Rex Stout took a wartime hiatus from writing Nero Wolfe novels after Where There’s a Will (1940), abridged as “Sisters in Trouble” for The American Magazine (May 1940), which started publishing the novellas with “Bitter End” (November 1940). Introducing the posthumous collection Death Times Three (1985), biographer John McAleer explains that the publisher refused to run an abridgement of Stout’s Techumseh Fox novel Bad for Business (1940), but paid him double to convert it into the Wolfe novella. Where There’s a Will—adapted in 1969 for the Italian TV series—gives Inspector Cramer his first name, Fergus, and has Wolfe leave home on business for a case involving the Secretary of State.

   The first Wolfe collection, Black Orchids (1942), pairs the title novella with “Cordially Invited to Meet Death,” abridged as—respectively—“Death Wears an Orchid” (August 1941) and “Invitation to Murder” (April 1942). The former introduces millionaire, fellow gourmet, and future ally Lewis Hewitt, whose Long Island greenhouse produced the three titular plants, demanded in payment by an envious Wolfe for sparing him embarrassment while investigating a murder. In the latter, he sends eight of those flowers to the funeral of Bess Huddleston, who was murdered with a deliberate infection of tetanus after hiring Wolfe to stop the anonymous poison-pen letters threatening her party-planning business.

   Not Quite Dead Enough (1944) also paired the eponymous work (abridged; December 1942) with another first published in The American Magazine, “Booby Trap” (August 1944). Both take place during Archie’s World War II service as Major Goodwin of U.S. Army Intelligence; in the former, he must goad Wolfe—who has been “in training” with chef Fritz Brenner, walking by the river and dieting, to kill Germans, as he did in 1918—to return to work. The returning Lily Rowan is briefly a suspect, and Cramer reveals that Lily’s late father “was one of my best friends. He got me on the force, and he got me out of a couple of tight holes in the old days when he was on the inside at [Tammany] Hall.”

   Also invoked, Captain Albert Cross and Archie’s superiors, Colonel Harold Ryder and General Mortimer Fife, all figure in “Booby Trap.” An anonymous letter to John Bell Shattuck links Cross’s fatal plunge from New York’s Bascombe Hotel with the betrayal of “secrets of various industrial processes,” entrusted to the Army, to “those who intend to engage in post-war competition of the industries involved,” which the congressman’s committee is authorized to investigate. After Wolfe says Cross, tracing stolen “samples” of brand-new H14 grenades, was murdered, Ryder is blown apart by an H14 he’d given Archie as a souvenir for his work on the case, which was returned at Wolfe’s insistence.

   Securing Fife’s grudging permission to see General Carpenter in Washington, Ryder had his suitcase already packed, and when sent by Wolfe to remove its remains surreptitiously from the site, Archie finds it gone. Deducing that it was taken by his secretary, Sergeant Dorothy Bruce, Archie is surprised to see Lieutenant Kenneth Lawson, Jr. in the WAC’s apartment when he fetches it and her, and even more so when — en route to Wolfe’s — she offers him $10,000 for it. Claiming that was a test of his loyalty, she is revealed to be the source of the anonymous letter and others; after a private talk with her, Wolfe tells Archie only that the grenade was inside the suitcase, which was booby-trapped to murder Ryder.

   Setting his own “booby trap” with props in his office, Wolfe arranges for Archie to watch from concealment as, sequentially, Lawson, Colonel Tinkham, Fife, Shattuck, and Bruce are each left alone there; none does anything clearly incriminating, but with Bruce’s help, Shattuck is exposed.

   Working undercover for Carpenter with Lawson, she sent 30 letters to smoke out the traitors, and Ryder was silenced when—shocked by Cross’s murder and his son’s death in combat—he decided to fess up to Carpenter. Wolfe has Archie drive to Van Cortlandt Park, where he gives Shattuck, whose political career is ruined, the chance to commit suicide with another H14, which Carpenter had provided for the “booby trap.”

   Bizarrely, “Gambit” (4/3/81)—an episode of NBC’s Nero Wolfe series starring William Conrad, with Lee Horsley as Archie—took its title from Stout’s 1962 novel, but credits “Booby Trap” as its source. The only entry scripted by Stephen Kandel, later a prolific writer-producer on MacGyver, it was directed by the show’s most frequent contributor, George McCowan; its executive producers, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, created Charlie’s Angels and shared an Oscar nomination as co-writers of the Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). Fritz (George Voskovec), orchid-meister Theodore Horstmann (Robert Coote), Saul Panzer (George Wyner), and Cramer (Allan Miller) were regulars.

   Best known as reporter Carl Kolchak in the 1972 TV-movie and ensuing series The Night Stalker, Darren McGavin guest-stars as John Alan Bredeman, first seen in comic mode as a faux service tech, hiding a surveillance system in the brownstone. Patti Davis, daughter of recently inaugurated President Ronald Reagan, plays magazine reporter Dana Groves, seeking an interview with Wolfe, against which he refuses to break a long-standing rule. Kandel rewrites Wolfe’s wartime role as “Butterfly,” commander of an intelligence unit, three members of which died when betrayed by Bredeman—code-named “Filligree”—who specialized in demolition, and now plans to kill Wolfe, having served 20 years for it.

   After asking Cramer to check on Bredeman, Archie risks bringing Dana to Wolfe, but as he is dressing them down, Bredeman gloats via the intercom that he has cut off the phone, and provides a “demonstration” by blowing up the stove, injuring Fritz. Asserting that he was innocent, he has rigged the whole house and planted a bomb on the elevator, defused by Archie with Wolfe’s guidance. As Dana exults in a juicy story, the staff disables three cameras, so Bredeman threatens death unless they gather in the entry hall, in view of the fourth; intending to slip out through a plant-room window, Archie sends her down, but in the stairwell, Dana—Bredeman’s daughter and accomplice—calls him on a walkie-talkie.

   Tipped off, he fires at Archie with a rifle (his aim spoiled by Wolfe tossing a pot through another window), belying his assurance to her that he means no harm to innocents; Fritz and Theodore cut off the power, gas, water, and intercom as Wolfe and Archie seek other explosives. Bredeman sneaks in to face his foe, trying to extract a confession for framing him, yet Wolfe, displaying unusual physicality, disarms him and tells Dana he’d deduced her imposture. In her presence, he confronts Bredeman with the truth: he was absent on the unit’s fatal mission, having alerted the enemy to their route, and over the years, guilt had twisted his mind, but attempting to flee, he falls victim to one of his own booby traps.

   Kandel’s “Gambit”—the last alleged adaptation on Conrad’s series—has little to do with “Booby Trap,” let alone Stout’s Gambit, used in 1971 and 2012 on the Italian series with Tino Buazzelli and Francesco Pannofino, respectively. Sally Blount hires Wolfe to clear her father of a murder charge after he served hot chocolate to Paul Jerin, poisoned while playing 12 simultaneous blindfold games at the eponymous chess club. The murder was a gambit, “an opening in which a player gives up a pawn or a piece to gain an advantage. The [murderer] had no animus for Jerin [who] was merely a pawn. The target was your father,” and Archie gets the proof on tape via a hidden mike in John Piotti’s restaurant.

            — Copyright © 2023 by Matthew R. Bradley.
   

Up next: The Silent Speaker

   Editions cited

Where There’s a Will: Avon (1941)
Death Times Three: Bantam (1985)
Black Orchids, Not Quite Dead Enough: Jove (1979)
Gambit in Seven Complete Nero Wolf Novels: Avenel (1983)

   Online source [link mislabeled as “Before I Die”]

MAXWELL GRANT – The Wealth Seeker. Jove, paperback, 1978. First published in The Shadow Magazine, 15 January 1934.

   A wealthy philanthropist’s home is raided twice by criminals, and each time the gangsters are defeated, their leader being killed before being questioned. Since the man’s donations have always been anonymous, who has revealed his identity to the underworld?

   There are only three suspects, and of course the obvious one is far too obvious. Walter Gibson, who wrote almost all of The Shadow stories, was terrible as a writer, but he was a dandy magician. He fooled me again, even though I was watching.

JACK DAVIES – Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer. Allen, UK, hardcover, 1979. Also published as North Sea Hijack (Star, UK, paperback, 1980). US title: Atlantic Incident (Jove, paperback, 1980).

Film: Universal, 1980, as North Sea Hijack; released in the US as ffolkes; also released as Assault Force. Roger Moore, James Mason, Anthony Perkins, Michael Parks, David Hedison, Lea Brodie, Dana Wynter. Screenplay by Jack Davies based on his novel. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen.

