Classic Mysteries

"Four Lost Ladies"

"Oscar, this isn't funny. I tell you, somewhere behind the disappearance of these women there's an evil intelligence at work, a human spider who preys on a certain type of lonely, susceptible woman with a little money. Not content with the cash, he takes their lives, too."

Miss Hildegarde Withers, retired schoolteacher, has been doing some investigating on her own, much to the annoyance of her old friend, New York City police detective Oscar Piper. She is concerned over what appears to be the disappearance of at least four women. Those four ladies were not particularly well-to-do. In fact, in social terms, they really were quite insignificant. When they vanished, nobody went looking for them; the police weren't even aware that anything was wrong. All of the women had recently come into modest amounts of money – perhaps a few thousand dollars here and there, usually through winning some small contest – maybe the jackpot in a radio program’s giveaway, maybe a successful bet at the racetrack. And they each decided to celebrate and spend part of their small winnings by staying at one particular hotel in midtown New York City.

And they all disappeared – without a trace.

Hildegarde Withers became concerned when an acquaintance who always sent her a Christmas card suddenly stopped sending cards one year. So Miss Withers went looking for her. What she found - or what she didn't find - is explained in Four Lost Ladies, by Stuart Palmer, first published in 1949. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

As regular readers of Palmer's series know, Miss Withers has a habit – a regrettable one, as far as Inspector Piper is concerned – of tripping over dead bodies or otherwise becoming engaged in murder cases which really ought to be none of her business. Hildy’s investigation of the disappearance of her acquaintance – the woman who suddenly stopped sending Christmas cards – turned up the names of three other women who had also disappeared. All of them had stayed recently at the prestigious (and expensive) Hotel Grandee – a hotel which had also had another unfortunate incident in recent months involving a woman who apparently committed suicide there.

The more Miss Withers investigates, the less she likes what she finds. Assisted by a young relative of her missing friend, and a few other people along the way, she launches her own investigation of those disappearances – quite against the wishes, of course, of either Inspector Piper or the hotel’s security chief. And she will use herself as bait to trap what she believes must be a multiple murderer – and to figure out how the women could have vanished without their bodies ever being found.

It sounds like a fairly grim scenario – and it is – but Stuart Palmer, as always, writes with wit and humor that helps to relieve the grimness. The banter between Miss Withers and Inspector Piper also helps. And a very large poodle named Talleyrand eases the tension and also proves quite helpful to Hildy’s investigation. Four Lost Ladies is an excellent way to meet Hildy Withers. It’s available now in e-book formats for the Kindle and other devices, or your mystery bookseller may be able to find an older hard copy for you. It’s worth the effort.

NOTE - Publishing this a bit early this week, as most of my Monday will be devoted to returning home from Left Coast Crime. Back on the regular Monday schedule next week.

Left Coast Crime Awards: The Winners

 At the annual awards banquet of Left Coast Crime this evening in Phoenix, Arizona, the group's annual Lefty Awards were presented to this year's winners. The winners (indicated by a double-asterisk ** and boldface) and the other nominees:

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel 
• **Donna Andrews, Lord of the Wings (Minotaur Books)
• Ellen Byron, Plantation Shudders (Crooked Lane Books)
• Jess Lourey, February Fever (Midnight Ink)
• Cindy Sample, Dying for a Donut (Cindy Sample Books)
• Diane Vallere, Crushed Velvet (Berkley Prime Crime)

Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (Bruce Alexander Memorial) for books covering events before 1960
• **Rhys Bowen, Malice at the Palace (Berkley Prime Crime)
• Susanna Calkins, The Masque of a Murderer (Minotaur Books)
• Heather Haven, The Chocolate Kiss-Off (Wives of Bath Press)
• Jennifer Kincheloe, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc (Seventh Street Books)
• Laurie R. King, Dreaming Spies (Bantam Books)
• Susan Elia MacNeal, Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante (Bantam Books)

Lefty for Best LCC Regional Mystery Novel, set in the LCC Geographic Region (Mountain Time Zone and all time zones westward to Hawaii)
• Michael Connelly, The Crossing (Little, Brown and Company)
• Matt Coyle, Night Tremors (Oceanview Publishing)
• Robert Crais, The Promise (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
• **Gigi Pandian, The Accidental Alchemist (Midnight Ink)
• Josh Stallings, Young Americans (Heist Publishing)

Lefty for Best World Mystery Novel (set outside LCC Geographic Region)
• Lou Berney, The Long and Faraway Gone (William Morrow)
• Lisa Brackmann, Dragon Day (Soho Crime)
• Chris Holm, The Killing Kind (Mulholland Books)
•** Louise Penny, The Nature of the Beast (Minotaur Books)
• James W. Ziskin, Stone Cold Dead (Seventh Street Books)

The winners were chosen by the more than 700 attendees to the Left Coast Crime conference. Congratulations to all the winners and to the nominees.

