Puzzle for Players - Patrick Quentin

THE STORY: Fresh out of his stay at a mental institution where he recuperated from alcoholism and psychological trauma related to his wife's death in a fire Peter Duluth has managed to score a hit play, an angel for financing that play and several veteran actors for his theatrical comeback as producer-director of the melodrama Troubled Waters.  But trouble starts early when the production is forced to move to an ancient, long dormant, and reputedly haunted theater. None of the cast is very happy about their new home.  Especially Lionel Comstock, playing a minor role in the play, who is paranoid about some horrible event that happened there years ago and fears the production may be headed for disaster. Peter dismisses it all as nonsense. After all, theater people are prone to silly superstitions. But when strange ghostly figures appear in a dressing room mirror, and rats infest the basement, it seems that the production may indeed be cursed. Comstock sees the dreaded figure he was worried about and drops dead. Just a heart attack or something more sinister? Then another actor turns up dead in a prop coffin. Peter believes that someone wants the production ended for good and will stop at nothing -- not even murder.

THE CHARACTERS:  Peter Duluth makes his second appearance in Puzzle for Players (1938) and is not much of a detective in this mystery novel. In fact, it is his "angel" Dr. Lenz who will prove to be quite an excellent sleuth. In addition to having helped Peter recover from his trauma in Puzzle for Fools (the first book) Lenz is now the primary financier for the production. His skills as a psychiatrist come in very handy when faced with a couple of puzzling illusions, a murder and attempted murder. Turns out that the novel is very much a psychological mystery and the behavior of several characters is explained in detail by Dr. Lenz over the course of the book. Strange phobias and an actor with an impressive memory for recalling faces from past encounters and are just two examples of "psychological clues" that will help the reader make sense of a rather complexly plotted story.

Being a theater mystery this story tends to be stuffed with melodramatic soap opera-like subplots. There are typical backstage crushes and quasi romances some of which turn out to be something completely different than Peter and the reader originally thought they were.  But the cast is sadly made up of hoary old theater clichés: an oddball stage door codger with a nostalgia issue grieving over his past life; a stage manager who is the miraculous Jack-of-all-trades with a specialty in trapping rats; a veteran actress with a drinking problem; young handsome Lothario as the drunk's protector; a foreign accented actor with dark and alluring looks, a scarred face from an airplane crash, and a secret; and another veteran diva who falls in love with her co-stars as easily as walking down a street. As much as I thought all of these people were stereotypes Webb and Wilson as "Patrick Quentin" do manage to pull off a couple of surprising twists, invert many of the stereotyped relationships, and come up with two well earned surprises in the finale

The best of the characters turn out to be Mirabelle Rue, the diva leading actress with a predilection for swigging from her brandy bottle during rehearsal breaks; her leading man Conrad Wessler, Austrian stage star with the deep, dark secret; and Wolfgang, Conrad's step-brother under Dr. Lenz' care at the Thespian Hospital. The story mainly revolves around these three and their relationship with each other and the other cast members.

Often Peter and Iris seem to be supporting players in their own story even though Peter narrates the book. He spends many pages mulling over his past and reminding us of the trauma of the fire and his wife's death and threatening to hit the bottle more than he does facing the consequences of two deaths in his cast.  Also, the mantra of "the show must go on" seems to infect everyone to the point that the entire company feels it necessary to withhold info from the police so that the play can open and be the success they know it will be. A bit too much even for a theater mystery. To these people the world of the stage is more important than the real world. It gets to be a bore. I only wanted to know who the villain was and why all the sabotage was inflicted on the production.

INNOVATIONS: While the subplots often are tiresome the oddities of the plot keep me engaged. The mystery of the ghost in the mirror is solved fairly quickly, proving to be both simple and utterly creepy when Dr. Lenz explains how the culprit uses the prank to trigger Conrad's fragile psyche and his continuing PTSD from the plane crash.

I especially enjoyed how Mirabelle's alcoholism turns out to be something utterly different primarily because the enabling of an alcoholic really bothered me even for a 1938 novel.  It's a given that heavy drinking seemed to be used way too often for comic effect in days gone by (I guess in some stupid sit-coms it still is) but I still have problems with that trope, especially people tolerating it and enabling the drinker. Webb & Wilson try to make Mirabelle a sympathetic figure who uses alcohol as a refuge but I was glad when it was all proven a sham, that she was seeking refuge in a bottle of something else for a problem that never occurred to me. Also, her relationship with Gerard has a twist in store as well. The Patrick Quentin mystery novels often has clever twists that come out of nowhere and transform something that seemed trite into a refreshingly original idea.

Another nifty plot element is the bizarre murder method used to dispatch a condescending blackmailer, an absolutely gruesome way to go and surely a contribution of Richard Wilson Webb, the lover of the macabre of this writing duo. Also worth mentioning -- Dr. Lenz prescribes acting as a therapy for his patient Wolfgang von Brandt as an ironic means to cure an identity crisis. While this seems radical or far-fetched when all is revealed in the finale (the supreme surprise of the novel) it turns out to be yet another bit of misdirection that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Ultimately, Dr. Lenz turns out to be the detective of the novel. In solving the mystery of the ghost in the mirror he explains why it was necessary to take place in the specific dressing room. He also spots two blackmailers with varying reasons for threatening cast members and the playwright, and in the final pages reveals the dangerous murderer hiding in the company. Peter does very little detecting and in fact Iris  proves herself better as a detective than Peter in this outing. Yet another surprise in the novel.

THINGS I LEARNED: For much of the book Iris continues to press Peter into marriage.  Whenever there is a break in rehearsal she prods him to run down to City Hall to get the license or to run off for the weekend to get hitched. After Peter is bonked on the head by one of the many villains in the story she finally decides to take matters into her own hands. She basically kidnaps him while he is unconscious and drives to Elkton, Maryland.

 

Why so far from New York?  Because as I learned after some fidgety Googling Elkton was the "Wedding Capital of the East Coast" for decades.  Over 10,000 marriages were performed on average each year during the 1910s and 1920s, less during the 1930s due to a change in state law.  For decades there was no waiting period after a marriage license was issued in Elkton and people would get married within hours.  But in 1938 -- oddly enough the year Puzzle for Players was published -- Maryland enacted a state law that enforced a 48 hour waiting period after a license was issued putting a quick end to the "quickie wedding."  To read about this town, that at one time had 20 wedding chapels on its Main Street, and the many celebrities who took advantage of the quickie wedding see this article in Time magazine from Feb 21, 2021.

