Cover of Murder at the Women's City Club. Image from PRETTY SINISTER BOOKS website. Thanks to the scholarly efforts of Curtis Evans over at his great GAD blog site The Passing Tramp, the mysteries published collaboratively under the names Q. Patrick, Patrick Quentin, and Jonathan Stagge are being discovered anew. And they're worth discovering, as my reading a few years ago of 1935's The Grindle Nightmare proved to me. As further cause for celebration, Mysterious Press/Open Road publishers have recently released eBook editions in the U.S. of some of the rare Q. Patrick titles, including the début novel Cottage Sinister (1931), as well as Murder at Cambridge and S.S. Murder (both 1933).
On his site, Curt has provided author information for these books, which is useful since four different writers contributed to the series at different times. Most famously – if that's the right word – the Patrick/Quentin/Stagge novels were either solo or collaborative projects between Q. Patrick creator Richard "Rickie" Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler.
On his site, Curt has provided author information for these books, which is useful since four different writers contributed to the series at different times. Most famously – if that's the right word – the Patrick/Quentin/Stagge novels were either solo or collaborative projects between Q. Patrick creator Richard "Rickie" Webb and Hugh Callingham Wheeler.
Transitioning from prose writer to playwright, Wheeler would later work with composer Stephen Sondheim on the musicals A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. For some of the earliest Q. Patrick mysteries, however, Rickie Webb partnered with one of two female co-writers, Martha "Patsy" Mott Kelley and Mary Lou White. White contributed to S.S. Murder, but it was Patsy Kelley who was Webb's initial collaborator, first on Cottage Sinister (which I have yet to read) and then on 1932's lively Murder at the Women's City Club.
Indeed, the entire story of Club takes place over a weekend at a women-only apartment building, and the cast of characters is quirky and colorful. The club's president, Mabel Mulvaney, returns to the metropolitan town of Desborough, New York and is anxious to talk to Dr. Diana Saffron, an invalided resident and very successful specialist in her medical field. The two meet, but very shortly both women have died, asphyxiated by the gas that runs in each room. The sudden deaths bring the boorish police detective Manfred Boot into the women's club, a man whose masculine authority makes him blind to more nuanced details of the case.
To be fair, Detective Boot has to contend with some trying suspects. Freda Carter, the deceased Dr. Saffron's young protégé, is a doctor-in-training whose clinical observations have the cool air of judgment; friendly Deborah Entwhistle, with her ironic-yet-honest approach to life, also unnerves the no-nonsense Boot; Millicent Trimmer, club secretary, has a penchant for fainting just when she needs to be interviewed; Amy Riddle has her own suspicions, and they revolve around "colored" club staff members Rudy and Cornelia; and then there's Constance Hoplinger, the resident mystery novelist, who takes a little too much pleasure in the current situation and theorizes about how her own detective would handle the case.
As a mostly forgotten and unsung American entry of mystery fiction's Golden Age, I found Murder at the Women's City Club remarkably satisfying, spirited, and enjoyable. The authors – and this might be Patsy Kelley's prose contribution – use humorous third-person omniscient perspective to freely comment on characters and provide observations during introductions and scenes. Mystery readers might be frustrated by this narrative approach, as the details effectively define and develop the characters but might also feel like unneeded description. To me, the opinionated third-person perspective is a delight and is used well; take this example of observational lines that brings Mabel Mulvaney into focus:
Indeed, the entire story of Club takes place over a weekend at a women-only apartment building, and the cast of characters is quirky and colorful. The club's president, Mabel Mulvaney, returns to the metropolitan town of Desborough, New York and is anxious to talk to Dr. Diana Saffron, an invalided resident and very successful specialist in her medical field. The two meet, but very shortly both women have died, asphyxiated by the gas that runs in each room. The sudden deaths bring the boorish police detective Manfred Boot into the women's club, a man whose masculine authority makes him blind to more nuanced details of the case.
To be fair, Detective Boot has to contend with some trying suspects. Freda Carter, the deceased Dr. Saffron's young protégé, is a doctor-in-training whose clinical observations have the cool air of judgment; friendly Deborah Entwhistle, with her ironic-yet-honest approach to life, also unnerves the no-nonsense Boot; Millicent Trimmer, club secretary, has a penchant for fainting just when she needs to be interviewed; Amy Riddle has her own suspicions, and they revolve around "colored" club staff members Rudy and Cornelia; and then there's Constance Hoplinger, the resident mystery novelist, who takes a little too much pleasure in the current situation and theorizes about how her own detective would handle the case.
As a mostly forgotten and unsung American entry of mystery fiction's Golden Age, I found Murder at the Women's City Club remarkably satisfying, spirited, and enjoyable. The authors – and this might be Patsy Kelley's prose contribution – use humorous third-person omniscient perspective to freely comment on characters and provide observations during introductions and scenes. Mystery readers might be frustrated by this narrative approach, as the details effectively define and develop the characters but might also feel like unneeded description. To me, the opinionated third-person perspective is a delight and is used well; take this example of observational lines that brings Mabel Mulvaney into focus:
Mrs. Mulvaney was not a prepossessing person. Her smile was acetic, her expression ascetic and her figure, while not exactly athletic, was built for speed and activity rather than for beauty. But what she lacked in embonpoint and personal charm, she made up for in efficiency. She was a Managing Woman, born to command rather than to comfort. She belonged to every committee to which she could commit herself and she made an excellent president for the Women's City Club.
The plot and puzzle at the center of the story are both solid, and the pacing feels instinctively right. There were a few very pleasant surprises, including a unique spin on the amateur detective: as Inspector Boot seems to be drawing the wrong conclusions, it's up to one of the women living in the building to step forward, make sense of the deaths, and identify a killer; this role-casting occurs organically rather than archetypically, which is very interesting. There's also a surprisingly gruesome final murder involving an unreliable elevator, and knowing the grimness to come in The Grindle Nightmare, it was likely a Rickie Webb contribution:
Suddenly, a scream rang out. It was Miss Hoplinger. Gasping for breath, she fell back against the wall and pointed with a trembling finger at a thin, red stream that came trickling aimlessly down one of the glass doors in front of them, out of the upper region of the shaft.
"Blood!" she exclaimed, and then again, louder, "I tell you, it's blood."
Finally, I must note how much I admire the solution of this story, which isn't groundbreaking in concept but it is logical, cleanly presented, and highly satisfying. John at Pretty Sinister Books – check out his smart review – finds the plot "a bit convoluted", but for me it was one of the most straightforward murder mystery reveals I've encountered, in a good way. I was a little ahead of the story when it came to revealing the murderer, but that person's identity is teased out very effectively, and the plot was scrupulously fair play.
While the characterizations of the African-American maid and handyman couple Rudy and Cornelia are products of their time – as is the racial prejudice that fuels one tenant's suspicion of them – it is balanced somewhat by the likeable Deborah Entwhistle's more progressive view of, and friendship with, the pair. I hope Mysterious Press/Open Road will be able to introduce this solid Q. Patrick whodunit to a new group of readers.
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