The Cabinda Affair

Slight on "detecting" in the conventional sense; the narrator relays information to Dr Mary Finney and she draws conclusions which she mostly keeps to herself until the time is ripe for a plot twisting revelation or surprise move. But the setting is exotic and taken from author Canaday's wartime experience, the characters are fully drawn, and the eye of the art critic is always in evidence. A psychological study for which a crime is a pretext, but still a satisfying read for mystery connoisseurs.

Second in the series about medical missionary detective Mary Finney and Hoop Taliaferro, in this one a minor US government bureaucrat working for the (Head's note says) imaginary War Claims Settlement Commission --basically paying off U.S,. government purchase left over from World War 2. As in Murder at the Flea Club (rereading which led me to buy this) much of the first part of the story is Hoop just telling Mary the circumstances leading up to a murder. In this case, he has gone to the (real, but according to Head's note slightly adjusted for the story) tiny Portuguese enclave of Cabinda (next to then Belgian Congo) to pay an incredibly high price ($4 million when that really was $4 million) for a load of mahogany which was going to show more be made into a projected airplane that got scrapped.. On the way, he meets a dubious English expat type named Pete Biggs who shows up murdered in Cabinda. show less

See review of the other copy