A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #22 - The Final Fair

Everyone's favorite nurse-turned-sleuth (and, no, I'm not talking about Cherry Ames!) returns for her sixth Zebra Mystery Puzzler.  Author Marcia Blair (in reality, Marc Baker) brings back Victoria "Tory" Baxter for another murder mystery - only, for the first time, the murder is not in any way connected to a patient for whom Tory is caring.  And that is not the only unusual thing about this book - there are a couple of other "firsts" in this one.  Oh, and this book also sports the misnumbered titles in both the front listing and the order from at the back of the book.  I'm guessing since books 21, 22, 23, and 24 were published simultaneously, they all contain the same errors in the listings.  When I read the next two books in the series, I suppose I'll find out whether that holds true.

 

The Final Fair does open pretty much the same way as all of the other Tory Baxter books in this series - the murder takes place right there in the opening pages. Which means, the reader has absolutely no opportunity to meet any of the characters prior to the killing, and therefore, we know nothing about anyone as the story progresses.  That honestly is okay with me.  I think it adds a certain nuance to the story, because the readers goes into it without any preconceived notions about any of the characters that the author may have inadvertently put into them.  In this instance, Tory and her coworker, Dr. Sandy Brockman (oh, he of the flashy red hair!), are attending a renaissance faire, all decked out in costume, when she hears a scream.  Before you know it, a jester gets up on stage and asks if there is a doctor in the house (and, of course, there is - literally).  Tory and Sandy follow the costumed clown to where a man is lying on his back with a knife protruding from his chest.  The dead man is Dr. Michael Peters, another resident at the hospital where Sandy works.  And the knife in his chest belongs to none other than his date, Nurse Leanne Davis, a women who Terry generally knows.  She claims someone took the knife and did this - but, as it turns out, only her fingerprints are on the hilt of the knife.  So, if she did not do it, then who did?  And how?

 

This is quite the challenging mystery, I will admit. There are not a tremendous amount of suspects.  There is Leanne, obviously, who was being blackmailed by Dr. Peters into marrying him.  There is also Leanne's father, who has been the one shelling out the money to protect his daughter's reputation.  And then there is Dr. Jeremy Jones, a married doctor with whom Leanne was once having an affair - an affair that Dr. Peters walked in on by accident and then used that "accident" as a means to get money.  And we must not forget Dr. Peters wife, who is so obsessed with social climbing, she stares daggers at any woman who comes in contact with her husband.  All of them have motive for killing Dr. Peters, but not all of them have the opportunity.  Dr. Jones and his wife happened to be out of town the weekend of the renaissance fair.  And oddly enough, Leanne's father does not even make the suspect list for the police.  So, was it Leanne?

 

Well, when Leanne turns up dead of an apparent suicide (complete with a typed-up, but unsigned suicide note right beside the empty pill bottle), the police think the matter is all wrapped up.  Tory is not so sure.  She is convinced Leanne was innocent, and for her, the girl's death only proves it.  She keeps looking into it, and suddenly she finds her own life in jeopardy, as she is nearly run down by a racing car and almost pushed into the path of an oncoming train!  Just when she has convinced her friend, Lieutenant Jay Thorpe, that the case may not be so clear cut, another body turns up.  With another typed suicide note.  Jay is convinced now that it really is all over, and he warns Tory to let it go.  Of course, anyone who knows Tory Baxter knows she is like a dog with a bone - she will NEVER let it go.  Not until the real murderer is caught.  Only this time, the murderer catches up to her in a dark parking lot with no one else around.  It makes one wonder just how she is going to survive this one...

 

As mentioned above, this book features several "firsts."  Not only is it the first Tory Baxter story to not have Tory taking care of someone, it is also the first Zebra Mystery Puzzler to NOT feature the title character on the cover.  This cover art, by none other than Sanford Hoffman, who has provided internal illustrations for a number of the books in this series (including this one), features the scene of Leanne having the knife taken from her by the masked man in the dark colored robe.  Hoffman even gets the minor detail right about the hint of blond sideburns peeking out from under the hood of the monk!   While Leanne is prominent, front and center, on the cover, our sleuthing nurse, Tory Baxter, is nowhere to be seen!  (Something else of note about the cover is that one the white car in the background, there appear to be some words written in red along the side of the car; however, I am unable to make it what they say, even when I try to enlarge the image. I would be curious to know what words the artist tried to sneak on to that cover!)

