The Penguin Pool Murder (1931) by Stuart Palmer

After reading many positive reviews of his work, I’ve finally bitten the bullet and read Stuart Palmer’s debut novel, The Penguin Pool Murder. Palmer was an active man: "variously employed as an ice man, apple picker, taxi driver, newspaper reporter, teacher, editor, and treasure hunter" (I want to know more about that last one.) He would later go on to be a screenwriter.

His first book introduced the world to Hildegard Withers, "spinster, born Boston, age thirty-nine, occupation school teacher," who debuts in style. Her first appearance has her tripping up a pickpocket during a class trip to the New York Aquarium, insisting that she’s entitled to the reward money for his capture, but still having enough morality and common sense to demand he get medical attention. But a pickpocket proves not to be the most dangerous person in the aquarium, for the squwaking of penguins alerts her to a body floating in their tank.

Inspector Piper of the New York Police Department at first thinks that it’s a case of drowning, but bruises on the dead man’s body and the blood in the water--not to mention the cry of shock from the man’s wife, "What have we done?"--alerts him to a carefully planned murder. But who stabbed the man in the ear with a hatpin before dumping him in the tank? Thankfully, Miss Withers is a believer in "an old-fashioned ideal of justice…blindfolded, uncompromising justice" and has always wanted to be a detective…

The book’s main appeal is Miss Withers herself. I was worried I would find her obnoxious, but she’s actually a very good protagonist. Tough and takes no nonsense, but is also capable of being flummoxed and even a bit of a romantic, which Palmer plays with at the end. Her byplay with Inspector Piper is great too. The mystery keeps a steady pace, with plenty of incident, although some of it reads as Hollywood cliches. (This book was turned into a movie in 1932.) There are even two minor impossible crimes thrown into the mix! First, a key piece of evidence disappears from a room. All of the possible suspects are searched, but the evidence isn’t on them. Later, a key witness is found hanging in his locked cell. Neither of these are major parts of the plot (the locked cell is explained almost immediately after it’s discovered, and I don’t know if the first one would have fooled the police), but they were still nice to see (even if they were too minor to label the post accordingly).

One of the best things about this book is how it captures the times. It was published in 1931 so the Great Depression is still very fresh. There’s references to the recent stock market crash. My favorite bit is when Palmer mentions that people are selling "a perfect reproduction of a check bearing the name and insignia of the ill-fated Bank of the United States, printed on an oblong of thin rubber!" But this isn’t just set-dressing. The fact that the victim was a broker who handled a lot of now-lost money provides a motive for a few of the suspects.

Speaking of the suspects and the cluing, this book was pretty good about cluing the killer. The decisive clue is only dropped at the very end, but there are actually quite a few clues throughout the book. I think that most experienced readers will turn a critical eye to the killer, although actually figuring out all the details of what they were doing and the exact evidence proving that this person is the killer will require close reading. I do wish the final clue was handled better, but I can chalk that up to the author not having the best grasp of how to finish his first book.

Overall, I quite enjoyed The Penguin Pool Murder. It was a really solid and witty mystery, and makes a very strong showing for its author. Recommended.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, The Golden Age of Detective Fiction (review contains spoilers), Classic Mysteries, The Book Decoder, Mrs. K Investigates.

Lord Edgware Dies (1933) by Agatha Christie

"Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a bookstall."

Lord Edgware Dies opens with Poirot and Hastings watching Carlotta Adams’s matinee, where she shows her skill at impersonation while mocking some of the biggest names in London. One of these is Jane Wilkinson, the current Lady Edgware. Wilkinson is one of Christie’s greatest monsters, a woman who’s completely self-absorbed. She doesn't care one bit about others unless it impacts her. "I don’t mean she’s exactly immoral--she isn't…Just sees one thing only in life--what Jane wants." Poirot gets a first-hand view of this when she tell him, "M. Poirot, somehow or other I’ve just got to get rid of my husband!"

Thankfully, she tells Poirot that she just wants him to help her get a divorce from her husband. Intrigued, and interested to study Lord Edgware, Poirot agrees…only to learn that Lord Edgware already agreed to a divorce! Six months ago! Poirot speculates that one of the two is lying, or a third party has suppressed the letter where he agreed. But this mystery is complicated by a more serious one: Lord Edgware is stabbed to death in his library, and the servants report that he was visited by Lady Edgware. An open-and-shut case, were it not for a crucial detail: Jane Wikinson was at a dinner at the time of death…

And before you get any clever ideas about Carlotts Adams, she too is dead. An overdose of veronal did her in. It’s quickly determined that she visited Lord Edgware on the night he died, but who hired her to frame Jane Wilkinson? Bryan Adams is the first to talk about Jane’s amorality whenever possible. There’s also the dead man’s daughter, a victim of Edgware’s cruelty. And what about Lord Edgware’s dissolute nephew, Ronald Marsh, who benefits handsomely from his uncle’s death? There’s even a shady butler who goes missing after the murder to complicate things.

