Mystery Monday: Thirteen Women

Mystery Monday: Thirteen Women 

Most folks are familiar with Myrna Loy’s iconic role as Nora Charles, the rich, plucky, and sleuth-wanna-be wife of William Powell’s detective Nick Charles. But Loy had an extensive film career long before she stepped into the fashionable role created by Dashiell Hammett. She appeared in more than forty films, silent and talkies, by the time she appeared at the Eurasian villain Ursula Georgi in Thirteen Women. 

 

The 1932 film was based on the 1930 best-selling novel by (Mr.) Tiffany Thayer. Made during the pre-code Hollywood era, the movie is a psychological thriller that film scholars claim also contains elements that make it a horror film and a pre-cursor to the slasher sub-genre. 

 

Pre-code Hollywood was “a period between the adoption of sound in pictures in 1929 and the

enforcement of the Motional Picture Production Code censorship guidelines in mid-1934.” (Wikipedia). The code had been adopted in 1930, but enforcement nearly nonexistent. Films produced during these years either depicted or implied sexual innuendo, romantic and/or sexual interracial relationships, mild profanity, illegal drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, violence, and homosexuality. Villains often profited from their actions, many times without repercussions. In Thirteen Women, the rape of Myrna Loy’s character is alluded to during a conversation. 

 

Cited as an early “female ensemble” film, the movie is about a group of women who were sorority sisters at an all-girls college. They keep in touch after graduation through a series of round-robin letters. One of the women gets them involved with a clairvoyant swami who mails them each a horoscope indicating their doom. The swami is under the sway of Ursula who had been snubbed at the school because of her mixed-race heritage; behaviors that forced her to leave school. She now desires revenge and manipulates the women into killing themselves or each other. She even manages to influence the swami to kill himself. Ultimately, a showdown comes between Ursula and one of the women, Laura Stanhope, played by Irene Dunne. 

 

The film was produced by David Selznick (best known for Gone with the Wind and Rebecca) and premiered in October of 1932 in New York City. A month later it was released in LA and a few other cities. The following year saw a limited national release. With the growing popularity of Dunne and Loy, the studio edited out fourteen minutes and re-released the film in 1935 (post-Code).

Have you seen this intriguing movie? Here is a preview clip: Thirteen Women

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Murder at Madison Square Garden

The dream of a lifetime becomes a nightmare. 

Photojournalist Theodora “Teddy” Schafer’s career has hit the skids thanks to rumors of plagiarism. With any luck, a photo spread with Charles Lindbergh at the America First Rally will salvage her reputation. After an attempted assassination of Lindbergh leaves another man dead, Teddy is left holding the gun. Literally. Can she prove her innocence before the police lock her up for a murder she didn’t commit? 

Private Investigator Ric Bogart wants nothing to do with women after his wife cleaned out their bank account and left him for another man, but he can’t ignore the feeling he’s supposed to help the scrappy, female reporter who is arrested for murder at the America First rally. Can he believe her claims of innocence and find the real killer without letting Teddy steal his heart?

Purchase Link: books2read.com/u/31qK17

The Secret Identity of Roger Scarlett

The Secret Identity of Roger Scarlett

It was not unusual for female authors to use male pseudonyms during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction – think Anthony Gilbert or Ngaio Marsh – but Roger Scarlett is actually the nom de plume of two women who met while working at the publisher Houghton Mifflin in Boston. Graduates of Bryn Mawr and Vassar respectively, Evelyn Page and Dorothy Blair came from well-to-do, prominent families.

Evelyn was from Philadelphia and Dorothy from Bozeman, Montana where her physician father had recently brought the family from Bridgewater, MA. (There’s a story there, but I couldn’t find it!) Not much is written about Dorothy, but it appears that Evelyn was quite active at Bryn Mawr. She was both Vice President and Treasurer in her senior year while serving as editor for the school paper, The Lantern. In addition, she also wrote for The Sportswoman, the first periodical devoted exclusively to women’s athletics.

After working at the publisher for several years, the women must have felt they could be successful as authors, because in 1929 they left their jobs and created the name Roger Scarlett. The following year, the first of their five “puzzle box” mysteries was published. Set in Boston, as is the entire series, The Beacon Hill Murders is about the murder of a member of the nouveau riche, Frederick Sutton. The protagonist, the intelligent Inspector Kane, does not have the usual accoutrements of the typical Golden Age detectives such as a waxed mustache or walking cane.

Scarlett’s works have been compared to those of S.S. Van Dine and Ellery Queen and have recently been reprinted by Coachwhip. In addition to their popularity in the States, the books also garnered a following in Japan. Disappointingly only five novels were published before Roger disappeared into obscurity.