EASY TO FIND?  A rare "Yes, indeed!" is the answer for a change, my friends. This book was reprinted multiple times in a variety of paperback editions from the 1940s all the way into the 1980s.  Nearly all those are priced well under $15 each. There are a handful of the US or UK hardcover editions as well. Obviously those will be more expensive.  A few collector's copies are out there as well with DJs and are the most expensive, of course. A digital version probably exists too.  But I never bother looking. Someone will most likely point it out in a comment below. Happy hunting!

FFB: Danger Next Door - Q. Patrick

THE STORY: Clark Rodman is fascinated with the apartment across the alley. He watches with curious intensity the occupants and in particular the young woman who lives there. He captivates her. She lives there with two other men, both of whom he knows are photographers employed by a news agency. One of them is her brute of a husband. They seem to know a little too much about Clark, too and let him know when in a chance encounter they attempt to make him the subject of a photo essay. When Clark refuses the attention Gene Folwell, the husband, lets on he is aware of Clark's Peeping Tom act and threatens him if it doesn't stop. Of course this only intensifies Clark's morbid curiosity, firing his imagination that there is Danger Next Door (1951) for Laura Folwell.

THE CHARACTERS: Clark, Laura, Gene and the rest of the cast are stock in trade characters you might encounter in any number of "foolish voyeur" thrillers so familiar to crime fiction fans. Clark is a rich kid who wants a taste of the simple life. He turned down his father's offer to join the family business and instead took off for the big city of Manhattan with dreams of becoming a writer. He uses Laura, the girl next door, as his muse and churns out a sordid tale of an abused young woman suffering in silence as a prisoner of her domineering ape of a husband. This turns out in part to be true, for Gene is a sadistic thug who exploits his wife in a blackmail scheme that relies on using Laura as an inserted model in altered photographs of people caught in nearly pornographic, compromising positions. As the story unfolds the reader knows that Clark will be determined to save Laura at any cost. Murder is not ruled out. Soon his outrage gets the better of him and Gene is killed. The final third of the story tells how Clark, Laura and Gene's brother Harry plan to cover up the crime.

But Ted Steele, Clark's intrusive neighbor, is complicating matters. Ted presents himself as a police officer on the vice squad with his eye on Gene and Harry's blackmail operation. He also seems to know a little too much about Clark. Everyone seems to be watching Clark with the same intensity that he is watching Laura. When Clark tries to verify Ted's identity he finds out that there is no one in the phone book listed as either Ted or Edward Steele. Through his connections with a policeman friend Clark learns there is no one named Edward Steele in the NYC vice squad. Who then is Ted Steele? And why is he so interested in Clark's welfare and the activities of the three people across the alley?

Then there is the mystery of furniture that seems to move by itself in the Folwell apartment. The odd glances Gene makes towards the floor. Was he kicking at an unseen dog? But how can a dog make a sofa glide across the floor? The wallpaper is ripped off and shredded from one of the walls in a room Clark can see from his place.  What might explain that?  Angry fits of temper? A wild animal going crazy? What of the messenger boy Clark enlists to deliver a note to Laura? Why did he return from the Folwell apartment in a terrified state talking of a freakish creature with the face of monster that was hiding behind Laura, clinging to her legs? Is that some kind of apelike pet the Folwell's are keeping in their home?

I liked the irascible forensic pathologist Dr. Talbot Trask who turns out to be one of Clark's few allies and a sort of detective in the final pages. He suffers no fools gladly and can't abide the naivete of the police he must deal with daily. Dr. Trask is interested in a cold case, the unsolved disappearance of Professor Barraclough who apparently was lost at sea. Trask is convinced that Barraclough has been murdered, but without a body he can prove nothing. The professor is an inventor of a photographic method that makes image manipulation very easy, something like a 1950s idea of Photoshop but without the digital aspect. An invention involving photography? Oh yes, you better believe this cold case will figure into the sideline of Gene and Harry Folwell. Trask provides the only bit of humor, albeit a nasty, cynical humor, in a novel that is filled with tension, suspense and few chilling surprises.

INNOVATIONS: More than any other Q. Patrick work Danger Next Door (1951) is a genuine noir novel not much of a detective novel though there are detective story elements. It's also as sordid as the magazine piece that Clark wrote. There is a perverse quality to the plot that recalls the brutality and cruelty of Q. Patrick's The Grindle Nightmare written nearly two decades earlier. I was reminded of the darkest novels of Gil Brewer and the revenge thrillers Lawrence Block wrote in his very early career. Sex and sadism mix together in a tale of twisted blackmailers obsessed with the darkest desires and blackest bedroom fantasies. Elements of the weird menace stories of pulp magazine writers like Anthony Rud, Wyatt Blassingame, and G. T. Fleming Roberts also turn up in one of the more bizarre revelations at the book's midpoint and in the ultimate twist in the final pages.

This might well have been titled Fifty Shades of Ebony. Yet none of the power plays and domination scenes we are shown (thankfully only two) can possibly titillate. It's just violence. Laura's victimization curdles the blood and chills the bone; there isn't a tinge of intended arousal. The reader is longing for Gene to get his comeuppance.

The novel can also be seen as an inverse of the Horatio Alger stories of poor young men who seek success and wealth in city life. Throughout the story everyone who meets Clark tells him that he's in over his head. That his rich kid background is something he can never escape and that he should never have left the comfort of his father's house and the guarantee of an easy life in an inherited position at the family business. Here is a sampling of the many warnings and advice our hero receives:

Gene Folwell: This isn't a healthy neighborhood for millionaires' sons.

Dr. Trask: Don't go poking your nose too far into other people's affairs. [...] Rich men's sons are good targets, too. We don't want to have you on a slab in the next room, you know."

EASY TO FIND? Already discussed in my exuberant post when I first discovered the book offered for sale and my immediate purchase of that rare copy. Read about it here. So the answer (as usual) is no. In this case the book is so uncommon that I'd amend that to a blunt "Absolutely not."

Q Patrick Rarity Unearthed

This morning when I checked my email I got an alert than one of my "want list" books was available for purchase. This happens all too rarely. Last year I got one of these email alerts and I wrote about it on this blog because the price of the book was gasp inducing. As I've said before, when I get one of these emails I cross my fingers that I can afford the book. This morning I think I managed quite a coup in book acquisition. Here's the notice I received:

Item Status: Confirmed

Title: Danger Next Door

Author: Patrick, Q. (Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler)

Quantity: 1

Book Description: Mysterious happenings have the girl next door frightened and in need of help. Gently bumped with a tape shadow to the front board, foxing to the end papers and edges of the text block. Binding square and solid. Jacket rubbed with long tears, internal and external tape repair. 2 loss to the spine heel, 1/2 to the head, in Brodart. A scarce title by the authors who also wrote under the names Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge.
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good

Book Price: US$ 100.00

Danger Next Door!  The most elusive book in the entire output of Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Wheeler. I've never seen a copy for sale in the nearly eighteen years I've been selling books. Nor have I seen one in the four decades I've been buying vintage mystery novels as an incurable collector and fan. This was the most exciting purchase I've made in a very long time. I feel like a little kid and I can't wait for the book to arrive and soak in its pages.

