Rivers of Blood

The Wyvern Company were really no better than a group of medieval thugs. While on the warpath in France, the company sacked a French abbey and ran off with (among other things) the sacred Bloodstone ruby, allegedly collected from the blood of Christ while he hung on the cross. The ruby was given into the possession of Sir Robert Kilverby, a wealthy merchant, whose duty it is to produce the Bloodstone twice a year and who is safeguarding it until such a time as the Wyvern Company dies off.

That day might come sooner than expected, because somebody is murdering members of the Wyvern Company one by one. But Sir Robert Kilverby is also found dead, poisoned inside of a locked room. How was the crime committed? Lucky for us, Brother Athelstan investigates the matter, and in good time a second impossibility is thrown in the good brother’s face when a fire is started from inside of a locked room: how could the culprit have started the fire without waking the room’s occupant and without disturbing the locked door?

A Demon in My View

I have quickly become very fond of Margaret Millar, which is why I decided to make her books an integral part of my 2012 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge. Only Gladys Mitchell and Ellery Queen appear more frequently on my list of books to read. I decided to get the challenge underway by starting with Millar, and soon settled on The Devil Loves Me (1942). It is the third and last of Millar’s books starring Paul Prye. This is my first book read under the theme Devil Take the Hindmost.

Paul is about to get married to Miss Nora Kathleen Shane, and the ceremony is taking place in the ever-so-exotic locale of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. However, the wedding is delayed when one of the guests, Jane Stevens, drops from atropine poisoning. Paul then discovers an anonymous letter addressed to him. Part of it goes thus: I have always been intrigued by the funereal aspect of weddings and the hymeneal aspect of funerals. It is high time someone combined the two.

They Love Not Poison

When I picked up No Friendly Drop by Henry Wade, I was at first expecting the “drop” to be a fall from a building— perhaps it would be an elevator murder if we were lucky. But as it turns out, I forgot a line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (despite having acted in the play) where Juliet refers to “no friendly drop” having been left for her by Romeo. That’s right, this is a novel involving a poisoning, and it’s a really good one.

Henry Wade was the pseudonym of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher. That’s right: he had two titles and 3 names (four if you count the hyphenated name as two). But don’t let that mislead you. If you’re expecting Henry Wade’s detective novels to have a sleuth à la Lord Peter Wimsey running around, making pedantic comments and a general nuisance of themselves, you’re entirely wrong.

No, his detective is Inspector John Poole, one of the most likeable police detectives I’ve ever come across. He has a college education, but he doesn’t go off into irrelevant asides about the limits of translating The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám into Swahili. He does have a romantic interest in this novel, but it’s delightfully subdued, producing extremely memorable moments of banter.

XLVI. Where Quinn Booker and Lobo Blacke ride off into the sunset.

I have read only four novels by the late William L. DeAndrea, but I would be willing to put his name among the great GAD authors any day. DeAndrea wrote mystery novels with actual plots; he didn’t unnecessarily pad out his stories, which were solid ones, complete with clues and red herrings. Also, DeAndrea’s writing style was like that of the great Rex Stout: he captured the voice of Archie Goodwin and had it speak through the characters of Matt Cobb or Quinn Booker.

Written in Fire and Fatal Elixir were two books starring Quinn Booker and Lobo Blacke, who were rather like Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe transported to the Old West. Unfortunately, DeAndrea’s untimely death prematurely terminated the series, and it’s a real shame: reading Fatal Elixir, I could only shake my head, dismayed as I read what might have been…