 

Another "first" for this series deals with one of the internal illustrations.  In all of the prior books, all of the illustrations have been included in the story before that final sealed chapter. Not so in this book.  The last illustration can be found on page 197, four pages into the last chapter!  And what is odd about it is that it holds absolutely no clues to the murder mystery at all - it merely shows the backside of Tory as she makes her way to her car in the dark parking lot (see above illustration depicting the scene just before the killer comes up behind her with a gun!).  I'm not sure why the publisher elected to have an illustration done from the last chapter, instead of adding another one to the main story, which might have provided another clue to the identity of the killer.  Which would have been helpful, as quite frankly, only one of the illustrations from the story had any sort of clue that would direct the reader to the killer.

 

Despite the lack of illustration clues, there were enough in the story to lead you to the killer - although, I will admit, there was some misleading ones as well, which took me in one direction, before I caught on the other ones.  I think I figured it out just before Tory did in the story - meaning Baker a/k/a Blair did a pretty good job keeping me guessing.  One big plus for this story is that Tory and Jay's relationship got pushed a bit further along, particularly right there at the end when Jay accidentally blurts out some things he never intended to say out loud, leaving him all flustered before he storms off - and leaving Aunt Tildy with a great big smile!

 

The author makes reference to Toll House cookies in the story (p. 20), which I found surprising, as these type of books usually avoid name brand references.  I could not even recall if Toll House cookies were popular back then, but apparently they have been around since 1938, so by the 1970s, they would be pretty well known.  The author also references the Cow Palace, which I first mistook for the name of a steak restaurant from back in the day when I lived in Kentucky (their slogan was "take ol' Alice to the Cow Palace!"); however, it is actually an historic exhibition hall where they host a "Dickens Fair" annually.  In the story, Aunt Tildy takes Tory to see the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace, making it another non-fictional reference in the book.  As I've noted before, these type of references to real places and things ground the story, to keep it a bit more "real" for the reader.

 

Another good one is a series of good mysteries!

 

RATING:  9 enormous pieces of apple pie out of 10 for keeping the mystery challenging and the friction between Tory and Jay even more challenging! 

A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #21 - You'll Die Today

There is a question of whether this book was published prematurely.  While the cover of the book shows it is clearly book 21 in the Zebra Mystery Puzzler series, if you look at the inside front listing of titles for this series (which is the first book in this series to have a complete listing like this!), it shows book 21 is The Final Fair by Marcia Blair, and this book is actually book 22!  However, if you look at the number codes after the books, you will this book is listed as (475), while the Marcia Blair book is listed as (476), which gives credence to this book actually being book 21 and not 22.  Somewhere along the line, someone screwed up and listed the books in the wrong order - will be curious to see if that gets corrected in future volumes of this series.

 

You'll Die Today is Maxine Reynolds' fifth foray into the world of Zebra Mystery Puzzlers, and by far, this is the best one yet!  Martin Grove (under his pseudonym of Marjorie J. Grove) writes an superbly crafted mystery that was filled with plenty of misdirect, red herrings, and a great Agatha Christie-style reveal!  Our favorite investigative reporter finds herself sent to San Francisco to attend a movie premiere - but when Max has to fill-in on a radio talk show unexpectedly as their guest - the movie director- fails to appear, Max finds another murder dropped in her lap when a caller informs her the director is dead!  The caller even admits to being the killer and gives Max (and the listeners) a cryptic clue of where the body can be found.  It turns out the cover to this book reveals the location of the body, and, of course, Max is the one to find it.  The only clues are the pink match sticks and the colored candy wrappers left at the scene of the crime.