A review on this rarity will definitely be appearing in February. Stay tuned, gang!

FFB: Puzzle for Puppets - Patrick Quentin

THE STORY: Lt. Peter Duluth (soon to be senior grade) is on Navy leave in San Francisco. His wife Iris has flown in from Los Angeles where she is finishing up a small part in a movie. Peter's leave coincides with Iris' 26th birthday and they decide to make the most of their limited time together hoping for an amorous weekend where they do not plan to leave their bedroom. That is if they can find one. Hotels are booked up and they're not having much success finding a room. Iris is about to suggest that they stay with her cousin Eulalia Crawford when a vivacious and very loud woman named Mrs. Rose overhears Peter and Iris discussing their hotel room dilemma. Mrs. Rose graciously offers them her room. It seems Iris has touched Mrs. Rose's sentimental side. It also helps that Iris bears a striking resemblance to a woman she knows very well. The Duluths gratefully accept the hotel room, the staff make the registration switch and thus begins an adventure that will include multiple cases of mistaken identity, abounding coincidences, a murdered puppeteer, and some insanity at a circus.

CHARACTERS: Peter and Iris Duluth are one of the most believable married couples in mysterydom. Not only are they truly in love, they have an unabashedly frank way of talking about their attraction for each other. This is a married couple with a sex life that is talked about openly and wittily. They can't wait to get in bed and they can't seem to keep their hands off each other. The sex talk and their attitudes are never vulgar, nor does it descend into wink-wink-nudge-nudge cutesiness. It's just real and human. Iris becomes the center of their truly surreal adventure when she is mistaken for her look-alike cousin Eulalia and she can't help but indulge in her avocation of an amateur sleuth much to Peter's disappointment.

Peter also gets involved in an absurd incident at a Turkish bathhouse leaving him without his navy uniform and without a towel at one point. So we have not only frank talk about their sex lives but an R rated sequence with loads of naked men, including Peter, at the baths. There's even a two sentence bit about Peter being cruised by a young gay boy. This is not your typical WW2 era detective novel by a long shot. But then it was written by two of mysterydom's most famous gay writers. You're bound to get some traipsing into taboo territory with Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler at the helm of your mystery novel.

The supporting cast is suitably fabulous. In addition to Mrs. Rose and her loud laugh and larger than life personality we have two private eyes one of whom helps Peter out of his predicament at the bathhouse. Later this private eye Hatch Williams along with his partner Bill Daggett help the Duluths get to the bottom of the multiple mysteries that begin with who stole Peter's navy uniform and leads to the bizarre stabbing murders of two women, and the identity of a lisping man, the solution to some enigmatic utterings from an inebriated criminologist, and tracking down the man who is running around San Francisco dressed in Lt Duluth's uniform and pretending to be him. Even the smallest walk-on part will turn out to be an important feature in this madcap plot that takes the Duluths on a wild chase throughout the city from the St. Anton Hotel to Eulalia's weird puppet workshop in her studio apartment, from a dive bar in Chinatown to the S.F. zoo, all of it culminating in a near fatal trap in the maze-like backstage corridors and basements of the Lawrence Arena.

Chinatown, San Francisco, circa mid 1940s

ATMOSPHERE: Here is one book published in 1944 that is very much about life during wartime. In addition to all the interesting business about navy officers and enlisted men and the rules they must follow even while on leave, Peter is very much concerned about getting his uniform back. For one thing it cost him $80 and should he be caught by some Navy V.I.P. out of uniform while on leave he'd be in a heck of a lot of trouble. Other references to the war include gas rationing, ration stamps, curfew, and my favorite -- the tattooed lady at the circus sideshow who has "Buy War Bonds" inked across her abdomen ("Surely no other artiste had risen to her country's emergency with such selfless nobility"). The Duluths get around town mostly by using public transportation, especially the trolleys, which allows for some interesting observations of everyday people

QUOTES:

"Happy birthday, baby"
"Nylons! Peter, how--how on earth did you get them?"
I kissed her ear. "By selling my body in the right places."

"Something about the room makes me shameless. I think it's the cupids' bare behinds."

"One of the toughest things in the world is explaining to a wife just how you can love her with every part of you and still be raring to get back into battle."

1940s era post card - Bank of America, Owl Drug & cable car turnaround on Powell St.

"I had forgotten what unkind variations age can play on the theme of the masculine form. [...] Men in bulk, without their clothes, lose all personal identity."

"My indignation which had been simmering so long seethed over when I looked down at the Beard snoring his head off on the bed--our bed. That was the ultimate insult."

"I just didn't care. It wasn't as if the mystery ever got nearer to being solved. [...] It was just a succession of doors, one door leading to another door leading to another door leading in an endless chain to the madhouse. Let them all kill each other. Let a howling mob string me up on the nearest lamppost as a mass murderer. I'm through."

THINGS I LEARNED: Adolph Sutro was a wealthy mining and real estate entrepreneur who helped develop several public works and supported the arts in San Francisco. He created Sutro Baths, a huge salt water swimming pool for public use that lasted nearly one hundred years. It was converted into an ice skating rink in the 1950s but was destroyed in a fire in 1966.

Navy officers and enlisted men are required to wear their uniform when in public while on leave. Peter brings with him two uniforms, his regular khaki one at the bathhouse and his "glamour uniform" he brought along especially for Iris' birthday celebration when they go out to eat and dance.

EASY TO FIND? Some good news for a change! There are multiple editions (US, UK and France) of Puzzle for Puppets, especially in paperback. Most of the Peter and Iris Duluth mysteries by Patrick Quentin were reprinted several times since their original publication back in the 1940s. I count at least five different paperback editions, the most recent being the 1989 IPL paperback. There are a few hardcover copies out there, both US and UK, and some with DJs, too.

This is truly one of the best of the Peter & Iris Duluth mysteries.  Excellent plot w/ lots of puzzling riddles, authentic WW2 background, colorful characters, loads of action, and a generous helping of weirdness -- a whole lot of fun.  Happy hunting!

FFB: Death, My Darling Daughters - Jonathan Stagge

THE STORY: At the behest of Inspector Cobb Dr. Hugh Westlake acts as an undercover detective in the wealthy Hilton household when Nanny dies under suspicious circumstances. Using his role as coroner as an excuse he tries to determine if her death by cyanide poisoning was an accident due to careless use of the silver polish on her antique tea service. Or was she done in by one of her relatives? Nanny had been overheard having an argument with a member of the house in which she accused the other person of planning to murder her grandson. A few days later Dr. George Hilton dies agonizingly in one of the most bizarrely imagined murders of the Golden Age. Now Westlake and Cobb must root out the poisoner before another person dies.

