The Colony of Unrequited Nightmares

Portrait in Fear [Mystery of Cedar Valley]
Vera Henry
New York: Caravelle, 1964
160 pages

I expected little of Portrait in Fear, the lone novel from an author whose bibliography consists almost entirely of confessionals published in post-war love pulps.

Ideal Love (December 1946) and Glamorous Love (July 1954)

She had me from the opening:

Even after all this time, the townspeople of Cedar Valley view our small summer art colony with suspicion. They tolerate us for business reasons, but they do not like us.

The narrator, children's book illustrator Maggie Balfour, is the colony's longest resident. She's also the youngest. Her parents first brought her as a child. She was fifteen the summer Steve Wentworth moved into the cottage next door. He was writing his first novel. Steve was a young man. Maggie was a girl with a crush. There was nothing untoward about their relationship. As the years passed, the two became good friends and in the off-season would visit other art colony residents in "the city." They all expected the pair to one day move on from being just friends, and so were surprised when Steve all of a sudden married another. Maggie had only herself to blame for introducing the two. Riona, Steve's bride, was an old schoolmate.

Now it's the newlyweds' first summer at the colony. Maggie is determined to put on a good front, and for the most part succeeds. Not so the colony's other women. Retired stage actress Connie Ordway is right in suspecting that husband Brown has been having an affair with Riona. Gwen Darlan is not only certain that her spouse would leave her for Riona, she would gladly give him up. It's not that she doesn't love her spouse, rather that she wants him to be happy. Where the reader recognizes a selfish, directionless child of a man, wife Gwen sees a genius deserving of so beautiful a woman. Sadly for Ted, Riona sees him as a plaything, little more than a sardine entangled by a fishing line.

Riona fits the femme fatale stereotype, right down to her dark hair, pale blue eyes, pale white skin, rocking body, and provocative dress. In a tight-knit community with so much resentment, jealousy, and hatred directed toward one person, you just know that something bad is going to happen. The front cover tells you as much.

Here I'm going to change focus, as I often do when writing about mysteries. I never want to wade in too far for fear of spoiling things. Let's look instead at this Caravelle Books edition, beginning with the cover copy:

• Riona is not "pretty." Maggie, who has every reason to find fault, describes her as the most beautiful woman she has ever seen.
• Riona has great sense of right and wrong. Manipulative and cruel, she's no "lost pussy cat."
• "They" do indeed have a reason to kill Riona, and of course one of them does.

I've spoiled nothing in revealing that Riona is murdered, right? 

Now, the back cover:

The artists' colony is hardly "swinging," though it is true that its men are keen on sleeping with Riona, husband Steve included. 

There is a whopper of an error in the second paragraph:

When Marie Balfour, Steve's ex-fiance, questioned Riona about the odd gold brooch she wore, Maggie didn't know it then but it was a pin that would unlock the mystery of Riona's death.

I'm glad I didn't see this until after I'd read the novel, otherwise I'd've kept an eye out for Marie, the jilted lover. The copywriter means Maggie, not non-existent Marie. Not only are Maggie and Steve never engaged, they never exchange so much as a kiss.

Returning briefly to the novel itself, much of the mystery has to do with painter Paul Petrie. Unlike Maggie, he was not raised in the arts colony, but on the outskirts. He grew up within the "Evangelical Brethern [sic]," a small religious sect that had settled Cedar Valley after "fleeing from the temptations of the mid-Victorian world." Paul was very much a black sheep, painting from an early age in a religious community that considers lipstick garish.

After years of condemnation and rejection, Paul Petrie disappeared at the very point his talent began to be celebrated. If anything, his recognition caused further bad feelings within Cedar Valley's predominantly Evangelical Brethern locals. Young Paul would've given them his paintings for free, now they hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.

Marie Balfour never appears, but does Paul?

I'm not telling, though I will say that the surprise ending Caravelle promises did indeed smack me right between the eyes.

About Cedar Valley: The author gives few clues as to the location of the community, but careful reading suggests that it is on Lake Ontario somewhere between Toronto and Hamilton.

About the author: Vera Henry (née Bates) began life in Forest, Ontario. According to the 1911 Canadian census he was born in July 1909, likely the last of seven children born to 37-year-old William, a livery stable laborer, and 40-year-old Margaret. The family doesn't appear in the 1921 census.

