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.