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Duncan Maclain Mystery #1
The Last Express A Duncan Maclain Detective Story
A Dell Mystery by Baynard Kendrick A Duncan Maclain Detective Story complete with a crime map on the back cover
Paperback
First published January 1, 1937
26 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
About the author
Baynard H. Kendrick
58 books11 followersAlso wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hayward
Kendrick was an American lawyer and executive who became a full-time writer in 1932. His first mystery novel, Blood on Lake Louisa was published in 1934.
In 1914 Kendrick was the first American to enlist in the Canadian Army, one hour after that country declared war.
He married Edythe Stevens in 1919 and Jean Morris in 1971, and became an executive and manager of hotels and publishing companies. Kendrick was the organizer and only sighted member of the Blinded Veterans Association.
He was also a founding member of the Mystery Writers of America and held membership #1. In the 1960s he retired to Florida.
Kendrick was an American lawyer and executive who became a full-time writer in 1932. His first mystery novel, Blood on Lake Louisa was published in 1934.
In 1914 Kendrick was the first American to enlist in the Canadian Army, one hour after that country declared war.
He married Edythe Stevens in 1919 and Jean Morris in 1971, and became an executive and manager of hotels and publishing companies. Kendrick was the organizer and only sighted member of the Blinded Veterans Association.
He was also a founding member of the Mystery Writers of America and held membership #1. In the 1960s he retired to Florida.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 24, 2023
This was an engrossing mystery. I like how the author puts you into Duncan's dark world seeing into his mind's eye with his heightened senses and assimilation of what's happening around him through his tactile reality. I look forward to reading the entire series.
”Your assurance leaves me two avenues of investigation—blackmail or intimidation.”
“Blackmail?” she repeated unsteadily. “With Paul? Impossible.”
“Unfortunately it’s quite possible. His wealth and his public office leave him doubly open. It’s a profession dependent on pride and money for existence. Your brother has both and knows many women. However, it’s not as dangerous as the intimidation. There are men in New York ready to use any means to save themselves from the law. Do you know of any recent cases on which your brother was working?”
FROM CHP. 4 “The Dead Mice”
“From what I can tell now, he was killed with a Mills hand grenade thrown into the back of his car out of a passing taxi.”
“How did you get that?”
“The Bomb Squad found pieces of the grenade, and there were marks of Michelin taxi tires visible close by where his car was stopped.”
”Your assurance leaves me two avenues of investigation—blackmail or intimidation.”
“Blackmail?” she repeated unsteadily. “With Paul? Impossible.”
“Unfortunately it’s quite possible. His wealth and his public office leave him doubly open. It’s a profession dependent on pride and money for existence. Your brother has both and knows many women. However, it’s not as dangerous as the intimidation. There are men in New York ready to use any means to save themselves from the law. Do you know of any recent cases on which your brother was working?”
FROM CHP. 4 “The Dead Mice”
“From what I can tell now, he was killed with a Mills hand grenade thrown into the back of his car out of a passing taxi.”
“How did you get that?”
“The Bomb Squad found pieces of the grenade, and there were marks of Michelin taxi tires visible close by where his car was stopped.”
October 24, 2023
Excellent
This was such a unique twist on detective stories. Captain Maclain is blind, has a seeing eye dog and a police trained dog, and what a fun twisty mystery it was. I tried this author because of a "read American mystery authors" challenge, and I am delighted that I did.
This was such a unique twist on detective stories. Captain Maclain is blind, has a seeing eye dog and a police trained dog, and what a fun twisty mystery it was. I tried this author because of a "read American mystery authors" challenge, and I am delighted that I did.
September 28, 2024
The first in this series of stories- and it starts with an interview of a concerned sister. Next chapter - murder. And we’re off. The story carries you through various realms of the underworld; as well as, Maclain’s blindness and how he has used this disadvantage to his advantage. It’s not a story that moans about loss- but shows just how much can be done when someone listens. It also accentuates the reviewing of clues by Maclain - and makes for an enjoyable hunting for answers with his take on events.
My first thought was that this story would take place in a smaller arena - but it takes place all over the city! Maclain travels through places - with his seeing eye dog. And it is fascinating. Maclain is no pushover - he takes incredible chances and faces danger as well. The story is packed with events and some really interesting characters- and while some are larger than life- you know there are people out there like this.
The bonus is seeing the world through Maclain’s mind. I certainly will be looking for other stories with Maclain.
My first thought was that this story would take place in a smaller arena - but it takes place all over the city! Maclain travels through places - with his seeing eye dog. And it is fascinating. Maclain is no pushover - he takes incredible chances and faces danger as well. The story is packed with events and some really interesting characters- and while some are larger than life- you know there are people out there like this.
The bonus is seeing the world through Maclain’s mind. I certainly will be looking for other stories with Maclain.
January 6, 2025
Masterful! I didn't figure out whodunit at all. Never even suspected. First time in decades I've been stumped. Loved it. Blind detective is amazing.
May 12, 2017
A blind detective is not new to anyone familiar with Max Carrados; but one that uses the aid of a Guide Dog is defiantly new.
August 25, 2025
You don't find many blind sleuths. I have met a deaf one, Caleb in Resurrection Bay, by Emma Viskic (https://wordsandpeace.com/2018/06/04/...), but I think Duncan Maclain is the first blind investigator I have met.
I'm not blind, but all the details related to his handicap sounded brilliant - and also about his smart guide dog! And actually the neat part, is that his blindness is not a weakness, but a real strength for Duncan. In many ways, he can see better than people with two eyes open!
Another fascinating aspect was all the marvelous info about 1930s New York, its backyards and its underground.
The plot was sometimes complicated, with a good amount of characters. But they were all very nicely developped, and the ending was satisfying, including the connection with the title.
I want to try more with this hero, and also planning to try another famous blind investigator: Max Carrados, by Ernest Bramah
I'm not blind, but all the details related to his handicap sounded brilliant - and also about his smart guide dog! And actually the neat part, is that his blindness is not a weakness, but a real strength for Duncan. In many ways, he can see better than people with two eyes open!
Another fascinating aspect was all the marvelous info about 1930s New York, its backyards and its underground.
The plot was sometimes complicated, with a good amount of characters. But they were all very nicely developped, and the ending was satisfying, including the connection with the title.
I want to try more with this hero, and also planning to try another famous blind investigator: Max Carrados, by Ernest Bramah
December 3, 2017
I liked it. I don't usually reading "detective" stories...I'm more of a mystery fan...but this one seemed different and I had found a lovely vintage first edition paperback--I love the covers on the older books. This one was written in 1937...and keeps going from beginning to end...The detective/investigator is blind with a seeing-eye dog, so there's a bit of a twist to the way he goes about things. The mystery part was good, but the characters were well-written and interesting.
April 24, 2023
I found this old time pulp fiction gem through an old time radio show that enacted one of Kendricks stories. Great writing without fear of using expressive and challenging vocabulary. Get a hardcopy if you can!
March 27, 2021
This is a 1937 book by American mystery author Baynard Kendrick and is the first book in the blind private detective Duncan Maclain series. The setting is in 1930s New York City. Captain Duncan Maclain is a World War I veteran and was blinded during the war. He is now a well-to-do private detective living in a penthouse in Manhattan with his partner and good friend Samuel Savage (called Spud). Spud’s wife Rena Savage serves as Maclain’s secretary. Maclain is also assisted by two very different but competent German Shepherd dogs: Schnucke is a Seeing Eye dog and serves as Maclain’s guide dog; Dreist, the other German Shepherd, is trained as a police dog and is trained to attack enemies on command.
The one blind detective character most mystery readers are probably all aware of is the famous Max Carrados created by English author Ernest Bramah in the 1914. While Maclain is similar to Carrados in many respects (rich and therefore independent, can read written words by touch of the fingertips, keen intelligence and deduction, able assistants who can serve as his eyes), I find Maclain to be less interesting than Carrados. I think Kendrick is not as good a storyteller as Bramah. While the plot of The Last Express is extremely interesting (with a Clive Cussler style of history and archeology research stabled with a lot of action adventure) and the story moves at a good pace, I find Kendrick oftentimes overdo his human interest portrait with excessive sentimentalities. 5 Star for plot. However, overall, it is a 3.5 Star book.
Spoiler Alert. The story starts with a rich young woman Evelyn Zarinka visiting Maclain to hire him to look into her brother Paul’s recent strange behavior. Paul Zarinka is an Assistant District Attorney with the Homicide Division of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office currently working on a big case against a notorious gangster Benny Hoefle, who is suspected of killing a labor union president Tom Delancey. Soon thereafter, Paul was murdered when somebody threw a hand grenade into his car when it was stopped at a red light late at night. Paul’s dying words as noted by the policeman on scene were “Sea Beach Subway - the last express!” As Maclain started digging into Paul’s affairs, he soon realizes Paul has betrayed the District Attorney’s Office and has sold out to Benny for financial gain. Paul was paid a $170,000 bribe by Benny to steal the DA office’s evidence against Benny, which he did. Paul then hid both the stolen evidence and the cash in a secret place. A singer who works at Hoefle’s nightclub called Amy Arden soon approached the DA’s office and told District Attorney Claude Dearborn she had information on Paul’s murder. When Dearborn and Maclain went to Hoefle’s nightclub called the Hi-de-Ho Club to interview her, she was stabbed to death in a fully packed night club when a live performance was going on. Police erroneously arrested Charles Hartshorn who was standing next to Amy when her death was discovered. Charles is the fiancé of Evelyn and a good friend of Maclain.
After a few red herrings and a near escape from death, Maclain solved all three murders (Tom Delancey, Paul Zarinka and Amy Arden) and recovered the missing evidence and cash. In the process, there was quite a bit of action and adventure with some interesting New York subway history threw in. Maclain was able to figure out what Paul said before he died was not “Sea Beach Subway”, which is a subway line to Brooklyn; but instead what Paul said was “See Beach’s Subway”, which is a reference to a long lost one-block subway line built as an experiment by an Alfred Ely Beach and was New York City’s first subway line. The subway was built in 1870 and ran on pneumatic power. The project was abandoned in 1873 and the subway line and the subway car both were long lost and forgotten. In the classic Clive Cussler style of adventure thriller, Paul discovered the long-lost subway line hidden under miles of tunnels under the city and he hid the stolen evidence and money on the subway car. Maclain, by following Paul’s footsteps, located the abandoned underground railway line and recovered the evidence and money. He was also able to decipher the second part of Paul’s message “the last express”. In addition, Maclain solved the mystery of how Amy Arden was killed in front of lots of witnesses and nobody saw it at the time it actually happened but all thought she was stabbed 20 minutes later when Charles approached her table. It turns out the murderer was smart enough to stab Amy at the beginning of a 20-minute period when the nightclub was lighted by red floodlights because a performance was going on. Amy’s blood-stained white dress did not look bloody then. Once the red light was turned off, then everybody saw she has been stabbed. Maclain finally figured out the criminal mastermind is not the notorious gangster Benny Hoefle but is instead a man called Springer, who is the chauffeur and bodyguard to the blissfully unsuspecting District Attorney Dearborn. Helping Springer was a psychopathic killer called Madonna and a couple of blackmailing dirt digging PIs called Bill Trilby and Alf Shane.
The one blind detective character most mystery readers are probably all aware of is the famous Max Carrados created by English author Ernest Bramah in the 1914. While Maclain is similar to Carrados in many respects (rich and therefore independent, can read written words by touch of the fingertips, keen intelligence and deduction, able assistants who can serve as his eyes), I find Maclain to be less interesting than Carrados. I think Kendrick is not as good a storyteller as Bramah. While the plot of The Last Express is extremely interesting (with a Clive Cussler style of history and archeology research stabled with a lot of action adventure) and the story moves at a good pace, I find Kendrick oftentimes overdo his human interest portrait with excessive sentimentalities. 5 Star for plot. However, overall, it is a 3.5 Star book.
Spoiler Alert. The story starts with a rich young woman Evelyn Zarinka visiting Maclain to hire him to look into her brother Paul’s recent strange behavior. Paul Zarinka is an Assistant District Attorney with the Homicide Division of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office currently working on a big case against a notorious gangster Benny Hoefle, who is suspected of killing a labor union president Tom Delancey. Soon thereafter, Paul was murdered when somebody threw a hand grenade into his car when it was stopped at a red light late at night. Paul’s dying words as noted by the policeman on scene were “Sea Beach Subway - the last express!” As Maclain started digging into Paul’s affairs, he soon realizes Paul has betrayed the District Attorney’s Office and has sold out to Benny for financial gain. Paul was paid a $170,000 bribe by Benny to steal the DA office’s evidence against Benny, which he did. Paul then hid both the stolen evidence and the cash in a secret place. A singer who works at Hoefle’s nightclub called Amy Arden soon approached the DA’s office and told District Attorney Claude Dearborn she had information on Paul’s murder. When Dearborn and Maclain went to Hoefle’s nightclub called the Hi-de-Ho Club to interview her, she was stabbed to death in a fully packed night club when a live performance was going on. Police erroneously arrested Charles Hartshorn who was standing next to Amy when her death was discovered. Charles is the fiancé of Evelyn and a good friend of Maclain.
After a few red herrings and a near escape from death, Maclain solved all three murders (Tom Delancey, Paul Zarinka and Amy Arden) and recovered the missing evidence and cash. In the process, there was quite a bit of action and adventure with some interesting New York subway history threw in. Maclain was able to figure out what Paul said before he died was not “Sea Beach Subway”, which is a subway line to Brooklyn; but instead what Paul said was “See Beach’s Subway”, which is a reference to a long lost one-block subway line built as an experiment by an Alfred Ely Beach and was New York City’s first subway line. The subway was built in 1870 and ran on pneumatic power. The project was abandoned in 1873 and the subway line and the subway car both were long lost and forgotten. In the classic Clive Cussler style of adventure thriller, Paul discovered the long-lost subway line hidden under miles of tunnels under the city and he hid the stolen evidence and money on the subway car. Maclain, by following Paul’s footsteps, located the abandoned underground railway line and recovered the evidence and money. He was also able to decipher the second part of Paul’s message “the last express”. In addition, Maclain solved the mystery of how Amy Arden was killed in front of lots of witnesses and nobody saw it at the time it actually happened but all thought she was stabbed 20 minutes later when Charles approached her table. It turns out the murderer was smart enough to stab Amy at the beginning of a 20-minute period when the nightclub was lighted by red floodlights because a performance was going on. Amy’s blood-stained white dress did not look bloody then. Once the red light was turned off, then everybody saw she has been stabbed. Maclain finally figured out the criminal mastermind is not the notorious gangster Benny Hoefle but is instead a man called Springer, who is the chauffeur and bodyguard to the blissfully unsuspecting District Attorney Dearborn. Helping Springer was a psychopathic killer called Madonna and a couple of blackmailing dirt digging PIs called Bill Trilby and Alf Shane.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 12, 2023
If it wasn't for the last chapter, I would have rated it 3 or 4. It was extremely anticlimactic. He didn't even name the murderer, you were supposed to guess.
April 3, 2025
Good plot and good ending. Maclain series is a must read.
September 12, 2024
I became aware of Baynard Kendrick many years ago, when I saw his name in a "Based on characters created by…" credit on a TV series called LONGSTREET that I really enjoyed, whose protagonist was an insurance investigator blinded in a murder attempt. This series is the one upon which that premise, that of a blind detective, was based. Duncan Maclain was however, blinded in World War I. The character was also portrayed in a couple of films by the fine actor Edward Arnold in the 1940s.
This book was well plotted, and clearly well researched in respect to then current resources available to the sight impaired, and also to some of the background with regard to the murder involved. One starts out obviously intrigued by the character and his milieu. The middle bogs down a bit, but the resolution is quite interesting. Based on this book, difficult to obtain for many years, until they were all released in recent years in Kindle format, I will be reading the rest of the series. Contemporary sight impaired readers of a sensitive nature may be offended by some of the content, but it should be kept in mind that this book was published in 1937.
This book was well plotted, and clearly well researched in respect to then current resources available to the sight impaired, and also to some of the background with regard to the murder involved. One starts out obviously intrigued by the character and his milieu. The middle bogs down a bit, but the resolution is quite interesting. Based on this book, difficult to obtain for many years, until they were all released in recent years in Kindle format, I will be reading the rest of the series. Contemporary sight impaired readers of a sensitive nature may be offended by some of the content, but it should be kept in mind that this book was published in 1937.
July 8, 2022
An apparently wealthy blind man lives in a luxurious New York apartment outfitted with all kinds of gadgets to assist him and compensate for his lack of vision. People start to get murdered and he and his "team" are called on to prove a man's innocence and solve the series of murders. The underground tunnels and sewers of New York are a major if oblique element of the story.
My issues with this first book in the series include the fanciful gadgets and tools the blind man uses to "see" geography and spatial details; why his associates call him Captain Maclain; his use of two assist dogs; the often bizarre esoteric vocabulary that is totally out of place in the context of the story; and finally, how the author deals with his blindness altogether. I am intimately familiar with a blind person and some of the scenes the character encounters (as it relates to his blindness) are trite and stupid.
My issues with this first book in the series include the fanciful gadgets and tools the blind man uses to "see" geography and spatial details; why his associates call him Captain Maclain; his use of two assist dogs; the often bizarre esoteric vocabulary that is totally out of place in the context of the story; and finally, how the author deals with his blindness altogether. I am intimately familiar with a blind person and some of the scenes the character encounters (as it relates to his blindness) are trite and stupid.
November 5, 2013
Classic vintage mystery. Interesting characters and plot. A great read if you enjoy the old mysteries.
January 28, 2014
The first of the Maclain mysteries. Fascinating in that it's not only a good mystery but a step into the beginning of the 20th century.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews