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Death Draws the Line
Vintage paperback
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
4 people want to read
About the author
Jack Iams
20 books2 followersSamuel Harvey Iams, Jr. was born on November 15, 1910 in Maryland. Iams began his writing career in American and British journalism. Adopting the pseudonym Jack Iams, he proceeded to publish his own books. Iams is best known for his mysteries, including Death Draws the Line, and his crime novels featuring the character Rocky Rockwell. He passed away in January of 1990.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 22, 2021
I have read and enjoyed half a dozen or so other books by Jack Iams. I think that Death Draws the Line is the poorest work of Iams' that I have read so far.
Zeke Brock, a wealthy and famous cartoonist with a serious drinking problem, has been murdered, drowned in a basin of water in his own studio. The first person to find the cartoonist's body is his young female assistant. The cartoonist's employer was a newspaper syndicate; that syndicate used to be run by Big Bill Whitcomb, who died ten years earlier. Now Whitcomb's family runs the syndicate: his widow, his two sons, and his daughter.
The general manager of the syndicate is Mark Wallis. Wallis becomes involved in trying to find out who the murderer is. He becomes increasingly entangled in the affairs of the Whitcombs. He also gets much more pleasantly entangled with the late cartoonist's assistant.
This is the only book that I have read by Iams that is not largely comic. It is a more standard murder mystery, awash in suspects and investigators. The solution is revealed in a series of comic strips, probably the most miserably drawn comic strips that I have ever seen. I don't see any information about who actually drew the strips; presumably no one was willing to take the blame. They seem to be very loosely based on the work of Harold Gray. Iams acknowledges the help of the great cartoonist Roy Crane, creator of Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer; I don't think that even if Crane were trying to be bad, he could be this bad.
This is not a small matter. The work of the murdered cartoonist, which this is supposed to be, was described as follows :
Zeke Brock and his famous comic strip, Little Polly Pitcher, provided the cornerstone of the Whitcomb Feature Syndicate... Zeke Brock had been Big Bill Whitcomb's great and shining discovery, and for twenty-five years his Little Polly Pitcher had been a public institution, shown by Gallup Poll to be known to 23.6 percent more people than knew who was president.
The strip in the book would not have become a public institution.
Iams has written well of newspapers (and of budding romances) elsewhere. This is not nearly as good, either as a mystery novel or a source of entertainment. Try Do Not Murder Before Christmas.
A final note - this is a Dell Mapback, one of the Dell Publishing Company paperback books that have maps and drawings on the back cover. The map on this book shows part of Manhattan. The pictorial inserts include a drawing labeled "Tim Costello's" showing a bartender with a beer. Costello's was a real Manhattan bar, a well-known gathering place for artists and writers.
Zeke Brock, a wealthy and famous cartoonist with a serious drinking problem, has been murdered, drowned in a basin of water in his own studio. The first person to find the cartoonist's body is his young female assistant. The cartoonist's employer was a newspaper syndicate; that syndicate used to be run by Big Bill Whitcomb, who died ten years earlier. Now Whitcomb's family runs the syndicate: his widow, his two sons, and his daughter.
The general manager of the syndicate is Mark Wallis. Wallis becomes involved in trying to find out who the murderer is. He becomes increasingly entangled in the affairs of the Whitcombs. He also gets much more pleasantly entangled with the late cartoonist's assistant.
This is the only book that I have read by Iams that is not largely comic. It is a more standard murder mystery, awash in suspects and investigators. The solution is revealed in a series of comic strips, probably the most miserably drawn comic strips that I have ever seen. I don't see any information about who actually drew the strips; presumably no one was willing to take the blame. They seem to be very loosely based on the work of Harold Gray. Iams acknowledges the help of the great cartoonist Roy Crane, creator of Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer; I don't think that even if Crane were trying to be bad, he could be this bad.
This is not a small matter. The work of the murdered cartoonist, which this is supposed to be, was described as follows :
Zeke Brock and his famous comic strip, Little Polly Pitcher, provided the cornerstone of the Whitcomb Feature Syndicate... Zeke Brock had been Big Bill Whitcomb's great and shining discovery, and for twenty-five years his Little Polly Pitcher had been a public institution, shown by Gallup Poll to be known to 23.6 percent more people than knew who was president.
The strip in the book would not have become a public institution.
Iams has written well of newspapers (and of budding romances) elsewhere. This is not nearly as good, either as a mystery novel or a source of entertainment. Try Do Not Murder Before Christmas.
A final note - this is a Dell Mapback, one of the Dell Publishing Company paperback books that have maps and drawings on the back cover. The map on this book shows part of Manhattan. The pictorial inserts include a drawing labeled "Tim Costello's" showing a bartender with a beer. Costello's was a real Manhattan bar, a well-known gathering place for artists and writers.
February 15, 2017
Read this book a while ago, an enjoyable mystery though there is a bit of romance as well. However, it's a solid mystery with a good writing style. A man who has been heading up the business since the big guy's death ends up having to solve a murder, which means he has to endure mingling with the big guy's family who he and (probably not even them) want to do.
November 3, 2020
Being a cartoonist, I like mysteries about cartoonists, and there are actually a few. This has the distinction of having had the great Roy Crane, one of my favorite cartoonists and biggest influences, as an advisor. Turns out this one is set in the world of syndicated comics strips of the 1940's but isn't mired in it. It's a snappy, little mystery that got me interested in the characters and wondering how it would wind up.
September 30, 2020
Big Bill Whitcomb built his features syndicate with gusto and brains. But he's long dead, and the artists and writers who work for him have only contempt for his surviving family. Zeke Broun, his most popular cartoonist, is especially relucant to humor the family. When Zeke dies suddenly, the syndicate's manager, Mark Willis, is suspicious and asks for an autopsy. Mark doesn't know that he's making himself, and lovely Mary Bradley, Zeke's assistant, targets for the police investigation and for the wrath of the Whitcombs.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews