Dance of Death, by Helen McCloy (1938)

Please be warned that this essay concerns a work of detective fiction; part of its potential enjoyment is based on surprising the reader. If you read any further, you will learn something about the titular novel and perhaps some others. I do not reveal whodunit, but I do discuss elements of plot and construction. If you haven’t already read this novel, it will have lost its power to surprise you to greater or lesser extent, and that would be a shame. So please go and read this book before you spoil your own enjoyment. If you proceed past this point, you’re on your own. 

This book was also published under the name Design for Dying.

I picked up my copy of this the other day — I read it a number of years ago and had forgotten the details in the intervening time. After refreshing my memory I thought it was a sufficiently enjoyable experience to share it with you.

What is this book about?

Katherine “Kitty” Jocelyn is one of the top debutantes of the New York season. She is slender, dark-haired, pale, and lovely, and in constant demand by advertising agencies to endorse everything from cigarettes to Sveltis reducing pills. Her coming-out party has been anticipated by her family for a long time, and every detail has been under the command of the well-known Mrs. Jowett, the premier social secretary for coming-out parties. Her family has devoted all its time and resources to advancing Kitty’s social career for years.

But the coming-out party does not go as planned, in many respects. Kitty herself is so ill on the night of her masquerade ball that the family persuades her cousin to impersonate her; and, as the reader rightly expects in a murder mystery, Kitty’s body is found soon after. The highly unusual features of her death include the facts that her skin has somehow turned a bright yellow, and her body is so hot that it has managed to maintain a higher-than-normal body temperature — despite its being found in a pile of snow.

Dr. Basil Willing is a psychiatrist who consults with the New York police department who becomes interested in the case. His interest is first piqued by the possibility that Kitty’s cousin Ann is being pressured by the family to continue impersonating the famous debutante; Ann appeals for Dr. Willing’s help to return to her everyday existence. Then there is the bizarre cause of death; there’s a great deal of scientific information packed in here about how and why she died and I won’t spoil it for you, but apparently McCloy came up with an interesting and unusual way of killing someone that is based in scientific reality.

Suspicion falls on members of her family, some of the servants, a couple of Kitty’s many suitors, and even a gossip columnist who seems over-involved in Kitty’s life. But it falls to Dr. Willing to pierce the many competing motives and find what turns out to be a murderer who acted for a very prosaic and understandable reason.

Why is this book worth your time?

I’ve elsewhere spoken of the “brownstone mystery”, a personal coinage describing a type of mystery that’s addressed primarily to a female reader; it’s meant to show the household arrangements of the wealthy class (clothes, social lives, furniture, homes, family relationships) while demonstrating to the reader that wealthy people are just as immoral and vicious as all the other social classes. The brownstone mystery flourished in the 1940s and authors like Frances Crane and Helen Reilly specialized in it. I’ll suggest that this is an early example, but to be frank Helen McCloy is a much better writer than, say, Frances Crane and brings her considerable skills to this, her first book. This is a brownstone mystery plus, and it’s the plus that makes it worth reading.

There’s a lot here to like. Basil Willing became the protagonist of a dozen mysteries in McCloy’s oeuvre, and while his personality is not as fleshed-out as it would later be, especially with the future addition of the beautiful Gisele to his life, he is an interesting and oddly compelling detective. The murder method is fascinating and apparently realistic. McCloy later became known for the occasional mystery involving a little-known chemical, such as the truth serum in 1941’s The Deadly Truth, and her treatment seems scientifically accurate with just enough detail to interest the reader without being tedious. The details of the Jocelyn household and its underlying difficulties are realistic and uncommon. And finally you will understand the motive for the murder without difficulty, but I rather doubt you’ll ever consider it during the course of the novel. The murder plot is clever and well-hidden but not impossible to work out if you’re paying very close attention.