CHARACTERS: There are enough research chemists in Death, My Darling Daughters (1945) to give any policeman a headache. Hilton heads up a research team and is one of those arrogant scientists who wants all the credit for himself making for an acrimonious working relationship with his colleague Dr. Richard Kenton-Oake and especially Dr. Victor Roberts, the hothead hunk (“The young doctor was the best looking man I had ever seen”). Victor is yet another Stagge Adonis whose initial description goes on for an entire paragraph detailing his “too beautiful” looks, impressive physique and “animal virility”. But he’s an embittered beauty. He’s not only angry about having his name left off publications for developing the synthetic rubber esters he made himself, but is ticked off that Hilton disapproves of his womanizing. Victor can’t help himself, of course, setting hearts aflutter of every young woman in the Hilton household including Hilton’s giddy much younger wife Janie. He’s sex on a stick 1945 style, passionate in temperament in more ways than one.

French paperback using a close translation
of the British alternate title (see below)

Rounding out the cast of research scientists is Dr. Lisl Stahl, a toxicologist from Austria who unfortunately has all her dialogue rendered in a phonetic accent. (Annoying!) Her scientific specialty conveniently enough is research on rodenticides, specifically on efficient methods to kill rats. But Dr. Stahl is careless with her lab, none of her chemicals are securely locked away in cabinets and the lab is left open to all. Anyone could’ve made their way into her lab and helped themselves to any amount of the various poisons she worked with.

The Hilton daughters who all sport the names of Shakespearean characters – Perdita, Rosalind and Helena – are not at all like their namesakes. Webb and Wheeler like their characters to be ironically named. Helena is brash and brazen, Rosalind is petulant and ridiculing, Perdita is distant and unloving to her father. All of them are talentless musicians no matter how hard their mother attempts to cultivate them into a classical trio. But they have other hidden talents – like vocal impressions. Rosalind is particularly talented in her various impressions of the men and women in the Hilton household. She imitates her mother and sister to perfection. Is that a clue to events to come? Maybe. Maybe just a clever red herring.

Their imperious controlling mother does her best to maintain her façade of social politeness but is a dragon of the worst sort. There is a scene between Mrs. Lanchester (she is George’s sister) and Dr. Kenton-Oake’s wife that could have been lifted from Clare Booth Luce’s witty play The Women. A verbal cat fight that allows each woman to reveal her true self. It’s a trenchant theatrical touch with bitchy and cruelly witty dialogue that foreshadows Hugh Wheeler’s future career as a playwright.

UK 1st edition (Michael Joseph, 1946)

INNOVATIONS: The method of introducing poison in this book is diabolical. No other way to describe it. Dr. Hilton’s murder comes at the most unexpected time in a manner that was gasp inducing for me. It certainly is a nasty and bizarre way to kill someone. I’ve read a lot of mystery novels and it takes a lot to shock me. This one worked.

THINGS I LEARNED: Back in the day (and maybe still true today) silver polish contained enough quantities of potassium cyanide to cause toxicity if not handled properly. Dr. Stahl quotes from contemporary toxicology textbooks specific cases of fatal poisonings resulting from the accidental ingestion of residual silver polish not properly removed from silverware, pots and platters.

Arrowroot, often used in cooking as a starch substitute, can also have toxic properties in mass quantities. Ironically, the name itself originally came about because the plant was useful in drawing out poison from envenomed arrows.

German edition. Title translates as:
Mrs Hilton's Pretty Daughters
(Gift is the German word for "poison")

EASY TO FIND? Doesn’t look good as of this writing. Though it was reissued in a 1946 Unicorn Book Club omnibus and reprinted in the 1950s by Bestseller Mystery in digest form there are about ten copies for sale. All of them are the Doubleday Crime Club 1st edition hardcover, some with the unique cavorting skeletons DJ. The chances of buying a UK edition are even more limited. I found only eight copies for sale online under the UK alternate title Death and the Dear Girls (1946). For non-English speakers/readers: my search turned up French, Italian, German and Norwegian editions at the WorldCat.org site. Libraries are always a good option when so few copies are offered for sale.

* * *

This is my second contribution to Rich Westwood's "Crimes of the Century" meme. This month we read books published in the year 1945. The first book I read and reviewed was This Is The House by Shelley Smith. A list of all the 1945 book posts and contributor's blogs can be found on this page at Rich's blog Past Offenses.

FFB: Death Goes to School - Q. Patrick

It's parents' weekend at Craiglea, an English boarding school for boys, at the start of Death Goes to School (1936). Several events have been specifically scheduled to show off the students' skills in athletics and other non-scholastic areas. Parents have traveled far and wide to visit with their boys and see how the Craiglea faculty are molding them into specimens of fine young men. During the weekend one boy is found dead in a linen closet.

Early on in the police investigation we learn that the boy is the son of a United States judge who had been threatened by Nazi sympathizers when he sentenced to death two criminals for anti-Semitic terrorist acts. The threats manifest in attacks on his two sons. A failed attempt at kidnapping prompts the judge to remove his sons from any further danger by sending them overseas to the boarding school. The prime suspects for the threats and botched kidnap plot are a brother and sister named Heller who are related to the criminals the judge sent to the electric chair.

An American private eye named McFee is hired to keep an eye on the boys. As vigilant as he thinks he is his talents as a bodyguard fall short of the mark when one of the boys dies. In order to redeem himself he turns sleuth to discover who killed one of his charges. As in all good detective novels he finds an accidental sidekick in the person of the headmaster's daughter who serves as Craiglea's music teacher. He also recruits a precocious student who he believes witnessed the murder to be another partner in sleuthing and to do some digging into the other schoolboys' secrets.

Death Goes to School is the very first collaboration between Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Wheeler as far as novels go.They had previously collaborated on several short stories which mostly appeared in American Magazine. (see this post). Already we can see themes and motifs that will recur in their later work such as the incorporation of taboo subject matter (child murder) and homoerotic descriptions of the handsome male characters. There always seems to be at least one Adonis in a book written by Wheeler and Webb. This time it's Harvey Nettleton, an English teacher at Craiglea.

The writing duo also display their penchant for the supernatural in the legend of the Grey Lady, a nurse who through negligence was responsible for a student dying of an infectious disease. Ironically, she succumbs to the same disease and dies. Her ghost is said to haunt the hallways of Craiglea. The boys tell stories of the Grey Lady moaning and wailing in grief and remorse for the loss of her ill patient. She makes a few appearances over the course of the book. Or is someone taking advantage of the students' superstitious fears?

