Showing posts with label Mysteries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mysteries. Show all posts

25 March 2024

Here's to Absent Chums


The Missing Chums
Franklin W. Dixon [Leslie McFarlane]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop, [c. 1960]
214 pages

The fourth Hardy Boys book, I read The Missing Chums for the title alone. "Chums" is so dated a word that I'm not sure I've ever written it before. The novel features characters with names like "Biff" and "Slim," teenage boys who spend rainy days in a barn walking on their hands and practicing their boxing skills. They might take to the trapeze, as does Jerry Gilroy, performing something known as "skinning the cat":

As every boy knows, ‘‘skinning the cat" is an acrobatic feat that does not necessarily embrace cruelty to animals. 
This boy knew nothing about skinning the cat, and isn't sure what to make of the reassurance that it "does not necessarily embrace cruelty to animals [emphasis mine]."

Jerry's attempt at skinning the cat is interrupted by a swat on the butt administered by Chet Morton. Jerry returns the favour after using a sash window to restrain Chet:


Read nothing into this.

Biff, Slim, Jerry, and Chet are but four of the Hardys' chums; Phil Cohen and Tony Prito, the latter owning a motorboat boat called the Napoli, round out their number. As every boy knows, Frank and Joe Hardy have a motorboat of their own, the Sleuth, which they purchased with reward money received in solving The Tower Treasure mystery. Biff Hooper doesn't have a motorboat himself, but his father does. Named the Envoy, it was purchased not long ago, which may explain the chum's ineptitude in piloting the craft. 

Grossett & Dunlop, 1944
This novel is in many ways a nautical adventure, with Biff and Chet as the titular chums. The former had long dreamed of "motorboating along the coast," and now has his chance. The Hardy boys would like to join them, but their father, "internationally famous detective" Fenton Hardy, is about to leave town and Mrs Hardy cannot be alone. Mr Hardy is on the trail of bank robber Baldy Turk who he believes to be in Chicago, the "thieves' paradise." 

Biff and Chet receive a nice send-off from Frank, Joe, and the rest of the chums. Iola Morton and Callie Shaw are also present, but they're girls, not chums. As the Sleuth and Napoli escort the Envoy towards open water a thunderstorm rolls in. The Sleuth and Napoli return to port, while the Envoy motors on into the Atlantic Ocean.

Have I mentioned Biff's incompetence? It's a matter of comedy in the novel's earliest pages, but by the end of the first chapter he's on course to collide with two sailboats.

The second chapter begins with Frank grabbing the wheel, thus averting loss of life. "Thanks," Biff says, "I'd have never got out of that mess if you hadn't taken the wheel. I was so rattled that I didn't know what to do." Frank is magnanimous: "After you've run the boat a few more weeks you'll get so used to it that it'll be second nature to you."

A few more weeks do not pass.

A day or two later, the Envoy is on its way, heading into a storm that saw more seasoned seaman like Frank Hardy and Tony Prito return to the shelter of the port.

There's some concern about Biff and Chet, which is elevated when a promised postcard fails to arrive. The Hardy boys would like to head out in the Sleuth to see what they can find, but what of mother?

Grossett & Dunlop, 1928
Hartley boy L.P. once noted: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Ignoring the obvious – that The Missing Chums is set in a foreign country – the novel was written nearly one hundred years ago. Was this really a time in which an intelligent, able-bodied middle-aged woman could not take care of herself? Would parents of missing children really let days go by before alerting authorities? Children who were last seen heading out into the Atlantic? During a violent thunderstorm? In a motorboat piloted by a novice? Would those same parents have relied on their children's chums to find them, even if those chums were the Hardy boys?

Beginning in 1959, the thirty-eight earliest Hardy Boys titles underwent extensive revisions so as to bring them up to date. No more roadsters. Ethnic stereotypes were toned down.

I've found no evidence that Republican politicians were at all concerned. 

Revisions to The Missing Chums were done in 1962 by James Buechler. They are more radical than most in that the plot is done away with entirely. I won't go into details for fear of spoiling it for readers of either version. What I find most interesting is that no one thought to replace the title, which seems so... well, it seems foreign to me. And yet, Grossett and Dunlop chose to maintain it, and continues to so do today.


Why not The Missing Friends? Was "chum" still so common in 1962?

I can't say. I pretty much missed the first eight months of that year.

Favourite sentence:

“I’ll say!’’ Iola replied, slangily.

