Women Sleuths - Various
In the middle 1980s,
Reader’s Digest issued a series titled Academy Mystery Novellas. Women Sleuths was the first, followed
by Police Procedurals and Locked Room Puzzles. Ever mindful of
costs Reader’s Digest kept the covers simple. In their favor, they hired noted editors,
Martin Greenberg and Bill Pronzini (a mystery writer himself), who deliberately
choose relatively obscure stories, too long for short story anthologies and too
short to be published on their own between paperback covers. Another plus is
that they included capsule biographies of the authors.
The Toys of Death (1939):
G. D. H. and Margaret Cole wrote almost 30 detective novels. They went along
with the Golden Age conventions of complicated engines of death, English country
house setting, a plethora of suspects, the intuitive amateur detective, obscure
knowledge and the long reveal, this time in a letter written by the perp who
has fled to Patagonia or some such remote wilderness. The rural setting is
quite evocative in this, with an overall attractive writing style that is
concise and vivid.
The Calico Dog (1934): It
is odd indeed that Mignon Eberhart (sounds like a character in a Perry Mason mystery) is a neglected writer now, since she had
about the longest career of any American mystery writer (from the 1920s to the
1980s) and was known as the “American Agatha Christie.” This Golden Age story has a unique plot: two
young men claim to be the same nephew who was kidnapped as a child. The sleuth,
Miss Susan Dare, is hired by the aunt who must decide which one is the real one
and thus inherit about 30 million mid-1930s dollars, about a bazillion dollars
in today’s money. The story moves along briskly, has very fine settings, and is
worth reading as a high society mystery.
The Book That Squealed (1939): Cornell Woolrich pokes genial fun at his heroine Prudence Roberts. She’s a young librarian who’s kind of a blur to men until she takes off her glasses. Then even hard-bitten police detectives start to feel all funny inside. Prudence gets involved in a serious crime with unhinged crooks during her own investigation after the police hoot at her warning that something bad is happening, or will happen. Woolrich, to my mind, is much better in short stories than in novels, which I find overwrought and shrill.
The Broken Men (1985): I’d not read a Sharon McCone story by Marcia Muller in about 25 years so this really brought back the 1980s for me: Chambray pants, Adidas running shoes, and overflowing ashtrays. McCone is hired as a bodyguard for two clowns at a show at a pavilion. It’s an easy job, of course, until the killing. Good use of flashback and past sins, a lazy horse named Whitefoot is funny, clowns are usually fun, and her cat gives her the idea for the solution. Highly recommended.
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