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Book Review: MURDER AT THE WOMEN'S CITY CLUB (1932) by Q. Patrick

9/16/2018

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PictureCover 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.

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:    

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.
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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.


UPDATE: Curt at The Passing Tramp blog has provided some fantastic history and analysis of this title, as well as great information about the writers behind the Q. Patrick pseudonym. You can read these articles here and here.


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Book Review: THE MURDER OF MY AUNT (1934) by Richard Hull

9/7/2018

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I have been thinking a lot lately about the role that characterization plays in mystery fiction past and present. It's an intriguing exploration, because one could argue that mystery stories (or any literary genre defined by a particular structure) only need character types to work, and not necessarily characters with sincere or striking traits or personalities. To this end, one has a detective, a victim, assorted suspects, and perhaps a Watson to act as proxy for the reader. With people in place, the author can then manipulate the characters like chess pieces and effectively play out the game. And just as chess pieces are familiar in role but nondescript in detail – we don't know more about our bishops, knights, or rooks beyond their functional maneuverability – a mystery writer can present game after game using the same characters making the same familiar moves on the board.

Of course, any type of fiction is enhanced when a writer manages to deliver engaging characters caught up in a compelling plot, with an original tone supporting both story and theme. (Easier said than done.) This explains why I prefer imaginative writers who experiment and take risks – and occasionally fail – to those who work from a tried-and-tested template. Personally, I'm far less interested in the puzzle than in how the mystery format can be used to say something about the characters and, by extension, about humanity. It's why I'm lukewarm on clever puzzle constructors like Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr, and why my favorite Agatha Christie books are not Poirot baffle-fests but instead And Then There Were None and The Mirror Crack'd, two titles where the psychology of the killer is both memorable and carries a note of human tragedy.

It is also why I read and reread the books of outside-yet-within-the-genre writers Gladys Mitchell and Richard Hull.

The Murder of My Aunt is Hull's first mystery novel, and the one he was compelled to write after working for years as a chartered accountant. It is one of those début books where the exuberance of the author alive to the possibilities of plot and prose and language is evident on every page. Hull chooses as his narrator a conceited, comically misanthropic young man named Edward Powell, who is unhappy with his stifled life in the small Welsh village of Llwll (pronounced, if Edward is to be believed, as "filth") in general and with his disapproving, domineering aunt in particular. As we learn of Edward's opinions and grievances through his confidences in detailed diary entries, we also learn much about his character. This is one of the book's most enjoyable gambits: Hull creates a narrator who is both sympathetic (perhaps pitiable is more accurate) and shallow. One can understand the circumstances of his frustration, but he's also greatly at fault due to his vanity and laziness, as he has no interest in pursuing an independent life and means of income. He is lazy, that is, until he decides that the murder of his aunt would provide freedom and a useful inheritance to boot.

Returning to those elements of strong fiction, Richard Hull incorporates all three with purpose, wit, and a great deal of ironic humor. The plot can hardly be bettered: one person wants to kill another, but the victim refuses to cooperate. In fact, as we only know what Edward reports, we get the feeling that Aunt Mildred might know more about the situation than our diarist thinks, and that creates an excellent mounting tension which connects directly to two age-old dramatic questions: What will happen next? and Who's going to win? Making both Edward Powell and his aunt well-delineated adversaries through personality and motivation, Hull offers up characterization that is as sharp and specific as anything he would later deliver. Further, the book's witty comic tone (for those who appreciate it; not all mystery readers do) is a terrific success. Edward's observations are amusing throughout, and the recounting of an incident where he tries to purchase oxalic acid and instead winds up buying a Christmas card in September is laugh-out-loud funny.

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There is a neat concluding twist that I will leave alone, but it is memorable enough for me to recall from my initial reading of Aunt some decades ago. It was also this book that made me vow to find and read each of the author's fourteen other crime stories, and slowly but surely I am doing just that.

You can check out Kate's great review of The Murder of My Aunt at her crossexaminingcrime site. The book is getting a welcome reprint release from the British Library Crime Classics series and Poisoned Pen Press, presented with a great introduction by scholar and author Martin Edwards. I received an advance eBook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 



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