Favourite exchange:

"Just a little while before they went on their trip I was talking to Chet and Biff and I remember that Biff said he had always wanted to visit Blacksnake Island.’’
   "Blacksnake Island!’’ exclaimed Frank. “That’s the place that is overrun with big blacksnakes, isn’t it?"

Fun fact: The word "chum" appears in the text fifty-one  times, roughly once every four pages. "Hardy boys" appears even more frequently – a total of eighty-eight times – which I'm supposing has everything to do with branding. And so, my second favourite exchange:

Trivia: In 1982, Armada, which owned the paperback rights to the Hardy Boys books in the UK, retitled the adventure The Mystery of the Missing Friends.     

Object and Access:
An unattractive, cheaply produced hardcover lacking dustjacket, I purchased my copy for one dollar twelve years ago in London, Ontario. The previous books in its "HARDY BOYS Mystery Stories" list suggests it was published in or about 1960. Its frontispiece is a bit of a spoiler.

As I write this, the most expensive copy of The Missing Chums listed online is going for US$950.

It is not a first edition.

In 1960 Dutch publisher Van Goor Zonen gave us De verdwenen vrienden (left) based on McFarlane's text. The jacket illustration, by the late Dutch artist Rudy van Giffen (1929-2005), is the best I've seen. It's easy to imagine it being used today.

There have been other translations 
– Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese –  but I'm fairly certain all are of the Buechler rewrite.

14 August 2023

Margaret Millar's Muskoka Murder Mystery



The Weak-Eyed Bat
Collected Millar: The First Detectives
Margaret Millar
New York: Syndicate, 2017

My aunt and uncle had a cottage on Bell's Lake, not far from Markdale, Ontario. I have memories of visiting as a child. Our journeys there would begin with the loading of the family Volkswagen Squareback in Montreal. The final leg had us on a narrow dirt lane at the end of which were four other cottages. I thought of these summer retreats while reading The Weak-Eyed Bat. Millar's setting is Ontario's Muskokas, roughly 150 kilometres northeast of Bells Lake, but it seemed very familiar.


The Weak-Eyed Bat was Margaret Millar's second novel. It followed The Invisible Worm, which I read five years ago. I didn't like The Invisible Worm, and really disliked Paul Prye, its protagonist psychologist/sleuth. Prye makes his return here, hence this delayed visit to cottage country.

I'm glad I made the journey. 

The Weak-Eyed Bat takes place within a small isolated grouping of summer homes like the ones on Bell's Lake, the exception being a large house belonging to Emily Bonner. A man of modest means such as myself might consider it a mansion. Unlike the neighbouring cottages, this Musoka residence is occupied year-round. Miss Bonner lives there, as do nephew Ralph and two servants. At twenty-three, Ralph has a hankering to "go out into the world," but Aunt Emily holds the purse strings. Remarkably, given his milquetoast demeanor, Ralph has proposed to summer neighbour Joan Frost, daughter of classical Greek scholar Professor Henry Frost. Joan's acceptance has everything to do with the aforementioned Bonner purse; she is very aware that it will one day come into Ralph's hands. In the meantime, eighteen-year-old Joan is happy to carry on with Tom Little. Another neighbour, middle-aged Tom had himself married for money. Since that time, plain Jane wife Mary has endured years of infidelity and, as seems appropriate, developed a severe heart ailment.

These are but five of the cast of characters living within this small community; Other residents include: Susan Frost (Joan's half-sister), Miss Alfonse (Emily Bonner's nurse), Jeanette (Mary Little's nurse/housekeeper), Nora Shane (a landscape painter), a "Mr Smith," and, of course, Paul Prye.

This Paul Prye is a different man than the one introduced in The Invisible Worm. Much of what made his so irritating in his debut is gone.  He no longer quotes Blake. Prye does quote Browning's 'Andrea del Sarto,' the source of the title, but that's nearly it:
          Too live the life grew, golden and not grey, 
          And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
          Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
          How could it end in any other way?
Current publisher Syndicate does a disservice in describing Prye as a "poetry-quoting psychologist."


That was the old Prye.

The Weak-Eyed Bat is nowhere near the best of Margaret Millar, but it is worthy of attention in that it shows Millar becoming Millar. Things unfold more slowly than in her debut. It isn't until the last sentence of the fourth chapter (of eighteen) that the reader learns a character has died. The end of chapter five gives some suggestion as to who it might be. The identity is revealed in the sixth chapter, accompanied by evidence that the character has been murdered.