Edgware is a novel set among high-society; Poirot hob-nobs with lords and ladies and actors and intellectuals. And yet, the key clues are things like a pair of eyeglasses, a torn letter. The mystery is very well-constructed. Some Christie novels suffer from too many unrelated criminal schemes at the last second, here she does a better job about folding in the plots of the different suspects to the main murder. Said main murder is quite well done. I’d been spoiled on it, and read some criticism of the solution going in. However, I think Christie does an excellent job, as she always does, at misdirecting the reader and getting them to ask the wrong questions and follow their own assumptions, rather than the evidence. Sure, you could argue that it’s unlikely that Poirot would struggle, but the average reader will. And even if you do know the solution, there’s always the joy that comes from seeing how carefully Christie clues her mystery.

Poirot and Hastings also have some good banter here. I will never understand why Hastings is always so keen to ship Poirot off to the old folks’ home every other time he speaks, but when he’s snarking with Poirot, he’s at his best. I do have a couple of issues with the book: there’s one bit that gets hyped up as a minor mystery that’s handwaved at the end (ROT13: gur zrqvpny xabjyrqtr arrqrq gb xvyy gur ivpgvz) and, on a more serious note, whenever Christie starts talking about Jews I wince. My issues, even the anti-Semitism, were ultimately minor issues in a pretty solid book, however.

Lord Edgware Dies is a little underrated. You don’t see people naming it as their favorite Christie, at least. I think this is because it was written when Christie was putting out classic after classic; the Poirot before this was Peril at End House, and the following book was…Murder on the Orient Express. So this can easily fall under the radar. The idea that the solution is weak I also think contributes to this. That’s a shame, because this is a solid Christie novel. It's not my personal best either, frankly, but it is very much worth your time. Recommended.

Other Reviews: Ah, Sweet Mystery, Dead Yesterday, Tangled Yarns, The Grandest Game in the World, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Classic Mysteries, Countdown John's Christie Journal (contains spoilers later in the post), Beneath the Stains of Time, Mysteries Ahoy!

Off the Record (2011) by Dolores Gordon-Smith

Image taken from the Puzzle Doctor's review, linked below.

For some years now, the Puzzle Doctor has been a passionate advocate for Dolores Gordon-Smith as a writer following in the tradition of the Golden Age of Detection. It’s taken me longer than it should have, but I’ve finally gotten around to reading the fifth in her main series, set in the 1920s and starring Army major and mystery writer Jack Haldean.

Off the Record doesn’t refer to reporting, but to recording. Specifically, to advances in sound recording. According to the author’s note, after fifty years of dominance, gramophones were challenged by radio, which easily surpassed them in sound quality. The only hope for them was to embrace electrical recording. Such is the issue facing Charles Otterborne, president of New Century Works. His salvation is in the form of Professor Carrington, who has invented a new method of electrical recording. Unfortunately, on the day he arrives to negotiate, things go horribly wrong. Otterborne is shot to death and Carrington is on the spot. His belligerence and history of mental problems do not serve him well, and he kills himself in his cell. The only salve for his reputation is that Otterborne’s death is ruled a suicide, as he was on the verge of being exposed for embezzling from his own company. That’s the end of it, as far as the police are concerned, but the "Stoke Horan suicides" cast a shadow over events to come.

A few weeks later, Hector Fergeson comes to Haldean with some concerns. His stepfather is Stephen Dunbar, the owner of the company that would have produced Professor Carrington’s machine. Oddly, even though his scientist and potential business partner are both dead, Dunbar is cheery, acting like he has an ace up his sleeve. Fergeson knows his stepfather is a ruthless man and asks Haldean to see what he can dig up. Haldean doesn’t get very far before someone shoots Dunbar in his hotel room.

The best suspect is Gerry Carrington, Professor Carrington’s son. He has a temper to match his old man’s and met with Dunbar minutes before his death. Half of the other suspects seem to think he’s guilty as well, but they dance around it out of sympathy. What about Dunbar’s wife, an actress and daughter of a murderer? She’s quick to challenge all suspicions against her in a dramatic monologue that’s one of the funniest scenes of the book. And then there’s Steven Lewis, Otterborne’s son-in-law, and his wife, Molly. And what does a violent assault on Lewis’s uncle have to do with this? Honestly, this is quite a violent book. There are six deaths by the end of it!

Gordon-Smith does a good job with a complex mystery. She has a firm grasp on pacing and doling out suspicion. Multiple times when reading I thought to myself, "You know, X hasn’t been mentioned in a while, I wonder if…" and lo and behold, every time, by the end of that chapter or the next, X had shown up and had plausible suspicion attached to them. Her characters are sympathetic enough that you can’t quite pin down who would be the best suspect. I know that some mystery fans will be on their guard as soon as the phrase “recording device” is mentioned, and while Gordon-Smith doesn’t do anything innovative with the idea, it’s still woven well into the plot.

The story isn’t perfect mind you. I had an issue with how Gordon-Smith uses a certain something. (ROT13: V qba’g guvax fvyrapref jbex gung jryy.) Also, while I thought that the plot was genuinely clever and that the main clue pointing to the big reveal was very good, it also felt to me like that was the only major clue. Once you realize X the mystery falls into place, but it didn't feel like there was as much pointing to X as there could have been.

My griping aside, I enjoyed this book. Gordon-Smith does an excellent job of writing a Golden Age-style novel that will challenge and entertain the reader. After I read it, I immediately wanted to pick up another one, and in light of that, I can safely Recommend this book.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel and The Invisible Event.