The idea of one person being forced to impersonate another for economic reasons has been the focus of mysteries a number of times; the one that came to my mind in connection with this instance is Puzzle for Fiends by Patrick Quentin. Here the idea is not made much of and soon disappears, which is a little disappointing. Quentin did it better and you might move on to that volume after this, if you’re curious to see how it’s handled over the course of an entire novel.

I frequently pause to comment upon what we learn about the society of the time and place against which the novel is set, but in this case it’s better if I don’t — almost everything is connected with the murder and I’m likely to say too much. But there is quite a bit here about the nature of the “coming out” process, which is a phrase that in 1938 related to debutantes and not sexual preference, and particularly its economic implications. Fascinating stuff and you’ll enjoy it more if you come to it without hints.

A note on editions

My favourite edition is, as usual, the Dell mapback edition — in this case #33, a very early number from about 1942. The cover art by Gerald Gregg features Dell’s trademark, the pioneering use of airbrush for the illustration showing a marionette being manipulated by a skeletal hand, and the typography is excellent; so is the map by Ruth Belew on the back cover, showing the Jocelyn house. I note that there’s an average copy available on eBay today for US$12 and I think this one would be the most collectible; that’s a good price, to my mind. Most of McCloy’s Basil Willing series until about 1950 are available in mapback editions.

The first edition is by William Morrow and I see that what appears to be a good copy without a jacket is available for about US$50. The person on eBay who wants US$650 for a near fine copy in a VG jacket is possibly delusional, since that’s perhaps three times what it should bring to my knowledge, but who am I to say? There’s also a Gollancz omnibus edition of McCloy’s 1st, 3rd, and 4th Basil Willing novels that includes the interesting The Deadly Truth, mentioned above, and might be the best bargain … except for the recent uniform e-books edition from The Murder Room.

 

 

 

 

The Tuesday Club Murders #3: Early Dell map back editions of Agatha Christie

In the spirit of celebrating Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday anniversary,my friend and fellow GAD mystery blogger Curtis Evans, whose highly recommended blog, The Passing Tramp, is found here, proposed recently that some members of our Golden Age of Detection Facebook group should undertake “The Tuesday Club Murders”. Simply put, we’re going to do a Christie piece every week on Tuesday, “for a while anyway”. I believe you’ll find a list of participants on Curtis’s blog.

Here’s my third contribution; last time it was the most valuable paperback editions of Christie and now on to some early American printings. Agatha Christie was remarkably widespread in that a number of different publishers did a couple of titles each, in the earliest days of US paperbacks … by looking at her editions you can get a good cross-section of what different companies thought was good marketing for a mystery. And since I’ve been using The Tuesday Club Murders (Dell #8, above) as the symbol of this  Tuesday Club blogging effort — let’s start with Dell. As I mentioned previously, Dell mapbacks are sought after by collectors because of the linking motif of the map on the back cover which depicts a scene from the novel; sometimes useful, sometimes not, but always funky and strange.

Dell experimented with a number of different styles of cover art but settled with a stable of reliable artists, principally including Gerald Gregg. A Chicago artist named Ruth Belew proved best at creating the maps for the back covers and produced almost all of them.

Mapbacks are also known for their innovative marketing gimmicks inside the books themselves. The opening pages were devoted to a series of fairly standard features such as “Wouldn’t you like to know …”  (What happens when a dinner party made up of four suspected murderers and four detectives winds up with a victim?) and “What this Mystery is about …” (Nineteen pair of extremely expensive HOSE which help to solve some puzzles). And of course the “List of Exciting Chapters” and “Persons this Mystery is about …”  “Hercule Poirot, that good-natured little Belgian with the remarkable gray cells which haven’t come up with a miss in years, admires the perfect murderer as he does a splendid tiger, but he will not voluntarily step into his cage — unless it is his duty to do so.” (Examples taken from #293, Cards on the Table.)

