Women Sleuths - Various
Volume 1 of 'Academy Mystery Novellas.'
This is a collection of four novellas (longer than a short story; shorter than a novel) bound together in a single volume, each on the theme of - you guessed it - women sleuths. The four novellas here are each quite different, with the only common elements being their mystery fiction genre and their use of a female protagonist. Even their time periods are different; the first three were originally published in the 1930s while the fourth was published in the 1980s. This means that the first three seem a bit dated at times - one case would have been easy to solve if DNA testing had been available.
To give a brief review of each novella:
'The Toys of Death', by G.D.H. Cole and Margaret Cole, has a famous (and fairly unpleasant) author found dead in his study. Although a well-known detective is on the scene to begin with, and is able to prove that this is a case of murder, rather than suicide, he is pre-booked elsewhere and must leave before the case can be solved. Instead, the detective's mother, Mrs. Warrender, is the one who continues the investigation. Mrs. Warrender herself is a fun creation and is a fairly sweet innocent old lady with little belief in her own detecting abilities. The mystery is fine, with a few interesting flourishes, but the ending does require the murderer to confess for no good reason. Somewhat fun, but nothing spectacular.
'The Calico Dog', by Mignon Eberhart, is the shortest and most straightforward of the four novellas. A rich widow (Idabelle[sic] Lasher) is faced with two young men, each claiming to be her long-lost son (abducted when a child), each having an almost identical story of what happened to them, and each able to remember certain details that only the real missing child should be able to remember. Susan Dare, a mystery writer, is invited to help Idabelle figure out whether either man is, in fact, her son. This one was fairly guessable and nothing special.
'The Book That Squealed', by Cornell Woolrich, follows a librarian, Prudence Roberts, who begins an investigation when a book in returned in a damaged state and she becomes convinced that it has been used to write a ransom note. Prudence is my favourite investigator from this volume due to her retiring nature and frustration with the detectives who brush her off. The sudden interest paid to her by one detective when she removes her glasses is also a fun touch. As Prudence gets further in over her head, she must rely on others to help her, but she still manages to unravel the mystery in doing so. Enjoyable.
'The Broken Men', by Marcia Muller, is the only novella here to star an actual female investigator, and follows Sharon McCone, who has been hired to keep two well-known clowns safe during a return to the area of their youth. One clown goes missing, and later on Sharon finds another man, dead, in that clown's makeup and outfit. Out of the four, this is the novella with the most traditional whodunnit feel, helped by the fact that - being the second longest after 'Toys of Death' - it has more time to introduce a few wrinkles and mysteries into the proceedings.
I would probably rank them from favourite to least favourite as follows: 'The Book That Squealed', 'The Broken Men', 'The Toys of Death', 'The Calico Dog.' None are super spectacular, but some are a fun diversion.
Completed 26 December 2023.
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