 

Max is determined to solve the crime (after all, solving the murder will give her an exclusive to yet another first-page story!), but she has to figure out not only who might have killed the man, but also why.  Was it the ex-wife, who claims to want nothing to do with him, yet who is still in love with him?  Or was it the angry actor who stormed off the set when the director refused to change some lines for him?  Or was it the head of the union who was furious the director was not using his union drivers for the film?  As Max begins to look into each of the suspects, she starts to find that each of them had means, motive, and opportunity!  And just when you think she might be able to figure it out, WHAM!  Another body turns up - a local columnist who met with the director on the night of his death and may very well have been the last one to see him alive.  Did he unwittingly know something about the murder, and so he had to be silenced?  Otherwise, what connection could he possibly have had with the director?

 

Grove manages to keep you guessing right up to the end - and the final reveal in this book definitely makes the entire book worth reading!  In true Christie-style, Grove has Max bring all of the suspects together in one room (in this case, it is the sound studio for the radio show), and live on-air, Max calls out each suspect, reviews each person's motive, and one-by-one eliminates them until there is just one person left - the killer!  And very careful readers will pick up on one particular clue -a simple statement made by one of the suspects that actually has a very important connection to one of the internal illustrations - I caught it immediately when the remark was said and guessed this person was the killer, and I was right!  But I give Grove credit for keeping it subtle, but laying the groundwork so that once the killer's identity is revealed, the reader can see that all the clues were there from the very beginning.  Otherwise, if you miss that one statement, then you could very well bounce around the suspects trying to figure out whodunnit.  Grove throws plenty of misdirects, and admittedly, at one point, I thought perhaps the killer was the roommate of one of the suspects (and it could have been, as there were clues that pointed to this person!), but I changed my mind when the real killer said something that I remembered seeing in one of the illustrations - which is why it is so important to pay attention to those internal drawings!

 

And speaking of which, there is no signature on the cover art, nor on any of the internals, so I have no way of knowing who provided the art for this book.  The internals offer framing for the drawings, which is something Sanford Hoffman tends to do on his illustrations for this series; however, the way in which the people are drawn in this book lead me to believe it was not Hoffman who did the art.  It's truly a shame the publishers did not credit the cover and interior artists for these books, as they do these days.  This series has offered up some pretty great art, both on the covers and inside, and it would be nice to be able to track down some of that art (if it is still in existence today and has not been thrown out or otherwise destroyed).  But, alas, I guess that was not meant to be.

 

Something I did find a bit strange with this book is that for the first time since this series began, the published provided a complete listing of every book in the series thus far (including the three books published alongside this one - books 22, 23, and 24) in the front of the book across from the title page - HOWEVER, that listing shows book 21 as The Final Fair by Marcia Blair (#476) and book 22 is this book (#475). The number in the parentheses appears to be a portion of the ISBN, and since this book has an earlier ISBN than the Marcia Blair book, it would make since that this book was published first, as book 21.  But the error does not stop there.  While books 23 and 24 are listed with their proper titles, in the back of the book, on the order form page, book 25 is listed as Who Killed Me? by Laura Allen (#497), book 26 is You'll Be The Death of Me by Miriam Lynch (#494), book 27 is Murder by the Book by Norma Schier (#495), and book 28 is The Whispering Cat Mystery by Josephine Kains (#496).  Yet, when they were published, book 25 was You'll Be the Death of Me, book 26 was Murder by the Book, book 27 was The Whispering Cat Mystery, and book 28 was Who Killed Me?  As you can see, the actual publication order followed the ascending ISBNs.  So, I'm not sure why the books were listed out of order in the front listing and on the order form page, but looking ahead, I found that this error does not get corrected until we are into the 30s for this series!

