One of the real pleasures I've taken from this blog and podcast is the joy of discovering new (to me) classic authors who loved to play the kind of games you'll find in traditional mysteries. That's really how I came to read an author who is said to have been among Agatha Christie's favorite American authors. Her name was Elizabeth Daly. Between 1940 and 1951, she wrote sixteen mysteries featuring biblio expert Henry Gamadge, who remains one of my favorite amateur detectives as well. Here's a script for my podcast review of one of Daly's clever mysteries called The House Without the Door that I read and reviewed a decade ago. I've revised it a bit to keep it up to date:
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It’s all very well to be tried for murder and found innocent. But when the public refuses to believe it, the consequences can be pretty grim. And when somebody else tries to kill you, where can you turn? That the dilemma facing one of the central characters in The House Without the Door, by Elizabeth Daly.
Elizabeth Daly counted Agatha Christie as one of her biggest fans. Daly’s books, written mostly in the 1940s, are set in New York City, and she manages to evoke a somewhat gentler New York than many of us are accustomed to seeing. She is particularly good at writing about the upper-class families who lived in the old brownstones on the east side of Central Park, as well as those in some of the less fortunate neighborhoods, in the shadow of what were then the elevated rail lines running down Second and Third Avenues.
Daly’s detective character was Henry Gamadge, a bibliophile and specialist in antique books. Some of his mysteries deal with frauds and forgeries, usually surrounding a murder, but most of his stories also present him with cases having social as well as criminal overtones.
That’s certainly the case with The House Without the Door, Daly’s fourth book, written in 1942. Three years before the events in this story, Mrs. Curtis Gregson had been tried for the murder of her wealthy husband. She was acquitted by the jury – but is not innocent in the mind of the public. She found it necessary to disguise herself and go into hiding, supported only by a few close family members and a handful of friends.
One of those friends persuades Henry Gamadge to meet and speak with Mrs. Gregson – because she believes she may be the target of a murderer. There have been four suspicious and quite possibly near-fatal accidents involving Mrs. Gregson. She tells Gamadge that she suspects that the real killer of her husband – who apparently has never been caught – may now be trying to kill her as well.
Gamadge agrees to investigate further – and, sure enough, there soon will be a murder. Gamadge must race a dangerous – and quite probably insane – killer to prevent further mayhem. How he does so is revealed in the course of a tightly plotted and extremely literate mystery.
Daly’s characters, as I suggested earlier, are quite well drawn; she has a flair for revealing their personalities in the course of their conversations. After a tense interview with one member of Mrs. Gregson’s family, Gamadge describes the encounter to another character this way:
“I upset Mr. Benton Locke. He finished by springing to his feet, clenching his fists, and making the kind of face you see on a totem pole. That’s more or less the kind of face he has anyway. He’s a trifle primitive.”
Daly obviously has a very dry sense of humor. Consider this description of Gamadge at one point:
Gamadge’s face assumed the polite but slightly dazed expression that it always took on when symbolism became too much for him.
I find that Gamadge grows on the reader, particularly over the course of several books. On the invaluable Golden Age of Detection wiki, Jon Jermey quotes a marvelous biographical sketch of Gamadge, written by Daly somewhere around 1946. Here’s part of what she says about her hero:
“His hobbies and recreations are bridge, golf, music (as a listener) and -- he insists -- the conservation of the transitive verb.
He says he has no pets. 'That yellow object that you see rolling among my papers, my cat Martin, is not a pet. He merely came and stayed. You might call him local colour, or you might call him my Familiar.'
During the war he worked here and in Europe for Counter-Intelligence. When asked what he did, he says he flew around."
Daly wrote a total of sixteen mysteries, all featuring Henry Gamadge. Over the past several years, Felony & Mayhem publishers have reprinted all of the sixteen books by Elizabeth Daly featuring Henry Gamadge. I suggest strongly that you make their acquaintance.
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You can listen to the complete podcast by clicking here.
Next week: Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert
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