Where is Mary Bostwisk? by Rae Foley
What was he going to say to the department store Santa Claus about the emissary whom he had sent to Gramercy Park and who was now residing in the deep freeze?
I picked up a bunch of old pulp mysteries and thrillers at Bouchercon, and this was one of them. It was not good, but it was extremely diverting by way of being completely nuts - something I did not expect from the title, cover, or blurb, which made it seem much more normal.
Here is the blurb: When lovely, wealthy young Jennifer Clay flew from California to New York, she plunged into a world of danger she had never dreamed existed. Her former college roommate, Mary Bostwick, had mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a multi-million dollar legacy. Jennifer vowed to find her friend. At Jennifer's side was a handsome lawyer she could not bring herself to trust. Blocking her path was a web of sinister deception. And shadowing her every step, moving ever closer, was a murderer who had killed twice and was poised to strike again...
This blurb is correct but misleading. Most of the book is from the POV of Foley's series detective, Mr. Potter, a wealthy young man with a big house and a live-in housekeeper.
He comes home from a vacation and finds that an unknown person is living on the top floor of his house but keeps not getting around to investigating this. He eventually asks his housekeeper, who says it's her sick mother. He almost immediately begins to doubt this, as the unknown hider in the house is also stealing his Scotch and cigarettes, but doesn't do anything about it.
Mr. Potter is hired to find a missing heiress, Mary Bostwick. If she's not found within three days, the entire fortune goes to a different set of heirs. Jennifer shows up about a third of the way in.
Mr. Potter finds an unknown corpse in his living room. Since he's in a hurry to find Mary Bostwick and thinks being investigated will delay him, he sticks the corpse in the freezer. A clue leads to a department store Santa, and thus to the immortal line, "I have to see Santa Claus about a dead man."
Santa is missing Mary's uncle, Bostwick, who sent the dead guy to Mr. Potter with a message. Mr. Potter immediately shows Bostwick the freezer corpse:
Mr. Potter explained why he had hidden the body and Bostwick accepted his explanation without question.
I would have questions.
Mr. Potter FINALLY goes to check out the hider in his house and finds him (an unknown bearded dude) sleeping. He goes downstairs to demand an explanation from his housekeeper but was sidetracked by the ringing of the phone. He then has a conversation in which he's about to ask, then gets distracted by a thought and wanders off.
Meanwhile, we learn that a male ballet dancer deliberately dropped his ballerina partner and broke her neck because she was getting more attention than him so he "got rid of his rival."
...that's not how that works.
For literally no reason whatsoever, Jennifer decides that a missing college student is probably a prisoner behind the Iron Curtain and maybe his girlfriend, the also-missing heiress Mary Bostwick, was kidnapped by Communists.
This is UTTERLY out of the blue.
Meanwhile, Mr. Potter again chats with his increasingly weirdly behaving housekeeper without mentioning the hider in the house who is definitely not anyone's mom.
Jennifer gets kidnapped and rescued, one of the rival heir's maids is murdered, and Mr. Potter randomly causes a riot in a department store by spanking a stranger's misbehaving kid.
SPOILERS include the immortal line "What makes you think you have leprosy?"
( Read more... )
I can't say I didn't get my money's worth but, similarly to the magnet murder book, it's a wildly coincidental and overly convoluted plot that only works because characters don't behave like actual humans. And also, make correct deductions with literally no basis.
Oh and it's not leprosy. It's an allergy to his new shaving cream.
Here is the author's Wikipedia biography; like the book, it takes a sudden turn: Elinore Denniston was an American writer of more than 40 mystery novels under the pseudonym Rae Foley. She wrote other mysteries as Helen K. Maxwell and Dennis Allan. Elinore Denniston was born on September 20, 1900, in North Dakota. She worked as an assistant to the playwright Theresa Helburn. She also worked as an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt.
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I picked up a bunch of old pulp mysteries and thrillers at Bouchercon, and this was one of them. It was not good, but it was extremely diverting by way of being completely nuts - something I did not expect from the title, cover, or blurb, which made it seem much more normal.
Here is the blurb: When lovely, wealthy young Jennifer Clay flew from California to New York, she plunged into a world of danger she had never dreamed existed. Her former college roommate, Mary Bostwick, had mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a multi-million dollar legacy. Jennifer vowed to find her friend. At Jennifer's side was a handsome lawyer she could not bring herself to trust. Blocking her path was a web of sinister deception. And shadowing her every step, moving ever closer, was a murderer who had killed twice and was poised to strike again...
This blurb is correct but misleading. Most of the book is from the POV of Foley's series detective, Mr. Potter, a wealthy young man with a big house and a live-in housekeeper.
He comes home from a vacation and finds that an unknown person is living on the top floor of his house but keeps not getting around to investigating this. He eventually asks his housekeeper, who says it's her sick mother. He almost immediately begins to doubt this, as the unknown hider in the house is also stealing his Scotch and cigarettes, but doesn't do anything about it.
Mr. Potter is hired to find a missing heiress, Mary Bostwick. If she's not found within three days, the entire fortune goes to a different set of heirs. Jennifer shows up about a third of the way in.
Mr. Potter finds an unknown corpse in his living room. Since he's in a hurry to find Mary Bostwick and thinks being investigated will delay him, he sticks the corpse in the freezer. A clue leads to a department store Santa, and thus to the immortal line, "I have to see Santa Claus about a dead man."
Santa is missing Mary's uncle, Bostwick, who sent the dead guy to Mr. Potter with a message. Mr. Potter immediately shows Bostwick the freezer corpse:
Mr. Potter explained why he had hidden the body and Bostwick accepted his explanation without question.
I would have questions.
Mr. Potter FINALLY goes to check out the hider in his house and finds him (an unknown bearded dude) sleeping. He goes downstairs to demand an explanation from his housekeeper but was sidetracked by the ringing of the phone. He then has a conversation in which he's about to ask, then gets distracted by a thought and wanders off.
Meanwhile, we learn that a male ballet dancer deliberately dropped his ballerina partner and broke her neck because she was getting more attention than him so he "got rid of his rival."
...that's not how that works.
For literally no reason whatsoever, Jennifer decides that a missing college student is probably a prisoner behind the Iron Curtain and maybe his girlfriend, the also-missing heiress Mary Bostwick, was kidnapped by Communists.
This is UTTERLY out of the blue.
Meanwhile, Mr. Potter again chats with his increasingly weirdly behaving housekeeper without mentioning the hider in the house who is definitely not anyone's mom.
Jennifer gets kidnapped and rescued, one of the rival heir's maids is murdered, and Mr. Potter randomly causes a riot in a department store by spanking a stranger's misbehaving kid.
SPOILERS include the immortal line "What makes you think you have leprosy?"
( Read more... )
I can't say I didn't get my money's worth but, similarly to the magnet murder book, it's a wildly coincidental and overly convoluted plot that only works because characters don't behave like actual humans. And also, make correct deductions with literally no basis.
Oh and it's not leprosy. It's an allergy to his new shaving cream.
Here is the author's Wikipedia biography; like the book, it takes a sudden turn: Elinore Denniston was an American writer of more than 40 mystery novels under the pseudonym Rae Foley. She wrote other mysteries as Helen K. Maxwell and Dennis Allan. Elinore Denniston was born on September 20, 1900, in North Dakota. She worked as an assistant to the playwright Theresa Helburn. She also worked as an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt.
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