 

A few tidbits worth nothing: first, Rob (Max's boyfriend) offers to take Max to the Blue Boar Inn (p. 68), which was a real restaurant in San Francisco.  Interestingly, you can find for sale on eBay matchbooks from that restaurant (which I say is interesting, but matches play an important role in this mystery!).  We had a Blue Boar restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up, but it was nothing like the one described in this book.  The second thing is when Max comes across the column typed up by Shelby Duncan, she notes the column "had been completed because the -"30"- the mark newspaper people use at the bottom of their last page of copy - had been typed" (p. 78).  I smiled when I read this, because I had previously learned about this when I was reading the Penny Parker series by Mildred Wirt (Benson), as the title character in that series helped her father, who owned a newspaper.  Lastly, during the big reveal, Max references a play that is mentioned in Shelby Duncan's column: "a new topless production of The Iceman Cometh..." (p. 170).  That is an actual play, written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill, which premiered on Broadway in the 1940s (some 30 years prior to the publication of this book). I cannot begin to imagine what a "topless" production of this play would have been like!

 

Without a doubt, this is my favorite book in the series, and most certainly, the best plotted and written of them all!  This one certainly sets a very high standard for the 39 books to follow in this series!

 

RATING:  10 unstruck pink wooden matches out of 10 for superb plotting, excellent execution, and fantastic fun in trying to solve this one! 

 

A Zebra Mystery Puzzler #20 - The Green Lama Mystery

With this 20th Zebra Mystery Puzzler, I hit the one-third mark for this 60-book series, and with it, we see the return of Josephine Kains' (Ronald Joseph Goulart's) television reporter turned sleuth, Terry Spring.  This is Kains' third foray into the Puzzler series, and it offers up a very Agatha Christie-style mystery for the amateur detective to solve.  I do love the fact that Kains' books feature titles very reminiscent of the old children's mystery series from back in the day - Devil Mask Mystery and The Curse of the Golden Skull being the previous two mysteries. They give these books a stronger feel of being "adult" Nancy Drew-style mysteries rather than just your run-of-the-mill murder mystery books!

 

The Green Lama Mystery offers up a mystery with plenty of suspects, but is told from a rather unique perspective.  The reader actually spends very little time with Terry Spring (who is the television reporter that is supposed to be the one solving the crime!); instead, the book seems to tell the story from the points of view of several other characters - particularly, Sara Denzlow, a young teacher who has, along with two of her cousins, inherited a creepy old mansion set up on a lonely hill outside of San Francisco, California.   In fact, the story opens with her driving towards the house, when she sees the ghost of an old sea captain who allegedly died over a hundred years ago - a ghost that is allegedly her ancestor who was killed with a heavy statue of a Buddhist lama made out of jade.  

 

Sara and her cousins, Barry and Arlen, have been required to live in the spooky house as a part of the bequest for their now deceased relative - in order to inherit the house, all of the land surrounding it, and the rather large bank accounts, the three must remain in the house for at least a year!  Sara can use the change of scenery after her recent divorce; Barry is determined to take the story of his ancestor's ghost and write a book about it, having dropped out of medical school to pursue a career in writing; and Arlen is hoping any publicity about the house and it history will help jump-start his acting career in Hollywood.  As for our crime-solving sleuth?  Well, she has been given the assignment to do one of her mini-documentaries about the haunting of the great house - so along with her faithful sidekicks, Chavez and Jess, she heads for San Francisco.

 

While we spend a few brief chapters with Terry, Chavez, and Jess (and I have to say, Goulart/Kains has really hit his stride with these characters, because their rapport in this book is top-notch - I thoroughly enjoyed reading their banter!) as they get their assignment and hop a plan to cross the country, a number of the chapters in the first half of the book introduce the Denzlow cousins, give us background on the house, and introduce us to some of the other suspects, including Richard Crossen, a slick real estate developer who is more than just interested in getting his hands on that property in order to develop a number of homes to sell; Roy Shooter, who is Sara's ex-husband who just happens to be in town at the same time as these weird things are happening; and Zack Carney, a reporter for a trashy tabloid who is not above helping people fake things in order to get an unusual story.  