Some of the reviews of the time:

"The best tale Q. Patrick has written, with an original finale. The setting seems to indicate that English schools are growing dangerous ground. Surely the fifth or sixth murder in a school, within the past few months!" - Kirkus Reviews, Feb 24, 1936

"Though slightly unfair in denouement the telling is good, the dialogue and background interesting." - Saturday Review Feb 29, 1936

This is a quick read and has some excellent scenes, especially between McFee and his boy sleuth. Some of the clueing is rather obvious but there is indeed rather an unfair twist in the final pages. As an example of Webb and Wheeler's interest in original, lively characters and adept plotting technique Death Goes to School is worth a look for the more discriminating reader of detective fiction. But don't break your back looking for a copy. Most of their later work under any of their three pseudonyms is much better as well as much more easy to find.

FFB: Murder by Prescription - Jonathan Stagge

"Why should the body live when the heart is dead?"

I'm beginning to think that Richard Wilson Webb was a secret sadist and hated animals. Murder by Prescription (1937) is the third detective novel and the second in the Dr. Westlake series in which cruelty to animals is on shocking display yet again. Not satisfied with the torture of horses and dogs in The Grindle Nightmare, not having worked out of his system even more brutality to horses and dogs in The Dogs Do Bark Webb and his collaborator Hugh Wheeler fill the pages of Murder By Prescription with kidnapped rabbits, a garroted cockatoo, and a dungeon-like warehouse of caged and starved cats that serve as experimental subjects for a couple of borderline mad scientists. All this in a story that is ultimately about the best way to alleviate suffering in terminally ill patients. The writers raise many questions about the practice of euthanasia and whether it is actually murder.

The original title of this second book in the Dr. Westlake detective novel series is Murder or Mercy? which underscores the main dilemma of the police when confronted with a series of ambiguous deaths.  Even the Italian title La Buona Morte (literally The Good Death) alludes to the central theme of mercy killing. Dr. Westlake has his reputation at stake all thanks to a newspaper account that mistakenly identifies him as a doctor who made a polemical speech about euthanasia at a community gathering. The real doctor who delivered the speech was a Dr. Westbrook, "an old quack" who "had a passion for getting into the newspapers". And it is this physician who Mrs. Talbot intended to have call on her when she makes her plea to have her life ended. But it's Westlake's name in the newspaper and it's Westlake who makes his visit to her bedside.

Doubleday Crime Club, 1st US edition (1937)

He listens to her veiled request to be put out of her misery and also indulges her by witnessing and signing a paper she scrawls out hastily. He leaves with her daughter Hermia a small amount of morphine pills and instructs her to give them as needed. Later that night Mrs. Talbot dies, presumably by her own hand. Police investigation discovers that although Hermia left all the pills by her mother's bedside the envelope containing the morphine fell behind the bed and was out of Mrs. Talbot's reach. Westlake notices that more than half of the 100 pills he started with that night are missing from the morphine bottle. When an autopsy reveals morphine poisoning it is clear to both the coroner and the police that Mrs. Talbot was murdered.

Things go from bad to worse for Dr. Westlake when the newspaper account with his name turns up in Mrs. Talbot's hand. And what of that handwritten paper with his signature? It's nowhere to be found. Was it a last minute change in her will? How convenient it would be for the doctor to take advantage of his euthanasia stance by subtly persuading the woman to kill herself after learning she intended to leave his nine year-old daughter $10,000.

Woven into this fiendish plot to frame Westlake as a sort of 1930s Dr. Kevorkian are some of the most bizarre characters ever created by Webb and Wheeler. Mrs. Talbot's second daughter Gail and her husband Conrad Fiske are the creepiest, most atypical married couple to ever appear in a 1930s mystery. Conrad, a genius medical student working on experimental narcotics in a fancy home lab, seems to be a precursor to the modern 21st century dude. With his sloppy attire, his permanently unshaven face and unkempt hair he could easily be mistaken for any hipster college student of our age. His wife is similarly unconcerned with her appearance, shying away from the usually heavily made-up faces of 1930s women her own age. But it's her manner that is most shocking. Rude, brusque and entitled she has no boundaries in expressing her opinion. To her Westlake is no better than a servant. She helps herself to medicine from his medical bag, openly insults the man, and dismisses him when he dares to confront her with inappropriate behavior. Webb and Wheeler do a good job of setting up this unlikable duo as the villains of the book. They may act like borderline sociopaths and ultra self-absorbed spoiled rich kids thinking nothing of the inhumane experiments and animal victims, but are they really capable of murder?

Italian edition depicting the grisly
discovery of a strangled cockatoo

Westlake's precocious daughter Dawn is probably the most interesting in this book as well. She serves as a foil to the burgeoning romance between Westlake and Hermia Landreth, Mrs. Talbot's martyr-like daughter. Dawn proves herself to be quite the girl sleuth when her father recruits her to find a crucial piece of evidence in the finale. She pulls off her adventurous assignment with the aplomb of Nancy Drew or Judy Bolton and gleefully delivers into his hands the last bit of proof needed to unmask the murderer.

The Westlake series tends to bring out the macabre side of this mystery writing duo. Here is a book that shows us their penchant for Poe-like grotesquery and scenes of unnerving horror. Webb who was the primary plotter of the two writers knew there are some taboo topics that just weren't meant for books intended as light entertainment and indulged himself with abandon. The sequence in which Westlake and the suspicious butler Josephs make their way to a dingy and fetid cellar and break into the storeroom where the Fiskes keep their animal subjects is as grotesque as the discovery of the walled up corpse and wailing feline in "The Black Cat". The only relief the reader gets from this stomach churning scene is Westlake's rescue of a couple of Belgian hares he bought as his daughter's birthday present. Later in the book the significance of the rabbits' unscarred and healthy appearance will serve as a big clue to one of the book's final surprises.

Murder by Prescription while only the second book in the Dr. Westlake series is perhaps the most unsettling and disturbing mystery written by Webb and Wheeler. From the series of murders committed seemingly without motive to the horrors of the animal experiments to yet another death trap from which Westlake must escape this detective novel is teeming with nail biting thrills. The various scenes alternating between inflicting pain and relieving pain and the continual reference to the phrase "murder or mercy" make for some moments of uneasy reflection about the right to die and the role of science in medicine. For a book written in the 1930s it still has some resonance for a 21st century reader. Why these books haven't been reprinted since their original publication is a bigger mystery than those presented in the story.

