I am always delighted, while poking around in the Classic Mysteries vault, to find Miss Hildegarde Withers snooping around among the files. If you don't know Hildy, take this opportunity to get acqainted. She's the New York schoolteacher whose demonstrated knack for solving impossible crimes (and making it appear as if her friends on the New York City police department really solved the cases) makes her invaluable in unraveling the best-laid plans of desperate killers. She was the creation of author Stuart Palmer, and usually found herself working with - or against - New York City homicide detective Oscar Piper. She also had quite a career in the movies. I've reviewed several of her books over the years. One very good one, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, has been republished as one of the American Mystery Classics series of American Golden Age mysteries from Penzler Publishers. Here's my original review of The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan as presented on the Classic Mysteries podcast about six years ago. I've updated it with information about this new edition of a mystery classic:
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One thing was certain: the Hollywood writer died of a broken neck. It certainly looked as though he had been standing on a chair while trying to redecorate his office…and the chair moved and he fell. Clearly, it must have been an accident. But then Hildegarde Withers started asking questions – for example, if it was an accident, how come nobody working near the dead writer had heard the loud crash his fall must have made? And how come there didn’t seem to be any other injuries from that fall? Of course, asking too many questions about a peculiar death could prove dangerous – as Hildy Withers would learn very quickly in The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, by Stuart Palmer.
Over the past several years, I’ve reviewed a fair number of Stuart Palmer’s excellent mysteries featuring New York City school teacher Hildegarde Withers and her sometimes friend (and sometimes detecting rival), New York City Police Inspector Oscar Piper. The characters were created in the 1930s at least in part with the movies in mind – Palmer always said that when he wrote Miss Withers, he had actress Edna May Oliver in mind – and that actress did, in fact, play Miss Withers in several movies. But the books, in general, were good mystery BOOKS as well as potential movie plots. They were generally well-plotted, sometimes containing seemingly impossible crimes, and always with a reasonable amount of humor – even if that humor was sometimes a bit grim.
The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan, first published in 1941, finds Miss Withers transported – for the time being – to Los Angeles – and, more specifically, to Hollywood. She is hired as the “technical advisor” to a Hollywood studio which is trying to make a movie about the Lizzie Borden case – you remember, Lizzie Borden who may or may not have murdered her parents with her little hatchet.
But Miss Withers has barely begun work when one of the script writers is found dead in his office near Miss Withers, apparently having broken his neck in a fall. Miss Withers isn’t convinced. If the writer had fallen off a chair – the police theory – he would have made more than enough noise falling to have been heard all along the corridor where Miss Withers worked – and she and the others heard nothing.
As I said, all this is happening in Hollywood. So Miss Withers calls her old friend, Inspector Piper, across the continent in New York: can the inspector think of any cases where someone died of a broken neck? As it happens, Piper can. And he and Miss Withers quickly find an apparent connection to someone in Hollywood. But as Inspector Piper starts working on the case…well, let’s just say something very bad happens in Hollywood, something bad enough to force Piper to jump on a plane – remember, this was 1941, and plane travel was a lot less common than it is today – and he flies to Hollywood looking for a killer.
I don’t want to say too much more about the plot, for fear of spoiling it for you. Suffice to say that there will be more murders. And I must say that the solution to that seemingly impossible crime…breaking someone’s neck without signs of violence or making any noise…is a bit disappointing when it is finally revealed…although the way that the killer is persuaded to confess is absolutely delicious.
Throughout the book, there is plenty of humor. Palmer, who did work as a screenwriter turning his books into movies – and writing scripts for other films as well – has a field day writing about the movie business and the real-life celebrities of the day. Readers familiar with some of the great movies of the 1930s will recognize a lot of the names being discussed (most of whom, apparently, want nothing to do with that movie version of the Lizzie Borden case). And there is one wonderful scene where Piper and Miss Withers are at a huge Hollywood function…it includes this paragraph:
Before the inspector could register a practical protest, he found himself dragged willy-nilly through the gauntlet where Miss Withers had the surprising experience of being mistaken for Edna May Oliver and asked for an autograph.
I love the tongue-in-cheek humor. There is also a great deal of fun to be had with the Lizzie Borden movie…at one point, for example, the producer is demanding that his screenwriters rework the murder scene. A hatchet, he explains, isn’t grand enough for his movie; he wants Lizzie to have…a gigantic, medieval halberd, or pole-axe. Only in Hollywood.
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[ED, NOTE: Currently, there is a new edition of The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan republished just this year, as I noted above, by Penzler Publisher's American Mystery Classics series. When I originally reviewed the book, it was sent to me as a review e-book by Mysterious Press/Open Road Media. It is available currently in paper, e-book and audio versions. However you choose to read it, I recommend it highly.]
You can listen to my original audio review by clicking here.
Next: Champagne for One, by Rex Stout.
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