The University of Oregon Libraries, which holds Vera Henry's papers – all "0.5 feet" – reports that the author graduated high school at age fourteen. She may have been living in Michigan at this point. I have nothing to go on other than the proximity to Forest and Vera Henry's association with the state.

The most informative profile I've found, 'You May Be in One of Her Stories,' was published in the 8 May 1954 edition of the Detroit Free Press. This was on the occasion of the Detroit Women Writers honouring Vera Henry as Writer of the Year.

There's so much to explore, like distaste expressed for her cash cow:

This suggests a lost work:

And here's something to keep in mind if I ever write a second edition of Character Parts:

Vera Henry died in Royal Oak, Michigan on 4 October 1987.

About Forest: A community of fewer than three thousand souls located five kilometres east of the southern shores of Lake Huron, Forest has had more than its fair share of notable residents. Emily Murphy lived there for a time, as did journalist Robyn Doolittle. Like any Canadian small town, it has produced at least a couple of NHL players, but the name that stood out to me is Emm Gryner. For ten years, our paths crossed as residents of nearby St Marys, Ontario. Here's Emm onstage with David Bowie:

Object and Access: A mass market paperback, my copy was purchased online earlier this month from a Guelph bookseller. Price: US$3.50.

Evidence suggests that in 1967 there was a second Caravelle edition. As I write, seven copies of the two Caravelles – 1964 and 1967 – are listed online. Prices begin at US$5.00.

The novel was first published in 1964 by New York's Avalon Books as Mystery of Cedar Valley. Worse title, better cover:

Might it also be a better novel?

I ask because Caravelle's Portrait in Fear features several remarkable errors, this being the worst:

One copy of Mystery of Cedar Valley – ex-library – is listed online. It's in pretty rotten condition, but does include the dust jacket (chopped up and pasted on the boards here and there). Price: US$50.00.

I recommend both.

The Great Lost Canadian Mystery Novel?

'Four To Go'
Kay Grant [Hilda Kay Grant]
The Star Weekly (24 - 31 March 1973)

I once thought that Hilda Kay Grant's bibliography could be divided neatly into two unequal parts. The first spanned thirteen years, beginning in 1951 with The Salt-Box, a fictionalized memoir of her youth published under the name "Jan Hilliard." Five novels followed, all using the very same nom de plume, the last being 1964's Morgan's Castle. The second part, which lasted from 1967 to 1969, consisted of three works of non-fiction written or co-written under the name "Kay Grant."

And then silence... Again, this is what I once thought.

Last autumn, while working on the Ricochet Books reissue of Morgan's Castle I stumbled upon a reference to a novel by "Kay Grant" titled Four To Go published over two 1973 issues of Toronto's Star Weekly.  

Surely this couldn't be same Kay Grant. It had been nine years since her last novel. Besides, all her fiction had been published as being by "Jan Hilliard." Could this be the other Kay Grant, the one who wrote wartime verse like It's 'ard to Keep Straight in the City (1941) and It's 'ard to Be Good in the Blackout (1944)?*

Rural life can be 'ard. I was spoiled during my Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto years in having ready access to resources. It took some effort to access those old issues of the Star Weekly, but the heart leapt when I did. Here's why:

The Niagara Peninsula! Why, Morgan's Castle is set in the Niagara Peninsula! So is her 1956 novel The Jameson Girls! I next came across this:

The Star Weekly, 17 March 1973

Written by Gwen Beattie, it's an author profile published in anticipation of the next week's publication of Four To Go. In it, Kay Grant is identified as Jan Hilliard, the author of "earlier Niagara-based novels – The Jameson Girls and Morgan's Castle."

I would've felt confident in declaring Four To Go as the work of Hilda Kay Boyle just the same. Location aside, it contains two elements found in each and every Jan Hilliard novel: dysfunctional family and an unusual house.

Twenty-five-year-old widow Katie Gaylord is narrator and protagonist. Maiden name Whitney, she'd thrown off her family-pressured engagement to stable second cousin Charles Davis, a lawyer, and had eloped with freewheeling Harry. During their two-year marriage, Katie's husband promised much, delivered little, and brought it all to an end by drowning off the coast of California. Left with next to nothing, Katie packs her clothes in cardboard boxes. gets in a pale green convertible – "purchased during a brief period of affluence" – and drives the more than four thousand kilometers home to Cragsmore, the grand Whitney family home on the Niagara Escarpment.