   Every collector has those books you look for over a period of years and somehow never come across a copy that is available and you can afford, and then when you do find it, it arrives in the mail, and you complete the anticipatory act of opening your acquisition when the inevitable doubt grips you.

   Is it any good?

   You have spent forty years or more looking for a copy having never read the book, having never read so much as a review of the book, and now it is in your trembling hands, and you face that dilemma; was it worth all this?

   In the case of Jack Davies’ Esther, Ruth, and Jennifer, the answer was a resounding, and relieved, yes.

   Granted in this case there was a very entertaining action film starring Roger Moore taking a break between Bond outings (Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only) and the screenplay for that was by the novelist, and that writer had written numerous great screenplays, and several good novels, but still, that timorous nagging fear lay heavily on my too often disappointed collectors soul.

   Was Esther, Ruth and Jennifer going to be a tremendous let down?

   Book and film have the same simple premise. Jennifer and Ruth, the largest of the North Sea Oil platforms have been mined by terrorists who are demanding £25 million or they will be blown-up, crippling North Sea oil production for decades. The hijackers have taken Esther, the state of the art supply ship commanded by Captain Olaffsen, and is holding his crew hostage.

   Harold Shulman embezzled from his own company and was sent to prison. There he met psychotic Lew Kramer and they decided to team up, ruthlessness and brutality. The only trick then was to find a target worthy of their ambition.

   Anyone who lived through the Seventies probably remembers just how much oil production and prices were on everyone’s mind. Those North Sea Oil Rigs were a lifeline for all of Europe and particularly for the United Kingdom and Norway. I worked on an industrial espionage case involving British Petroleum and the North Sea platforms and the pressure from several governments was intense.

   Enter our hero, Rufus Excalibur ffolkes, ex Royal Navy, and eccentric cat loving, woman hating, whiskey (and in kilt-wearing ffolkes’ case that should be ‘whuskey’) swigging, motorcycle enthusiast, and sewing aficionado who has trained his own team of tough sea going privateers for just this sort of thing. Both the British government and the company approach him despite the fact he is almost impossible to work with.

   After all, he predicted exactly how the rigs might be hijacked so he has the best chance of saving them.

   ffolkes’ plan involves his going aboard Jennifer with part of the team assigned to negotiate the ransom, Admiral Brinken of the Royal Navy and Mr. King from the oil company, but things go awry. Then too the Navy and the company are wary ffolkes’ plan which begins with convincing the hijackers that they have made a mistake and Ruth, out of their line of sight, has blown up because of them.

   Little can ffolkes expect things will go wrong between rough seas and human error and he will find himself aboard the Esther with one healthy ally he can rely on, Sanna, a female crew member ffolkes mistakenly thinks is a young man at first, as the deadline grows closer.

   In the film released in the UK as North Sea Hijack and here as ffolkes it is all in the acting, Moore having great fun as ffolkes, Anthony Perkins as Shulman, Michael Parks as Kramer, James Mason the Admiral, and David Hedison the company representative. On the printed page it is a cleverly and richly told take that, considering the author’s history in film, is a well crafted and often humorous thriller that at times reads as if P. G. Wodehouse was collaborating with Alistair MacLean. The action may be cinematic, but the book compares well with many of the better adventure thrillers of the era by legends in the genre like Canning, Innes, and Bagley.

   You never feel as if you are reading a scenario for a film though the film follows the book scene by scene.

   If you love British comedy of the late fifties into the sixties Jack Davies name should be familiar to you from the credits. Jack (John Bernard Leslie) Davies was a British screenwriter whose films include Laughter in Paradise, Doctor at Sea, An Alligator Named Daisy, Gambit, It Started in Naples, The Poppy is Also a Flower, Monte Carlo or Bust (aka Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies based on his novel), Paper Tiger (with David Niven and Toshiro Mifune also based on his novel) and the Oscar nominated best original screenplay for Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines. His lines read by a veritable who’s who of Hollywood stars including Clark Gable, Sophia Loren, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLane, Alex Guinness, Tony Curtis, David Niven, Yul Brynner, Rita Hayworth, and more.

   Three of his four novels were made into films unsurprisingly.

   Whether in novel or film form this is simply an entertaining romp, but I have to say with great relief, after years of looking for it, the book is everything I wanted, and packs far more into less that three hundred pages of smallish print than most of today’s bestselling high concept thrillers bloated out to doorstop size.

