google-site-verification: googlef64103236b9f4855.html Philly Reader: March 2017

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Do Not Murder Before Christmas by Jack Iams

Stanley (Rocky) Rockwell is the young city editor of the newspaper The Record which is crusading against the city machine which is run by the Malloy family. It had been a tradition in the city for many years that on Christmas day, Uncle Poot, a local toymaker, would open his shop and give free toys to the children who visited. The Malloys had opened a community center and planned on Christmas to open the center and give a party for the local children at the same time. Rocky was given the assignment to write an article on the two competing Christmas celebrations.

Rocky started his assignment by visiting the new community center which appeared to rather poorly funded by the Malloys. It was run by Jane Hewes, a good looking blonde, who was not really qualified for the job, but Rocky found her very attractive, and they got along quite well with each other. Together they visited Uncle Poot and tried to convince him to change the date of his party to Christmas, but he declined.

On Christmas eve, Uncle Poot was murdered in his toy shop and his money was taken. At first the police accused a mentally challenged man, Loppy O'Shea,  of the murder and the robbery, but Rocky refused to believe that Loppy was guilty. Rocky undertook the job of finding the murderer. He was helped by his friend Lieutenant Bill Hammer who was one the few policemen who was not in the pay of the Malloys, and by the society columnist for The Record, Mrs. Pickett, who writes under the name Debbie Mayfair and who was familiar with the Malloys but not their friend.

I enjoyed this book. It is well written and has some good humorous touches. The main characters undergo many difficulties during the search for Uncle Poot's killer including being arrested, being fired, and engaging in some fist fighting.

This book was written in 1949 by Jack Iams (1910 - 1990). Iams was born in Baltimore, and his name was actually Samuel Harvey Iams Jr. During his lifetime, he was a reporter for the London Daily Mail, The Daily News, and Newsweek. He was also a television critic for the New York Herald Tribune. He wrote 13 books, and some of these were the mystery series with Stanley Rockwell as the detective.


Thursday, March 23, 2017

Crime Hound by Mary Semple Scott

Herbert Crosby, fourth assistant to the District Attorney of Saint Lewis, was on his vacation in an attractive area of lakes and pine trees near Brantford. It was so attractive that he decided to rent a cottage in the area as a summer vacation spot for his family. It should be noted that his idea of a cottage has five bedrooms and also bedrooms for 5 servants. He went to the office of Jediah Cook whose rental ads he had seen along the road. Cook never showed up, however, and Crosby found a way to find an attractive lakeside cottage which was being rented by an attractive young woman, Joan Ashleigh. Joan was living with her aunt, Countess Ororsky in the cottage next to the one that Crosby wanted to rent. Joan is an orphan whose parents died in a boating accident. Crosby put down the money for the summer rent on the spot.

It turns out that Jediah Cook didn't show up at his office because he died when he and his car went into the lake not far from the site of Crosby's cottage.  Local law enforcement in the form of Sheriff Mott showed up to investigate. His conversation seems to be limited to the words "Yeah, sure". Mott seems to suspect Herbert Crosby to be responsible for Cook's death and a great deal of the other happenings in this resort community. Countess Ororsky suspects Russians are involved. Others in the community suspect a Native American named Rain of the crime. The reader will note that there is a great deal of prejudice against Native American in this book.

The plot becomes much more involved. A young girl is locked in a closet. Another death occurs. Then there is Tender Teddie who runs a night club which is quite similar to the speakeasy which he ran during prohibition. Tender Teddie is really in prison, but seems to get parole every summer to run his club. Everything seems to be controlled by Benjamin Skeeter who wants to run this community and its residents.

Eventually everything is resolved in a rather surprising ending. I cannot say that I recommend this book for serious mystery readers. It is more of a cozy than a hard boiled mystery novel. There is a love story included, and Herbert Crosby tackles all the mysterious happenings with the secure faith in his ability to solve the crimes.

Mary Semple Scott (1873 - 1968) was the granddaughter of Illinois senator James Semple, and her brothers made the first electric bus in St. Louis. She was active in the woman's suffrage movement, and was editor of a suffrage magazine. Crime Hound which was published in 1940 was her only mystery novel.




Monday, March 6, 2017

Somewhere in the House by Elizabeth Daly

Henry Gamage, detective and expert on books, was invited to one of the strangest cases of his career. Mrs. Clayborn Leeder invited him to be present at a very unusual family event - the opening of a door which had been sealed for twenty years.

 Mrs. Leeder's grandmother Clayborrn had six children. Noonie was her youngest daughter and was her favorite child. Noonie could play the piano although she was not otherwise too intelligent.  Grandmother gave Noonie special favors, and when Noonie showed musical ability, grandmother had a room at the top of the house soundproofed so that Noonie could practise. Then, at a young age, Noonie died. After this, grandmother shut herself up in her room with only a distant relation, Aggie Fitch, to keep her company. Grandmother had a wax model of Noonie made and placed in the room with the piano. Only grandmother and Aggie Fitch were allowed to enter the room which was otherwise kept locked The family kept quite about this extreme behavior less others should think that grandmother was unbalanced (wasn't she?). When grandmother died, her will stated that the room should be kept as it was until her grandson Garth was 25 years old; he was five years old at the time of her death. On this date, those members of the family still alive, would inherit the Clayborn money.

So the room had remained for 20 years. The family did not, however, want anybody to know about it. They had the room sealed in such a way that the door looked like part of the wall. The outside windows were bricked up. The servants who knew about its contents had been dismissed. Aggie Fitch had left when the room was sealed. The family believed that she had used her savings to go traveling.

The remaining family members had continued to live in the house, because they were living on money given to them by grandmother's estate, and that amount of money was not enough to live in any other way. 

Now Mrs Leeder wanted Gamage there when the door was opened, because she said that she believed that grandmother and Noonie had a valuable button collection which was hidden somewhere in that room, and she wanted an impartial witness present at the opening to search for it. Indeed, when the room was unsealed, something shocking was discovered. This discovery would lead to other crimes and an explanation of an older ones.

Mystery novels of the Golden Age do sometimes contain contrived situations which would never occur in real life in order to give the detective a real challenge. There are perfectly normal people who keep the rooms of loved ones intact after their death. I, however, found the situation in this book a bit extreme. The older family members still seem to do nothing to improve their financial situation, and remain content to remain in that house doing very little for twenty years. Only the very young ones seem to offer any hope of the future. Gamage, of course, solves the mysteries and ties everything up quite neatly. Readers who enjoy complex family dramas will find this book appealing.