The Virgin Kills

by Raoul Whitfield, Boris Dralyuk (Introduction)

Millionaire gambler Eric Vennel's yacht, "Virgin," sets sail for the Regatta at Poughkeepsie with an oddball assortment of uneasy companions-hardheaded sportswriter Al Conners; beautiful actress Carla Sand; her rival gossip columnist Rita Veld, oversized brute Mick O'Rourke and a large sampling of East and West-Coast society. Rumors of Vennel's extensive wagering on the Regatta, and a midnight attack, raise the tension to the point of murder.

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Although born in New York, Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield's early life was shaped by his father's transfer to the Philippines where he led the privilege life as the dependent of a Territorial Government bureaucrat. Young Whitfield would later travel through China and Japan where his memory of Asia would prove to serve him well. Back in the States, the teenager aspired to motion pictures, where his rugged good looks graced the silent cinema. If it weren't for America's entry into the Great War in 1917 we might know him as an actor, but Whitfield enlisted in the Army and was initially assigned to the ambulance corps. Desiring action, he sought and won a commission as a pilot and saw duty on the German Front as a combat pilot. After the Armistice, Whitfield spurned his steel business-based family's desires, married his first wife Prudence and landed a job with the Pittsburgh Post as a reporter. Prudence encouraged his long held desires to write pulp fiction stories. His writing drew upon his childhood travels in the Far East (his 'Jo Gar, Island Detective' character was based in Manila) along with his more recent wartime exploits. He succeeded in selling stories for Boy's Life, War Stories and Battle Stories (under the pseudonym 'Temple Field') - but he's especially notable for his contributions to Black Mask, the creme of the pulps. His 'Crime Buster' Black Mask stories were so popular they were amalgamated into his first novel, Green Ice (published in 1930) earning the praise of none other than the genre master, Dashiell Hammett, with its hard-as-nails emphasis on action. Whitfield had a total of 9 books published during the depths of the Great Depression. The speed in which he ground out work was amazing but it also drew criticism; his lesser stories were spurned as hack work. Whitfield often wrote under the pseudonym, Ramon Dacolta, who ironically proved a heady rival in readership popularity. Many of his 1927-33 stories easily ranks with the best authors of pulp fiction. Whitfield's screen writing career began in earnest after his divorce from Prudence and relocated from Florida to Los Angeles in 1933. He landed a job as a writer for Paramount and on a whirlwind trip to New York City, met and married the wealthy and unstable Emily Davies Vanderbilt Thayer, with emphasis on the Vanderbilt. Life was good for a short period; the couple purchased a large ranch outside Las Vegas, Nevada and Whitfield's writing productivity slowed to a trickle. The Whitfield's marriage was wobbly, masked by partying. Emily experienced bouts of manic depression and the couple separated in early 1935. Her mental state was far more fragile than anyone had imagined, she committed suicide at the Nevada ranch that May. Whitfield was inconsolable over his wife's death and he was utterly destroyed. Contracting TB in his 40s he died at a military hospital in California in 1945.

Reviews

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate being an expert on Raoul Whitfield's Crime novels already. I wish there were another twenty or so, beyond the three I read this year in fairly quick succession. But with Death in a Bowl, Green Ice, and finally The Virgin Kills taken care of, that's all there is, there ain't no more. No more novels - I can pursue some short stories.

The yacht setting for this book made things feel, sometimes, like a hardboiled version of Death on the Nile, alas without quite the cleverness to the whodunit solution. Though, Whitfield does okay with the reveal at the finale, it all makes sense, etc. - it's just that his two whodunits Death in a Bowl, and The Virgin Kills do not deal in great clues, or in the case of Virgin Kills, strict 'fair play' Mystery protocols. But then I wouldn't say things are unfair. Call it 'last minute evidence' pointing somewhere you might have been pondering anyway. Bizarre as it may be for me to say this - if The Middle Temple Murder got 4 stars out of me with an ending that did not play fair, then I can't go low on something like this novel, where it was all so much fun, so exciting, that I don't care if Raoul Whitfield doesn't wrap it up as stunningly as Agatha Christie; and on that note, we do get all suspects collected for the final explanations, so that seemed very familiar. If Middle Temple Murders had the excuse that it was from 1919 - before people were laying down rules about fair play - then The Virgin Kills (1932) is off the hook due to being a better hardboiled Crime novel than a seamless whodunit. And anyway, I got fooled, and never really zeroed in on the true culprit.

Besides the delicious 'boat trip of friends, lovers, business rivals, acquaintances, and total strangers, which goes horribly wrong' angle, I also loved how this book reminded me of The Arsenal Stadium Mystery...the sporty angle. Nobody collapses on a football pitch here, but the yacht's passengers settle in to watch the Regatta - rowing race - and is if our spectators didn't have enough collective backstory of a sinister nature, well, the race gets...disrupted. The yacht's drama seems very likely to somehow tie into the Regatta's tragic ending, and no one gets to sail home just yet.

Green Ice is, to my mind, the best of Whitfield's three novels - but it's not really a whodunit, though there are some terrific plot twists and surprises. I lump Whitfield's stunning debut with stuff like Little Caesar, James M. Cain novels, and great robbery/heist books full of lowlifes and kingpins of crime needing to weed out who they can't trust (plus emeralds; uh, maybe plus emeralds). Death in a Bowl, on the other hand, may sit with most readers, as the author's best shot at a 'fair play' whodunit...murderer foiled by clues and science. But, I must rate The Virgin Kills a bit above Death in a Bowl, because...well, I don't know, really...I think I just had more fun.

Anyway, if you are rooting around for the neglected gems of the hardboiled genre, you can be a Raoul Whitfield expert in just three novels (sadly) (nothing found in a drawer, that can be published decades later? we can't have a Desmond Bagley moment...no? darn!). The list of recommended hardboiled works that put me on to Whitfield had comments attached that said Death in a Bowl is superior to the other two...but this is why we check things out for ourselves, eh? And I would say, firmly, if you go to Whitfield, don't skip The Virgin KIlls.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good piece of early Noire (1933). A nice outing on a yacht. It's Noire. It's Gatsby. I think Whitfield is a little too unknown. I love GREEN ICE, the gun molls in it were some tough girls in a tough world. This book deserves more attention, Raoul Whitfield is one of the best authors of early, early Noire/Hard-boiled Crime.