These discoveries come a touch early for a Margaret Millar novel, but then The Weak-Eyed Bat was only her second. She was finding her legs. Still, it is long enough for Millar to introduce and flesh out and make memorable characters, no matter how minor. My favourite is Emily Bonner, in part because she pretends to be much older than her 65 years so as to receive compliments on her appearance.

It's a neat trick.

Must remember it if I ever find myself swimming again at Bell's Lake.

Trivia: As with The Invisible Worm, the contract for The Weak-Eyed Bat names husband Kenneth Millar as co-author.


Object and Access: The Weak-Eyed Bat was first published in 1942 by Doubleday. It reappeared two years later in Two Complete Detective Books magazine (May 1944). A Spanish translation, El murciélago miope, which Google translates as "The Myopic Bat," was published by Club del Misterio in 1948.


And that was it until 2017 when it was returned to print beside The Invisible WormThe Devil Loves MeWall of Eyes, and The Iron Gates in the first volume of the Collected Millar.

15 February 2023

The Girl Off the Train



One Way Street
Dan Keller [Louis Kaufman]
London: Hale, 1960
190 pages

Toronto boy Paul Saber has had a rough ten years. The earliest were spent as a commando in the Pacific theatre. After the fighting stopped, just as Paul prepared his return home, he received a "Dear John" letter. And so, Paul remained overseas, building an import-export business in Saigon. One presumes it was through this endeavour that he somehow ended up at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu:
"I wasn't a combatant, but I got mixed up in the whole mess and was captured by the Reds. It took me a year to escape back to Saigon, by that time there was little more left of my business than enough to pay my passage home."
He might've saved some money by taking a more direct route. Rather than cross the Pacific to Vancouver, Paul makes for Halifax, then travels the final leg to Toronto by train. He's only just set foot on the platform at Union Station when the jostling crowd forces an embrace with a fellow passenger:
"I am sorry," I apologised. "I'm afraid I lost my balance."
     She smiled. "It was as much my fault as yours, everyone is in such a rush."
This is a Canadian novel.

Toronto has changed. Not only is there a subway, the Royal York, at which Paul has a reservation, has undergone a significant expansion. Standing in its lobby, he spies the woman whose warm body he'd held at Union Station. She did not book ahead, meaning she's out of luck in getting a room. The helpful front desk clerk manages to secure accommodation at the Bentley, a much lesser hotel, and she sets off. Paul is so taken by her beauty that he follows at a discrete distance as she negotiates the city's darkened icy streets. Some might call it stalking. In any case, it's good that he did because she's pulled into an alley by two men. Paul rushes to the rescue, kneeing one in the groin as the other runs away.

The Princess Lounge, Royal York Hotel, 1954
He ushers the woman back the Royal York – the Princess Lounge, to be specific – where they down martinis, get to know one another, and fall madly, wildly, deeply, exasperatingly in love. No exaggeration. One Way Street is one of too many novels in which characters fall in love at first meeting.

Or is it second meeting? Does the bump (no grind) at Union Station count?

Paul's new love is beautiful blonde Patricia Bailey, a sophisticated and svelte Montrealer who models furs for a living. In the midst of their flirtations, Paul offers to exchange his room at the Royal York for hers at the Bentley. Patricia accepts. Because Patricia is a lady, she does not invite Paul in for a nightcap. Because Paul is a gentleman, he leaves the Royal York, trudging through frozen Toronto to the Bentley. Paul takes her room, and dreams of a new life with his new girl.

He awakens to find the Bentley in flames. Eighty-two will perish, but not our Paul. He ties together bedsheets and scales the outside of the building to the room one storey below. A body with bullet hole in the forehead lies on its floor, but given Paul's immediate circumstances, it is ignored. Paul makes for the hallway and is rescued by firefighters, but not before saving a young woman from certain death.

Our hero's recovery is a slow one; much of it is spent slipping in and out of consciousness. He emerges to find himself in the home of a prominent physician named Kahn. Seems a good thing, until Paul realizes that he's being held captive.


Because this is a mystery novel, further descriptions of the plot will only serve as spoilers. Still, there are things worth noting.

Let's begin with beautiful Patricia Bailey, who is not only a model, but a Montreal model. She's sharp as a tack, quick as a fox, and remarkably loyal. After she accepts Paul's marriage proposal – during what is either their second or third meeting – Patricia reveals that she comes from an extraordinarily wealthy family. Daddy is eager to give her anything and everything, but Patricia wants to prove that she came make it on her own. In short, Patricia Bailey is a fantasy figure, with the emphasis on figure. 