Mystery Monday: Who was Peter Drax?

Mystery Monday: Who was Peter Drax?

There were many famous people who lost their lives during WWII: Carole Lombard, Glenn Miller, Leslie Howard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Someone perhaps less well-known who was killed in action was author Eric Elrington Addis. Writing under the pseudonym Peter Drax, Addis published six crime novels during the Golden Age of detective fiction.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1899, Eric was the son of a retired Indian civil servant and the daughter of an officer in the British Indian Army. He attended Edinburgh University and then entered the Royal Navy. After serving with distinction, he retired in 1929 and became a barrister focusing on admiralty law and divorce. (A barrister is a lawyer who specializes in courtroom litigation.) At the outbreak of WWII, he was called back in to service and was assigned to HMS Warspite. Unfortunately he was killed in action during an air raid on the British Navy base at Alexandria, Egypt.

Despite his short career as a novelist, Eric is considered an important author during the Golden Age. As one reviewer put it, “Rather than the artificial and outsize master sleuths and super crooks found in so many classic mysteries from the Gold Age, Drax’s novels concern police who are not endowed with supernatural powers and crooks who are also human.” Two of his books, Death by Two Hands and Tune to a Corpse were published in the United States, and received excellent reviews. When he died he left an unfinished manuscript Sing a Song of Murder, and his wife, author Hazel Iris Wilson completed the book, it was published in 1944.

Eric was a voracious reader of thrilled, and felt most were “lamentably unlikely affairs,” and set out to write mysteries that were “credible.” Critics and readers agree that he met his goal, creating seven gripping stories, not for the faint of heart. (An interesting aside, I searched for quite a while and never found a photograph of Eric.)

Mystery Monday: Mignon Eberhart, A Storied Career

Mystery Monday: Mignon Eberhart - A Storied Career

Author Mignon Eberhart is a distant memory for many and unheard of by many more. However, at one time she was the third highest paid mystery writer behind Agatha Christie and Mary Roberts Rinehart. Not bad for a girl who didn't finish her degree.

Spanning over sixty years, Mignon's career is one of the longest among the major mystery writers. Her first book, The Patient in Room 18, was published in 1929, and her last book Three Days for Emerald was published in 1988 when she was 89 years old! She wrote one series with Nurse/amateur sleuth Sarah Keate, but the majority of Mignon's books were stand alone novels. A prolific writer, she published novellas, short stories, and plays as well as over sixty novels, nine of which were made into movies.

Romantic suspense is a well-known sub-genre in literary circles, and there are many modern-day writers of note. But when when Mignon was publishing, romantic suspense had not yet come into its own, and she had a strong hand in developing it.

Critics of Mignon's writings have noted that her heroines are usually somewhat silly and her plot devices somewhat repetitive (her protagonists get knocked out quite often), but most agree that her settings are inventively eerie, and her prose vivid and evocative:

"The room was bare and hot and bright with electricity. Mina, in that incongruous ivory satin, sat down at her tall desk and drew a fat checkbook forward."  (The Dark Garden, 1933)

Solving the mystery is only a portion of Mignon's books. The other is finding true love against all odds. For Mignon, apparently it was not only about the good guys winning, but for love to find a way. With any luck your local library will have some of this author's gems in their fiction section.

Mystery Monday: Who is E.R Punshon?

As if I don’t have enough TBR (to be read) books on my nightstand, I continue to search for authors I’ve not heard of from the 1930s and 1940s. Thanks (again) to The Passing Tramp, I have discovered E.R Punshon.

A British literary critic, playwright and novelist, Punshon also wrote under the pseudonym Robertson Halket. He published a series of crime and deduction stories (perhaps called police procedurals today) that featured Inspector Carter, Sergeant Bell, and Constable Bobby Owen, who eventually rose to the rank of Commander at Scotland Yard. Owen was Oxford educated and reminiscent of the “gentlemen sleuths” found in writers like Agatha Christie and Margery Alligham.

Punshon’s ability to construct intricate plots has been compared to that of John Dickson Carr, considered one of the greatest of the “Golden Age” mystery writers, and author of the Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale series. In addition to well-written plots, Punshon also studied character in his novels-the motives behind crimes and what drives a seemingly normal person to commit them.

It is challenging to find books from the less popular writers of this era. Even if you find them, they are often cost prohibitive. The good news is that Dean Street Press has reprinted many detective stories from the lesser known authors, including E.R. Punshon. If you’re looking for a intriguing, well-constructed stories, give one of Punshon’s classics a try.