IN BRIEF: The Scarlet Circle - Jonathan Stagge

Like most mysteries featuring Dr. Hugh Westlake and his mischievous daughter Dawn The Scarlet Circle (1943) begins with one of the little girl's observations. One night she sees a strange pink light emanating from an abandoned church graveyard near the hotel where the two are vacationing.  Never reluctant to investigate strange and myster- ious events Westlake heads out to the graveyard and interrupts a shadowy figure who has been digging up a coffin. The pink light turns out to be a red paper Chinese lantern and it will signify gruesome events to come. A few nights later another Chinese lantern is found glowing over the strangled corpse of one of the hotel guests. Inexplicably, a mole on her cheek is encircled with a scarlet ring drawn on with lipstick. Could this be the work of a homicidal maniac?

Typical of the Dr. Westlake series the crimes are tinged with a macabre touch, the atmosphere is brooding and menacing. This is perhaps the most Gothic of Stagge's detective novels with its Poe-like emphasis on graves, exhumed coffins, a lugubrious nearly necrophiliac undertaker named Mr. Usher, and a killer apparently obsessed with anatomical imperfections in his female victims. Later in the novel we learn the inhabitants of the Massachusetts town are mostly Portugeuse immigrants who still cling to Old World superstitions and folklore surrounding violent deaths. There are elements of the modern serial killer novel in the ritualized nature of the murders -- the Chinese lantern marking the crime site, the lipstick circle drawn around skin defects and wounds -- and eventually the final twist revealing the murder's motivation. The Scarlet Circle is a fine entry in one of the better American amateur detective novel series. With only nine books it is a shame it was such a brief run for Dr. Westlake.

Also reviewed on this blog is the first Dr. Westlake novel, The Dogs Do Bark

More about the Dr. Westlake mysteries by Jonathan Stagge:
Sergio Angelini on Turn of the Table
Curt Evans on The Scarlet Circle
Douglas Greene on The Yellow Taxi

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Reading Challenge update:  Golden Age card, space O5 - "Book with a spooky cover"

FFB: The Crippled Muse - Hugh Wheeler

“Merape is a charming woman and distinguished poet. […] She is also a beautiful ruin. Ruins have gaping cracks in their battlements, rats in their armouries, jackdaws in their bell towers. And this, too, is true of Merape. You must beware, my dear sir…”

-- Professor Fishbourne-Grant in The Crippled Muse

Merape Sloane is a mysterious reclusive poet with a mystical aura and a coterie of protective sycophants. Horace Beddoes has traveled to the Isle of Capri where Merape lives in a sort of exile of retirement where he hopes to meet her, gain an interview and propose that he write her definitive biography. He happens to be an expert on Merape’s poetry having completed his Ph.D. thesis on her work which he titled "The Last Flowering of the Romantic Age". But when he meets Mike McDermott, a hack writer of sleazy potboilers, Horace is appalled to learn that McDermott has beaten him to the punch. Somehow McDermott managed to convince Merape Sloane that he would be the perfect man to write her biography and he has already a collection of notebooks with spicy gossip.

McDermott has also decided to title his book The Crippled Muse, alluding to Merape Sloane’s lifelong battle with illness that left her lame. This further upsets Horace because not only is it a near duplicate of his own planned title (The Crippled Corinna), the change of single word makes it a much better title in his estimation. Horace finds himself festering in jealousy and anger, struggling to keep from exploding with rage. A sex writer in charge of the life story of the genius Merape Sloane! What a cruel irony it all is.

Horace proceeds to drown his sorrows and sublimate his furor by getting blissfully drunk at a party where Merape is the guest of honor. In his besotted state he makes a fool of himself by introducing himself to Merape and groveling in her presence while slurring his drunken praise and admiration for her work. Shortly thereafter while stumbling home he comes across a bloody champagne bottle. Simultaneously he learns that Mike McDermott has disappeared from the party and not returned to his lodging. The next morning McDermott’s battered body is found at the foot of a cliff. It is thought that he too got carried with away with drinking, slipped and fell to his death. But the bloody bottle leads Horace to suspect foul play.

Soon Horace finds himself inextricably implicated in McDermott's death. He was seen holding the bottle by at least one person the previous night who then witnessed him throwing the bottle into the ocean. How will he prevent himself from being named McDermott’s murderer? But the novel is not simply another riff on the oft used wrong man theme. The crime plot serves only as background to Hugh Wheeler’s highly literate, allusion filled, languorous novel which touches on so many themes: love vs. desire, the importance of art in one’s life, the transcendent nature of lyrical poetry, the need to belong, the importance of finding home. The story defies categorization. It's a mixture of a literary detective novel, murder mystery and metaphysical exploration of attraction between all the sexes; a triple play mystery novel incorporating all connotations of the word mystery.

It's difficult not to find similarities in this book with some of Tennessee Williams' more recognizable plays about the sexual tension between a virile young Adonis and an artistic grand dame (Sweet Bird of Youth, Orpheus Descending, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore) until you realize that Wheeler's novel predates all of those plays, the earliest by seven years. Did Williams perhaps read this book and pick up on its theme either consciously or subconsciously? More likely is that Wheeler knew his Williams and either borrowed or was influenced by the playwright's trademarks.

The similarities in this one book to Williams favorite motifs are amazing -- the erotic temptations of Girlie and Loretta; the Duchessa who has a keen insight into the closeted homosexuality of McDermott and her sad resignation to being attracted to men who prefer men; Horace's repellent attitude towards the menacing pansexual Latvian gigolo Askold who attempts to blackmail Horace with sexual favors; Horace's admiration (attraction?) and envy for the brawny physiques of the Swedish masseurs who remind me of the athletic German couple and their overt sexuality in Williams' Night of the Iguana. The book is drowning with Williamsian desires whether they are forbidden, fantasized, or unrequited. Horace not only has the mystery of Merape's life to solve and clear his name of McDermott's murder he must confront the mystery of human sexuality in all its varied and nuanced guises. Horace's feverish confusion of sexual desire and love culminate in this lament:

Was this the way love operated--like a staphylococcus, one moment drowsing latent in the bloodstream, the next moment flaring up with renewed violence? [...] I'm a man and I don't know whether or not I'm in love--or with whom.

Isle of Capri by Jasper Francis Crospey (1893)

More than any of the Patrick Quentin or Jonathan Stagge books The Crippled Muse shows off Wheeler's gift for dramatic monologue. The sections with Clara Pott, Horace's landlady with a closetful of secrets, in particular foreshadow Wheeler's later success as an award winning playwright. There is a classic moment when Clara delivers a lengthy monologue detailing how Merape robbed her of her husband and her comfortable her life in Ohio. Her words are polite and contradictory to her actions. As she speaks Horace notices a flower in her hand that she continues to twist and crumple.  "No, I didn't dislike Merape," she says tossing the utterly destroyed flower to the ground. The book is replete with dazzling moments like that.