One Way Street should be of interest as one of the first mystery novels set in Toronto, but it is not. Union Station and the Royal York figure as settings, but Keller doesn't describe either. Remove these – along with fleeting references to the Toronto Star, the King Edward Hotel, the Ford Hotel, Front Street – and One Way Street could have been set in any other Canadian city.

The alleyway assault on Patricia aside, every crime in One Way Street is related to the heroin trade. This revelation, leads back to a character whom Paul confronts as the novel draws to a conclusion. He is "not without influence" in Toronto:
"I've moved heaven and earth, done everything in my power to get the narcotic laws changed, without success. There's only one way left open to me. If I can set up a clinic, get it operating successfully; prove that the drug addict is not necessarily a menace to society providing he is under medical care and is ensured a supply without having to murder or steal for it; then, when I'm caught, maybe people will sit up and take notice."
At the end of it all, this character, not Paul, proves to be the novel's greatest hero.

Pierre Poilievre will disagree.

Trivia:
The front flap copy errs in placing Vietnam in the Middle East.


This may explain Paul's return to Toronto via Halifax.

Object: A very attractive hardcover in brown boards. The woman on the jacket is meant to be Patricia, right? If so, she should be a blonde with green eyes. Did you notice the two men in the alleyway? Are they the men who tried to mug her? I'm not so sure. Patricia never wears a yellow dress, and no woman would venture outside like that in a Toronto winter. Stil, I like the illustration and wish the artist was credited.

My copy was purchased last year from a bookseller in Rochester, Kent. Price: £80.00.

The jacket offers no information about the author – more here – but it does have adverts for several other Hale novels.


Access: One Way Street enjoyed one lone printing. There were no further editions. As of this writing, four copies are being sold online. At the low end is a jacketless copy going for US$50.00. The most expensive is another jacketless copy going for US $427.44. Look in the middle and you'll find two signed copies, with jackets, at US$110.00 and US$187.50.

You know which to buy. 

Library and Archives Canada has a copy, as does the University of Calgary.


06 February 2023

A Woman Cheated


The Cannibal Heart
Collected Millar: Dawn of Domestic Suspense
Margaret Millar
New York: Syndicate, 2017

In Margaret Millar's bibliography, The Cannibal Heart falls between It's All in the Family and Do Evil in Return. As a light and lively novel for children, the former is her most unusual; the latter, which deals with the tragic consequences of a refused abortion, is both her most controversial and most timely. The Cannibal Heart isn't so noteworthy. Of the fourteen Millars I've read to date, it ranks below the average, which is to say that it is merely very, very good.

The novel takes place almost entirely on the grounds of a large California oceanfront estate rented by the Banners: Richard, Evelyn, and their active eight-year-old daughter Jessie. The property belongs to a Mrs Wakefield, whose efforts to sell have been thwarted by a draught. Her employees, cook Carmelita and caretaker husband Carl, live with their adolescent daughter Luisa in a three-room apartment above the garage.

Someone spoken of, but not seen, Mrs Wakefield grows as a figure of mystery in the initial chapters. She at last appears as an attractive thirty-something widow worthy of sympathy. In the space of the previous two years, Mrs Wakefield has lost her husband John, as well as Billy, their only child. John was a naval engineer, a wealthy man whom Mrs Wakefield met as a schoolteacher from a small Nebraska town. Their child, Billy, was... well, let's say Billy is revealed gradually. 

But then things in Millar novels are always revealed gradually.

It's suggested that the Banners have come from the East Coast to recover from some sort of domestic disturbance. Might Evelyn's issues with jealousy be related? Even when alone, Evelyn and Richard maintain the pretence that the move has to do with expanding Jessie's horizons.

We come to know Mrs Wakefield intimately. The life she shared with her husband is something of a blur, but her experience giving birth to Billy and the days that followed are too clear for comfortable reading.

As always, Millar delves deeply into the inner lives of its characters, children included. Fifteen-year-old Luisa, a minor character (no pun intended), is a good example. Like most teenagers, she dreams of life far from her parents. In her fantasies, she's a singer with beautiful blonde hair, fawned over by handsome men with lots of money. But this can never happen in the way she imagines. Reality intrudes, reflected in the words of her father, who recognizes that she has been born "half-mulatto, half Mexican."

Syndicate Books, Millar's current publisher, lists The Cannibal Heart as a novel of suspense. It isn't. The Cannibal Heart belongs with Experiment in Springtime and Wives and Lovers, the two (and only two) novels the publisher categorizes as "OTHER NOVELS." As I wrote in a previous review, in these people do bad things; as do we all. While the reader might anticipate murder – after all, Millar was a mystery writer – nothing of the kind occurs. No character commits a criminal act, though one comes close. That that same character is the most sympathetic, most wronged, and most cheated, leads me to wonder whether I'm not right to thinking The Cannibal Heart below average Millar.

Dedication:
"For an old friend, a fine critic, and an ever-imaginative angler, Harry E. Maule."
An editor at Random House, Harry Edward Maule (1886-1971) accepted Millar's 1956 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Beast in View.

Object and Access: A bulky trade-size paperback, Dawn of Domestic Suspense is the second in the attractive (if cramped) seven-volume Collected Millar. The Cannibal Heart was the last to be read; the others have been reviewed in previous blog posts:
The Cannibal Heart is the ninth of Margaret Millar's twenty-six novels. It was first published in 1949 by Random House; Hamish Hamilton issued a British edition the following year. The Random House jacket (above right) better reflects the novel.


The Cannibal Heart was not a commercial success. It had spent over three decades out-of-print when, in 1985, International Polygonics issued the first paperback edition. A Thorndike large print edition followed fifteen years later.

As might be expected, The Cannibal Heart is uncommon in our public libraries. That serving Kitchener, the city in which Margaret Millar was born, the city in which she was raised, the city in which her father served as mayor, does not have a copy.

The Collected Millar remains in print. Used copies of The Cannibal Heart listed online begin at €6 (a first edition lacking jacket). At US$225, the most expensive is the same edition in "fine, bright dust jacket." Do not read the bookseller's description as there is a spoiler. 

The Cannibal Heart has enjoyed two translations: French (Le coeur cannibale) and German (Kannibalen-Herz).

03 January 2023

A Forgotten Mystery; a Shattered Dream



The Twenty-First Burr
Victor Lauriston
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922
292 pages

Victor Lauriston was born William Edward Park on 16 October 1881 in the hamlet of Fletcher, not far from Chatham, Ontario. As an adult, he changed his name because he thought Park too plain for a writer. This was in 1918, sometime between the sixth and seventh rewrite of The Twenty-First Burr.

The Twenty-first Burr is a mystery novel populated in part by characters with assumed names and hidden identities. It begins with twenty-year-old Laura Winright's rushed return to North America after two years touring Europe. I've read enough old novels to know that such a young lady would not have been been permitted to go off alone to the Old World. That Laura did so – and in the midst the Great War – is a mystery left unexplained and unexplored.

"Was she a spy?" asks my wife.

Good question.

Our heroine's haste has everything to do with a telegram sent by her father, Detroit department store baron Adam Winright. Laura never lived in the Motor City, rather she was raised at the family mansion, Castle Sunset, at Maitland Port (read: Goderich, Ontario) on the shore of Lake Huron. 

Laura's return takes nearly everyone by surprise, most of all George Annisford, her betrothed. Not only does he fail to meet her ship as it docks in New York, he scolds her in a wordy telegram:
Oh, see here, chick! You've come down on us like the wolf on the fold. We haven't time to send out for crackers and cheese. Of course your father is just fine and dandy. Why shouldn't he be?
But Adam Winright is not fine and dandy. By the time Laura reaches Maitland Port, her father is dead.

Laura is convinced he was murdered, but brother Tom, her lone sibling, isn't convinced. What's certain is that Adam Winright was being blackmailed by a man signing himself "Andrew Webster." Brother Tom sends for Detroit private detective Harry Burnville to get to the bottom of it all.

Going further into the story risks doing the mystery a disservice, but only because plot is not its strong point. What makes The Twenty-First Burr worth reading are its characters. George, goodnatured and ever-positive, hides a fragile heart. Mrs MacTurk, the Winright's Scotch housekeeper, is a sour old bird who obsesses over apparitions and keeps a logbook of her sightings. My favourite character is the widow Villard, who sniffs in contempt at the memory of a young actress who it turns out... Ah, but that would be spoiling things.

Contemporary reviews invariably focus on Glory Adair, a nurse and amateur sleuth who relies on palmistry in bettering Burnville, her professional rival .


The Twenty-First Burr certainly has its flaws. Any speculation that Laura may have been a spy is quickly put to rest by her forgetfulness, which serves no purpose other than to slow the plot. This reader was amused by the amount time lost to rail travel, all of which could have been avoided if only Lauriston hadn't chosen to have the principle players live so far apart.