Having a Wonderful Time...

As they used to say on those picture postcards, back in the days when people used to send and receive picture postcards, "Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here!"

That sentiment describes how I feel while enjoying this year's Left Coast Crime conference, now under way in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm here with some 700 mystery readers and authors to spend a few days talking about mysteries, reading mysteries, watching mysteries...well you get the idea.

The conference got its formal kickoff today, beginning with an "Author Speed-Dating" session hosted by my wife and me. It's an opportunity for some 40 writers to pitch their books, upcoming projects, etc., to well over a hundred readers and prospective audience members, and it's great fun and a splendid way for those authors to find new readers. An afternoon of panel sessions followed, including a session on "Murder on the Books," which I moderated, featuring a panel of four excellent authors of bibliomysteries. There are dozens of panels every day, not to mention receptions, occasional meals, and books everywhere for sale or even for free - every attendee gets a bag stuffed with mystery books donated by publishers. (If you don't like what's in your bag, you can probably arrange to swap those books for some more to your taste.)

As for the "Wish you were here" part of it, well, I do. It's great to see so many friends - but I do wish you could be there as well. Maybe you ought to think about trying to attend one of these conferences - if not Left Coast Crime, there's always Bouchercon and Malice Domestic and a whole list of lesser conferences. Believe me, you are missed. Hope to see you at one of them soon.

"Death on the Riviera"

For the two English police detectives, the search began rather pleasantly. They were hunting for a British forger, an expert at producing counterfeit French banknotes. He seemed to have gone to earth somewhere on the French Riviera, so the two detectives found themselves traveling from the bleak cold of a London February to the warm sunshine of the Riviera. But they soon found that their hunt for the counterfeiter wouldn't be as easy or as straightforward as it seemed. They also found themselves caught up in something they hadn't expected: a mysterious death which might have been suicide, or accident - or murder. You'll find the details in Death on the Riviera, a 1952 mystery by John Bude, now being brought back into print as part of the British Library's Crime Classics series, published in the U. S. by the Poisoned Pen Press (which provided me with a copy for review). Death on the Riviera is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

John Bude, another of those prolific Golden Age authors whose work has fallen into an undeserved obscurity, wrote Death on the Riviera fairly late in his career. It features Detective Inspector Meredith of Scotland Yard, who appears in several of Bude's books. He is accompanied here by Acting Sergeant Strang. They are pursuing a counterfeiter named Chalky Cobbett, whose dexterity at producing almost-but-not-quite-legitimate French banknotes was a source of considerable irritation to both the French and English police. Finding Cobbett should be fairly simple and straightforward - but that proves not to be the case at all. The two detectives also find their paths crossing regularly with several other people, all of whom appear to have some connection to the Villa Paloma, an estate owned by a wealthy and rather eccentric Englishwoman named Nesta Hedderwick. She has a number of people living there as her guests, and it soon becomes clear that just about everyone staying with her may have something to hide – often several things. And then there is a sudden death, and the detectives find themselves investigating what might be a suicide - or a very carefully planned and seemingly impossible murder.

The book has a clever plot, with some lovely surprises along the way, as Bude juggles a number of different story lines before tying them together to find unusual and very clever solutions to the mysteries here. This new British Library Crime Classics edition of John Bude’s Death on the Riviera features an introduction by British mystery writer Martin Edwards, providing more background about Bude and his work. I think you'll enjoy this book. Official publication date is March 1, but your favorite mystery bookseller (or Amazon) will be happy to get it for you.

Distressing News About the Rue Morgue Press

It appears that one of my favorite publishers of classic mysteries, the Rue Morgue Press, has gone out of business. According to some comments published in TomCat's "Beneath the Stains of Time" blog and a longer appreciation in JJ's "The Invisible Event" blog, a combination of factors - including books seriously damaged by flood waters and both financial and health problems - has led the RMP to shut down; its website seems to have disappeared.

This is terrible news, to put it mildly. Tom Schantz and his late wife Enid were pioneers in republishing some of the great - and often little-known - classic authors and their works, long before many of today's smaller presses got into the business. RMP was responsible for republishing several of the finest John Dickson Carr mysteries, but they also specialized in other first rate, if often obscure, mysteries. RMP introduced me to Dorothy Bowers, Glyn Carr, Clyde B. Clason, Gladys Mitchell, Craig Rice, Kelley Roos, Margaret Scherf and many more authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and beyond. Each book had a brief, literate and entertaining introduction written by Tom and Enid which provided information about the author and his/her works. The Rue Morgue Press books remain centerpieces of my classic mystery collection. I'll miss them.