Katie knows that her 87-year-old grandmother Beatrice will accept her back. The prodigal granddaughter  reappears as Beatrice is entertaining two other elderly ladies:

"Well, Katie," she said, as matter-of factly as if I'd left home that morning. But she clutched my hand tightly as she lifted her face to be kissed. "Sit down and have some tea. You know everybody. Mrs. Kemp, Mrs. Taylor. They're collecting for the unmarried mothers."

Grandmother Beatrice will never say a word about Harry or his tragic death. He will be forever forgotten, expunged from the Whitney family history.

* * *

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

— Leo Tolstoy

Katie's family isn't particularly happy or unhappy, though its history is tinged with tragedy. Only one of Gran's children lived beyond infancy, that being Shane O'Neill, described by daughter Katie as a "philanderer and amateur sadist":

Three years later, forty-something Shane married eighteen-year-old Rose, then three months pregnant with Katie. Gran liked this second wife and was heartbroken when Rose's car plunged over a cliff not a half-mile from the family home.

Shane was the next to go (boating accident), but not before fathering a son, Conn, who was left on the doorstep by the teenage daughter of an itinerant fruit-picker.

The Whitney fortune came from jam.

* * *

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.

—Anton Chekhov

Though it has been just two years since she left, Cragsmore is much changed from the house Katie knew. Thirty-three-year-old Martha, a woman who had never once garnered a second look from a man, is now married to local lothario Joe Bennett. Mrs Baines, the long-time cook is gone. Joe replaced her with a man named Horace. He lives with his "cousin" Dickie in an apartment above the old coach house. Dickie is employed as Gran's chauffeur.

Martha has taken to wearing makeup and now cares more about her dress. Katie doesn't even recognize seventeen-year-old Conn. He's grown his hair and bought a motorcycle, but really only as an act of rebellion against Martha. Conn's also taken up with a runaway named Sue, who he has hidden away in a room above the old barn. It also contains his rock collection. At night, he uses the old dumb waiter to sneak out of the house. It works on a pulley system that involves ropes and lead weights running from the cellar to the second of Cragsmore's three storeys. Originally used to carry coal, now used to carry laundry, Martha has the dumb waiter inspected every March and September by old Mr Bennett. He died in April. 

You'd be right in thinking that something's going to happen with that dumb waiter.

I'll leave it at that.

Four To Go is a conventional mystery. An argument can be made that it is the author's only mystery. I'm happy to have found it, all the while being disappointed. Four To Go just doesn't reach the level of the Jan Hilliard novels. Black humour is absent, the pacing is off, and the denouement seems so very long.

In that old Gwen Beattie Star Weekly article she describes Four To Go as a condensed version of the author's "latest Niagara novel."

The uncondensed version has yet to be published. The manuscript has yet to be found.

Is Four To Go the Great Lost Canadian Mystery? 

I don't suppose we'll ever know. Are there other lost Canadian mystery novels? 

Is Four To Go worth republishing as is?

Of course, it is.

* What little I know of Australia's Kay Grant comes from the brief author bio found on the rear jacket of the American edition of the intriguingly titled It's 'ard to Keep Straight in the Navy.

cliquez pour agrandir

Related posts:

The Jan Hilliard Ricochet
A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic
As He Lay Dying

The Jan Hilliard Ricochet

Let the revival begin!

I first read Jan Hilliard three years ago. The book was Dove Cottage, her third novel. It may not be the best place to start, but Dove Cottage is very good, so good that I purchased and read all her others.

Morgan's Castle was Jan Hilliard's most successful book sales-wise. Published in 1964 by Abelard-Schuman, it received enthusiastic reviews. Anthony Boucher championed the novel in the pages of the New York Times. Unlike her other books, it enjoyed second, third, and fourth lives in mass market paperback.

Fifty years have passed since Morgan's Castle last hit drug store spinner racks.

It returns to print this week as the nineteenth Véhicule Press Ricochet Book.

As series editor, I'm proud to have played a part. In my opinion, Jan Hilliard stands with Phyllis Brett Young (whose 1962 thriller The Ravine was Ricochet #16) as the two most unjustly neglected Canadian authors of their generation.

Jan Hilliard (Hilda Kay Grant) in a 1973 Star Weekly profile.

This new edition, with introduction by yours truly, can by purchased at the very best bookstores, the usual online sources, and through this link to Véhicule Press. 

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Cunning Cottage

A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic
Nature as the Devil's Playground
Phyllis Brett Young's Ricochet

All His Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Murder Began Yesterday
Lee Johnson [Lilian Beatrice Johnson]
191 pages

London: Gifford, 1966

We begin with what is perhaps the worst first sentence of any Canadian novel:

The windshield wipers were having a hard time battling the weight of wet snow driving against the glass; shh-klip ... sh-sh-klip ... shh-hh-kl-ip ... sh-shh-kl-i-p ... k ...kli ... i ...p ...

No complaints about the second sentence ("The snow won."), though the third is nearly as bad:

With a disheartened sh-shh they both stopped, making protesting klips at intervals like maiden aunts with the hiccups, then sliding to rest with a despondent sigh.

And so, the reader is left with an obvious choice: soldier on or get out with little investment.

This reader chose to soldier on, but only because I find great enjoyment in truly awful writing.

I was disappointed.

Murder Began Yesterday is not a bad book or an awful book, rather a perfectly satisfactory mystery novel with an unusual setting and several instances of interesting social commentary. 

The narrator is Scott Royale, a medical doctor who has been handed a second chance. The poor man is clearly emerging from a rough patch and is understandably reluctant to provide backstory. What little can be pieced together runs like this: Scott was married to a woman who left him for another man, sought solace in drink, then struggled with the bottle until he was pulled away from the fight by close friends.

Today, we would refer to this as an intervention.

Scott has family in the form of his sweet supportive sister Penny, who has encouraged him to resettle in Shelton, a northern town in which she clerks for the local police detachment. 

It makes for a nice fit. Shelton is in need of a new doctor, having just lost the last in what appears to have been a freak automobile accident. What was Dr Bruton doing on the Vaughnan road anyway?

Penny installs Scott in the dead doctor's house, which I'm guessing is owned by the town, and sets to work on redecorating. Meanwhile, her brother sets out on his rounds.

This is not medical drama, though the brief glimpses of Scott's profession will be of interest to anyone studying changes brought by the 1966 Medical Care Act.

As suggested by the title, cover illustration, and front flap, the novel is a murder mystery, It is also one of those murder mysteries in which a character (in this case, Scott) tells another (Penny) that they are not in a mystery novel. And so, as other chharacters follow Bruton in dying suddenly and unexpectedly, it takes the new doctor a good while to suspect that anything at all is amiss.

Some readers may be frustrated. How can Scott be so blind?

As one of those readers, I remind that we know Scott is the protagonist in a mystery novel, but he does not.

In the meantime, Scott has begun work on a novel, which he describes as:

Nice light detective fiction. Hero only normally immoral; a sultry blonde swaying through his office offering whatever he wants plus a few thousands to prove that she's been bilked out of her lawful rights; a couple of gory corpses; an unintelligent police officer and so forth and so on...

Author Lee Johnson deserves some credit here in having Scott reimagine the recent deaths as murders for his novel. In doing so, he realizes that they were in fact homicides.

The last scene is short, unexpected, and very good.

That last sentence is perfect. 

Trivia (not really): If I haven't already, I spoil things somewhat in revealing that the spark for the spate of murders involves a woman who, suffering from hay fever, confuses two similarly named women. As if to bolster the idea that such a thing is possible, the novel features a nurse surnamed Pennington-Jones, who prefers to be addressed as "Matron" and a character whose surname is Marton. The pages in which the too interact demand careful reading. Manton is a neighbouring community.

It appears that even the publisher became confused, twice referring to the town of Shelton as "Sheldon" on the front flap.

About the author: There's not much to share. Lee Johnson (née Lilian Beatrice Johnson) is yet another mid-twentieth-century Canadian author who was published in the UK, but not in her own country. I've yet to find any recognition of the author in a Canadian newspaper or magazine.

The 1931 census records twenty-seven Lilian Johnsons, ranging in age from eight months to fifty-seven years. Was one of them the author?

She is credited with four titles:

Medallion (London: Gifford, 1962)
Keep It Simple (London: Gifford, 1963)
Heads for Death (London: Gifford, 1966)
Murder Began Yesterday (London: Gifford, 1966)

Four novels in five years... and then nothing?