   Davies knows when to be terse and when to be expansive, when to draw to his heroes eccentricities and when it is too much, which is the key to this kind of character working.

   And, the ending of the book, as the ending of the film did, hits just the right note, a smile and not a laugh relieving considerable tension.

PAUL KAVANAGH – Such Men Are Dangerous. Macmillan, hardcover, 1969. Signet, paperback, 1970. Also published as by Lawrence Block by Jove, paperback, 1985.

   Pseudonymously written by Lawrence Block, but much funnier (if you like gallows humor) if taken at face value as written in the first person by the protagonist. The story is about an ex-Green Beret, adrift. Picture Rambo without the patriotism. Parker without the greed. Hoke Mosely without a job (a la Grimhaven).

   Since Paul’s been back from Cambodia, nothing interests him. Women? Meh. Booze? Meh. Money? Meh. Jobs? Meh. Paperbacks? Meh. Movies are alright to pass the time, I guess.

   Then he gets summoned to DC to interview with the CIA. He’s got all the stuff you’d want from an international operative. Sans one: He flunks the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): he’s a psycho.

   He can’t believe it. He gets in a big argument with the CIA recruiter (George) that summoned him to DC. His record in the Green Berets is stellar. He’s never done anything politically questionable. He’s done everything he’s ever been asked to do, with flying colors.

   There’s just one problem, George tells him: Would you take the black pill in your hollowed out tooth if ordered?

   Paul asks why? I’d do it if it was necessary.

   That’s the problem, George explains. You’d ask why. A true patriot wouldn’t ask why. They’d just do it. We can’t trust you to follow orders. Ten years ago you’d have just done it. Now? Now you’re thinking for yourself. We have no use for you.

   Pissed, but grudgingly accepting, Paul leaves to figure out the rest of his life.

   He takes a plane to Miami, settles on a small uninhabited island, and makes a list to live his life by:

   Things are going swimmingly for him. Everything’s in control. Keeping a rigorous schedule, keeping religiously to his list, he’s finally finding peace and flow.

   And then George shows up. He’s tracked him to his island. He tells Paul that he’s just the man he’s looking for. Not for the CIA, mind you, but for a caper: they’re gonna hijack a bunch of weapons from the military and sell them for a couple of million bucks to a supposedly ‘friendly’ terrorist group.

   The caper is the balance of the novel, and it’s a doozy. A violent, bloody, doozy. About as violent as it could be and still be ‘written’ by the protagonist.

   It was good. Liked it but didn’t love it. I felt like Block was kidding me. Which is fine. It’s kinda funny and quite captivating and I enjoyed the ride. But for ‘novel of violence’ verisimilitude I’d take Westlake and Jim Thompson any day over it.

   It’s my third Block, having read 8 Million Ways to Die and When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, and I remain nonplussed at the universal acclaim. Scudder has neither the chivalry of Marlowe nor the dogged tenacity and efficiency of Sam Spade or the Continental OP. His clients always seem to end up worse for having met him.

   I’m no worse for having read Block’s books. But I don’t feel any better either.

RICHARD NEELY – No Certain Life. Jove, paperback original, 1978.

   It begins as an idyllic Hollywood love affair. A handsome would-be screenwriter meets a promising young starlet, lonely and compulsively withdrawn, but a long weekend together seems to change all that. Then overnight their brief world of happiness crumbles to panic-stricken dust. She has a husband already, it turns out, a former prisoner of war not at all the same person since his release. An attempt at hospitalization fails, she flees, her new lover finds her, but back in Beverly Hills her mother-in-law is found, slashed to death.

   At this point one expects no more than a rather common chiller-thriller in the vein of Hitchcock or perhaps one of his bloodier imitators, but the pacing lags more than it seems it should, and the observant reader (aren’t we all?) will puzzle over certain inconsistencies in the behavior of some of the characters. Of course all is not what it seems, but the feeling begins to grow that Neely dashed this off on a bad day.

   Wrong! The ending is certain to make a shambles of all premature conclusions. Neely is not writing by the strict rules of classical deduction. and while the “locked room” aspect of the two lovers’ nightmare of terror is nearly lost to view, it can’t be missed the second time through.

   Beyond saying that this is indeed a book which has to be read a second time, I can’t give anything more away, but while this smashing knockout of a story was surely written with an eye for the movies, do read it now.

Rating: B plus.