"The Shortest Way to Hades"

We are told quite often that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Certainly the intentions of the lawyers working to protect the assets of a very large (and very English) estate from taxation had the best of intentions. Without a change to the legal trust which had originally been set up, the heirs of a five million pound estate would have to pay more than three million in taxes. A little practical - and perfectly legal - editing of the trust agreement would reduce that bill very considerably. No, the intentions were certainly good. It was hardly their fault that someone decided a certain short cut along that well-paved road was going to be needed. The result is quite neatly summed up in the title of Sarah Caudwell's wickedly funny mystery called The Shortest Way to Hades, first published in 1985. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Later this Spring, at the beginning of May, Sarah Caudwell will be honored at the annual gathering of traditional mystery fans at Malice Domestic, where her name will be honored as this year's "Malice Remembers" honoree. She wrote just four mysteries, all set within the arcane (to those of us not-British) world of the British legal system. But her books are so well written, with pointed satire of the law in general and lawyers in particular, that those books have become classics in the tradition of legal mysteries. The author herself was a lawyer, specializing in international tax planning (according to her obituary in the New York Times). So it is not surprising to find that the central characters in her books are members of a firm of barristers, practicing in Lincoln’s Inn in London. There is another regular character, the narrator, Professor Hilary Tamar – and, over the course of four novels, Caudwell never reveals whether "Hilary" is a man or a woman.

The mystery began with one of those fine points of English law concerning a rather complicated will. The estate – as I said, worth about five million pounds – could have wound up owing a tax bill of three million pounds or so, unless it could be avoided. It’s the sort of thing, apparently, that British barristers handle every day. In this case, all that would be required to change the trust arrangements is the consent of various provisional beneficiaries. The primary heiress herself was fine with the change. Only one cousin was not. And that cousin suddenly had a terrible…well, let’s call it an accident. At any event, that’s why Professor Tamar received the following message:

Professor Tamar – Mr. Shepherd rang and said please come to London as soon as possible. You can stay at his flat and he will give you dinner. He says it has something to do with a murder.

The Shortest Way to Hades is written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, with some marvelously funny satire. There's a classic Golden Age feel about her novels, and she does provide clues for the careful reader to discover. For more background information about Sarah Caudwell and her novels, please be sure to read an article by mystery author and scholar Martin Edwards. He describes Caudwell and her books this way:

"Sarah Caudwell’s books are admittedly an acquired taste. Subtle, complicated and witty, they appeal most to readers who hanker after the Golden Age of crime writing...and to those whose sense of humour demands something more elitist than the belly laugh."

I think I've acquired that taste. Martin Edwards will be at Malice Domestic in May to talk about Sarah Caudwell. It's another excellent reason to be there!

 

"Mr. Splitfoot"

"Do as I do, Mr. Splitfoot."

That spoken phrase was supposed to be at the center of a rather malicious prank, played by a couple of angry teenagers upon adults who were present in an allegedly haunted house. The plan called for one of the unhappy teenagers, named Lucinda, to shout that phrase out suddenly in the middle of the living room as a ritual for summoning the devil, and she'd clap her hands three times. Her friend, another disaffected teen named Vanya, hidden in a secret room in the house, would knock three times in return. The adults, hearing the raps coming from some unknown location in a house said to be haunted, would think the knocking came from a poltergeist or even from Mr. Splitfoot - the devil himself.

But the prank went wrong - badly, frighteningly wrong. Oh, the hand-clapping and return knocking happened as planned - but the responding raps didn't come from the right place or the right person. And that was before the impossible murder in the haunted room.

Fortunately, psychiatrist Dr. Basil Willing is on hand when the trouble begins - and he is less concerned about the supernatural than he is about the human devil behind these mysteries.

It happens in Helen McCloy's mystery, Mr Splitfoot, originally published in 1968. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

 Helen McCloy was the author of nearly 30 novels, of which about a dozen featured Dr. Basil Willing as the detective. Mr. Splitfoot is an excellent example of McCloy's skills at creating an atmosphere of terror and mystery while providing readers with some well-hidden clues to what's really happening.

The book begins with those two teenagers, Lucinda and her neighbor and sole friend, Vanya. Lucinda has a deep hatred of her stepmother, a hatred which seems to inspire all sorts of bad behavior. As both children seem to be remarkably well-read in the literature of psychic research, ghosts and séances, they decide that they are going to frighten the adults by staging an apparent incident with a poltergeist, a malevolent and mischievous sprite.

Well, things don’t work out that way. First of all, Dr. Willing and his wife – who has injured her ankle and whose car has broken down – arrive at the remote house where all this is happening, and they are offered a place to stay, as a snowstorm has blocked all the roads. As a result, they are witnesses when something goes very wrong with that planned prank with the poltergeist. That incident leads the adults to discuss that supposedly haunted room in their house – and they decide that one of them will spend the night in that room, to prove there’s no danger.

