David Frome (1898–1983)

Murder is the Pay-Off is one of Leslie Ford's one-shots. It's written in third person. I wasn't up to chapter three before I was torn over which of three characters I'd most want to be the murder victim: Connie Maynard, her father, John Maynard, or John's sister, Mamie Maynard Syms.

Connie wants to break up Gus Blake's marriage so she can have him, even though she jilted him to marry the man she's divorced. John Maynard is a lawyer who puts on an act to fool people. (I've quoted a show more description of John from the first chapter.) Mamie Maynard Syms is the probable reason that poor Nelson Syms has ulcers that put him in the hospital a couple of times a year. Check out chapter two for how high Mamie has promoted her husband's ancestor who fought against Cornwallis. Mamie has convinced herself that champagne isn't booze. She can't understand why she has such a nasty headache the morning after a champagne night. Mamie is against slot machines, so it's a good thing that she doesn't go down to her brother's play room in what used to be the cellar.

Connie is beautiful. She doesn't think that Gus' wife, Janey, is even pretty, let alone intelligent. She can't understand why Janey is so popular. Perhaps if Connie had a nice, unselfish bone in her body she might be able to figure it out.

There's trouble brewing in Smithville. 'Doc' Wernitz, who operates the Smithville Recreation Company, Inc., is leaving. His slot machines are a money-maker for the town, but more than one citizen owes him money. Janey Blake is horrified to realize that she's written checks for a thousand dollars in the six months that Connie's been back in town and trying to steal her husband. Janey has completely wiped out their savings and then some. How will she ever tell Gus?

It doesn't help that Gus is the editor of the local paper and Connie got her father to convince Gus to hire her. Gus and Connie are both out at the scene of the murder the night someone breaks in the Blake home. Janey is all alone with her two-and-a-half year-old daughter, Jane. Janey may be scared, but she won't let anyone frighten her baby. I loved what the cop who came to the Blake home thought about Janey in chapter 7.

Ms. Ford gives readers a bit of information from the killer's point of view, but has several suspects do the same thing so we still get to guess. It was interesting finding out what the plan had been and what mistakes were made before the last chapter rolls around.

Several characters put two and two together and come up with seven, not to mention rousing needless suspicion. One of the the very wrong conclusions leaves Connie and the city editor to get the paper out. Connie is so very proud of her editorial decisions -- right up to the point her father called her 'Constance,' something he hasn't done in years. By the time her daddy gets through with her, Connie's pride is dragging in the dust. Hurrah! It's almost as much fun as Connie and Gus's big fight in chapter 20.

The Connie-Gus-Janey triangle reminds me of the Courtney-Cass-Molly triangle in Ms. Ford's earlier mystery, All For the Love of a Lady, but there are differences, especially since there's no first-person Grace Latham as the filter through which we get our information. I happen to like the way the triangle was resolved in this book much better than in the other.

There may be some readers who will consider this book dated. The racist terms and sexist attitudes are no fun to read, but they do allow us to see how far we've come. I enjoyed Connie's surprise at discovering that someone still chews tobacco in 1951. We still have people who talk in cliches, such as the County Attorney. I chuckled at what the Chief of the County Constabulary said about those cliches in chapter 5. There will always be people who like to throw their weight around and people who think they're much smarter than anyone else. If you know about the 'man cave', you might smile at Mrs. Ferguson's complaint in chapter 9. On the other hand, Janey Blake thinks the town baker is mean because he won't let his employees smoke inside the bakery.

All in all, this is a fun little cozy. show less

This one is set in early Spring. Grace Latham now says she was born, married, and produced two children in Georgetown. She traded her house with a distant cousin in San Francisco because her older son, Bill, has enlisted as a Naval Air Cadet and he's being stationed near that city.
(We learn that Bill lied about his age to enlist, so he's defintely under 20.)

The exclusive neighborhood may be lovely, but the same can't be said for all of the cousin's neighbors. The best-known neighbor is the show more wealthy Loring Kimball. He's quite eccentric. His mansion survived the earthquake and fire of 1906, although his first wife didn't. Kimball had the house moved to the terrace. A light burns all night, every night, in the room that belonged to his first wife -- even though San Francisco is supposed to be blacked out in case of bombers. How do his daughter by that wife, his second wife, and his stepdaughter feel about that? Whatever their feelings, you may be sure that Kimball doesn't care.

Thorne Kimball, the lovely stepdaughter, didn't get to marry Nat Donahue, the man she loves. Guess who was responsible for that?

Nat does have a wife and she's as rotten as she is beautiful. Ilya brings in the kind of reporter who loves to write up scandals -- and make them sound far worse than they actually are. It's too much to hope that he'll be one of the murder victims, but don't worry. Colonel Primrose will take care of him.

Colonel Primrose and Sergeant Buck show up in San Francisco. No surprise there, although the excuse he used to see Grace made me smile.

There are plenty of other colorful characters living on the terrace, especially the Butts family. Mrs. Butts is their most colorful member. In chapter 11, the look in her eye reminds Grace of her childhood horse, Ginger. Ginger had an unpleasant habit. Will Mrs. Butts do the same?

There's also a cute little boy who's the grandson of Grace's cousin. He thinks he saw a ghost. What did he see?

What about that strange remark another neighbor, Dr. Norton, made about the first Mrs. Kimball? How much does he know about the mystery of that light Kimball keeps burning in her bedroom?