A subject for further research.

Object and Access: A hardcover in yellow boards, I don't see that there was a second printing. The jacket artist is uncredited. Interestingly, the man depicted is not Scott, rather a secondary character. I believe that is meant to be Scott on the spine.

Four copies, all with dust jacket, are currently listed for sale online. Boy, are they cheap! Expect to pay between $9.94 and $15.15.

My copy was purchased online this past spring from a UK bookseller. Price: £7.00.

The Man with the Midas Touch

Sword of Desire

Robert W. Tracy [Alvin Schwartz]
New York: Arco, 1952

176 pages

As far as I can tell, "Fort Crime!" is the first Alvin Schwartz story I ever read. It concerns a criminal organization that uses heavy artillery in committing crimes. Superman, Batman, and Robin figure.

"Fort Crime!" first appeared in published in World's Finest Comics #71 (September-October, 1954). I read the story when it was reprinted twenty years later in World's Finest Comics #224 (August 1974).

Alvin Schwartz had long since walked away from comics by the time I caught up with him, but in 1954, when "Fort Crime!" first appeared he was still very active in writing for the comics. He was just as active in 1952, the year Sword of Desire saw print, churning out stories for Batman, Superboy, Superman, and the Superman daily comic strip.

Sword of Desire is not for children. It opens on the meeting of a senate committee looking into a "white slave" syndicate. The most recent witness, a woman who wore a clinging black silk dress and "gracile lizard skin pumps" – much is made of this – has been found naked and dead in a vacant lot. Senator Kingarden, who heads the committee, has had enough:

"Let's stop acting like a collection of sanctimonious old women poking Puritanically around the outer edges of wickedness. Let's be realistic and recognize that you don't investigate a crime by turning up your noses at the smell. If it's our business to legislate, then we can't afford to be so refined that we regard our noses as mere facial ornamentation. We've got, if I may say so, a genuine stink on our hands and the sooner we use the natural organs that God gave us for dealing with it, the sooner we'll get results."

Tough talk, though it is clear that Kingarden has no intention of bringing fellow senators' noses or other organs an inch closer than need be. Instead, he proposes that psychoanalyst Dr Genorius Veresi be brought in to help with the investigation by going undercover as a john. There is some pushback from committee members, though not nearly so much as one might expect.

"One of those rare geniuses of healing that has come out of the new schools of psychology which regard sex as the basis of all man's inner desires," Veresi is a controversial figure who employs unorthodox methods. Schwartz hints that the doctor restricts his practice to married women who have little or no sexual desire. The doctor's treatment, which comes from years of intense study, involves a fleeting touch that unleashes sexual desire.

It's not what you think, nor is it wear you think. In the first case, Veresi grazes the underside of a patient's wrist.  

Consider it a superpower. The doctor uses it to induce women in the syndicate to reveal all.

There were many points at which I nearly gave up on this novel. The whole thing seemed so silly and, to be completely honest, the sex scenes were mild in the extreme. Still, I'm glad I made the effort.

It was, I think, in "Contact Two," the sixth chapter of sixteen, that something twigged. I recalled something about Wilhelm Reich, "orgone energy," and "orgone theory," which were all the rage in the post-war years. I'm fairly certain I skimmed over something about it all in university. I next came upon a 2005 online response to a query in which Schwartz describes Sword of Desire as a "take-off on Reichian Orgone psychology." That he seemingly felt the need to explain suggests limited appeal for today's reader, Reichians excluded. 

I will say that after "Contact Two" things really begin to pick up, even for those who know little of Reichian theory. It's here that Sword of Desire becomes a true detective story.

As might be expected, a woman proves to be both Veresi's Kryptonite and his Lois Lane.

Sword of Desire was read for the 1952 Club, co-hosted by Kaggsy and Simon. Other books from 1952 I've read and reviewed here over the years include:

Dark Passions Subdue - Douglas Sanderson

Destination: Universe! - A.E. van Vogt

Die With Me Lady [Weep No More, Lady] - Ronald Cocking

Flee the Night in Anger - Dan Keller [Louis Kaufman]

Hot Star - Robert W. Tracy [Alvin Schwartz]

The Lively Corpse [Rose's Last Summer] - Margaret Millar

Murder Over Dorval - David Montrose [Charles Ross Graham]

Pierre le magnifique - Roger Lemelin

Vanish in an Instant - Margaret Millar

Of these, the one I most recommend is Vanish in an Instant, which is one of my very favourite Margaret Millar novels. She wrote so many!