No doubt some weaknesses have to do with all those drafts. According to the author, the first was written in 1905, nine years before fighting broke out in Europe. The conflict is rarely mentioned, and then only in passing; it's effect on the home front is nonexistent. This reader counted four able-bodied young men, not one of whom is fighting overseas. And then we have the conclusion, in which Glory, who solves Adam Winright's murder, shares observations and clues not found elsewhere in the novel.

The Twenty-first Burr is anything but a fair-play mystery, but I don't hold a grudge. The characters are captivating and the locations are so uncommon as to be interesting. Mystery lovers living in Grimsby will be flattered by descriptions of their town as it was one hundred years ago: "the stone road, the fine country homes, the peach orchards, rank on rank of green trees orderly as soldiers on parade."

The worst thing about The Twenty-First Burr is that it shows such promise, yet was Lauriston's only mystery. McClelland & Stewart used the plates from George H. Doran's American edition. Neither publisher went back for a second printing.

Lauriston spent his royalties on buying those same plates. He hoped that they would one day be used in returning the novel to print. An author's fantasy, it ended in 1941 when they were sold for use in the war effort.

The Windsor Daily Star, 21 August 1941

The accompanying article – 'Chatham Writer's Dream Shattered After 19 Years' – begins:

Sale of 700 pounds of lead and copper plates in New Britain, Connecticut, recently, put an end to a dream that has lived in the persevering mind of Victor Lauriston, Chatham novelist, ever since he sold his first book 19 years ago. He had hoped sometime to use the plates for a reprint of the book, "The Twenty First Burr," [sic] a detective story.
     Metal in the plates will be melted to help win the war. Owing to exchange regulations, proceeds of the sale will go to pay a 16 years' storage bill. 
Lauriston lived well into old age, dying two days after his ninety-second birthday, yet he wrote only one more novel. A roman à clef titled Inglorious Milton, according to the Border Cities Star (20 October 1934), it "set every tongue in Chatham wagging." Lauriston's papers hold the manuscript, along with numerous letters of rejection. The novel was finally published by the Tiny Tree Club, a branch (sorry) of Chatham's literary society. I've not read it, but should. The Border City Star article compares it to Joyce's Ulysses.

I can only assume society members are portrayed in a flattering light.

Object: Light brown boards with black impressing. The jacket illustration is by Margaret Freeman. My copy once belonged to a woman named Olive Shanks.


At the time of the 1921 census, Miss Shanks, then age 29, lived with her parents (John and Hattie) and siblings (Bessie and Mark) at 146 Park Street, Chatham, Ontario.

146 Park Street, Chatham, Ontario
November 2020

In 2019, her copy ended up in my home, having been purchased from bookseller David Mason. Price: $90.00.  

Access: The Twenty-First Burr was published by Doran in the United States and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. Neither edition enjoyed a second printing. As of this writing, two copies are listed for sale online, both from London booksellers: London, Ontario's Attic Books offers a jacketless copy of the Doran edition at US$35.00; London, England's Any Amount of Books is asking £30.00 for its jacketless Doran. The McClelland and Stewart edition is nowhere in sight. 

Sixteen of our academic libraries hold copies of one edition or the other, as does Library and Archives Canada.

The Twenty-First Burr can be read online here thanks to the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive.

17 August 2022

Dope. Danger. One Doll.



Lost House
Frances Shelley Wees
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949
192 pages

Frances Shelley Wees runs hot and cold with me. I liked The Keys of My Prison so much that I selected it for reissue as a Ricochet Book. I did the same with M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty, but disliked No Pattern for LifeThis Necessary Murder, and Where Is Jenny Now?*

So, Lost House? Hot or cold?

The prologue 
is frozen solid. This takes the form of a brief conversation between the head of  Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigations Department and one of his detectives. Apparently, a man known as "the Angel" is up to something in a place known as "Lost House." The detective is dispatched to see what's what:
He rose. "Very well, sir, I'll have a go at it."
Action shifts to British Columbia, where newly-minted physician David Ayelsworth is exploring "the forest primeval" astride his horse Delilah. What David finds is a half-submerged body by the shore of a lake. The doctor's attention is then drawn to the sound of a young woman chasing a dog. She falls, twists her ankle, and he comes to her aid. The injured young woman is Pamela Leighton, who lives at nearby Lost House.