I suspect you know what’s coming next. Despite the door being locked, and despite the room being watched constantly by all the men, the one man who wound up staying in the haunted room is found dead after only a few minutes – with no wound, no weapon, and no visible cause of death. The door, of course, is still locked. There are no fresh footprints except the victim's in the dust in that room or in the freshly-fallen snow outside.

And that will be only the first of the nightmarish incidents. Is the room really haunted? Dr. Willing, of course, insists the answer is no. But if not, how can a man be killed with no apparent wound or weapon? And what of the teenagers and their poltergeist? Finding the answers will lead the psychiatrist to a final, dangerous confrontation.

This is a well-written and skillfully plotted mystery, with an intriguing locked room problem with a satisfying solution. McCloy's characters are compelling and the remote location, isolated by a snowstorm, plays a significant role in the mystery. Mr. Splitfoot is available as an Orion e-book from The Murder Room, and it's very highly recommended.

Be My Valentine. Please!

Planning to get something from Amazon.com for that significant other person in your life? If so, I'd really appreciate it if you would use the box in the upper right corner of your screen on any of my pages - the box that says "Amazon Shop. Connect. Enjoy." - to click and reach Amazon for your shopping trip. If you do, I get a (remarkably small) percentage of the purchase price as a commission. It's not much, but it can cover some of the basic costs of keeping this blog functioning, and it costs you nothing more than your regular purchase price. So go ahead. Make my day. Please! And Happy Valentine's Day.

And the Agatha Nominees Are...

The organizers of Malice Domestic 28, to be held in Bethesda, MD, at the end of April, have announced the nominees for this year's Agatha Awards. Here they are:

Best Contemporary Novel

Annette Dashofy, Bridges Burned (Henery Press)
Margaret Maron,  Long Upon the Land (Grand Central Publishing)
Catriona McPherson, The Child Garden (Midnight Ink)
Louise Penny, Nature of the Beast (Minotaur Books)
Hank Phillippi Ryan, What You See (Forge Books)

Best Historical Novel

Rhys Bowen, Malice at the Palace (Berkley)
Susanna Calkins, The Masque of a Murderer (Minotaur Books)
Laurie R. King,    Dreaming Spies (Bantam)
Susan Elia Macneal, Mrs. Roosevelt’s Confidante (Bantam)
Victoria Thompson, Murder on Amsterdam Avenue (Berkley)

Best First Novel

Tessa Arlen, Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman (Minotaur Books)
Cindy Brown, Macdeath (Henery Press)
Ellen Byron, Plantation Shudders (Crooked Lane Books)
Julianne Holmes, Just Killing Time (Berkley)
Art Taylor, On the Road with Del and Louise (Henery Press)

Best Non-Fiction

Zack Dundas, The Great Detective: The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes    (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Martin Edwards, The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story    (HarperCollins)
Kathryn Harkup,    A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie    (Bloomsbury USA)
Jane Ann Turzillo, Unsolved Murders and Disappearances in Northeast Ohio (Arcadia Publishing)
Kate White (Editor), Mystery Writers of America, The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook: Wickedly Good Meals and Desserts to Die For (Quirk Books)

Best Short Story

Barb Goffman, “A Year Without Santa Claus?” (AHMM)
Edith Maxwell, “A Questionable Death” History & Mystery, Oh My (Mystery & Horror, LLC)
Terri Farley Moran, “A Killing at the Beausoleil” (EQMM)
Harriette Sackler, “Suffer the Poor” History & Mystery, Oh My (Mystery & Horror, LLC)
B.K. Stevens, “A Joy Forever” (AHMM)

Best Children’s/Young Adult

Blue Balliett, Pieces and Players (Scholastic Press)
Joelle Charbonneau, Need (HMH Books for Young Readers)
Amanda Flower, Andi Unstoppable    (Zonderkidz)
Spencer Quinn, Woof (Scholastic Press)
B.K. Stevens, Fighting Chance: A Martial Arts Mystery (Poisoned Pen Press)

The Agatha Awards are presented to honor books written in the "traditional mystery" style exemplified by the works of Agatha Christie and others. They have no explicit sex, gratuitous gore or extreme violence. Attendees at Malice Domestic will vote to select the winners, and the awards will be presented at the annual awards banquet on April 30, 2016.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Experts in Crime on the Left

Three weeks from today marks the opening of Left Coast Crime 2016, also known as "The Great Cactus Caper." Hundreds of mystery authors and readers will be gathering in Phoenix for three days of talking about crime.

The organizers have now released their program identifying the panels and participants who will be talking, educating, informing and thoroughly entertaining the other attendees (including myself, as I'll be moderating a panel called "Murder on the Books: Mysteries Involving Books"). There are nearly 80 panels on the list. That's nearly 80 good reasons to be there.

If you're a mystery reader and you haven't signed up for the conference yet, there's still time. I'd love to see you there!