The Crippled Muse (1952) is Wheeler’s only novel published under his real name and it appears to have been a very personal work for him. He dedicates the book to Rickie – no doubt Richard Webb, his collaborator on dozens of detective novels using their pseudonyms Q. Patrick, Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge. Webb had retired from writing in 1951 and Wheeler continued writing the mystery novels under those pen names alone. Unlike his mystery novels, as good as they are, in The Crippled Muse we discover another side of Hugh Wheeler. He gives us another gripping and suspenseful crime plot, but there is also a greater display of Wheeler's love of literature, his love/hate affair with American culture and Americans, his fascination with exotic locales and even more exotic people. Perhaps, too, if we read a little deeper into the story of Horace's self-discovery we find a  revelation of the enigmatic writer himself.

FFB: The Dogs Do Bark - Jonathan Stagge

I have this idea that Richard Wilson Webb still hadn't recovered from his intensely lurid thrill ride with his writing partner Mary Aswell when the two of them concocted the brutal and savage crimes depicted in The Grindle Nightmare. One year later in what appears to be his first collaboration with his partner (in more ways than one) Hugh Wheeler he once more delved into noir territory in creating the murders in The Dogs Do Bark (1936). Oddly enough the book first appeared in England under the title Murder Gone to Earth before it was published by the estimable Doubleday Doran Crime Club under the title reviewed here. Although the level of violence never reaches the heights (depths?) of the butchery in The Grindle Nightmare this is definitely a book anyone would describe as grisly.

A nude woman's dismembered corpse is uncovered in a fox burrow at the tail end of a hunting expedition in the Massachusetts town of Kenmore. The body has been decapitated and is missing both arms. While the head does not turn up until the penultimate chapter the arm bones are soon found in the kennel that houses the bloodhounds for a hunt club. The flesh had been completely devoured by the ravenous dogs the night before. All this happens in the first two chapters. Grisly enough for you? But there's more.

Dr. Hugh Westlake, in his debut as Stagge's series detective, is promptly deputized by the local policeman giving him the chance to turn amateur detective with some authority. Prior to the discovery of the murdered woman Westlake had been consulted by Louella (Aunt Lulu) Howell, one of those garrulous fearful invalids that turns up in mysteries of this era. She is fearful of the baying hounds a sure omen of horrible things to come. Nurse Leonard who had been caring for the Aunt Lulu has recently been fired for indiscretions observed on the job. She was convinced the nurse was dallying with her husband, an unattractive dumpy man who Westlake has hard time envisioning as an object of desire. But could the nude corpse be Nurse Leonard?

Then there's Elias Grimshawe. A Bible thumping fundamentalist of the worst kind (yes, they had them back in the 30s, too) he has been battling with the horsey crowd and their obsession with fox hunting for a long time. That the body is found on his property during another of their bloody hunts angers him beyond reason. His daughter Anne who is rumored to have been carrying on with several men, some of them married, has also gone missing. Grimshawe startles Westlake and Inspector Cobb when in referring to the murder victim he quotes an Old Testament passage about Jezebel being fed to the dogs. No one but the the detective duo knew about the dog kennel business. They ask Grimshawe to go to the morgue to identify the body. Grimshawe is adamant that the victim is Anne.

The atmosphere builds to one of Gothic dread set up perfectly with the opening paragraph in which Dawn, Westlake's ten year-old daughter, is seen chanting an old nursery rhyme ("Hark, hark, the dogs to bark/The beggars are coming to town...") while standing at an open window and listening to the howling bloodhounds. Little does she know exactly why they are howling, but her precocious allusion is just as chilling as Aunt Lulu's prediction of horrible events to come. Once again as in The Grindle Nightmare animals are at the mercy of the murderous fiend on the loose and soon a horse is killed by an unusual method nearly killing its owner in the process.

Horses and hunting will play a prominent role throughout the story. So too will the Grimshawe property which Westlake and Cobb learn Anne would have received on her twenty-fifth birthday. The property is of interest to several characters in the book and provides an obvious motive, especially for Walter, Anne's handsome and athletic brother.

Handsome men with athletic builds are another recurring motif in the book and in others in the series. The descriptions of male physique stand out like posing gym boys in comparison to how the women are described and signal to me another kind of fascination of the authors. At times the rhapsodic physical accounts approach the kind of recitals of male beauty you would expect to find in the pages of a bodice ripper. I wouldn't exactly call these passages homoerotic, but they are very noticeable and perhaps revealing of the two men who wrote the book.

Dawn, who will later become more active in the series, is depicted here as a cute little prop used mostly for comic effect. For the most part she behaves like a kid but often she has an oddly precocious and inconsistent vocabulary. In one scene Webb and Wheeler have her confuse the word distinguished for extinguished. Then later she will correctly use the word ominous in sentence. She has a kind of schizoid role -- at times a mysterious oracle as in the opening paragraph and later when she helps her father with offhand comments, at other times a goofy awkward kid obsessed with rabbits. Dawn has always a problem for me in these books. It doesn't help matters much that Westlake refers to her by the ironic endearment "brat" and rarely calls her by name. Still in this first appearance the relationship between father and a daughter is honest and affectionate. Dawn didn't annoy as much as she does in other books.

The Dr. Westlake books would go on to feature equally bizarre and unusual crimes with a tendency towards the Gothic. Turn of the Table has a murderer who might be a vampire. The Stars Spell Death uses astrology and superstition as a springboard for the plot. In The Yellow Taxi the writers recycled the equestrian themes found in the first book as well as lifting the climactic barn fire towards the end of The Dogs Do Bark and duplicating it even to the point of Westlake's escape through an upper level window. Perhaps the most haunting and chilling entry is The Scarlet Circle with its unearthed graves, corpses daubed with lipsticked circles, and the creepy Talisman Inn.

As a beginning to a short-lived series The Dogs Do Bark shows great promise. Veteran detective novel readers may catch on early to the surprise twist in the tale, but that won't ruin what is essentially a fine example of a traditional detective novel with an ample amount of puzzling plot points, intriguing characters and evocative atmosphere.

Below is the complete list of detective novels featuring Dr. Westlake and his daughter Dawn. Those reviewed elsewhere on this blog have links.

Dr. Westlake Detective Novels
The Dogs Do Bark (1936) UK title: Murder Gone To Earth
Murder by Prescription (1938) UK title: Murder or Mercy?
The Stars Spell Death (1939) UK title: Murder in the Stars
Turn of the Table (1940) UK title: Funeral For Five
The Yellow Taxi (1942) UK title: Call a Hearse
The Scarlet Circle (1943) UK title: Light from a Lantern
Death, My Darling Daughters (1945) UK title: Death and the Dear Girls
Death's Old Sweet Song (1946)
The Three Fears (1949)

Q Patrick & the Pseudonym Enigma

The young and rugged Hugh Wheeler

The Q. Patrick pseudonym is one of those puzzling oddities of the mystery writing realm that has nothing to do with a fictional murder. For still unknown reasons it underwent multiple changes of writing partners. When Richard Webb first started writing detective novels he had as his partner Martha Mott Kelley. Together the duo wrote Cottage Sinister (1931) and Murder at the Women's City Club (1932). In 1933 Webb decided to go it alone as a mystery novelist. His solo effort as Q. Patrick was Murder at Cambridge. Then out of the blue it seemed Webb teamed up with another woman, Mary Louise Aswell, and with her wrote S.S. Murder (1933), The Grindle Nightmare (1935). Sometime in 1936 he found Hugh Wheeler. It is with Wheeler he continued the Q. Patrick pseudonym as a writing partnership until Webb quit writing in 1950. The two men also created another pseudonym - Patrick Quentin - and the marvelous husband & wife detective team of the theater, Peter & Iris Duluth.

Webb and Wheeler wrote quite a few remarkable novels together under both pseudonyms. But I'm wondering if the Q. Patrick novellas I have read in the pages of The American Magazine were the work of Webb alone. These two novellas are markedly different in tone, fairly formulaic in plot, excessively melodramatic with some preposterous ideas, and have some excruciatingly rendered dialog. They don't have the Wheeler-Webb flair. For me it was not so important to learn whodunit in these two novellas as it was to discover who actually wrote the stories. They seem like Q. Patrick impostor works.

"Exit Before Midnight" appeared in the October 1937 issue. It's a fairly routine story employing one of the most overused of detective story tropes - a group of characters in a setting cut off from the outside world who are systematically killed. That they are trapped in a locked office building with a power failure and that a board meeting of shareholders has brought them together did not help to enliven the proceedings for me. I find nothing at all exciting about big business having worked in offices all my life. Even if a corporate merger seems timely in this day and age, one that took place in 1937 between a fictional chemical processing company and a dye manufacturer seemed utterly dreary to me. The stock characters didn't help matters either.

Prior to the shareholder meeting a secretary discovers a threatening note naming seven of the primary shareholders in Leland & Rowley as potential murder victims. The anonymous note writer warns that the vote to merge the two companies must not be passed. If it does, he will begin killing those named in the note and will continue doing so until they change their voting results by midnight. Sound like a 1930 B movie programmer? It is. It does not improve any either.

There are sheets ripped from a desk calendar left on each victim. The remaining characters tremble in fear as they watch the calendar change from December 31 to January 1 then suddenly jumping ahead to January 4. One victim is found, but they know that two more are planned.  Exclamations marks are used in abundance in the dialog. Who is the killer? Who will survive? Does it matter?

It's all handled perfunctorily with wretched dialog, paranoid characters accusing each other histrionically or acting and talking so cool and sarcastic as to be unreal. There is a also a requisite "romance" between the secretary and two of her male suitors that is inserted at a point in the story that slows down the action. It all reminded me of dozens of movies I'd seen before and that were done far better. Although this predates And Then There Were None by about three years, the action in the story for me was too familiar and not at all handled in any original manner. Detection is at a bare minimum and limited to the observations of the secretary who the reader follows from start to finish although she is not the narrator.

The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing is the only "trapped in an office building" mystery story that holds any excitement for me. It's far superior to this yeoman effort by Q. Patrick. No surprise that "Exit Before Midnight" has never been reprinted outside of the magazine. At least not according to my reference books and research.

The better of the two novellas (but not by much) is "The Jack of Diamonds." It was the lead work of fiction in the November 1936 issue. It is also --as far as my research tells me-- the first time a Q. Patrick story was published in The American Magazine.

Once again we have a small cast of characters who are cut off from the rest of the world. In this case we have an invited group of guests who are to attend a skating party at the home of Theo Vanderloon. Only a few hours into the weekend there is a snowstorm that makes the roads impassable and the intense wind knocks out the electricity and presumably the telephone. (Another power failure! Didn't Wheeler and Webb have better ideas than these cliches?) The butler must act as maid, cook and footman since the host has sent the other servants away for the weekend. He's the best character in the story. I watched him closely as he was clearly intended to be someone that was to be taken for granted yet it was obvious that the authors (author?) would make him a key player in the denouement.

It's sort of a subversive story since it tells the tale of a group of blackmail victims conspiring to murder their tormentor. They will lure him to the sabotaged lake which has a pre-cut hole in the ice, cause him to fall through the ice and leave him to drown in the freezing water, thereby making his death look accidental. Nice people. That they will be skating at night seems to raise no questions of suspicion among any of them. But I'm sure the police would remark on that immediately. However, the plot backfires. It has to otherwise there would be no real story. And what follows is at least somewhat more interesting and even a bit exciting than what happens in "Exit Before Midnight."

The title refers to a playing card dealt out to one of the characters who is elected to dispatch the nasty blackmailer when their targeted victim fails to fall through the ice as planned. At least it wasn't called "Ace of Spades." That was one bit of novelty in this improvement over the other story.

There is yet another routine romance (love at first sight no less), even more melodramatic dialog, and a bunch of stock characters including an opera singer who bursts into snippets of arias at the most ridiculous and inappropriate times and a young ingenue with the unfortunate name of Carmelite who actually says to her besotted lover "Take me away from all of this!" That was only one of the many examples of hackneyed speech that sent me into fits of eyeball rolling, head shaking and groaning. But this time the story works. And there is actually a bit of suspense. Although I easily managed to figure out one of the tricks in the story there was a final twist in the last few paragraphs that, although not truly surprising, did manage to elude me.

The sappy love at first sight scene in "Jack of Diamonds"

Out of curiosity I went in search of other Q. Patrick stories or novellas that were published in The American Magazine.  At the Fiction Magazine database I found four more, one of which is a story featuring Peter & Iris Duluth and published under the Q. Patrick pseudonym rather than Patrick Quentin. I'll be searching the internet and elsewhere to see if anyone is offering these issues for sale. If affordable, I'll be purchasing some of them.  I'm curious to see if they get any better.  I certainly hope so. 

The involved merry-go-round of Q. Patrick partner changes (both writing and otherwise) is detailed in a series of comments at the Golden Age of Detection website page for Patrick Quentin. You can read about Webb, Aswell and Wheeler at length (little is known about Kelley, sadly) by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and read the comments section for interesting tidbits about the three writers and intimations on Webb and Wheeler's personal life.