Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 75, No. 2. Whole No. 436, February 11, 1980

The Jury Box by Jon L. Breen

© 1979 by Jon L. Breen

The Elizabethan dramatist Thomas Kyd holds a peculiar fascination for mystery writers — or at least his name does. When the renowned Shakespeare scholar Alfred Harbage wrote mystery fiction, he chose Kyd’s name as his pseudonym, and now one of the newest in the long roll of California private eyes also bears the name.

**** Timothy Harris: Good Night and Good-bye, Delacorte, $8.95. Thomas Kyd’s second recorded case (and first in U.S. hardcover) tells the old tale of the mendacious, enigmatic beauty and the smitten shamus but tells it exceedingly well. The quality of Harris’s writing, more than any special originality in plot, character, or background, makes this the best private-eye novel I’ve read in quite a while.

**** Thomas Gifford: Hollywood Gothic, Putnam, $10.95. A fugitive screenwriter tries to prove somebody else used his Oscar to brain his estranged wife. This is another scintillating writing job, offering a vivid if downbeat picture of Southern California and the movie colony. Some of the characters-particularly an aged Hollywood mogul and a teenaged Edward G. Robinson mimic — should live long in the reader’s memory, as should the rain-drenched atmosphere.

*** Frank Parrish: Sting of the Honeybee, Dodd, Mead, $7.95. Dan Mallett, rural English poacher, is more Robin Hood than detective in this second adventure, beautifully written and full of striking nature passages. Though the plot is reminiscent of an old-fashioned stage melodrama, the figures of hero, villain, and victims are all far from standard.

*** Donald Olson: Sleep Before Evening, St. Martin’s, $8.95. Olson’s second novel, a diverting account of tangled relationships, is long on atmosphere and plotting, short on sympathetic characters. Genealogist Devillo Green is a truly memorable villain.

*** Robert B. Parker: Wilderness, Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, $8.95. Here is a genuinely suspenseful tale of outdoor revenge, centered on a middle-aged writer with a machismo hang-up and his college professor-wife. Parker is a very readable writer, and he involves his readers in the lives of his characters so completely they will even put up with some laughably pretentious dialogue.

*** William L. DeAndrea: The HOG Murders, Avon, $1.95. A promising new Great Detective candidate, Professor Niccolo Benedetti, finds a worthy opponent in HOG, perhaps the most terrifying versatile serial killer in mystery annals. Fair play is manifest, and the solution is so logical and inevitable that many readers will probably anticipate it. On balance, this is probably a better book than the author’s Edgar-winning debut, Killed in the Ratings (1978).

*** Simon Brett: A Comedian Dies, Scribners, $7.95. Although actor-sleuth Charles Paris is not at his best in this fifth adventure — Brett’s plot is his weakest to date, and Charles’s detecting is ineffectual to the end — the background of British nightclubs and television and the beautifully drawn character of comebacking comedian Willie Barber save the day.

*** Michelle Collins: Murder at Willow Run, Zebra Mystery Puzzler #32, $1.95. The story of a locked-room murder in an upstate New York artists’ community is a smoothly professional job, the best Zebra sealed-ending mystery I’ve sampled to date. (Note for pseudonym buffs: Clues to the contrary, I am assured that this Collins is not Dennis Lynds.)

** Robert Bloch: There Is a Serpent in Eden, Zebra, $2.25. A retirement community provides the scene for Bloch’s latest suspense novel, packed as usual with puns, nostalgia, and downbeat social commentary. This is minor Bloch, with twists easier to anticipate than usual, but it is never less than readable and entertaining.

** Anthony Shaffer: Murderer, Marion Boyars, $3.95. This grisly stage shocker, alternately amusing and revolting, is far from the author’s classic Sleuth in terms of quality. For true-crime buffs, there are many references to famous cases.

Among the reprints is F. Lee Bailey’s 1978 novel, Secrets (Bantam, $2.50), an enthralling and instructive courtroom drama for readers (like me) who could never get enough of Perry Mason... Though his life at times seemed like a long-running soap opera, theatrical producer Peter Duluth was one of the best series detectives of the Forties and Fifties. Too long out of print, his cases (as recounted by Patrick Quentin) are now being reissued in paperback, beginning with Puzzle for Fiends (1946) and Puzzle for Pilgrims (1948) (Avon, $2.25 each)... Fred Halliday’s three flamboyant and satirical novels about tastemaking gourmet Stanley Delphond have been gathered in an omnibus edition, Murder in the Kitchen (Pinnacle, $2.50). Only in the first, The Chocolate Mousse Murders (1974), does the recipe really work, however, and all three will be too gross for some palates.