Edith-Jane Bahr - A Nice Neighborhood (1973)

"I can't imagine any of this," I said out loud. "It's like a Hitchcock movie."

If Margaret Butler, the narrator of A Nice Neighborhood, is in a Hitchcock film, it would be Rear Window. Sitting in the bay window of her kitchen while giving her six week old daughter a 2 a.m. bottle, Margaret notices a light on in the family room of their backyard neighbors' house. Margaret's first thought is that someone must be sick and so is surprised to see Marilyn Crane, clad in something "loose and see-throughy", furtively let a man out the back door. Her initial surprise at the audacity of Marilyn letting a man in and out of her house while her husband is sleeping upstairs turns into amusement as she witnesses several more of these clandestine meetings, reasoning, as she never hears a car starting up, that Marilyn is carrying on an affair with a local man (who, of course, is only seen in shadow and silhouette). Margaret's amusement is short-lived however; John Crane wakes up one morning to discover his wife in the family room, dead from a stab wound in the back. The police's initial assumption that Marilyn surprised a prowler is discarded after Margaret's account of the night visitor and their focus turns to a disgruntled lover or a vindictive spouse. With the peaceful facade of the neighborhood being stripped away by revelations of affairs, lies and other problems, Margaret becomes more and more uneasy that one of her "nice" neighbors is possibly a killer and that, after a second murder, she herself might be the next victim.

A Nice Neighborhood should be a novel with an atmosphere of suffocating and ever-growing paranoia, but apart from a short scene in which Margaret fears that the killer is hiding inside her house, the narrative isn't very suspenseful. Part of the problem lies with the cast of suspects. While they are supposed to be benign, at least on the surface, I never had the impression that there was an added layer to their characters, that one of them really posed a threat a Margaret and could strike out at any moment. And this benignity extended to the final reveal, a confrontation which was flat (and somewhat abrupt with an overly garrulous killer).

Spencer Dean - Murder on Delivery (1957)

Lily Inez, beautiful television star, is set to receive a very exclusive gift from the Sak's-like Amblett's department store--a 100,000 blue sable mink coat which is to be delivered on her birthday by two employees of Amblett's. The coat, however, is hijacked at Lily's apartment, the two employees are missing and Don Cadee, the head of Ambletts' security suspects that Lily and her manager have more knowledge about the theft than they want to reveal. The knowledge that this pair has proves to be rather ludicrous, but without this twist there wouldn't be much to the story. Dean, to his credit, doesn't tie everything neatly up at the conclusion.

More information on the series can be found here.

Paul Kruger - Weave a Wicked Web

I'm getting perilously behind on my reviews...and it doesn't help that that several of them could be quickly summarized as "meh" or "okay". So today I'm going for a copy of noon-hour "quickies"...

Weave a Wicked Web is the second in a series of mysteries featuring Phil Kramer, a Colorado attorney. Kramer is retained at the beginning of the novel (by a young, beautiful and wealthy client, of course) to trace a red-headed woman named Kitty Bates. That's all the information the client, Stella Packard, is willing to give him and against his better judgment Kramer agrees to take on the job. Eventually Kramer ties in Kitty Bates with a news item about the discovery of the body of a red-headed woman in the vicinity of his client's home. Questioning his client, Kramer learns that Stella had made a blackmail payment to a woman identifying herself as Kitty Bates. The big problem; Kitty Bates was dead and in her improvised grave well before the blackmail attempt so who was the second Kitty Bates and how does the body tie in with the Packard family? It's an interesting set-up, but the problem I had with the novel is that eventually it seems that everyone was either cognizant of the blackmail or part of it, thereby lessening the impact of the story.


More information on the Phil Kramer series and its author can be found at the Thrilling Detective website.

Frank Kane - Syndicate Girl (1958)

"The syndicate runs this town. If they say go, you go. If they say jump, you damn well better jump. If they say you die, don't start reading any continued stories."

In a previous post I observed the disparity between the plot summary and cover artwork of a Rae Foley Mr. Potter novel, seemingly to make the book more palatable to a romantic suspense fan. Like that book, Syndicate Girl has a presentation at odds with its actual content. The cover blurb (She was as tough as the hoods she worked with--until she met a man who made her feel like a woman) along with the accompanying illustration of a long-legged blonde seductively posed on an armchair with a cigarette dangling from her fingers, would suggest that the novel is a crime melodrama involving the redemption of the syndicate girl (with perhaps a hint of risque action.) The trouble is threefold; the syndicate girl doesn't reform, doesn't meet a man who makes her feel like a woman, and since she isn't discovering her latent womanhood, there's no risque lovemaking either. Actually, the problem might be fourfold as the syndicate girl, Mary Lister, isn't even the main character in the book. That honour belongs to Mal Waters, a young and naive district attorney (and the future son-in-law of the mayor) who becomes involved in the battle against organized crime in a small city and the fight to prove that the suicide of a policeman was actually a mob hit tied to a corruption probe.

One's enjoyment of SG will depend on how much one can make allowances for the actions of Mal Waters. While he is supposed to be naive, a puppet placed in office by the crime-ridden administration, most of the story depends on the character doing foolish things such allowing himself to be set-up or revealing his plans to those he shouldn't trust (even though he learns early on about the duplicity of those close to him). Mal's development as a character is in contrast to what the blurb promises about Mary Lister: a "nice: guy who has to become as tough as the hoods whose downfall he wants to bring about, although the Mickey Spillanesque ending can be predicted early on.

Paperbacks II

A few more...

Paperbacks I

Yesterday was the final day of a local ten-day book and music sale. Some of my more interesting purchases from the (ever-dwindling) "collecticle" paperbacks section...

S.S. Van Dine - The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1938)

"So you want to be a detective" he said cheerfully. "I think that's an excellent idea. And I'm going to give you all the help I can. We'll work together; you shall be my assistant, so to speak. But you must keep very busy at it. And you mustn't let anyone suspect that you're doing detective work--that's the first rule."

I love the Philo Vance mysteries. I love Gracie Allen. I love Philo and Gracie together. But I was greatly disappointed with The Gracie Allen Murder Case as the mystery, about the discovery of a body in a restaurant with criminal connections, was so thin and featureless that I kept waiting for something interesting to happen story-wise. One over-the-top chapter involving a gangster's metaphysical ramblings should appeal to Van Dine aficionados but this is easily the least of the Philo Vance titles that I've read (although I've yet to read The Winter Murder Case). Perhaps it worked better as a film.