A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #17 - The Final Appointment

For whatever reason, Kensington Publishing Corp. decided to publish two Marcia Blair (a/k/a Marc Baker) mysteries right in a row.  Book 16, The Final Guest, was published in January 1979, while this book, Book 17 in the Zebra Mystery Puzzler series, was published one month later in February 1979.  While Jan Michaels had two books published somewhat close together (books 12 and 14 were Michaels' two Darby Castle mysteries), this is the first time (and I believe the only time) an author had two books in a row published in this series.  Not sure the reasoning, but it gave fans of the series an opportunity to read two Tory Baxter murder mysteries one after another!

 

The Final Appointment finds our young nurse detective actually being sought out and asked to help solve a case.  The book begins with Tory being followed by someone - and being the intuitive young sleuth that she is, she quickly outwits the woman and confronts her, only to learn that Dina Severson needs her help.  Dina and her two best friends, Felicia Adams and Candice Jeffers, believe they are in danger.  Someone has been entering Felicia's apartment and moving things around. Nothing is stolen, but paintings are turned upside down, vases are placed in the middle of the room.  Despite the locks being changed several times, the culprit continues to get in.  Now the matter has escalated, as Felicia has received a photograph of the three girls - with Felicia's face marked out with a big "X"!  It seems Candice knows Tory's Aunt Tildy, and Tildy told them about Tory's sleuthing abilities, so they sought her out to help them.

 

The mystery becomes more dangerous than Tory expects when Felicia turns up dead, found at the bottom of the stairs in the girls' apartment complex.  Tory's police friend, Lieutenant Jay Thorpe, rules it out as an accident, but Tory is not convinced.  Especially when they find Felicia's key ring with an added bonus: a small golden charm of a monkey with its hands covering its mouth.  Dina and Candice swear that Felicia never had such a charm. Plus, with Felicia out of the picture (no pun intended), it seems Candice is next on the list - her apartment is vandalized, this time with a warning about the her time in Paris with Felicia.  Candice swears nothing happened on their trip, but Tory has to wonder if they did not inadvertently offend some psycho who is now exacting his (or her) revenge.  Before you know it, Candice turns up dead, and Dina is afraid she is next!

 

The suspects include Felicia's boyfriend, who turns out to be related to someone accused of embezzling funds from the financial firm owned jointly by the girls' fathers.  There is also the mysterious blond haired woman who was seen putting envelopes into the girls' mailboxes at the apartment complex, as well as having purchased golden monkey charms from a dealer in San Francisco.  Then there is the Paris connection between the two victims, which seems out of place, since Dina did not go to Paris - so why would the killer target her?  Does everything tie back to their fathers' financial firm and the problems that occurred decades ago?  Or is the motive something much darker and more sinister?

 

Blair (Baker) tries to craft a great whodunnit, but, unfortunately, the identity of the killer is pretty easy to spot from the very beginning.  There are plenty of red herrings thrown out there, even though they are woven in for purposes of making the reader think this is the real trail of the killer.  I was a bit disappointed in that aspect, as the previous mysteries in this series written by Blair (Baker) were actually pretty well plotted.  That being said, I did enjoy the further developments with Tory's friendship with Dr. Sandy Brockman and her love/hate relationship with Lt. Jay Thorpe.  I feel bad for poor Sandy, who seems to always get the raw end of the deal, but at least Jay steps up by the end of this book to let Tory know once and for all exactly how he feels - it sure took long enough!

 

The cover art for this book is provided by Mel Greifinger, who also did the art on the cover of  The Curse of the Golden Skull, which was a Terry Spring mystery by Josephine Kains (a/k/a Joseph Goulart).  Rather than a particular scene from the book, we get a collage of Tory, the three girls, the son of the embezzler, and one of the girls putting on make-up.  I find it somewhat amusing that all of these Tory Baxter covers show Tory in her nurse's outfit, but share rarely, if ever, actually wears such an outfit in the books.  And speaking of inconsistencies in the artwork (yeah, so that was a pretty bad segue, but whatever!), the internals in this book have some glaring mistakes in them.  The first internal illustration, on page 21, shows Tory holding the picture while sitting in front of the three girls - Dina, Felicia, and Candice (see above).  However, in the story, Tory has come racing over to Dina's apartment because Felicia is missing - and in the particular scene depicted, Tory is talking only to Dina and Candice.  Felicia is not in the scene at all!  It leaves you to wonder just what kind of information are the internal illustrators given when they are told what scenes to draw!

 

Now, the third internal illustration, found on page 59, shows a woman who I can only assume is Tory (her appearance is never consistent in these internals) looking at a woman's hand that is holding up a key ring that displays the small monkey charm, with its hands cover its eyes ("see no evil").  The only problem with this one is that in the story, the "little figure was beautifully done and tiny hands were over its mouth" (p. 58).  That is a pretty glaring error, particularly when these monkey charms are supposed to be a clue to the killer's identity!  Again, what information was given to these illustrators for the scenes they were to draw?  Aside from that error, though, I will say that Tory (if that is her) in this scene bears a striking resemblance to the Rudy Nappi version of Nancy Drew that graced the covers of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories in the 1960s and 1970s - similar hair style, facial expression, etc.  Perhaps the role of Tory Baxter was temporarily being placed by Nancy Drew (yeah, okay, probably not, but it is a funny coincidence).

 

While by far not the best mystery in the series, I cannot say it was a bad read.  With any luck, this was just a one-off for Blair (Baker), and the later mysteries featuring Tory Baxter will be a little bit more difficult to solve!

 

RATING:   7 wild blond mops of hair out of 10 for FINALLY moving Tory and Jay's relationship forward, which turns out to be the highlight of this book!