Stuart Palmer’s fourth Hildegarde Withers book, The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree, is set on the island of Catalina, a vacation destination for Depression-afflicted America. Our story doesn’t begin on the island, however, but on the mainland. A man misses the boat to the island and reluctantly gets aboard the “flying boat” the Dragonfly. It’s quicker, but the turbulence is a killer. Possibly literally. For barely five minutes into the flight, the man begins to panic, screaming “I’m dying—I don’t want to die!” By the time the plane lands, he’s dead. The local doctor and police chief, who’ve barely seen any crime, much less murder, for years are willing to write the death off as natural causes, a heart attack from the stress. Unfortunately for the killer, one of the tourists on Catalina is schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers, who insists that the death is a murder. Her claims gain some force when the dead man’s identity is discovered: Roswell T. Forrest, a secretary who’s wanted back in New York by the police for testimony against his corrupt union bosses. Said bosses want him quiet, and they’re willing to pay $15,000 to make it happen.
Miss Withers will have to sort the killer out from the melting pot of people on board the Dragonfly. There’s a newly-wed couple, a director and his two assistants, a ship captain, a pottery seller, the pilots, and a young woman with dreams of stardom who becomes Miss Withers’s pseudo-Watson. Most of them are strangers to each other, much less the dead man, but $15,000 in 1930s money is motive enough. But there are other problems: How could anyone have poisoned Forrest on a crowded flight that he didn’t even plan to be on? Complicating matters further is that someone makes off with his body in the night. There’s no trace of it on the island even though there’s seemingly no place to bury it. And no, it wasn’t dumped in the ocean. Separated from dependable Oscar Piper of NYPD, Miss Withers will have to go this alone.
And it’s that aspect of going it alone that’s the main draw of the book. The previous book in this series, Murder on the Blackboard, toyed with having Miss Withers cut off from her normal support group, but this takes it further. Not only does Miss Withers not have any real allies, but it’s an uphill battle convincing the authorities that there’s even been a murder at all. Miss Withers gets pretty hardboiled here, even holding a gun on one of the suspects! But at the same time, Palmer subverts expectations a little bit here. Miss Withers’s stunt with a gun doesn’t really gain her anything and the whole chapter has her off-guard and flummoxed. When she does find herself face to face with an actual hardened criminal, she’s easily overpowered and almost killed. There’s this sense that the case might be a bit too much for her, at least on her own. I don’t think Palmer is using this as commentary on women being too weak for detective work or anything, but it feels like he’s trying to put Miss Withers in different circumstances and see how she reacts. It gives the book some interest for long-time readers.
Sadly, that’s probably the best part of the book. The actual mystery didn’t satisfy me. The explanation for the poisoning is fine. Similar to Murder on Wheels, Palmer is smart enough to know that the reader will likely figure out how it was done and reveals it early on. The location of the missing body is obvious but also clever. But the rest falls short. Near the end of the book there’s another death, a shooting. All of the suspects are tested for gunpowder residue, but no trace is found. Sadly, the explanation for how the killer managed to do this is just a trivia fact. And even when Miss Withers does point at the killer, there’s like, one clue pointing to them. It’s a good clue, yes, but it’s one clue! I agree with Dead Yesterday’s review that the killer really could have been any of the suspects.
All in all, while this was a good read, I found it to be a very weak mystery. I liked the island setting and seeing Palmer putting Miss Withers outside of her comfort zone. But the actual mystery wasn’t to my taste. I’m giving this a Not Recommended, With Caveats. If you like Miss Withers or Palmer’s writing, then this is worth a look because of how he plays with the formula. But if you’ve never read one of his books, or if you’re reading solely for the mystery aspect, you’d be better off picking another book from this series.
Other Reviews: Dead Yesterday, Bitter Tea and Mystery, The Grandest Game in the World.
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