Prices vary: Christie is always very collectible, and condition is crucial to value. You’ll be able to find most or all of these titles on ABEBooks or even eBay if you’re interested in one of the most collectible Agatha Christie paperbacks you’ll ever see. As Dell progresses through time, the prices decrease and the cover styles change. This is all the Christie titles with numbers lower than #200 — there are more to come in a future post.

Dell #46, The Boomerang Clue (front)

Dell #46, The Boomerang Clue (map back)

Dell #60, 13 At Dinner (Lord Edgware Dies) (front)

Dell #60, 13 At Dinner (Lord Edgware Dies) (map back)

Dell #105, Appointment With Death (front)

Dell, #105, Appointment With Death (map back)

Dell #145, Murder in Mesopotamia (front)

Dell #145, Murder in Mesopotamia (map back)

Dell #172, Sad Cypress (front)

Dell #172, Sad Cypress (map back)

Dell #187, N or M? (front)

Dell #178, N or M? (map back)

Dell #199, The Secret of Chimneys (front)

Dell #199, The Secret of Chimneys (map back)

The Unicorn Murders, by Carter Dickson (1935)

Author:

Carter Dickson, the principal pseudonym of John Dickson Carr, whose Wikipedia entry is found here. The Dickson pseudonym was reserved primarily for the adventures of Sir Henry Merrivale, of which this is one. John Dickson Carr, in all his pseudonymous incarnations, is still the “Master of the Locked Room Mystery”; this particular volume qualifies only as a subset of the locked room mystery, an “impossible crime”.

2014 Vintage Mystery Bingo:

This 1943 volume qualifies as a Golden Age mystery; second under “G”, “Read one book set anywhere except the U.S. or England.” This book is set in France. For a chart outlining my progress, see the end of this post.

Publication Data:

The first edition is from William Morrow  (U.S.) and a scan of the jacket can be found below. My own copy is Dell mapback #16 (1940), unnumbered except on the spine. Many other editions exist; the book has been occasionally reprinted in paperback (Berkley Medallion, 1964; IPL, 1989; Black Dagger, 2000) and there is a 1944 digest-sized edition from American Mercury #52.

About this book:

Standard spoiler warning: What you are about to read is likely to discuss in explicit terms the details of a murder mystery. Please read no further if you wish to preserve your ignorance of the plot. I have elected here to not reveal the murderer but it is likely that you will find out more than you wish to know, if you haven’t read this book.  

The protagonist, Kenwood (Ken) Blake, is an agent of the British Secret Service who works for the brilliant and eccentric detective Sir Henry Merrivale; Blake is a recurring character in a few books and is the usual doofus, in charge of the narration because he’s two steps behind the detective and one step behind the reader. He’s in love with his fellow agent, Evelyn Cheyne; together they are in France and become entangled in a bizarre battle of wits between Gaston Gasquet of the Sûreté and his arch-enemy, Flamande. And in a twist that strikes anticipatory delight into the heart of the reader, no one knows what either Gasquet or Flamande looks like, and they are both “masters of disguise”. Sir Henry, Blake and Cheyne are part of a group of passengers — almost certainly including both Gasquet and Flamande, or what’s the point? — whose plane is forced down near a chateau whose master, the Comte d’Andrieu, welcomes them all. 

Everyone goes to rooms on the second floor to change. The driving rain promptly brings down the causeway that is the only access to the chateau; the connoisseur immediately recognizes the standard country-house situation.  The only possible murderers and victims are now isolated in the chateau and the game is afoot. Almost immediately, one of the passengers tumbles down the stairs to the ground floor, in full view of witnesses, with a hole in his forehead that looks like it was made by the horn of a unicorn. But no one was near him at the time.

