Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon

Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the flying squad received a series of telegrams from the International Police Commission (IPC) which was based in Vienna. The IPC was an organization which tried to stop those who were engaged in organized crime in Europe. These telegrams informed him that Pietr the Latvian was headed for Paris.  Maigret had also received a very detailed description of Pietr the Latvian, and Margret knew that he would recognize him . Maigret also knew that Pietr was in car 5 of the train which would arrive at the Gare du Nord, and Maigret went to the station to watch him arrive. Maigret easily recognized him from the description. A very well dressed Pietr was leaving the station for one of the most expensive hotels in Paris and was being followed by three porters with his luggage. At exactly the same moment, a cry of murder came from the train carriage. Maigret found the body of a man in the restroom of car 5 who exactly matched the description of Pietr the Latvian.

Maigret would also find two other manifestations of Pietr as his investigation continued. One was a disreputable alcoholic named Fyodor Yurevich who was living with a Jewish woman in a dismal room in Paris. The other was found by tracing a photograph cover found in the pocket of the dead Pietr. This led Maigret to the village of Fecamp where he found a Mrs. Swaan who stated that her husband (who also appeared to be Pietr) was the first mate on a ship.

 Maigret found that the well dressed Pietr was engaged in some kind of business deal with a very wealthy American businessman named Mr. Mortimer-Levingston. Surveillance of Pietr in the hotel led to a shooting and the death of a policeman for which Maigret felt responsible.

Maigret is a man who enjoys the confort and warmth of the big cast iron stove in his office. This investigation seems mainly to be conducted in the cold, rain, and mud. He was shot in the coarse of the investigation, and carried on with very little medical attention. He eventually found the solution to the various personalities, pseudonyms, and murders involved in this story. Maigret follows his hunches and follows people who will eventually provide an explanation of what is going on.

This book was written in 1929. There is a mention of the political situation in the Baltic, of the communists in this area, of the various ethnic groups in regions where national boundaries do not match ethnic differences.  There are several antisemitic statements in the book.

This is the first of the series of seventy five Maigret novels. It was translated by David Bellos, and the edition which I read is the first in the series of Maigret novels which Penguin is currently publishing. It was a very readable book, very dark, and the problem of determining the identities of the various Pietrs does keep the reader going.

The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner

A woman who called herself Eva Griffin came to the law office of Perry Mason looking for help. She had been at a club called the Beechwood Inn with congressman Harrison Burke who was a candidate for the senate. A murder had happened in the club that night, and the police were called. She and Burke had hidden in a private dining room, and a policeman friend helped them to get away without being interviewed.  She knew that a reporter, Frank Locke, who wrote a for gossip paper called Spicy Bits, knew about Harrison Burke being there and was going to publish. Locke did not know that she was the woman who was with Burke. She also knew that Frank Locke was working for the real owner of Spicy Bits, and that this paper made its money from blackmailing people who wanted to keep their names out of the news. She wanted Perry Mason to hush the whole thing up, and was willing to pay a lot of money to keep her name out of it.

Mason went to Locke and found out the huge price that would be required to keep it hushed up. Mason, with the help of private investigator Paul Drake,  found out the owner of Spicy Bits was a man named George C. Belter.  Mason went to Belter's home, and threatened to expose him as the owner of Spicy Bits if the story about Harrison Burke is published. On his way out of the house, he met Belter's wife who was the woman who gave her name as Eva Griffin.

Then George Belter was murdered in his home. Eva Belter called Mason to come to the house before she called the police, and Mason examined the gun which was used.  Mason found that Belter had a nephew named Carl Griffen who was dedicated to loose living, and who would be the heir to the Belter wealth. Eva Belter was left very little money.  Further investigation revealed even more blackmail schemes, and forgeries, and other complications until Mason worked the whole thing out. It should be noted that all along that Mason's secretary Della Street believed that Eva Belter was a dishonest woman who was manipulating everyone in her life including Mason. Eva Belter did accuse Perry Mason of the murder of George Belter. Even then, Mason continued in his belief that his first duty was to the client who hired him.

This book does not have a courtroom scene.

This book was published in 1933, and was the first Perry Mason mystery. It is available as an e-book. The Perry Mason novels were extremely popular. There were six movies based on them, and the Perry Mason TV show was on the air for nine years and had 271 episodes.

Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham

The Gyrth Chalice was a priceless historical relic, and it was the duty of the Gyrth family to protect this thousand year old relic of the earliest years of British history. The family kept it in a tower in their estate of Sanctuary. This tower also contained a "secret room", and on his 25th birthday, the Gyrth heir was told of the secret of the "secret room", as he took over the duty of protecting the Chalice.