Harlequin's cover reminds me of nothing so much as Garnett Weston's Legacy of Fear (New York: W S Mill/William Morrow, 1950), which also features a grand house in a remote corner British Columbia.

Interesting to note, I think, that both pre-date 
Psycho.

The mysterious D. Rickard is credited with Harlequin's cover art. I make a thing of his rendition because Rickard's Lost House isn't at all as described in the novel. Wees's Lost House rests on a walled island linked to the mainland by causeway and drawbridge. An immense structure, an exact replica of an English country manor, it was built by an eccentric Englishman who sought to further his wealth through a local silver mine. The mine proved a dud, the Englishman died, and all was inherited by Pamela Leighton's mother. Improbably, Mrs Leighton manages to maintain the estate by taking in paying guests during the summer months. This year, they include:
  • James Herrod Payne, novelist;
  • Shane Meredith, tenor;
  • Archdeacon Branscombe, archdeacon;
  • Lord Geoffrey Revel, lord.
There's a fifth male guest, an unknown who is being cared for by Mayhew, the resident doctor. The patient was brought in one night after having taken ill on a train stopped at Dark Forest, the closest community.

(That Lost House has an infirmary speaks to its immensity. That Lost House staff and guests are close in number speaks to Mrs Leighton's financial difficulties.)

There are also four female guests, Lord 
Geoffrey's mother being one, but it's the males that command our scrutiny; after all, we know the Angel to be a man.

Which is the Angel? Which is the Scotland Yard detective? It's impossible to tell. The focus is so much on David and Pamela, and to a lesser extent Mrs Leighton and Dr Mayhew, that the guests are little more than ghosts. The reader encounters them from time to time, but as characters they barely exist. Lost House fails as a mystery for the simple reason that Wees provides no clues. The Angel could be any one of the male guests. Indeed – and here I spoil things  much of the drama in the climax comes when he passes himself off as the Scotland Yard detective. And why not? There's nothing that might lead the reader or the other characters to suspect otherwise.

As the novel approaches mid-point, Pamela apologies to David. "I've dragged you into a dreadful mess," she says. "I've spoiled your holiday..."

This isn't true; David's
 involvement has nothing to do with her. He's at Lost House because the body he found by the lake turns out to be that of a missing Lost House staff member.


Lost House is a dreadful mess. The novel's disorder may have something to do with the fact that it first appeared serialized in Argosy (Aug 27 - Oct 1, 1938). Its fabric is woven with several threads that are subsequently dropped, the most intriguing involving Verve. A new brand of cigarette. Verve is a frequent topic of conversation, as in this early exchange between Pamela and David:  
"You've been smoking a tremendous lot." Her eyes were on the big ash tray before her.
   "Yes."
   "I like Verves," she decided, looking at the tray. "Not as much as you do, apparently... I don't smoke very much though. But when one is a bit tired, a Verve seems to give one exhilaration. Doesn't it?"
   "Yes," David said after a moment, "I... think it does."
   "You say that very strangely."
   "Do I ?" He shifted in his chair. "perhaps I'm a little lightheaded. I've sat here and smoked twenty of them in a row, and they do give one exhilaration. That's... the way they're advertised, of course. But other cigarettes, other things, have been advertised that way, too. Only... this time... and the whole world is smoking Verves. They've caught on extremely well. The whole world."
   She said, troubled, "You are queer."
   "Sorry." He crushed out the cigarette carefully and locked his hands together.
More follows, including a suggestion that the cigarettes have some sort of additive, but the subject is dropped in the first half of the novel. In the latter half, it's revealed that the Angel is using Lost House to store marijuana bound for the United States and United Kingdom. It seems a very lucrative trade. Might the drug have something to with Verve? The question is asked, but never answered.


Lost House was the second ever Harlequin, but the publishers pushed it like old pros.

Dope? Sure.

Danger? Ditto.

Dolls? Well, Pamela is described as attractive in the way prospective a mother-in-law might approve. Wees makes something of her playing around with "the soft pink ruffles of her skirt" when speaking to David in the final chapter. That's sexy, I guess. But Pamela's just one doll. The female guests at Lost House include a sad middle-aged widow who has yet to throw off her weeds, elderly Lady Riley, and two older spinster sister twins who live for knitting. 

Pamela's mother often appears in a lacy negligee, though only before her daughter. Is Mrs Leighton the the other doll?

Back cover copy continues the hard sell:


Pamela does not "land at David's feet, showing more in the process than a nice girl would normally show to a strange male." She wears a heavy skirt that approaches the length of a nun's habit. I add that she has sensible walking shoes.

