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The Man Next Door
A GIRL, A SPY, A MURDER...
Maida Lovell was a beautiful young Washington confidential secretary with love on her mind and hardly a care in the world — until she was suddenly caught in a net of intrigue, spying, and worse.
Terror descended on her, threatening not only her life but her good name. She was abruptly faced with the choice of betraying the man she loved, framed on a murder charge — or surrendering her honor and probably her life.
Popular Library #445-00401-125.
Maida Lovell was a beautiful young Washington confidential secretary with love on her mind and hardly a care in the world — until she was suddenly caught in a net of intrigue, spying, and worse.
Terror descended on her, threatening not only her life but her good name. She was abruptly faced with the choice of betraying the man she loved, framed on a murder charge — or surrendering her honor and probably her life.
Popular Library #445-00401-125.
- GenresMystery
174 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1943
3 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Mignon G. Eberhart
143 books70 followersMignon Good (1899-1996) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. She studied at Nebraska Wesleyan University from 1917 to 1920. In 1923 she married Alanson C. Eberhart, a civil engineer. After working as a freelance journalist, she decided to become a full-time writer. In 1929 her first crime novel was published featuring 'Sarah Keate', a nurse and 'Lance O'Leary', a police detective. This couple appeared in another four novels. In the Forties, she and her husband divorced. She married John Hazen Perry in 1946 but two years later she divorced him and remarried her first husband. Over the next forty years she wrote a novel nearly every year. In 1971 she won the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America. She also wrote many short stories featuring banker/amateur sleuth James Wickwire (who could be considered a precursor to Emma Lathen's John Putnam Thatcher) and mystery writer/amateur sleuth Susan Dare.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 1, 2020
Sometimes chance, if you believe in such a thing, smiles on you. It did for me when I found this book while rummaging in the cellar. It has a bookplate from my great aunt inside, and while it is missing a dust jacket it is great shape. Only a lover of old books could understand the thrill of finding a vintage mystery!
And that's what The Man Next Door is. It is set when it was written - in the midst of World War II - in America's District of Columbia. A young secretary working for an important officer of the War Department stops by the house of her boss to pick up a script for a radio broadcast...a routine event that sends her headlong into a dizzying web of murder, deceit, espionage and desperation. Not knowing whom she can or cannot trust, Maida Lovell has to rely on her own wits and instincts to save not only herself but her country.
Mignon Eberhart's writing style is well suited to thrillers. She has a fine ability at setting a scene and providing the reader with a lifelike mental picture of people and places. She also has what I soon realized to be a deliberate (and savvy) habit of ending each chapter on a cliffhanger. This was how the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew hooked many of us as kids, and now I have to wonder why more authors don't utilize this technique.
I was never bored by this book, although I feared that the ending would be predictable (but I will confess to changing my mind on "who done it" more than once; so she kept me guessing). I will be back for another of this author's works at some point.
And that's what The Man Next Door is. It is set when it was written - in the midst of World War II - in America's District of Columbia. A young secretary working for an important officer of the War Department stops by the house of her boss to pick up a script for a radio broadcast...a routine event that sends her headlong into a dizzying web of murder, deceit, espionage and desperation. Not knowing whom she can or cannot trust, Maida Lovell has to rely on her own wits and instincts to save not only herself but her country.
Mignon Eberhart's writing style is well suited to thrillers. She has a fine ability at setting a scene and providing the reader with a lifelike mental picture of people and places. She also has what I soon realized to be a deliberate (and savvy) habit of ending each chapter on a cliffhanger. This was how the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew hooked many of us as kids, and now I have to wonder why more authors don't utilize this technique.
I was never bored by this book, although I feared that the ending would be predictable (but I will confess to changing my mind on "who done it" more than once; so she kept me guessing). I will be back for another of this author's works at some point.
August 22, 2019
Major characters:
Maida Lovell, our protagonist, secretary to Steve Blake
Steve Blake, head of a government wartime (WWII) project
Bill Skeffington, his assistant
Christine (née Favor) Blake, Steve's sister-in-law, a war widow
Angela Favor, Christine's high-maintenance younger sister
Walsh Rantoul, the effeminate boarder
Nollie Lister, a nosy neighbor
"Smith", a foreign agent
Locale: Washington DC
Synopsis: Pretty Maida Lovell, secretary to war department executive Steve Blake, stops by Christine Blake's house (his widowed sister-in-law) where he is living and has his home office. She is to pick up some notes for his radio speech later that evening. She is in love with him, and jealous that Blake has been spending time with Christine's elegant penthouse-lifestyle sister, Angela Favor. She encounters - and rebuffs - prissy Walsh Rantoul in the house, who is mixing drinks and coming on to her. She goes upstairs to retrieve the notes, and Blake stops in at the same time. After Blake departs for his meeting, Maida goes downstairs to find Blake gone and Rantoul dead in the kitchen. It looks like Blake has murdered him, since they had words earlier.
A stranger who calls himself "Smith" enters. In order to protect Blake from discovery, he offers to dispose of Rantoul's body and the evidence, if Maida will find information about airplane movements for him. The information he asks for is to be public knowledge anyway, so she complies. Now she is trapped. Smith is obviously an enemy spy and he has a hold on Maida to find out more and more intelligence on wartime materiel and personnel movements.
Review: A riveting murder/spy mystery and love story all rolled into one. As in many of Eberhart's books, the protagonist is the cute brunette girl-next-door caught up in intrigue as she also faces losing the man she loves to a high-maintenance blonde. The descriptions of Washington DC set the tone of the story, and emphasizes how much of the progress there occurs not in Congress, but behind closed doors at cocktail parties. The WWII restrictions add to the flavor. This is a tight novel, with a small cast of characters. She outwitted me, as usual. Three or four times I predicted how this was going to work out, but I was wrong every time. Even the title misled me, I thought "the man next door" referred to a certain person, but again, wrong. Can't tell you more than that.
Maida Lovell, our protagonist, secretary to Steve Blake
Steve Blake, head of a government wartime (WWII) project
Bill Skeffington, his assistant
Christine (née Favor) Blake, Steve's sister-in-law, a war widow
Angela Favor, Christine's high-maintenance younger sister
Walsh Rantoul, the effeminate boarder
Nollie Lister, a nosy neighbor
"Smith", a foreign agent
Locale: Washington DC
Synopsis: Pretty Maida Lovell, secretary to war department executive Steve Blake, stops by Christine Blake's house (his widowed sister-in-law) where he is living and has his home office. She is to pick up some notes for his radio speech later that evening. She is in love with him, and jealous that Blake has been spending time with Christine's elegant penthouse-lifestyle sister, Angela Favor. She encounters - and rebuffs - prissy Walsh Rantoul in the house, who is mixing drinks and coming on to her. She goes upstairs to retrieve the notes, and Blake stops in at the same time. After Blake departs for his meeting, Maida goes downstairs to find Blake gone and Rantoul dead in the kitchen. It looks like Blake has murdered him, since they had words earlier.
A stranger who calls himself "Smith" enters. In order to protect Blake from discovery, he offers to dispose of Rantoul's body and the evidence, if Maida will find information about airplane movements for him. The information he asks for is to be public knowledge anyway, so she complies. Now she is trapped. Smith is obviously an enemy spy and he has a hold on Maida to find out more and more intelligence on wartime materiel and personnel movements.
Review: A riveting murder/spy mystery and love story all rolled into one. As in many of Eberhart's books, the protagonist is the cute brunette girl-next-door caught up in intrigue as she also faces losing the man she loves to a high-maintenance blonde. The descriptions of Washington DC set the tone of the story, and emphasizes how much of the progress there occurs not in Congress, but behind closed doors at cocktail parties. The WWII restrictions add to the flavor. This is a tight novel, with a small cast of characters. She outwitted me, as usual. Three or four times I predicted how this was going to work out, but I was wrong every time. Even the title misled me, I thought "the man next door" referred to a certain person, but again, wrong. Can't tell you more than that.
March 24, 2020
This is one of those mysteries written with an old-fashioned flair of silly romance with a twist of espionage. Written in 1942, Ms. Eberhart would go on to have one of the longest careers among major American mystery writers. Sadly, I had never heard of her. Thank you Powell’s Books in Portland, OR for introducing me to Ms. Eberhart’s books. May not be my cup of tea, but she definitely has my respect.
Set during WW2, the story reads with a deep sense of patriotism and a deep sense of scruples. Maida is a secretary to Steve Blake, a man who holds a high-level government position and is the keeper of confidential materials regarding the US war effort. Maida is madly in love with him and it doesn’t hurt that he is tall, dark, and handsome. But her over the top adoration of Steve was gag inducing.
“Steve – all she could think of was Steve – all that bright future of Steve’s was gone. And his job – that was important too: terribly important in wartime; where would they find another man so patriotic, so selfless in his interests, and who knew that job with its peculiar and difficult requirements?” p. 28
Maida finds herself in the middle of intrigue where she must balance protecting Steve and protecting classified secrets. There’s a lot, and I mean a lot, of talking and very little action. The characters talk about what they’re going to do or what they’ve done, but rarely do we ‘see’ them doing anything. Maida doesn’t really take control, she tends to rely on the men around her for help. I guess the era in which the book was written lends itself to the heroine being more passive than I would like.
Even though there is dialogue overload, Ms. Eberhart’s writing does create slight tension and provided enough plotting that I wanted to find out who the spy was, what happened to the dead body, and how Maida resolves her dilemma of saving Steve.
PS – I loved the description of Angela Favor, “(Angela) lived in a small and luxurious penthouse, and mainly occupied herself with being a beautiful ornament of society” (p.7).
Set during WW2, the story reads with a deep sense of patriotism and a deep sense of scruples. Maida is a secretary to Steve Blake, a man who holds a high-level government position and is the keeper of confidential materials regarding the US war effort. Maida is madly in love with him and it doesn’t hurt that he is tall, dark, and handsome. But her over the top adoration of Steve was gag inducing.
“Steve – all she could think of was Steve – all that bright future of Steve’s was gone. And his job – that was important too: terribly important in wartime; where would they find another man so patriotic, so selfless in his interests, and who knew that job with its peculiar and difficult requirements?” p. 28
Maida finds herself in the middle of intrigue where she must balance protecting Steve and protecting classified secrets. There’s a lot, and I mean a lot, of talking and very little action. The characters talk about what they’re going to do or what they’ve done, but rarely do we ‘see’ them doing anything. Maida doesn’t really take control, she tends to rely on the men around her for help. I guess the era in which the book was written lends itself to the heroine being more passive than I would like.
Even though there is dialogue overload, Ms. Eberhart’s writing does create slight tension and provided enough plotting that I wanted to find out who the spy was, what happened to the dead body, and how Maida resolves her dilemma of saving Steve.
PS – I loved the description of Angela Favor, “(Angela) lived in a small and luxurious penthouse, and mainly occupied herself with being a beautiful ornament of society” (p.7).
July 21, 2024
Didn't finish it. Written in 1942, and set in a house in Washington DC during the early days of World War II, this looked promising. But I gave up after less than 75 pages because I found the "heroine," who was I think supposed to be 'plucky,' a ninny. The murder takes place right away, but when it turned into what seemed to become an espionage tale I lost all interest. So maybe not a fair review.
August 11, 2019
Murder-mystery written and set during WWII, it has all the cozy charm one would expect from a homicidal puzzle with a dash of espionage thrown in. The book also has a fair dose of WWII love-of-country fervor. But considering that these folks were fighting actual nazis (unlike the current crop of alt-right microscopic IQs), there is a refreshing quality to their willingness to sacrifice... since they didn't have anywhere to post memes.
The fact that I found a Dell Map Back edition made it all the more enjoyable.
The fact that I found a Dell Map Back edition made it all the more enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews