FFB: Vicious Circle - Manning Long

THE STORY: Gordon Parrott receives an urgent message from his Aunt Hester in upstate New York. She demands he come for a family gathering at Christmas, not just as her nephew but in "his official capacity." Parrot is an assistant district attorney in Manhattan an he has a feeling that something shady may be going on in the Allison household. At dinner two nights after they arrive an unexpected guest shows up -- Ruth Matlick. She claims to be married to Clifford Allison, Hester's son who is engaged to someone else. All hell breaks loose and later that night the woman is found dead in her room. Liz and Gordon turn detectives to find out who killed Ruth and why Aunt Hester wanted Gordon there in the first place.

THE CHARACTERS: Liz Parrott appears in her second mystery adventure but the first time as wife to Gordon who she met in Here's Blood in Your Eye. Liz is not a favorite of Aunt Hester's. Gordon asks her to be on her best behavior and downplay her life as an artist's model that so offends Gordon's haughty aunt. Instead Liz decides to play act and turn herself into the exact opposite of a glamorous artist's model. She does her hair up into a librarian's bun, shuns all use of make up, alters her fashionable form fitting dresses to appear frumpy and pretends to be a dishrag of an intellectual. She even drops Latin phrases into her speech to further annoy her husband. Gordon in retaliation flirts with Amy Thorne, Clifford's intended fiancee. When Ruth is poisoned and Liz was known to be the last person to see her alive the family points the finger at Liz as the primary suspect.  Never mind that several family members have much better reasons to have knocked off the unexpected guest.

In addition to the problem of having a poisoner under their roof Liz is intrigued by the mystery of Clifford's book on Russian culture and politics, The Quality of Mercy, every copy of which has unaccountably disappeared from the house. There are whispered accusations of Clifford having plagiarized the manuscript. Three of his writer friends claim to have written the book themselves though Clifford managed to publish it under his own name. Added to this literary mystery is the puzzle of Clifford's possible near bigamous marriage to Amy. Liz is determined to get to the bottom of all the mysteries whether Gordon likes it or not.

The other supporting players include Aunt Mina, Hester's mannish sister always wearing "horse togs" and always seeming like a weak minded minion to the stronger willed matriarch; George Prentice, the handsome devil of the book, another writer friend of Clifford's who spent time in Russia with him and has his eye on Liz; Amy Thorne, Clifford's wife-to-be and the foil to Liz, spends much of the book toying with all the men and taunting Liz with outrageous theories of why she killed Ruth.

INNOVATIONS: Vicious Circle (1942) is divided into three sections. Part one, subtitled "Set 'Em Up", is basically an expository lead-in to the murder done as a screwball comedy. Much of the story in this section relies on Liz and her antics in disguise, her teasing Gordon, and the catty remarks exchanged between Amy and Liz. Part two, " Knock 'Em Down", introduces the murder mystery and Liz drops her disguise in order to turn detective. "Drag 'Em Out" is the final part in which another death occurs and the mystery centers around the true authorship of Quality of Mercy.  Liz spends a lot of time tracking down a MacGuffin she calls "the bulge" because she saw George hide something in his ski parka one day and secretly run off to hide it somewhere. The "bulge" will prove to have significance in the bibliomystery portion of the novel.

The more the book progresses the more I got a sense of the kind of household one finds in the work of Ross Macdonald. There are many family secrets Liz will uncover and a sense that someone was determined to keep all of them buried even if murder had to be the last resort.

THINGS I LEARNED: There are several scenes at a local saloon where Liz likes to play the jukebox. Though I like to compliment myself on a vast knowledge of WW2 era music (I was entranced by my parent's rare record collection) most of the songs I had never heard of including "I Give You My Word" and "Can I Forget You?" There's some singing in the book, too. While taking a bubble bath Liz lets loose with some lyrics from an innuendo filled tune called "She's Sellin' What She Used to Give Away", a 1938 tune written by Buster Jones and recorded by his brother Buddy. Gordon sings and his voice is compared to "a fine Kenny Baker tenor." Kenny Baker was a singer on Jack Benny's radio show in the 1930s and appeared in several movie musicals from 1938 to 1946 including Goldwyn Follies and The Harvey Girls.

Liz mentions "The Bride of the Mistletoe" several times in the last section of the book and it's also one of the chapter titles. Druid legends tell of a virgin sacrificed to Druid priests under mistletoe. From what I gather this is not human sacrifice, but the rape of a virgin performed for the satisfaction of a tree god. There is a 1908 novel that bears the same title written by Kentucky writer James Lane Allen that makes use of the legend as a metaphor for a wife's obedience to her husband. Nice.

A pul-motor was an early device used in performing CPR. The police need to use one on Liz in the climactic scene that takes place in the Allison household attic.

EASY TO FIND? Pretty scarce this one. Currently there are seven copies available for sale in a variety of editions, paperback and hardcover, both US and UK. In my search for photos I uncovered a 1940s edition in a French translation. Apparently all of her books were translated into French. Remarkably, Manning Long's only detailed biographical information on the internet can be found in an article on the French version of Wikipedia. She obviously has her Gallic admirers.