Naturally, Grace is going to have her favorites and will do what she can to help them. Just as naturally, that means she'll try to keep information from Colonel Primrose if she thinks it will hurt them.

For my money, Siren in the Night is one of the most memorable books in this series. I hadn't reread the book in almost 11 years, but I had no trouble recalling the Big Dark Secret. What a psycho!

Notes:

Because this book was written and published during World War II, the Japanese are called 'Japs'. The appalling decision to send Japanese Americans to internment camps gets a brief mention near the end of chapter one. Grace herself says nothing for or against it except to note that her cousin's Chinese [-American?] servant laughed about it. Given what the Japanese did when they invaded China during WWII, John's laughter is not surprising.

Sadly, African-American Lilac's letter to Grace is full of spelling mistakes, one of the stereotypes of the time.

San Joaquin Terrace appears to be fictional. That's Spanish for 'Saint Joachim,' who was Jesus' maternal grandfather in the Infancy Gospel of James, but I have no idea if that choice of name was supposed to have any significance for the mystery.

This is a classic cozy mystery. Racist touches aside, it's well worth reading. show less

Grace Latham is going to Reno to see Judy Bonner, her neice by marriage, who is seeking a divorce. If Grace doesn't go, Judy's mother will. Since Grace considers Mildred to be probably 'the most charming and utterly silly woman in the world,' she doesn't think Judy needs her mother at this time. (Neither does Judy's father.)

Grace's misadventures start because Judy neglected to mention that her widowed aunt is under 40 and quite pretty. The friends she asked to meet her aunt assume that the show more 'old woman' missed her plane. Then the desk clerk at Judy's hotel assumes that Grace is just another woman seeking a divorce. His helpful hints leave Grace bewildered. Then there's the gossip she overhears in the elevator and the stranger who tries to pick her up before she's even found her niece...

On the face of it, Judy is divorcing her husband so she can marry handsome Dex Cromwell and Clem can go back to his first wife, the lovely Kaye Gorman -- now a rich widow. Grace is not impressed with Dex. Soon she's very sorry that she asked her friend, Colonel Primrose, to stop in Reno to see her on his way home from a case in San Francisco. She's with the Colonel when he discovers a murder victim -- and there's a clue that points straight to Judy.

It doesn't help when Grace finds the murder weapon in her niece's laundry hamper. How can she protect Judy when Colonel Primrose and Sergeant Buck are on the scene? Grace pulls some stupid stunts, as usual, but I still like her. When one of the characters claims she knows Grace's sort and doesn't believe that Grace could mistake cheap chantilly lace for hand-made alencon, I couldn't help liking Grace's reply.

I enjoyed the descriptions of 1930s Reno and what it took to get a divorce there. I also enjoyed Sergeant Buck's reaction to seeing one of his Colonel's old flames there. (According to Buck, Primrose got drunk for a week when she married someone else.) There are plenty of cautionary stories about what goes on in Reno. I felt particularly sorry for Vicky Ray, a gambling joint hat check girl.

There are quite a few suspects. Colonel Primrose has his work cut out for him. What Sergeant Buck does to deter a sleezebag of what we would call a paparazzi may not have been legal, but it was satisfying. The last few pages made me chuckle. The racism didn't. The author has a Chinese servant, Wu Lung, use "he" for women and 'she' for men. Worse, several characters, including Grace, refer to him as a 'China boy' even though Wu Lung is about 60 years old!

For readers who enjoy progression in relationships, Colonel Primrose will startle Mrs. Latham by using her first name. His behavior after she's saved from a truly nasty situation is even more interesting. Chapter 20 has -- unless I missed it in the earlier books -- the first time Sergeant Buck tells Mrs, Latham, 'No offense meant, ma'am;' and she replies, 'None taken, Sergeant'.

My copy is the Popular Library edition with the blonde being strangled by a rope. Some of the details aren't correct, but there will indeed be a woman in that peril, so the lurid cover isn't entirely misleading.

I recommend this book to fans of old cozy mysteries, with a warning about the attitudes of the time. I've quoted a sexist remark, something that shows how naive Grace is, and a sample of the humor. show less

Leslie Ford was a very lady-like writer, but this is her take on the tough-guy hardboiled mystery that was so popular in the 1950s. When men were men and said things like, "Get that dame out of here!" Hilarious.

Bad rich girl Connie Maynard was engaged to Gus Blake, but she left him for what she thought was a better prospect who turned out to be a big mistake. Divorced and back in her hometown, Connie is disgusted to find Gus married to Janey, a woman Connie contemptuously dismisses as no show more competition at all. Connie gets her father to persuade Gus to hire her as a reporter on the paper where Gus is the editor. Gus and Connie are together all day and late into the night, covering the news. Janey, pushed aside, takes up gambling on slot machines with disastrous results.

Connie is not as smart as she thinks she is, and Janey is not as stupid as she acts in the first part of the book. Both of them smarten up a lot as the story progresses.

A meek little non-entity of a man named Doc Wernitz, who supplies juke boxes and slot machines to the tarnished little town of Smithville, is bludgeoned to death one night in the basement of his house. Connie and Gus go to cover the murder for the paper, and Janey, left alone again, contemplates suicide over her disintegrating marriage and her gambling debts. Then someone breaks into the house. Janey snaps out of it and starts fighting back, against Connie, against Gus, and against the unknown killer who is threatening her and her daughter.

A great snapshot of 1950s life, well worth the 25 cent cover price of this edition, or the $10 or so I gave Abebooks for it this year. Loved it! show less