Lost House is not "a fashionable British Columbia retreat for wealthy guests from all over the world;" it is nowhere so exotic, attracting only the dullest the English have to offer.

At end of it all, I found Lost House neither hot nor cold. It's lukewarm at best, despite Mrs Leighton's negligees.

*In fairness, as a romance novel, No Pattern for Life doesn't fit the Ricochet series. I recommend it as a strange romance.

Trivia I: In the preface to the anthology Investigating Women: Female Detectives by Canadian Writers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1995), David Skene-Melvin writes that the novel's royalties helped finance "Lost House," Wees's home in Stouffville, Ontario.

Trivia II: Like Wees, David is a graduate of the University of Alberta. He and his father practice medicine at the University Hospital, Edmonton. 

University Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, c. 1938

Object: A very early Harlequin, my copy is a fragile thing. The publisher used the same cover in 1954 when reissuing Lost House as book #245, marking the last time the novel saw print. 

Access: Lost House was first published as a book in 1938 by Philadelphia's Macrae-Smith. The following year, Hurst & Blackett published the only UK edition. In 1940, the novel appeared as a Philadelphia Record supplement.


As of this writing, one jacketless copy of the Macrae-Smith edition is being offered online. Price: US$50.00. I'm not sure it's worth it, but do note that the image provided by the bookseller features boards with yellow writing. I believe orange/red (above) to be more common.

The Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library doesn't hold a single edition of Frances Shelley Wees's twenty-four books.

06 June 2022

Accidents Never Happen in a Perfect World



Murder by Accident
Leonie Mason [Joan Suter]
London: C. & J. Temple, 1947
200 pages

Guy Warren is a demobbed major. The war over, he seeks rest and relaxation at Green Acres, an American-styled retreat in the English countryside. Henry and Christie Burton serve as host and hostess. Fellow guests include middle-aged middlebrow novelist Anna Rawlings, her much younger husband Frank, and her overworked secretary Angela Nash. Soon to be divorced brassy blonde Lydia French and wealthy hotelier George Hesketh round out Green Acres' vacationers. 

Was there a time in which hotel guests gathered in the common room for evenings of conversation and bridge? Murder by Accident suggests as much. With the sun setting on Guy's first day at Green Acres, Lydia begins making moves. He enjoys the attention until pretty Angela enters in the room.

The next morning, host Henry has to deal with novelist Anna turning up late for breakfast. On a typical day, this hour is set aside for going over business in private with Christie. Anna intrudes, takes a generous helping of eggs and mushrooms, retires to her room, becomes violently ill, and dies. Henry does better in that he survives.

The coroner is called, blame is placed on the local grocer for providing toadstools, and everyone moves on but not out. All stay at Green Acres, Guy and newly-unemployed Angela included; their burgeoning romance is fed by a shared conviction that Anna was murdered.

Joan Suter's second novel, Murder by Accident followed her first, East of Temple Bar by a matter of months. Of the two, I prefer the former, but only for its autobiographical elements.

Murder by Accident isn't terrible. Its most obvious flaw lies in the title, which serves as something of a spoiler. While Guy and Angela talk and talk and talk, positing this theory and that about Anna's death, the reader knows that the novelist's murder wasn't intentional.

The book's greatest flaw lies in its climax. I regret to report that this is one of those mysteries in which the murderer is given the opportunity to murder again so as to be caught in the act. Worst still, the intended method is absurd.

I'll say no more, but will be happy to share with the curious. You may just laugh.

Trivia: Both East of Temple Bar and Murder by Accident were thrown aside, never to be acknowledged after the author's emigration to Canada. As Joan Walker, wife of James Rankin Walker, the former Joan Suter (aka Leone Walker) wrote three more books: Pardon My Parka (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1954; winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour), Repent at Leisure (Toronto: Ryerson, 1957; winner of the Ryerson Fiction Prize), and Marriage of Harlequin (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1962; it won nothing). She lived a further thirty-five years after the last, but published no further books.

Object: A post-war artefact, Murder by Accident is a cheap production bound in flimsy red boards with delicate wraps. I paid eight pounds for my copy. Its dust jacket promotes The Attic Murder and Four Callers in Razor Street, two Temple mysteries by Sydney Fowler. How's this for a jacket illustration?


Access: I can find no evidence that any library has Murder by Accident in its holdings. A bookseller in Blackpool has listed a copy sans jacket at £7.25. After that, there's nothing.

Get it while you can!  

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