Percival St. John Wykes Gyrth (Val) was the only son of Colonel Sir Percival Christian St. John Gyrth who was the current protector of the chalice. In just a few days Val Gyrth was due to learn the secret. He, however, was estranged from his father who did not approve of Val's marriage to a woman who had since died. Cut off from funds, Val had fallen on very hard times when he was rescued in London by Albert Campion.

Campion is an amateur detective with a private income. He is described as "a tall thin young man with a pale inoffensive face, and vague eyes behind enormous horn-rimmed spectacles." He was assisted by his man Lugg, an ex-criminal who was very large and muscular.  Campion believed that there was a group of very, very wealthy people who employed criminals to steal very valuable items of such importance that they would never be placed on sale. Campion believed that the Gyrth chalice was the next item on their list to be stolen and offered to assist Val in protecting it.

Campion, Val, and Lugg went to the family home where Campion effected a reunion between Val and his father.  Also present were Val's aunt, Lady Diana Pethwick, who was quite domineering and "difficult". She had the bad taste to be photographed with the Chalice. This photograph had appeared in the newspaper, and had attracted a disreputable group of artistic and new religion types who hung around the neighborhood.  Val's sister Penelope was quite attractive and had a charming personality as did her friend Beth Cairey who was the daughter of an American professor who had taken a house near to the Gyrth's. Another neighbor is Mrs. Dick Shannon who owned a racing stable. She had a bellowing voice and Val called her "One of those damn women-with-a-personality". She wanted to buy horses from the Gryth's, but they did not wish to sell them to her.

Near the Gryth house was Pharisees's clearing which was supposedly haunted by evil spirits, and it was here that Lady Diana died of fright. The doctor believed that she had seen something horrible which caused a heart attack. Lugg went to the clearing, and returned in hysterics.

Campion stopped Penny's attempt to remove the chalice to the safety of a London bank. He took it to an expert in London who testified that the current chalice was a 150 year old copy of the original. Campion now had the problems of not only protecting the chalice from thieves, but also of finding the original chalice to protect. Campion did succeed but his success included confronting the horror of Pharisee's clearing, and a mad cap confrontation between friendly gypsies and the thieves.

This is a great read. Campion is a bit vague about everything. The reader will wonder as the novel goes along how he knew this or that, but all will be explained in the end.  Allingham is one of the great writers of the Golden Age of mystery fiction, and one of my favorite mystery authors.

This book was published in 1931. It is available in paper and e-book form. It is also the first story in the TV production of Campion stories which starred Peter Davison. When the book was published in the United States, the title was The Gryth Challenge Mystery.

Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh: a review

Agatha Troy Alleyn has been asked by Sir Henry Ancred, an outstanding Shakespearean  actor,  to do a portrait of him as Macbeth, one of his most famous roles. At first Troy does not want to undertake this commission because Sir Henry has requested it be four by six feet which Troy considers to be impossibly large. She relents when she discusses the situation with Sir Henry's son Thomas who says it would cheer up an ailing and aging Sir Henry, and she sets off for the family residence of Ancreton.

At Ancreton, Troy meets the quarreling and overly emotional members of the Ancred family. There is elder daughter Pauline who is the mother of Paul and Panty. Panty is a young problem child who engages in a great deal of mischief. There is Millicent who was the wife of Sir Henry's oldest son who is now deceased. Millicent has remained at Ancreton to care for Sir Henry. She is the mother of Cecil who is the heir apparent of the estate.  Also present is Fenella, Sir Henry's granddaughter who is the child of Claude Ancred, Sir Henry's son. Most shocking to the whole family is the presence of Miss Sonia Orencourt who is Sir Henry's current love interest. She is much much younger than he is, and not a member of the Ancred's social class.

Troy begins the portrait and is soon caught up in it. Sir Henry poses, and Troy gives young Panty a board and some paints to keep her out of mischief during these sessions. Then strange things begin happening. Troy finds red paint on the banister of the stairs near her room. Somebody paints spectacles on Sir Henry's portrait. The family immediately blames Panty, but Troy believes her innocent.

The climax begins when Paul and Fanella announce that they are engaged. Sir Henry is furious because he does not believe that first cousins should get married. He springs a surprise on the whole family and announces that he going to marry Miss Sonia Orencourt. The family members are appalled because this may mean changes in the Will. Sir Henry announces changes to the Will each year at his birthday dinner which is only a few days away.

The birthday celebration takes place with family members and friends present. Sir Henry enjoys himself immensely while eating and drinking far more than his doctor would approve of. The change in the Will is announced. The portrait is unveiled and applauded. The next morning, Sir Henry is found dead in his bed. The doctor pronounces heart failure as the cause of death.