I would be remiss in not also praising Murder Over Dorval by the mysterious David Montrose (Charles Ross Graham), which I helped return to print as part of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series. Coincidentally, I'm now involved in reissuing another of the titles listed above.

More to come! 

Object: A red hardcover wrapped in a jacket with uncredited illustration. The novel itself is followed by  several pages of Arco promo material, six of which flog "ARCO SOPHISTICATES." The first title listed is Touchable, Schwartz's 1951 Arco collaboration with Lee Scott. It's the first Alvin Schwartz novel I ever read.

Access: Published once, then never again, McMaster and the University of Toronto have it in their holdings.

I purchased my copy two years ago as part of a lot of twelve Arco books. There were only two I wanted, the other being Alvin Schwartz's Man Maid (New York: Arco, 1952), but the price was right at an even US$100. At the time, two copies of Sword of Desire were listed online, the cheaper being US$100!

Never mind! As I write this, just one copy of Sword of Desire is listed for sale online. The price is a mere seven quid! Get it while you can!

Related posts:

Sexy Stuff from Bizarro Superman's Creator
Dick Tricks Chicks Into Hot Pix!

An Alvin Schwarz Cover Cavalcade

Tumbling Towards Mystery

The Stone Cottage Mystery
Joyce Boyle
Toronto: Macmillan, 1961
151 pages

A big city girl made unhappy by her family's move to a small town, sixteen-year-old Isobel Anderson will be a familiar figure to readers of children's fiction. In her case, the big city is Toronto; the small town is Farston, to which Isabel's father (occupation unknown) has been transferred.

Coinciding with Farston High School's Christmas break, the Andersons' arrival is soon followed by a different sort of break. One particularly blowy, snowy day, Isobel is out on a solitary a walk when she falls and does something to her foot. Isobel tries to make for home, but the pain is too great. It's all she can do to reach the nearest dwelling, an old stone cottage that sits high on the hill at the end of her road. No one responds to her knocking, but she finds the door unlocked. And that is where she is found sometime later by young Eleanor Morgan. The girl lights a fire, makes sure Isobel is comfortable, and then sets off to get help. This arrives in in the form of a sleigh driven by Doctor Gordon Brown – "I'm Doctor Gordon Brown" – who then whisks her off to hospital where "several small foot bones" are found to be broken.

Forget the foot, this mystery concerns a stone cottage. Built by Eleanor's great-great-great grandfather, the building is now owned by the town, which has handed it over as the meeting place of the Farnston High School Historical Club.

Two observations:

• at my high school, clubs met in the school itself;
• there was always a teacher present, which is never the case here.

Before you get all hot and bothered about underage drinking, drugs, and sex, let me assure you that the students of Farston High are all good kids. They welcome Isobel with great warmth, going so far as to enlisting the help of  Norwegian immigrant Nels Olsen in building an elaborate sled so that she can participate in the school's Valentine skating party.

Isobel's date, Eleanor's brother John, proves a true gentleman:

"Good time?" he asked.
   "Never better," was Isobel's answer. "Oh, John, it was a perfect evening! And all I can say is 'Thank you'!"
   "That's all you need to say," was John's reply. "Thats all you need to say when you use that tone of voice."

And off he goes home.

The Edmonton Journal,
10 September 1958

The students of Farston High School are an extremely wholesome and cheery  lot, which is not to say that there isn't tension within their midst. Understanding the source is dependent one's knowledge of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Eleanor's great-great-grandfather, Alan Donaldson, a supporter of reform, was falsely accused of being a rebel. Facing arrest, he fled to the United States and was never seen again. A box of money and papers entrusted to his care disappeared at the same time. Eleanor's great-great-grandmother was certain that her husband had hidden the box, but the Farr family is convinced that he stole it.

As expected, Isobel, Eleanor, and their schoolmates solve the mystery of the missing money and papers. That they do this with the assistance of Miss Malcolm (Isobel's Toronto history teacher), Miss Norman (Isobel's Farston history teacher), and Miss Fleming (the town librarian), raised a smile because Joyce Boyle herself was a teacher and librarian.