FFB: Here's Blood in Your Eye - Manning Long

THE STORY: Louise "Liz" Boykin is an artist's model by choice. She's trying hard to become part of the artist community but lives on the fringes of acceptance. She's getting over the recent break up with her old fiance who dumped her and dealing with her uptight, ultra conservative, new fiance who is not much of an improvement. When she is invited to a swank artists' party at the home of married painters and her current employers, Flora and Whitfield Linton, she feels she is finally part of the in crowd. But when her ex-fiance Melchior Thews turns up violently murdered, circumstances continually point to Liz as the prime suspect. With the help of Gordon Parrott, investigator for the Manhattan DA's office, her name is cleared, but not before she is implicated in at least two more deaths.

THE CHARACTERS Here's Blood in Your Eye (1941) is the first of the Liz Parrott books. Knowing this ahead of time spoils a bit of the final chapter where Liz Boykin discovers she will become Liz Parrott. But not much of a spoiler really. Any reader well versed in detective novels jammed packed with romantic subplots and with a leading character who has left a trail of ex-fiances behind her knows that as soon as Liz meets Gordon she has found her third and final fiance-to-be. With this one reading Liz Parrott has become one of my favorite woman amateur sleuths of the 1940s. She's got a contemporary edge to her and she's got so many conflicts within herself she makes for a unique character. It helps that she's got a tough side to her and a wicked sense of humor in her narration. I could easily see these books made into movies with Barbara Stanwyck in the lead even if Liz is supposed to be more ravishingly beautiful.

The rest of the cast is made up of equally brash and snobbish characters. They all sport the kinds of names that reek of the kind of urbane Manhattan sophisticates that turn up in mysteries set in NYC. In addition to the preposterously named victim we have Husted Breamer, Liz' laughably priggish current fiance; Clare Edmiston and Barry DuBois, an older woman engaged to an investment broker playboy; Grace Leigh a dangerously wronged woman with blackmail on her mind; Leonard Foxe-Macon who first sees Liz when her gun falls out of her purse in front of Melchior's apartment; and Marcella Payne, a wealthy art patron and one of the many ex-lovers of the murder victim. Even the cops have unusual names like Inspector Langmede who is convinced that Liz has a part in Melchior's death and all the violence that follows in its wake.

INNOVATIONS: The narrative voice of Liz Boykin (soon to be Parrott) is loaded with zingers and fine ironic writing that never descends into the jokey wiseacre stuff of this era. I could fill this entire post with great quotes but it's better to discover them within the context of the story. Her edgy voice has a purpose too because she's trying to find her way in life, sorting out what she wants and who she wants and most importantly of all trying to preserve her identity and personality without having to sacrifice her fiercely independent ways. Getting over her previous engagement which is tinged with a personal shame and a terrible incident that still haunts her provides some conflict to the story as Melchior exploits her past, writes it up in a letter and attempts to blackmail Liz and ruin her chances at marriage with Hue Breamer who disapproves of everything from her posing partially nude in a artist's studio to her owning a cat.

The plot, overflowing with letters used for blackmail purposes and a string of ex-fiances and ex-lovers in Melchior Thews' amorous past, is perhaps a bit too complicated for its own good. The large cast of characters, especially several women who appear to be clones of one another, is often a bit hard to keep track of. Nevertheless Long carries off the telling of this complex story with panache and verve. There are plenty of incidents to keep the plot moving, some decent fair play detection, and a handful of clues dropped early on in the story to point the reader to the somewhat surprising killer.

THE AUTHOR: All I could find out about Manning Long comes from a French Wikipedia article. She was born in Virginia, lived in Washington DC, New York and New Jersey and eventually settled on a farm back in Amherst, Virginia. She was married to Peter Williams, a ceramist and sculptor who created the bust of Edgar Allan Poe used for the MWA Edgar awards.

EASY TO FIND? This title is rather scarce, but later titles in the Liz Parrott series are comparatively common. None have been reprinted in contemporary editions nor did I find any eBooks out there. The first couple of books in the series were published in the US, UK, Canada, and France so finding a copy may be easy for an assiduous book hunter. Here's Blood in Your Eye is one of the earliest Harlequin titles dating back to the days when they published all sorts of genre fiction before turning exclusively to romance novels. Manning Long's first mystery novel is Harlequin #10 first published in a 1948 edition with the suitably lurid cover shown above.

Liz Parrott Detective Novels
Here's Blood in Your Eye (1941)
Vicious Circle (1942)
False Alarm (1943)
Bury The Hatchet (1944)
Short Shrift (1945)
Dull Thud (1947)
Savage Breast (1948)

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This is late because I'm in Alaska and it took me an entire day to fix my phone so that it would work way up here. Sprint and roaming call headaches. I needed to download a software update that finally I managed to do when we were in a hotel with decent WiFi. Expect more delays over the next ten days.