 

After Arlen is pushed down the stairs, resulting in a broken leg that leaves him bedridden, readers meet the next suspect(s) in this murder mystery - Reverend Postage and Sister Martha of the Fellowship of the Inward Light, a religious organization (better, a cult!) who is the secondary beneficiary of the house and all other assets from the estate should the heirs fail to reside there for at least a year.  They show up on a dark and stormy night, claiming to have had car trouble at the bottom of the hill.  That same night, Sara's ex-husband shows up, demanding money, at which point Barry throws him out into the rain.  Well, the next morning gives readers the murder victim - yup, you guessed it.  Poor Barry is found dead in the library, having had his head bashed in by the green lama (a repeat of his ancestor's death so many years prior). The question then becomes - who killed Barry?

 

From this point, the book follows the local police lieutenant as she investigates the crime, with Terry following along to assist - all the while hinting that she has the thing figured out, but she needs to check a few things to make sure first.  We get more scenes with Sara, we even get scenes with Chavez and Jess as they discuss what is going on and what they believe Terry is or should be doing.  What we do not get are the actual scenes of Terry investigating.  Rather, we get Terry mentioning what she is planning to do, then Goulart/Kains skips ahead to after the fact, so the reader is left wondering what it is that Terry did and what information she learned.  Of course, there is a scene fairly early on when Terry is speaking with a potential suspect that pretty much gives away the fact this person is the killer - in fact, there are two blatant clues in the book that give it away so early, that the rest of the read is pretty much perfunctory just to see how she reveals the killer's identity.

 

At least the revelation in the last two chapters is done wonderfully dramatic, much as you would watch on an episode of Murder, She Wrote or read in any Christie novel.  Terry has the police lieutenant gather all the suspects to the scene of the crime where she goes through the entire story of how the ghost was fabricated, who pulled the scam and why, and ultimately who the killer is (through a clever con that forces the killer to reveal him/herself). The ending sort-of makes up for the lack of Terry Spring through most of the mystery.

 

The cover artist is once again not identified (although there is a possible name just below the spool of film, but it is cut off so you can only see some smidgens of white that could potentially be the top part of a signature), but the scene comes directly from the moment where Sara walks into the library and discovers her cousin's corpse.  The only problem is, in the story, Sara is wearing her sleeping robe, not a blouse and jeans.  Unless the person on the cover is supposed to be Terry, which is completely in error, as Sara was the one with the flashlight, and she is the one who picked up the glove as depicted on the cover.  The interior illustrations are provided by Sanford Hoffman, whose drawings are much better than those in the previous book.

 

A couple of things to note - I smiled at Arlen's reference to Terry as a "regular Nancy Drew, is she?" (p. 45), as well as Terry's comment to Jess that she makes Terry "sound like Wonder Woman" (p. 124).  Two of my favorite fictional women referenced in one story - what are the odds?!  There is also an editing or publishing snafu that caught my eye on page 91.  At the top of the page, the first line reads:

"Barry's been killed," Terry told him.  chest.  "Christ, you must be ... Barry?" He shifted his weight...

Not sure what was actually supposed to be between "told him" and "chest," but it appears an entire sentence, or maybe even a paragraph, was somehow omitted.  I guess that is one mystery that we'll never have solved...

 

Of the three Terry Spring mysteries thus far, I'd saw this was my second favorite (with Golden Skull being my first). I know there are several more stories in the pipeline before the series ends, so I'm hoping I will get some better stories in those yet to be read!

 

RATING:  7 gold-fringed drapes out of 10 for a decent enough attempt at a clever mystery of misdirect and deception, with a great climatic reveal! 

 

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!

The Lindsey & Plum Detective Series, Book One - The Comic Book Killers

Recently, David took me to a little comic shop over in Daytona Beach, one I didn't even know existed, let alone had ever visited.  The store had tons of great and obscure back issues, a lot of toys, and a number of shelves filled with sci-fi and comic-related books.  One of those books was a paperback titled The Comic Book Killer by Richard A. Lupoff.  It was a first printing, and it was only $1, so I picked it up (as I have a small, but growing, collection of mystery books that center around comics in some way).

The book was published back in 1989 by Bantam Books, and it ran a good 260-plus pages of story with very small front, so I figured I was guaranteed a good, meaty story.  Comics - - Murder Mystery - - Crime Noir - - it had to be a gimme!  So, I put this on the top of my stack, and when I was ready to read my next book, down it came.

First, let me say that with most authors, it is pretty easy to distinguish the author's feelings and point-of-view and the characters' feelings and point-of-view.  In fact, it's not very often where I read a book and feel like I'm reading the author's own opinions.  Yet, for some reason, from the very first chapter, I got a distinct distaste in my mouth and had a very hard time shaking it.

The author, Richard A. Lupoff, clearly knows comics. Just reading the book, without doing any research on Lupoff, it is clear he is well-educated on the history of comics.  From his references to the early Timely Comics, prior to Marvel, as well as the fact that "DC" stands for Detective Comics, along with the fact that each comic has its own tell-tale signs that differentiates it from every other issue of that same comic, the book is filled with historical comic facts.  But, as his bio page at the end of the book reveals, he was involved with two pioneering studies of comics in American life - All in Color for a Dime (1971) and The Comic-Book Book (1973).  This would lead you to believe Lupoff would have a reverence for comics and the fans who read and love them.

Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.

Lupoff portrays every comic reading fanboy (and girl) in the book as skinny or fat, a slob or a hippy, not-so-intelligent or psychotic.  As if to stress the point of how belittled comic fans are, when his protagonist, Hobart Lindsey, visits a store that is 1/2 comic store and 1/2 mystery book store, he describes it as such:

The store was busy.  Two or three clerks were helping customers while a cash register kept up a steady electronic din.  The customers were easy to tell apart--the comic book buyers were young, mostly scruffy, dressed in tee-shirts and jeans or old army fatigues.  The mystery fans tended to be older, better dressed, more conservative. (p. 55)

It is this image that Lupoff portrays throughout the entirety of the book.  Now, I realize that the stereotype for "funny book" fans has not always been pretty, but let's be realistic.  By 1989 (when this book was published), comics were a more respected medium of entertainment, and it's readers and collectors were not just children, scruffy teenagers, and under/over-weight single nerds who lived in the basement of their mother's home.  I had a very difficult time not getting offended with every reference Lupoff makes in this style.

In addition, Lupoff, although to a lesser degree, makes a very clear prejudice against non-white races in this story.  Now, I realize that this was meant to come across as the main character's personal bias (which he eventually overcomes when he falls for the African-American police officer who is investigating the crime of the stolen comics and the murdered store owner), but with Lupoff's style of writing, it is sometime difficult (at least for me) to really discern if it is truly means just for the character, or if the author himself was not somewhat prejudiced.

Honestly, I was well over half-way through reading the book before I was able to truly overlook all of that and just enjoy the meat of the story.  Thirty-five comics, worth collectively a quarter of a million dollars, are stolen from a small shop outside of San Francisco.  Lindsey, who is an adjuster for the insurance company that insured the books, must investigate the claim to determine if it is valid.  At first, he writes it off as an over-inflated pricing of funny books.  As he delves more into the world of comics, something he never really got into (even though his own now-deceased father was a comic artist), he finds there is a lot more to these funny books than he realized.  These books are now being used for investments, as well as educational studies in schools of higher learning.  When the store owner is found murdered, Lindsey begins to think there is something more going on than a simple theft, particularly when the comics begin to re-appear, one by one.  Lindsey himself is attacked, and the race is on to uncover the truth about the stolen comics - and about his own father's death - a race that could cost him his own life!

The solution to the mystery is actually quite satisfying.  In some ways the plot reminded me of the old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, where there were two separate stories going on within the mystery, but somehow they always managed to tie together before the end, and that is definitely what occurs here.

If one can overlook the belittling of comic fans and the racial prejudices within the story, it's actually a pretty good comic-book murder-mystery.

And what I most certainly did not realize when I bought the book is that this is actually the first in an ongoing series of Lindsey/Plum detective stories, where each book apparently focuses on a different type of collecting (such as classic cars, etc.).  Will I go out and search for any of the books in this series?  Probably not.  But, I did get some enjoyment from this mystery, so I guess it was a $1 well spent.

RATING:  6 golden age heroes out of 10 for making the mystery interesting and intriguing enough to get me past the other issues.