She never married.

I know more about her than I do my great-great-great-grandparents or even my great-great-grandparents.

Object and Access:  First published in 1958 by Macmillan of Canada. Unlike Joyce Boyle's previous novel, Muskoka Holiday (1953), it was not published in the United Kingdom or the United States; something to do with the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, I expect. My copy, a second printing in olive green hardcover with mustard printing, was purchased last year at my favourite local charity shop. Sadly, it lacks the dust jacket, but what do you want for 65 cents. 

As I write, just two copies of The Stone Cottage Mystery are being sold online, both published in 1969 by Macmillan. At US$13.00, the more attractive is a hardcover with dust jacket. The other bookseller offers a paperback copy for US$68.00: 

I recommend the hardcover.

Related post:

Joyce Boyle: Early Research

The Case of the Queer Antiques Dealer

The Mystery of Cabin Island
Franklin W. Dixon [Leslie McFarlane]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop [c. 1960]
214 pages

If you ever happen to visit Bayport, home of internationally famous detective Fenton Hardy and his sons Frank and Joe, I recommend you stay away from the water. The Missing Chums, which I read last year, begins with the near collision of a motorboat with two sailboats. The early pages of The Mystery of Cabin Island features the near collision of two ice boats. In both cases, tragedy is averted only due to Frank's quick thinking and piloting skills.

Iceboats date back to 18th-century Holland, but I had no idea that they were so common in 1920s America. Frank and Joe built one themselves. Their chum Biff receives an ice boat from his dad as a Christmas present. Bad Tad Carson and Ike Nash, who are most certainly not chums, have the biggest one by far.

London: Harold Hill & Son, 1953

Is this an American thing? I ask because I don't believe I've ever met anyone who owns an ice boat.

The eighth book in the series, The Mystery of Cabin Island is my third Hardy Boys read. As I'm discovering, backstories often reference the boys' previous adventures. In this case, that previous adventure is book number six, The Shore Road Mystery (1928), which saw the brothers working to expose a gang of car thieves.

One of the cars retrieved was a Pierce-Arrow, belonging to a "queer" antiques dealer named Elroy Jefferson. He was away in Europe at the time and so never had a chance to thank Frank and Joe. Now that Jefferson has returned to Bayport, he rewards them with two crisp hundred dollar bills (roughly $3700 today):

The boys protested, but Elroy Jefferson insisted, and finally they were forced to accept the reward.
   “Now,” said Mr. Jefferson, “if there is anything else I can do for you at any time, don’t hesitate to ask me."

But Frank does hesitate... then asks permission to camp on nearby Cabin Island, which happens to be owned by the antiques dealer. In fact, it was Jefferson who constructed the cabin after which the island is named. Just the previous day, Frank, Joe, Biff, and their chum Chet had landed on Cabin Island in their ice boats, only to be ordered off by a mysterious man named Hanleigh. As it turns out, he's been pressuring Jefferson to sell him the island, but the "queer old chap" won't budge:

I won’t sell him the island at any price, and I told him so. You see, when my wife and son were alive they loved to go there in winter and summer, so Cabin Island has certain associations for me that cannot be estimated in terms of money. They are dead now, and I cannot bear to part with the place.

Jefferson is happy to grant the Hardy boys and their chums Biff and Chet permission to camp on the island, though I must say this doesn't involve camping as I understand it. No tents are involved, rather the four boys settle into the cabin, complete with large living area, kitchen, and bedrooms. Upon arrival, they spy Hanleigh inspecting the cabin's imposing chimney and jotting down figures on the back of an envelope.

What exactly is Hanleigh up to?

The Hardy boys are nowhere near so curious as this reader. After ordering Hanleigh off Cabin Island, the four boys while away the hours skating, skiing, and ice boating. I began to wonder whether Frank and Joe's disinterest in Hanleigh's jottings might best be explained by issues with short-term memory.

Hear me out.

Frank, Joe, Biff, and Chet, spend the following day exploring Barmet Bay on ice boat. Upon returning to the cabin they find that their "grub" has been stolen. The following morning, the Hardy boys set off for in their iceboat for supplies at a general store run by chatty old-timer Amos Grice. Upon learning that the boys are staying on Cabin Island, the storekeep relates a fascinating story about an extremely valuable stamp collection that had been stolen from Elroy Jefferson by his man servant John Sparewell some fifteen or so years earlier.

