime. Nor do they have clever solutions. Death Draws the Line is a non-series work, set in New York City. Although the victim is a comic strip creator, and the book was put together with the aid of famed comic strip artist Roy Crane (Captain Easy), there is distressingly little inside info on the comic strip business. This book suffers from sleaziness and unlikable characters, although it is readable. Do Not Murder Before Christmas is the first of the trilogy starring "Rocky" Rockwell along with What Rhymes With Murder? and A Shot of Murder; all three books in the series have "murder" in their title It is much more wholesome than Death Draws the Line, and has a readable start leading up to the murder, but it is no great shakes either.