Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 2. Whole No. 363, February 1974

The Jury Box by John Dickson Carr[8]

Following last month’s disappointment, when luck provided no worthy new title, it is a relief that for February I can offer four. If one of these is a collection of tales from days gone by, and another the paperback reprint of an espionage thriller two years old, each acquires glittering newness in its present form. From detection to mystery-adventure and from espionage to short stabs of dirty work, then, our course runs thus:

The Thirteenth Trick, by Russell Braddon (Norton, $4.95), snares us at once into emotion as well as classic detection. Either straightforward-seeming Mark Gifford or sardonic Robert Gifford, his bitter and crippled ex-athlete brother, must be the “Motorways Maniac” who has been killing fair-haired young girls near Aylesbury in rural England.

Mark, a P. & O. ship’s officer on leave, is visiting Robert’s cottage when police find the body of the fourth murder victim in the back row of a cinema at Aylesbury. The wordy card game between Mark and Robbie, those two clever fellows, is joined by Detective Superintendent Cheadle, as clever as either but more patient than both. Even with so narrow a field of suspects, by adroit jugglery the author keeps tension at fever pitch until the game’s last trick is won after near-fatal archery at tea-time.

Years ago, in Cards on the Table, Dame Agatha Christie spun one of her best stories round just four suspects. Mr. Braddon shows equal virtuosity with only two. And all the clues are there.

With The Turquoise Lament, by John D. MacDonald (Lippincott, $6.95), the first Travis McGee adventure to appear originally in hardcover finds Trav involved even more than usual with a fetching female who has appealed for help.

Linda “Pidge” Lewellen, now married to big, good-natured Howie Brindle, is the daughter of Trav’s late friend, Professor Ted Lewellen, who has left his daughter a fortune derived from marine salvage but apparently has not left her the key to further marine salvage worth millions more.

Summoned to Hawaii by a frantic phone-call, McGee finds Pidge dithering sifter inexplicable, haunted occurrences with her new husband aboard their own boat. Well-meaning Howie Brindle can’t possibly want to murder her, and yet what’s some explanation for the inexplicable?

In recent books the author has abandoned detection for near-mystery-adventure in which hypnotic narrative skill keeps us on edge even when most perplexities have been resolved. Mr. MacDonald has never done better than this financial and emotional whirlwind, from opening challenge to sensational climax and wry, ironic epilogue. Since every character takes on the flesh and blood of life, you’re always safe with Travis McGee.

Provided with a new face by plastic surgery after ambush in Vietnam, Captain David Garrison, the very sympathetic hero of Walter Wagner’s Swap (Pocket Books, $1.25), embarks for Russia on a secret mission as danger-fanged as any jungle foray.

Implacably the Soviets hold fourteen-year-old Sonya Brodsky, only Russian survivor of the millionaire American Brodskys, and won’t release her at any price; Garrison must slip past the iron curtain to effect a rescue. In Moscow, where Sonya disappears and can’t be found, the iron curtain has become a stone wall.

But Garrison, himself expert at ambush, conceives his plan as our scene shifts from Moscow to Paris for an International Arms Conference. Assisted by two Green Beret sergeants and an Israeli secret agent, he kidnaps the important Soviet delegate he will exchange for one helpless child.

At breakneck-paced action amid flying bullets, with beautiful Elizabeth Clement standing by, snatch and exchange are accomplished despite deadly intrusion by the red Chinese. Frustrating a Soviet counter-move to kill everybody rather than yield any point at all, Garrison rescues young Sonya and emerges triumphant in the best cloak-and-dagger thriller of recent years.

The Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Sir Hugh Greene (Pantheon, $6.95), comprises Sir Hugh’s third and, he tells us, likely his last collection of tales from 1891 to 1914, when Baker Street dominated all. Though the supply has now run short, here are thirteen flashes of sound investigation or ingenious plot from lesser sleuths than Sherlock and lesser craftsmen than Doyle.

Try M. McD. Bodkin’s “Murder by Proxy.” Dip in anywhere; you will find this book true stimulus when time hangs heavy and television commercials can no longer be endured.