Troy returns to London, and Roderick Alleyn returns home after being away for three years because of the war.  The first case that Roderick is assigned  on his return to the police force is the death of Sir Henry Ancred which has been brought to the attention of the police by family members because they have received anonymous letters which imply that Sir Henry had been poisoned. Roderick's investigation is complicated by the possibility that Troy, his wife, could be called as a witness. Roderick will solve the case but not before another death occurs.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because I find Marsh to be a literate and witty writer. If you like country house mysteries with lots of difficult family members, you will find it enjoyable too. This book is available in paper and e-book format.

The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Great Impersonation is the story of a German agent who enters Great Britain by impersonating a British citizen whom he very strongly resembles. This book was written in 1920, and the time period in the novel is about the years 1912 - 1914.

Everard Dominey and Leopold Van Ragastein had attended school together in England,  and everyone said that they strongly resembled each other. Now they were grown men in German East Africa, and their lives had diverged. Baronet Everard Dominey had fled England after it was believed that he had murdered Roger Unthank who had disappeared. Dominey's wife Rosamund had developed mental problems after Roger's disappearance and vowed never to see Everard again. Everard had wandered around the world living a life of dissipation. Leopold was now Major General Baron Leopold Van Regastein and was commander of the colony. He had been banned from entering Germany again because he killed a man in a duel over Princess Stephanie Eiderstrom, a Hungarian princess and his lover. Where Everard was weak and flabby and showing signs of his drinking, Leopold was strong, active, and showed every sign of great intelligence and determination.

Leopold decided  that since he strongly resembled Everard that he would enter England posing as Everard. The real Everard was made to disappear, and Leopold took over his life. Whereas Everard was a spendthrift and has impoverished his estate, Leopold brought a lot of money from the German government, and paid off the debts on the estate. Then he had to convince those who had know Everard that he was Everard and had overcome his bad habits through healthy living. Most people believed him and most amazingly Rosamund overcame her morbid fear of Everard.

The imposter at first was not sure what his mission for the German government was. He took a trip to Germany and met with the Kaiser who told him that he should make friends with Prince Terniloff who was the German ambassador to England, and who was working for peace and understanding between the two countries. The imposter's mission was endangered when he encountered Princess Eiderstrom again. She had great difficulty in accepting his assumed identity, and wanted to marry him right away even though in his new role, he was married to Rosamund. Indeed, Rosamund was beginning to seem like a better choice for a wife than the princess.

Then World War I began. Everard now has to deal with political events along with the complications in this personal life. Oppenheim brings it all to a surprising and successful conclusion.

This is a readable novel. If you are a fan of spy stories with a lot of melodrama, you will enjoy this book. It is available in both print and ebook form.

I do not especially care for spy stories which is what I initially thought this book was. However this book developed into a story of love and romance among the very wealthy which I do not especially care for either. There are also melodramatic elements such as haunted forests and screams in the night which are not on my list of favorite things in novels. So all in all, it is not really my kind of book.

Death Takes a Bow by Francis and Richard Lockridge

Jerry North was quite nervous because he was going to deliver the introductory speech for a talk by Victor Leeds Sproul at the Today's Topic Club.  Sproul had become a best selling author for Jerry's publishing company, Towsend Brothers. Sproul's book was a big hit because it described Paris as it was before WW II (This mystery was published in 1943). Before Sproul had written this nonfiction book, he had published several not very successful novels during the period when he was living in Paris. Jerry believed that these novels had included people whom Sproul had know. "You could almost see the people whose lives Mr, Sproul had borrowed squirming uneasily on the pages to which Mr. Sproul had pinned them."

Jerry got over his nerves and delivered his speech  and turned to Sproul who was sitting on a chair onstage. Sproul did not move. Indeed Sproul would never move again because Sproul was dead. For a while it was a question of whether Sproul had committed suicide or had been poisoned but morphine poisoning was finally ruled the cause of death.

Before Sproul had gone on stage, he had met with his agent Y. Charles Burden who had arranged a speaking tour which was to begin with the talk at the Today's Topic Club. Sproul also met with Mrs. Paul Willians who was the program chairman. She was a very uptight and successful lawyer in her mid thirties. Loretta Shaw was also present. She had divorced her husband, and believed Sproul when he said he would marry her, but she was beginning to have her doubts and her ex-husband was looking a lot better. There were several others from Sproul's life in Paris whose secrets he may have known.

This is very much Lieutenant Bill Weigand's investigation. He  believed that the notes for the lecture that Sproul was going to deliver contained a secret about somebody in the audience who did not want it made public. Bill got the notes, lost the notes, and got the notes back again with the help of a little dark man with the difficult name of Bandelman Jung.

Pam North was hampered in her usual part in the investigation because she was playing hostess to two teenage nieces who were very much interested in all the sailors and marines who were in New York at this time.  The sailors and marines were also quite interested in the nieces. and Pam needed to be a chaperone. She did manage to get into a wacky pursuit down Fifth Avenue in the rain.

Pam and Jerry North had always been favorites of mine. They are pleasant people, and the murders which they investigate are not gory.  This book was published in 1943, and is now out of print. Used copies are available.

The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy

An old man and a woman reporter sat in an A.B.C. tea shop in London, and had conversations about recent murder cases while he drank his milk and she drank her tea. The woman reporter would record these conversations,  and they would be the first descriptions of a detective who solved crimes by using logic alone,  and who saw little reason to investigate the scene of the crime and to collect clues. He says "There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation".

The old man was pale, thin, with light colored hair combed over his bald spot. He constantly played with a piece of string and tied and untied complicated knots in it while he described the murder that he had solved. He did attend trials and these and newspaper accounts seem to be his primary source of information. He had a profound distrust of the ability of the police to solve anything. He believed that people failed to observe, and failed to think about what they did observe. Most of his solutions seem to be based on the idea that once an explanation of the cause of the crime was made by the police or by the court, they failed to consider that another interpretation of the facts could be made. Most of the cases deal with middle class members of British society who have enough money to make significant bequests in their wills or to keep cash on hand. Frequently family disputes are found to lead up to the murder.

Baroness Orczy is best know for her novel The Scarlet  Pimpernel which was published in 1905. The first Old Man in the Corner story was published in The Royal Magazine in 1901. This was followed by five other stories. In the last of these, "A Death in Percy Street" she revealed the identity of the Old Man and ended the series. The stories were so popular that, like Sherlock Holmes, the Old Man was revived and continued with his stories and two more series of stories were published. Baroness Orczy had two other detectives. She published Lady Molly of Scotland Yard in 1920.  This book described the investigations of a female detective associated with Scotland Yard. She published Skin o' My Tooth in 1928 which narrates the adventures of an Irish lawer.

I would like to note that the murder in "The Tremarn Case" bears a striking similarity to the murder in The Mystery of the Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume which was published in 1886.

These stories are available in e-book form. I have read the paper Dover edition which has an introduction by E. F. Bleiler. The subtitle of this book is "Twelve Classic Detective Stories" I see that there is an e-book edition available which has an introduction by Otto Penzler.

Spring Harrowing by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Somebody or something murdered Bart Paget in his own home. Paget was found with claw marks on his throat and a skull in his hand. Asey Mayo, the Homespun Sleuth of Cape Cod, was a friend of Paget's, and was definitely going to be involved in the investigation of the mystery. Paget was a collector of everything. He had collections of books, skulls, Indian relics, and many other things which were all crammed into his home. He also owned the Porter Century automobile which was close to Asey's heart.

The claw marks were attributed to Mrs. Susan Remington's wild cats. Mrs. Remington had married Mr. Remington, a very wealthy and older man, who had died and left her very well off at her home on Cape Cod. She indulged in her hobbies which included raising these two wildcats. Someone had released the wild cats on the evening when Bart Paget was murdered. Mrs. Remington set off on a search for the cats as did others in the community of Quanomet Bluffs. The wildcats were found and returned to their cages, but now Mrs. Reminton had disappeared.

 Asey Mayo's investigation is thorough, but a bit haphazard. He confides details of this investigation to Dr. Cummings who is his friend and confidant in the book. He does do better than Hanson who is the local policeman who is not really open to new ideas. The reader will learn what a wagh nakh is and how it was used to commit a murder. The reader will also learn how to play Hoople which is a game dear to the heart of the local residents.  These local residents are rather eccentric and include Webster Betts who is a one-armed man who built his own golf course, and Ellen Allenby who invented Hoople, and her son Scott who was promised a job by Bart Paget who later changed his mind about the offer. There is also Madame Lucy who arrived at the Allenby's one day and stayed for a year.

Phoebe Atwood  Taylor usually tells a good story, but I would not say that this her best novel. She does not include much description of Cape Cod which is a very scenic area. Occasionally she mentions the beach but that is about it. Also the local yokels who constitute the police force are really too stupid and frightened to be believed. It would have also been helpful to the reader to understand the action of the characters if she had given more indication of their ages.

The spring harrowing in the title does not refer to plowing the earth, but to Asey's plowing the clues to find the murderer. This book was published in 1939, and is no longer in print.