Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 92, No. 3. Whole No. 547, September 1988

The Jury Box by Allen J. Hubin

© 1988 by Allen J. Hubin.

It’s said that there are only a few basic plots in the world — perhaps seven — which are endlessly retold. I’ve no basis for quarrel with that, and if it’s true of all fiction it’s certainly applicable to the corner of storytelling of particular interest to us.

Thomas Maxwell’s The Saberdene Variations (Mysterious Press, $16.95) clearly retells one of the ancient stories. I won’t identify precisely which one — that’s something you should discover for yourself, for this is fresh, polished, and wholly absorbing. Charlie Nichols and Victor Saberdene, friends at college, kept in contact over the years as Nichols became a successful writer, Saberdene a renowned New York defense attorney. In due course, Victor married — married Caro, sister of a murder victim whose killer Caro’s testimony assured of a very long jail sentence. Now Carl Varada is out of prison, unexpectedly proved innocent, and psychopathically bent on revenge. Victor asks Charlie’s help to save his supremely beautiful wife. For Charlie and others, deep and deadly traps await. I read this one straight through. It would make a remarkable film as well.

Mignon F. Ballard’s second novel is Cry at Dusk (Dodd Mead, $15.95), a good tale of the sort that would have been called gothic in the 1960s. Laura Graham was very close to her cousin Laney — until Laney drowned near her home in South Carolina. Accident, of course, because Laney had much — including a baby son — to live for, though some of the circumstances of her death are troubling. When summer relieves Laura of her teaching responsibilities, she goes to Redpath, to a high-school reunion, to see why Laney was so absorbed in an earlier death, that of a child decades before. Effective romantic suspense.

Death Signs (Walker, $15.95) is a first mystery novel by H. Edward Hunsberger, a Minneapolis author who has previously committed suspense short stories and a western novel. Matti Shayne, a special-education teacher of the deaf in Hunsberger’s city, is asked by Lieutenant Ryder to translate when a deaf man is found stabbed. She catches just a cryptic phrase or two from the dying victim. His wife proves also to be deaf, as are other persons in the case, so Matti continues to help, to listen, to ultimately and perilously put the pieces together. Quite a readable tale, and Ryder and Shayne are well worth another meeting or two. But the usual foolishness attendant dying messages (which almost always, as here, could realistically have been clear and removed all mystery) has to be tolerated, as, too, the unexplained incompetence of the killing.

Bill Granger’s view of Chicago in his series about police detective Terry Flynn is notably bleak: the city comes across as desperately, fatally political, with justice only triumphant when some “higher” purpose can simultaneously be served. This is especially true of The El Murders (Holt, $16.95). Flynn (whose earlier adventures appeared under the Granger pseudonym Joe Gash) has to contend with the murder of a homosexual, and with the view of some of his colleagues that this constitutes good riddance. Meanwhile, Flynn’s friend and fellow detective Karen Kovac is working on a brutal rape and its crushed victim, not knowing that rapist and killer are one and the same. An impressive — and probably realistic — narrative.

Gerald Hammond’s latest about Scottish gunsmith-sleuth Keith Calder is The Worried Woman (St. Martin’s, $13.95). This is rather more tranquil and talky than the best of the series, but the puzzle is well formed and we again have some very nice interactions between Calder and his soon-to-be-beautiful young daughter. The widow of the most thoroughly hated man in the Scottish labor movement does not like the police verdict on her husband’s death: suicide. Calder reluctantly agrees to have a look, quickly (with his firearm expertise) turning the official solution on its head. This provokes malice: a threatening phone call, a nocturnal attack. Things are getting out of hand.

Prolific English mystery writer John Buxton Hilton died in 1986, so alas we shall have no more of the delightfully witty tales about Inspector Mosley that he wrote as John Greenwood. What, Me, Mr. Mosley? (Walker, $15.95) is the sixth and last. Mosley, whose mind works in eccentric and devious ways foreign to those of his superiors, is rummaging in the village of Bagshawe Broome. Here his sharp eye has spied some stolen property among rummage-sale displays. House squatting and house looting have been going on of late, and Mosley has particular interest in the moldering pile once dwelt in by the late Henry Burgess. Matters progress to kidnaping, and Mosley’s boss, Superintendent Grimshaw, comes unglued to add to the general chaos. You could do far worse than settle in with this whole series.

Isidore Haiblum, known heretofore as a science-fiction writer, lands solidly in our firmament with Murder in Yiddish (St. Martin’s, $17.95). James Shaw, N.Y.C. private eye, stars in this caper, a convoluted affair in which Shaw is kept largely in the dark about practically everything — certainly including the motives of his client. He’s hired to watch a crooked ex-cop, and while doing so fails in his rescue from attack of a little old lady living in the shabby tenement he’s watching from. When Shaw gets out of the hospital with his largely untreated concussion, he finds that the lady was also watching the ex-cop and has left her account in Yiddish. After this, things get worse for the battered Shaw. Colorful, amusing, and fanciful.

In McKain’s Dilemma (Tor, $16.95), Chet Williamson presents another new private investigator, the troubled and beleaguered Bob McKain, operating out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Here he becomes entangled in a surpassingly ugly and violent area, full of homosexuality and AIDS, with a dollop of organized crime. Carlton Runnells, wealthy through carefully arranged marriage, hires McKain to find the man, a New York designer, with whom he spent a night and would like to spend more. McKain, not passing judgment on clients or lifestyles, does as bidden. Murder follows, and McKain — now consumed with the frailties of his own body and once happy family — lets compassion rule his head. To his vast peril. Tense and involving.

Joseph Hansen’s latest about L.A. insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter, Early Graves (Mysterious Press, $15.95), operates in similar territory, offering a grimly memorable account of the ravages of AIDS among those it most attacks.

A fresh corpse, dispatched by knife and subsequently determined to be dying of the disease, is deposited on Dave’s doorstep, apparently the latest work product of a serial killer. This body is that of a real-estate developer, outwardly a happy husband and father. Someone, with knife, takes offense when Brandstetter inserts himself in the proceedings, looking for a common denominator among the victims and their desperate and agonized families and friends.

Peter Marklin, dealer in antique toys, whose gentle occupation has a curious tendency to involve mayhem, returns in Neville Steed’s Die-Cast (St. Martin’s, $15.95). Lana-Lee Churchill, an actress of great beauty, has retired to Dorset, near Marklin’s shop. He makes her acquaintance, and that of her repulsive husband, with whom she has unaccountably become reunited. This to the great fury of Adam Longhurst, wealthy landowner and now-displaced Lana lover. When Lana’s husband is found murdered and Longhurst is found without alibi, Marklin is determined to stay out. Until Lana asks his help and Scotland Yard’s Inspector Blake trolls across Peter’s path, dragging bait. Very enjoyable, with toy lore again providing both seasoning and substance.