Spider House

Hugh North #5

by F. Van Wyck Mason

When eccentric Ezra Boonton retired from financial circles with a huge fortune and a reputation for shady dealings, he left behind him a score of crippled corporations, which his manipulations had bled to the bone, and the disparaging title of the "Spider of the Street."Seemingly a large portion of his wealth was spent on his new country estate, well fortified, and containing every safeguard against the many threats of personal violence his ruthless methods had resulted in. Steel doors, electric wiring, alarms, and personal bodyguards all protected the inhabitants of his home, yet through them stalked the Dark Angel in a series of visits that left tragedy in his wake.Captain Janos Catlin of the State Police found in this weird house with its air of impending horror circumstances foreign to even his wide experience in the solution of fantastic cases. That his presence was resented by even those who had summoned him and that every obstacle possible was raised by his oddly assorted companions still further complicated his already difficult position.Mr. Mason has reached a new level of deftness in his characterizations of old Ezra Boonton, wily, degenerate, and neurotic; Dr. Lawes, suave and professional; and Nurse Delray, exotic yet tempered with the world's hardness, and the reader will find these and other personalities drawn with the utmost vividness.

Genres: Mystery

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

aka Geoffrey Coffin, Frank W. Mason, Ward Weaver

Francis Van Wyck Mason (November 11, 1901 – August 28, 1978, Bermuda) was an American historian and novelist. He had a long and prolific career as a writer spanning 50 years and including 65 published novels.

Reviews

[Orion · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard of Spider House because the Oxford English Dictionary says the first usage of the phrase "cold as a witch's tit" appears on page 210 of this book:

Quote:
1932 Van Wyck Mason, Spider House p. 210 It's cold as a witch's tit outside.

I had been trying to find out where this phrase came from, and Cecil Adams' The Straight Dope listed the OED reference and goes on to say: "Van Wyck Mason was a writer of mysteries, at a time when colorful metaphors were common. There is a strong possibility that he invented the phrase himself." So I started looking into the book and Van Wyck Mason, its author.

Fortunately my local college library has the original 1932 edition of Spider House. As a special treat this copy was originally owned by Merle Norman whose famous line of cosmetics is known around the country.


The story is about a man named Ezra Boonton who made a fortune on Wall Street taking money from poor good-hearted people. He became known as The Spider of the Street and is now retired and living in fear for his life in a specially built house in New Brunswick, NJ, where he has blockaded himself on the 2nd floor with a guard and security systems to protect him from being murdered. On a particular cold November night he has asked State Trooper Captain Janos Catlin to visit him because he is in "a momentary danger" of his life. At the house are his butler/guard Kelly, his nurses Dora DelRay and Hans Gruber, his brother Juan Boonton, and Dr. Lewes his physician. Two more troopers join Captain Catlin to provide extra security. Then, in this secure house, first the butler appears to shoot himself while cleaning his gun and then it seems a gun with a silencer is used to kill Ezra Boonton, but the murder weapon cannot be found. All that can be determined is that several people heard a low hum and there is a smell of burnt hair.

By the time it is solved this is quite an elaborate mystery with lots of excitement and intrigue. Van Wyck Mason's writing suffers from racial and ethnic caricatures that, while acceptable in the 1930s, make this book hard to read now. As for the famous phrase in the book, "It's cold as a witch's tit outside," that would outlive the author's fame, it was one of seven similes for how cold it was that Mason used in this book. The others being:

Cold as an Arctic gale (p.74),
Cold as all hell (p.107),
Cold as human greed (p.107),
Cold as a grave stone (p.210)
Cold as a witch's tit (p. 210),
Colder'n a loan shark's smile (p.214), and
Cold as a Pharoah's heart (p.272).

This gives credence to Cecil Adam's theory that Mason was just trying to use colorful similes to get across the frigidness of the weather.

[Rick Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a version of a locked-room mystery, which has turned into a locked-entire-second-floor mystery. A bit daring, with the killings occurring under the nose of the state police. Red herrings abound. It is remarkable that there is only one woman in the book - and this one is the one your mother warned you about.

The drug smuggling gang seems to be a popular theme of the 1930's. The action all culminates in a big fight on the houseboat, quite satisfying.

Note that the text uses stereotypes and pejorative terms for various nationalities, unacceptable today but common in writing of the time.

[Cary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read reviews by others of the complete edition of this book and I agree with booth reviewers, but there is one thing that has been neglected. Although this book is listed as Hugh North #5, North does NOT appear anywhere in the book! I suggest that someone more knowledgeable about GOODREADS should make this fact known and the numbering of the Hugh North books be changed as appropriate. The whole list appears problematical to say the least. The Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Van_...
appears to be correct.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been really cold here (10 below with windchill). Stepping outside, someone exclaimed, “ it’s colder than a witches tit!” This led to our lively discussion of where such a peculiar phrase could’ve originated. Google informed us that this phrase originated in this book (Page 210). In fact, when this work was published in 1930, the author was considered a master of the simile. Here are some examples.:

It looked on that human, gorilla as appropriate as the coronation robes of England on a jazz drummer.

It’s cold as human greed. How’s that for assembly doctor?

Smells like a circus riders drawers (page 120)

I’m as low as a secondhand railroad stock (page 134)

It’s colder than a lone shark smile out here (page 214)

Damn, it’s as cold as Pharaoh’s heart (page 272)

I found a number of similarities between this work and the writings of Rex Stout. Comparing Captain Janos Caitlin with Nero Wolf I notice:

* both are famous detectives
* both use reason and deduction
* both refuse to share their suspicions until the big reveal at the end of the book
* both gather all the suspects in a house to allow one suspect to see that they are trapped and then confess to the murder

All that being said, I enjoyed the mystery and recommend this book.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captain Janos Catlin has been called to the forbidding mansion of Ezra Boonton, known as the "Spider of the Street". Presumably Wall Street is meant; after all the book was published in 1932 not so long after the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. As the story proceeds, Ezra's butler is murdered and a bit later he himself is murdered too. Captain Catlin figures out fast that a lot of the people might have motives to do the deed. There is his brother, Juan Boonton, Nurse Dora Delray, Dr. Lawes, and others. and he discovers gangland rings of dealers of narcotics. Where to start - there are more murders to come as well as kidnappings and wild chases. And the "Spider of the Street" had swindled a number of people out of their life savings - back then there were no Social Security, 401Ks, IRAs and the like.