The Cases of Susan Dare

It's not often that I pick up and read a vintage "adult" novel - most of the "grown-up" mysteries or sci-fi/fantasy books that I read are recent publication.  But once in a great while, an older book will catch my fancy, so I'll pick it up and give it a shot.  Such is the case with this one.  I can't tell you where I first came across this book, character, or title, but I knew that I wanted it - and I searched quite a while before I found a decent copy in dust jacket in fairly good condition.  A female detective is sure to spark my interest, and the name alone - "Susan Dare" - was enough to pique my curiosity.  So, I bought it and finally sat down to read it.

The Cases of Susan Dare is a collection of six short tales written by Mignon C. Eberhart.  This is Eberhart's only short-story collection, but this author, dubbed "America's Agatha Christie," was quite prolific - she wrote mystery novels published from 1929 all the way to 1988 - that's some career!  From what I found online, her mysteries mostly featured female protagonists (yay!), and it appears she only wrote one series, the Sarah Keate mysteries (consisting of seven books, the first five of which were made into films!).  Thus, it looks like I picked an author whose books I will definitely be hunting down!  Especially the Sarah Keate mysteries, if they are anywhere near as well written as the Susan Dare stories (plus I need to see if any of those movies have ever made it to DVD...).

Susan Dare is a mystery writer who somehow finds herself at the scene of a murder time and time again, and it falls upon her to figure out these seemingly unsolvable cases.  Unlike so many female sleuths of today, who are fearless, determined, and seek out mysteries to solve, Susan Dare is a reluctant sleuth.  She is hesitant to become involved and is usually coerced into it; she becomes weak-kneed  and fearful when she realizes who the killer is, afraid she may be the next victim; and she tries so hard to stay away from situations that could potentially become dangerous (and yet, there she is again and again put into those very situations!).  Despite these drawbacks, Susan Dare is a very likable character with realistic flaws that would be present in a real person (let's face it - how many mystery authors would REALLY want to find themselves faced with a dead body and the task of figuring out who the killer is?!).

The six short stories were originally published in 1934 in The Delineator, which was an American women's magazine published in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  From what I could find, it appears the stories were first collected into book form in 1935, although the book I has a publication date of October 1942, so it is clearly a later edition.  Each story is 47-53 pages in length, but they are each complete mysteries, although admittedly, in most of them, the reader does not actually get to see the killer brought to justice - we simply see Susan solving the crime and revealing the identity to the police for them to apprehend.  That does not make them any less interesting, nor any less satisfying, though.  In fact, the brevity of the tales and the lack of final "resolution," so to speak, actually adds to the mystique of the stories.  Oh, and I should probably mention that Susan does have a cohort of sorts, a young reporter by the name of Jim Byrne, who she turns to often to help rescue her from the dangerous situations in which she finds herself.

"Introducing Susan Dare" is the first story, in which readers meet Susan Dare, who is visiting with a dear friend, Christabel.  When Christabel's former love interest turns up dead in the estate's library, Susan finds herself questioning which of Christabel's family who live on the estate could have killed the man in cold blood.  "Spider" tells the tale of a young woman who is overcome by fear in her own home.  When the woman's adopted sister is killed, it appears the young woman is the only possible suspect, Susan must uncover the truth before the wrong person goes to jail.  In the "Easter Devil," a wicked-looking carved idol is believed to be the source of all the trouble happening in the Denistry home - but the one who killed the family's butler is not finished, and Susan tries a desperate ploy to trap the killer before he or she strikes again.  "The Claret Stick" is one of my favorite stories, being set in the theater, where Susan must figure out how the leading man was killed on an empty stage, with no one present.  (This story kind of reminded me of the Nancy Drew TV episode from the '70s show, "A Haunting We Will Go")  "The Man Who Was Missing" takes Susan to a boarding house, where a woman's fiance has disappeared, and although everyone else believes he simply got cold feet, Susan begins to suspect foul play may be involved and must find a way to prove it.  And the final story, "The Calico Dog," features a case of two men both claiming to be the son and heir to an older widow, who wants nothing more than to be reunited with her real son who disappeared some 20 years prior - but one of them is a fraud, and when the woman's trusted family friend turns up murdered, Susan must figure out if one of the men claiming to be the son is a murderer!

Reading these stories, I could easily envision them being weekly episodes of a television show.  I'm actually surprised no one has ever picked up on that idea, as the name and character truly lend themselves to an ongoing serial drama about a female writer who solves murders (hmmm ... maybe someone did happen across that idea and simply turned it into a show starring Angela Lansbury ...).  In any event, the stories were well-written, engaging, and filled with plenty of suspense and surprises - and I'll readily admit that despite my years of reading mysteries, several of these stories had me stumped!  Definitely a recommended read for mystery lovers!

RATING:  10 ropes and pulleys holding the flys and drops out of 10 for superbly written murder mysteries with a fantastic "new" lady detective.