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

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Cold Steal by Alice Tilton

Leonidas Witherall is a secret writer of mystery novels and an amateur detective.  He looks like Shakespeare, and his friends think that he is incredibly clever. In this novel, he is returning from a trip around the world, and is on the last leg of his journey on a train which will take him home to Dalton. On this train, he saw a mousey, grey woman hide a package in the bottom of a trash container. Unable to control his curiosity, he took the package out and found that it contained a gun and a pair of handcuffs. He rewrapped the package and put it back. This action will get him involved in a strange series of events on the train which will conclude with him getting banged on the head.

Meanwhile, while he was gone, Leonidas had entrusted his friends with the job of getting a new house built for him. He had given them the necessary money and the plans. He was indeed a very trusting man. On the train, he met a young man named Dow who befriends him and agrees to take him to the new house in Dalton. After a very confusing drive around Dalton, they at last arrived at the new house which is not quite what Leonidas had in mind when he gave his friends the plans. Leonidas was quite thrilled with the house which is described in a remarkable amount of detail. At the end of his tour of the house, he finds the body of a woman in his car in the garage. He finds out from Dow and Cassie, an older friend of his, that the body is that of Medora Winthrop, an incredibly wealthy and very difficult woman who was his neighbor. In the best tradition of cozy mystery novels, Leonidas, Dow, and Cassie decide that they will find out who the killer is.

Their investigation is complicated by the invasion into his house of many citizens of Dalton who wish to look at the architectural and decorating wonders of his new house. It is, of course, necessary, to keep them from looking in the garage where the body is still in the car, and this body will remain undisturbed in the car for the rest of the novel. So much for any crime scene forensics. The investigation proceeds in a rather haphazard way and eventually the solution is found.

I hope that this novel is meant to be a farce. Some parts are down right silly, some parts are funny. The actual solution of the crime is stuck on at the end after a great deal of running around by the amateur detectives.  If you are looking for humor and farce in a mystery novel, this is a book for you.

Alice Tilton is one of the pen names of Phoebe Atwood Taylor who is the author of the more conventional, but cozy Asey Mayo mysteries which are set on Cape Cod. This book was published in 1939.



Monday, June 19, 2017

Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake

World War II is now over. Nigel Strangeways had spent the war working in the Ministry of Morale which provided information about the war for the British public. Now he had only six months left in his tour of duty. Strangeways had grown to know the people he worked with. He possibly did not really like all of them, but he had become accustomed to them.

One of the most interesting people who had passed through the department was Charles Kennington who had worked at the Ministry, become very good friends with Nita Price, the department secretary, and then had left. The news said that Kennington had died fighting on the Rhine. Now with the war over, the news had it that Charles had been acting as a British spy in Europe and had captured Stultz who was the number three Nazi leader. Charles had taken from Stultz the poison capsule which was the way the German leader had expected to commit suicide.

Now Kennington had come back to see his old co-workers, and he had brought with him the poison capsule. At a small party with members of the department, the capsule was passed around for all to see. Tea was served and when Nita Prince drank hers, she died immediately. She had been a victim of the poison capsule. To use the capsule, it was necessary to break it, but the remains of the capsule was not in Nita's tea or in the office where the party was held or in the street below the window of the room.  Was Nita the intended victim or was it intended for someone else? Inspector Blount asked Nigel to assist in the investigation since he had been so useful in prior investigations.

The first question to be answered was why any one would murder Nita Prince. She was liked by the people in the department. It was rumored that she was having an affair with Jimmy Lake who was the head of the department.  Jimmy Lake was, however, married to Alice who was the sister of Charles Kennington, and Alice had been present at the party when Nita was poisoned. Nigel's investigation would also turn up a person in the department who might have been collaborating with the Nazi's during the war. It would be up to Nigel to untangle the complex scheme of personal relationships in this department in order to find the murderer.

This book was published in 1947 by Nicholas Blake which was the pen name of Cecil Day-Louis who would become the poet laureate of England. During World War II, Blake had worked as a publication editor for the Ministry of Information, and it is likely that he got his idea for Minute for Murder during his time there.