The Wench is Dead ... / Miscast For Murder, by Ruth Fenisong

 

9798886010909

Stark House, 2024

324 pp

paperback

(a huge thank you to the good people at Stark House)

(read earlier in July)

I recently paid an online visit  to Stark House's website to order two more two-in-one volumes by this author, which together comprise the first four novels in this series.   I am a series completist so it drives me a bit batty not to at least start with book number one when I come across a new-to-me detective character, in this case,  Gridley "Grid" Nelson of the New York City Police.  Today's book contains numbers eight and nine, so I obviously have a bit of catching up to do.   

This series spans two decades in the making with the first novel,  Murder Needs a Name, published in 1942.  Ruth Fenisong (1904 - 1978)  would go on to write twelve more installments of this series, while also several publishing nonseries books during the same time frame with two more coming along  afterwards, one in 1967 and the last in 1970.  Curtis Evans provides a brief biography of Fenisong in the introduction to this book; his blog The Passing Tramp offers additional insights into the author's life as well as her work.  

1953 paperback cover, from Fantasic Fiction

It's June, and Nadine (Dene) Cameron has received and turned down several offers from friends to make a the yearly "exodus" from New York City and the Manhattan heat.  The one she accepts comes from an older couple, Vera and Sam Curtis, who she doesn't know very well at all, but Vera has assured her that she understands Dene's need for a bit of independence.  Vera's home on Long Island has a gatehouse where Dene can stay, which is not too far from the main house but will afford Dene the privacy she desires.  Vera will be away for a while, but Sam will be in residence, and could use Dene's company from time to time.   On her arrival at Sandy Crest, "at the far end of Long Island," she is picked up by Sam and another man, who is driving Sam's car, by the name of Paul Debrulet.  As the blurb for this book notes, "the attraction is immediate."   As they start to become close, Dene feels like there is more to this man than meets the eye, but whatever it may be he's not saying.   Back in New York City,  Gridley Nelson is a lieutenant and the acting captain of homicide, NYPD.   He lives with his wife Kyrie and their "two and a fraction" year-old son Grid Junio (referred to as Junie) in an apartment on Lexington Avenue, where the family is taken care of by the cook, Sammy.   Home from a very tough case,  Grid notices that his son has latched on to a pile of magazines which he'd discovered at the incinerator, a true detective sort of thing complete with pictures of wanted criminals.  For some reason, Junie just loves these things, wanting to hear bedtime stories (made up, of course -- not the facts) based on the photos.   As it happens, Kyrie and Junie have been invited to stay with friends on Long Island for a few days.   The two stories merge at a dinner party held by Vera and Sam, where, once seated at the table with the guests, Kyrie is taken completely aback when she realizes that she is sitting with someone she recognizes from the photos in one of her son's magazines, someone who is wanted for murder in another state.   This is when the action really kicks in, beginning with a hit-and-run accident, or was it? 

1954 Doubleday Crime Club edition, from Amazon

Miscast for Murder (1954) moves the action back into New York City.  The story centers around the relationship between a young woman named Bess Rohan and her estranged father, Kevin Culhane, who used to be a renowned singer  back in the day.  His wife had divorced him when Bess was still a small child, and then remarried some time later.  Bess hasn't seen her father in years, so imagine her surprise when she sees him one day while at lunch in a restaurant near  the publishing company where she works. She says nothing to him but seeing him (and the young woman who accompanies him)  weighs heavily on her mind, largely because of all of the negativity about her father generated by her mother since Bess had been a child. Even though her mother has remarried, the subject of Kevin Culhane remains "taboo" between them.  Luckily she has her Aunt Alma, with whom she lives in the city, and a new friend, Link Bassett, a radio broadcaster who enjoys a certain amount of celebrity.  While Link and Bess hang out at her place (and unbeknownst to Bess),  Alma and Kevin are dining together at a restaurant.   Alma talks Kevin into coming over to her place to reunite with Bess, but first they have to make a stop at Kevin's hotel so that he can change his shirt that is now "coffee-spotted" after a mishap at the dinner table.   They agree that Alma will wait in the lobby while Kevin changes, but more than half an hour goes by without him returning.  He can't be reached by phone in his room, so Alma decides to go up and see if everything is okay.  The door is unlocked, so she goes into the dimly-lit room where she discovers a dead body on the floor which she covers with a black coat that's laying on the floor. She did not, however, phone the police but goes back to her apartment instead, where later, Kevin shows up.  Bess shuts herself in her room not wanting to have anything to do with her father, but her father returns to her life in a very big way after the police arrive the next morning looking for him in connection with the murder of the woman in his hotel room. 

Fenisong's detective Grid Nelson is certainly not your average New York City Cop. In The Wench is Dead we learn that he and his wife live comfortably and have "plenty of money," and in Miscast For Murder the two have moved from their apartment to a house and are still "more than solvent."  He is aware that there are some people who view his job as "no more than an eccentric hobby indulged in by a man of wealth and background," but for Nelson that's not the way it is, having 

"almost empathic identification with humanity at large, the slayer as well as the slain, the parents of each, the issue, the wives or husbands, the lovers, the friends, all those who had been encircled by the elastic radius of crime." 

His focus on "humanity at large" also filters down into his home life, especially in his relationship with the family's African-American housekeeper Sammy.  It's refreshing to see the way Fenisong writes this character, especially given that it's the 1950s.  

Of these two books I enjoyed Miscast for Murder a bit more, largely because it's much more of a whodunit than The Wench is Dead .., where I pretty much waited for the police to catch up to what I already knew.   The solution to Miscast for Murder took me by surprise, but there are definitely plenty of suspects to ponder over in the meantime. 

I love traveling back into yesteryear and discovering these old mysteries -- I actually prefer older to newer so it's a genuine pleasure when Stark House sends me a book that makes me want to discover more from the same author.  I think true fans of vintage American crime will enjoy these two books in one, and even if you haven't read the earlier series books, the way these stories are written sort of hint at Nelson's past so it's not at all necessary to know much of anything prior to reading this one.  My thanks to Stark House for the pleasurable hours I spent with this book. 

•