Now, this is rousing stuff, and the story moves forward at a brisk clip until the climax. In fact, the events are dizzyingly difficult to follow; there are so many people who are not what they seem that it’s the rule rather than the exception, and disguise plays a huge role in this plot. Indeed, it is incredibly difficult to solve this mystery, and the average reader may as well sit back and merely enjoy the ride. If you’d care to match your wits against the brilliant JDC in one of his most difficult works, you will need to keep very careful track of exactly who is where at all times — regardless of what they say, or what you’re told. And you will have to figure out exactly what happened in the minute before the corpse arrived at the bottom of the staircase.  I’ve chosen to say very little about what goes on in this novel because it really is worth reading; the answer depends on coincidence, dim lighting, split-second timing and the development of a complicated scheme in a very brief period of time, in an unfamiliar location, but it is absolutely fair. You are given all the clues you need to solve the mystery. One excellent reason to get the mapback edition is that, with this book, you will actually find the map useful; this book requires the reader to form a picture of the building, its furnishings, the location of its inhabitants, etc., in order to have any chance of solving the mystery.

Why is this book worth your time?

For the connoisseur of the fair-play puzzle mystery, and its most rarefied levels exemplified by the impossible crime story, this is an absolute classic. It’s one of Carr’s top ten, in my humble opinion. The difference for me is that I expect most readers to slap their foreheads and say, “Oh, I should have figured that out!” instead of “Oh, who the HELL could have figured that out?”  The first is pleasurable and the second is not. This book is very pleasurable; it’s exciting, fast-moving, filled with unexpected twists and turns and with a solution that will knock you back in your chair.

Of course, it’s well known that Carr was not much on characterization, and this book is no exception. The two agents whose love story underlies the plot are bland cyphers whose love interest is inexplicable, except you sort of have to have one, Carr seems to feel. Sir Henry himself is mostly a collection of annoying mannerisms and verbal tics whose main function is to hide his deductions from the reader until the end. Since all the characters must have an equal chance of being the guilty party, there’s not much to any of them; the backstories are implausible and the events of the plot have obviously been jiggered to pack as many of them into the isolated chateau as possible. In fact it’s pretty clear that Carr worked out the method of murder and then wrote a book around it. But unless you are the most cold-hearted of readers, you will be amused and pleased by this book. True, it has little in the way of what I think of as “literary quality”.  This is not art fiction, this is melodrama with a complex puzzle at its heart. But it is damn good melodrama written by a master of that genre. Some cold-hearted readers may say that the solution is implausible; I agree. It is implausible in the extreme. But such concatenations of implausibility do occasionally happen; those cold-hearted readers at least cannot say that they haven’t been given every piece of information and inference needed to solve the mystery.

This is one of a very small group of mysteries that really is worth trying to solve. Carr seems to have felt that this sort of novel is a kind of battle between the reader and the writer, and if you want to have a chance of winning, I recommend that you take it very, very slowly — know where everyone is and what they’re doing — be aware that trickery and impersonation abound — and stop before the end and formally declare your opinion as to who the murderer is. There are so few of these mysteries in the canon that it is worth savouring this like some exquisite lollypop, taking only slow, careful licks until the centre is revealed.  I envy the reader who has yet to read this book. Don’t spoil your experience by rushing through it.

Notes for the Collector:

As of this writing, a VG first edition without jacket will set you back somewhere between $150 to $200. I didn’t see any copies available with jacket; that might be in the $300 or $400 range. There are a number of collectible paperback editions; principal among them is Dell mapback #16, with cover artwork by Gerald Gregg, and a Near Fine copy is available for $50. That would be my choice as the most collectible edition that will hold its value the best, since mapback collectors abound. My own copy is less pristine; it’s rolled and worn, but the colour is bright (always a problem with this particular cover, for some reason) and I think it’s worth around $20. The image at the top of this post was scavenged from the internet.

The digest-sized editions from American Mercury are also quite collectible and a VG copy of #52 in the series will be somewhere around $25. (I’m adding a note after first publication of this post; an experienced dealer mentions in the comments below that in his opinion the digests are NOT all that collectible, and he’s more experienced and knowledgeable than I am … your mileage may vary.)