     
   Novels:

Death to My Beloved (1969)
The Plastic Nightmare (1969) aka Shattered. Filmed under the latter title in 1991. Reprinted by Stark House Press.
While Love Lay Sleeping (1969) Reprinted by Stark House Press.
The Walter Syndrome (1970)
The Damned Innocents (1971) aka Dirty Hands. Filmed under the latter title in 1975.
The Sexton Women (1972)
The Smith Conspiracy (1972) Finalist 1973 Edgar Award for Best Paperback.
The Japanese Mistress (1972)
The Ridgway Women (1975)
A Madness of the Heart (1976) Finalist 1977 Edgar Award for Best Mystery
No Certain Life (1978)
Lies (1978)
The Obligation (1979)
An Accidental Woman (1981)
Shadows from the Past (1983)
   

LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Canceled Czech. Evan Tanner #2. Gold Medal d1747, paperback original; 1st printing, 1966. Reprint editions include: Jove, paperback, 1984; Otto Penzler Books, hardcover, 1994; Berkley, paperback, 1999; Harper, paperback, 2007.

   The underlying gimmick in Lawrence Block’s “Evan Tanner” books is that he is also known as The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, or the title of the first book in the series. I have misplaced my notes as to how he got the injury to his head that caused the problem, but the fact is that he cannot fall asleep. I don’t know if it’s possible in the real worlds, but he is up and awake 24 hours a day.

   Which as gimmicks go, it’s quite a good one, or it would be if it ever came into play as this particular book goes on, but it doesn’t. For reasons that were probably gone into a lot more thoroughly in the first book, the head of some very hush-hush organization thinks Tanner works for him. His assignment: help the last of the high echelon non-German Nazis escape from his prison in Czechoslovakia where he’s about to go on trial and be executed.

   Tanner wonders why. It seems that the US has been secretly monitoring all of Janos Kotacek’s communications with the outside world from his lair in Portugal, and they have decided it would be more useful to keep him alive than to have him dead. The job won’t be easy, but Tanner agrees to give it a try.

   When he gets to Czechoslovakia, however, he has no plan. He’s the kind of fellow who takes his opportunities wherever he can get them. And thus enter Greta, the daughter of the man, a devout follower of the imprisoned man, who agrees to help Tanner get Kotacek free. To that end, Greta, who is not as political as her father, is sent along with Tanner to aid and assist him as best she can.

   And what she really does best she does in bed. Both buxom and blonde, she is everything men in the 1960s dreamed of in a woman – a nymphomaniac. Sometimes, Tanner realizes, it is better not to have a plan. Greta’s proclivities in this regard, as it so happens, is exactly what he needs to pull off the most wild and woolly escape possible.

   The story is basically serious, but Block tells with such a light touch that the pages fly by. Once the escape has taken place, though, and Greta is no longer needed, she disappears from the story completely, never to return, and it’s quite a slog to get Kotacek back to his home is Lisbon. I’m deliberately leaving out all of the details of both the first and second halves of the story, but I would like to say the first half is by far the better one.

LAWRENCE BLOCK – Sometimes They Bite. Arbor House, hardcover, 1983. Paperback editions include Jove, 1984. Avon, 1992.

   I was impressed with Lawrence Block’s Eight Millions Ways to Die. His detective, Matthew Scudder, is a fully-realized and invariably interesting character, and the suspects are sharply delineated. There are, however, some weaknesses in the book: Block’s comments about modern life have all the subtlety of a steamroller, and he doesn’t bother about fair play in clueing. But on the whole, the positive aspects of Eight Millions Ways led me to expect great things of Block’s first short-story collection, Sometimes They Bite.

   My reaction was, as they say, mixed. The volume has one fine Matt Scudder tale, one good story about thief Bernie Rhodenbarr, and two cases of that exceedingly criminal lawyer, Martin Ehrengraff.

   The other stories illustrate Block’s light touch — praised by many critics but which seems to me to trivialize tragedy. Block believes that his audience will be vastly amused whenever an attractive protagonist [sic]. This is not what Anthony Boucher meant when he said, “death and laughter are old friends.” Investigating a murder can be amusing; watching your friends in pain is not.

   With the exceptions of the Scudder, Ehrengraff and Rhodenbarr tales, Sometimes They Bite has no detection, no suspense and little mystery. Each story, it’s true, has a twist, and with a little effort some of them might have become mystery or detective stories.

LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN – The Cat Who Lived High. Jim Qwilleran #11. Putnam, hardcover, 1990. Jove, paperback, 1991.

   For the first two-thirds of this book I thought that this review I was going to write would be positive if not an out-and-out recommendation. Former reporter Jim Qwilleran and his two live-in feline companions, Yum Yum and Koko, have temporarily abandoned their home in Pickax City, up north in Moose County, and have headed for the dangerous wilds of Down Below (for which I have always assumed you could substitute the city of Detroit.)

   Qwilleran has been asked to use some of his new fortune (tied up with the Klingenshoen Fund) to renovate a classic old apartment building,once the home of the rich and famous, but now on the verge of immediate takeover and conversion to new office towers and condos. And to investigate the building’s worthiness, he decided to take the penthouse accommodations for the winter.

   In spite of the many free-spirits still living there, not surprisingly the Casablanca turns out to be a sad picture of urban decay. Yum Yum in particular does not take well to her new surroundings, and Koko’s nose for dirty work soon uncovers the fact that a notorious murder-suicide took place in the very apartment Qwilleran in now staying.

   If Braun’s goal had been to write a humorous book about cats and life in the big city (which in part she has), the book would be a resounding success. It’s the unraveling of the mystery which, well, unravels. When the mystery finally (of necessity) takes center stage, you the reader are forced to realize that solving a murder by intuition (masculine as well as feline), ouija boards, and just plain good wishes is something that simply can’t be done, or at least not well.

   In other words, the last third of the book self-destructs. I can’t think of a better word to describe it. The mystery is wound up so fast that (as far as I can tell) any thread of plot that is finally tied together is purely accidental. On his part, Qwilleran is totally content to head back to Pickax City. In a way, I don’t blame him. On the other hand, he certainly seems to leave a mess behind.

LEE CHILD – Die Trying. Jack Reacher #2. Putnam, hardcover, 1998. Jove, paperback, 1999. Setting: Montana.

   Jack Reacher, former MP and expert sharpshooter, just tries to be a nice guy to a woman having trouble folding her dry cleaning. In exchange, they both end up being kidnapped and taken to a paramilitary camp in Montana. The woman isn’t just anyone; Holly Johnson is an FBI agent with a very powerful father and godfather. The militarists don’t want money, they want to start their own

   Strong characters, excellent dialogue and non-stop, albeit very violent, action combine to make this a fast, entertaining read. I’d categorize this as a perfect airplane book — a great book in which to escape for a few hours, but not one you’re likely to collect or reread.

Rating: Very Good.

NGAIO MARSH – Photo Finish. Roderick Alleyn #31. Little Brown, hardcover, 1980. Jove, paperback, 1981. Reprinted several more times.

   [Speaking of old pros still at work, as I was in my review of a recent book by Richard Lockridge], the second half of that description goes double for Ngaio Marsh’s latest work. Once again on hand to solve the mystery is her long-time leading character, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard.

   Alleyn’s first appearance, then as a Detective Inspector, was – would you believe? – in 1934. This is his and Dame Ngaio’s thirty-first collaboration together.

   And, coincidentally, the theatre has played a large part in many of their cases as well. The connection this time is not as strong as it is in the Lockridge book, but there is one here as well. The scene is a remote hideaway in New Zealand, where a famous opera singer nicknamed La Sommita has commissioned an embarrassingly bad opera to be performed, and naturally with herself in the leading role.

   Also involved is a photographer specializing. in taking extremely candid shots for the more sensationalistic newspapers. There is a bare hint of illicit drug-dealing. What the detective work depends most greatly upon, however, is the mystery that surrounds the keys to La Sommita’ s locked bedroom after she is murdered.

   Alleyn has no Watson along to bounce his theories off this time – his wife Troy having evidently long ago refused to go along with the idea – and so some of his deductions are rather abruptly announced, on what occasionally seems to be mighty little evidence.

   Marsh’s writing style lacks some of the sprightly sparkle to be found in Lockridge’s work, but the surprise she gives us at the end is greater. This is only the latest in a long series of plots designed over the yearns by the reigning Queen of Mystery to catch the unwary reader. She succeeds again.

[UPDATE.] There were to be only two more cases for Roderick Alleyn to solve, and one may or may not count:

32. Light Thickens (1982)
33. Money in the Morgue (2018) (with Stella Duffy)