Mystery Monday: Meet Clyde B. Clason

Although less well known than S.S. Van Dine, Dashiell Hammett, or Raymond Chandler, Clyde B. Clason published ten books between 1936 and 1941. An advertising copy writer and editor, Clason was born in Denver, Colorado in 1903. Little is known of his personal life. In fact, every reference I found provided the exact same information word-for-word.

Those of you looking to read about unusual protagonist might enjoy any or all of Clason’s novels. They feature amateur sleuth Theocritus Lucius Westborough, an elderly scholar of the Roman Empire. Westborough is cultured, highly educated, and has an extensive knowledge of art. In each book, Westborough assists the police, stereo-typed as good natured, honest, and a bit “bumbly.” The stories themselves contain intricate plots, most of which are locked-room mysteries. Most of the crimes take place in high-end, museum-like homes which are described in great detail.

In his article comparing Clason to Van Dine, blogger Mike Grost postulates that “Clason, like Van Dine and many other writers of his school, was sympathetic to racial minorities, and his books contain protests against racism. In both writer, the anti-racist theme is linked to a respectful, knowledgeable treatment of world art, with equal admiration being given to art created by all races.”

A reminder that novelists have an opportunity to edify and influence their readers through well-crafted, entertaining story-telling.

What authors have you read who weave social causes into their writing?

Mystery Monday: Meet Hildegarde Withers

Expectations for women in the 1930s and early 1940s were to marry and raise a family. To be relegated to spinsterhood was to be pitied and sometimes scorned. With the arrival of WWII, there was a gradual acceptance of women holding a career, albeit a “proper” career such as teaching, nursing, and secretarial.

In literature, a few authors at the time pushed the envelope by creating female sleuths. Nancy Drew and Miss Marple being two of the most famous. Let me introduce you to one of the less well-known created by Stuart Palmer, reporter turned novelist turned screenwriter.

As with most amateur sleuths, school teacher Hildegarde Withers was thrust into the role when she stumbled on a body floating in the penguin tank at the New York Aquarium where she had taken her class.

In Palmer’s first book to feature Miss Withers, The Penguin Pool Murder, she is described as one “whom the census enumerator had recently listed as spinster, born Boston, age thirty-nine, occupation school-teacher.” Elsewhere the novel states “she collects tropical fish, abhors alcohol and tobacco, and appears to have an irritable disposition. However, she is a romantic at heart and will extend herself to help young lovers.” (note the reference to her spinsterhood!)

When asked how he created Miss Withers, Palmer gave the following response:

The origins of Miss Withers are nebulous. When I started Penguin Pool Murder (to be laid in the New York Aquarium as suggested by Powell Brentano then head of Brentano’s Publishers) I worked without an outline, and without much plan. But I decided to ring in a spinster schoolma’am as a minor character, for comedy relief. Believe it or not, I found her taking over. She had more meat on her bones than the cardboard characters who were supposed to carry the story. Finally almost in spite of myself and certainly in spite of Mr. Brentano, I threw the story into her lap. She was based to some extent on Fern Hackett, an English teacher in Baraboo High School who made my life miserable for two years. Once I came to get her permission to transfer to another class and she said okay, only she’d be lonesome and board without our arguments; that I was the only student in the class whom she thought enough of to bother with. I think she started me as a writer. Fern was a horse-faced old girl, preposterously old-fashioned, fine old New England family run to seed, hipped on Thoreau and Emerson.”

In addition to appearing in fourteen full length novels, Miss Withers shows up in countless short stories published in “Mystery” magazine, a periodical sold exclusively at Woolworths stores. In addition, Palmer successfully partners with author Craig Rice to pair Miss Withers with Rice’s character John J. Malone. There were several screen adaptations to the books with actress Edna May Oliver being the definitive Miss Withers.

Consider reading about Miss Withers’ adventures:

• The Penguin Pool Murder (1931)
• Murder on Wheels (1932)
• Murder on the Blackboard (1932)
• The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933)
• The Puzzle of the Silver Persian (1934)
• The Puzzle of the Red Stallion (1935) [also known as "The Puzzle of the Briar Pipe"]
• The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (1937)
• The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (1941)
• The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers (1947), an anthology of short stories
• Miss Withers Regrets (1947)
• Four Lost Ladies (1949)
• The Green Ace (1950) [also known as "At One Fell Swoop"]
• The Monkey Murder and other Tales (1950), and anthology of short stories
• Nipped in the Bud (1951) [also known as "Trap for a Redhead"]
• Cold Poison (1954) [also known as "Exit Laughing"]
• The People Vs. Withers and Malone (1963), written with Craig Rice