Back on Cabin Island, Joe comes across a notebook belonging to John Sparewell:

"Sparewell," mused Frank. "Where have I heard that name before?"

It takes a while before Frank and Joe remember the name from the story they'd heard just hours earlier.

There's little in the way of sleuthing here. The mystery of The Mystery of Cabin Island is revealed when the chimney comes down in a winter storm, exposing the missing collection.

The boys are again rewarded, this time to the tune of $200 apiece. Jefferson gives lesser players Biff and Chet $100 each.

My attention had long since been absorbed by Elroy Jefferson as a character, largely because of the repeated use of "queer" in describing the antiques dealer. Now, I do realize that The Mystery of Cabin Island was written at a time when "queer" was commonly used – but not always used – as a synonym for strange or unusual. Still, reading it here did raise a nod, wink, and smile. I could not help but think that Leslie McFarlane was having a bit of fun within the constraints imposed by Hardy Boys creator Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Leaving aside stereotypes associated with Jefferson's occupation, and that he spends most of the year  in Europe rather than provincial Bayport, I might've thought I was reaching had it not been for Grice's reaction upon learning that the antiques dealer had allowed the boys to camp on his island:

“Yes, that’s just like Mr. Jefferson. Got a heart of gold, specially where boys is concerned. But queer — mighty queer in some ways,” said Amos Grice, again wagging his head. "Do you know" — and he leaned forward very confidentially — "I really think he married Mary Bender because of her postage stamp collection.”
   This amazing announcement left the Hardy boys rather at a loss for words. “He married his wife because of her postage stamp collection!” exclaimed Joe.
   “That’s what I said. You’ve heard of the Bender stamp collection, haven’t you?” he demanded.
   The boys shook their heads.

   “Well, I ain’t a stamp collector and I’ve heard of it. The Bender collection is supposed to be one of the greatest collections of postage stamps in the world. Why, I’ve heard tell that it’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”
   “And Mrs. Jefferson owned it?”
   “Yep. Her name was Mary Bender then, and she inherited it from her father. I got parts of the story from people who knew Mr. Jefferson well. It seems he has always been a collector of antiques and old coins and stamps and things, but one thing he had set his heart on was the Bender stamp collection. But he couldn’t buy it. Either Mr. Bender wouldn’t sell or Elroy Jefferson couldn’t raise the money — but somehow he could never buy them."

"Queerest story I ever did hear," says Amos Grice in concluding his account of the theft, adding:

"Mary Bender died just a short time after. And ever since the stamps were lost, Elroy Jefferson ain’t been the same. [...] It seemed to break Elroy Jefferson all up, because that collection was the pride of his heart, and when it disappeared so strangely, he just didn’t seem to take any more interest in anything."

I may be reading too much into this. 

Now, if McFarlane had written "so queerly" instead of "so strangely" I might be more certain.

Caution: Of the four ice boats that feature in the novel, two are destroyed in accidents. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

London: Armada, 1982

That said, it does seem a dangerous mode of transportation.

Object: This one was purchased eight years ago for one dollar. It once belonged to a girl named Pamela who lived on Blasdell Avenue in Ottawa. That she wrote her name and address in the book using a fountain pen gives some indication as to its age. A further clue is found in the book's list of previous Hardy Boys Mysteries, the most recent being The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (1960).

Sadly, my copy lacks the dust jacket. It would've featured this illustration:

The cabin is roughly a sixth the size that described in the text. The chimney is far too short and should be wide enough to easily accommodate a sixteen-year-old boy. The depiction in the original 1929 edition is more accurate, though the cabin is far too close to the water:

Access: The Mystery of Cabin Island was first published in 1929 by Grosset & Dunlop. As I write, two first editions with dust jackets are listed for sale online. The cheaper is going for US$700.

The novel was rewritten in 1966 by Anne Shultes, Andrew E. Svenson, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. This is the version in print today.

I'm not familiar with the revision, though as I understand it involves a missing grandchild, medals, and a smattering of racism. How much of Leslie McFarlane's original remains I cannot say, but I'm guessing it isn't much. 

As far as I can tell, there had been three translations – French (Le mystère de l'Île de la Cabane), Swedish (Mysteriet i jakstugan), and Norwegian (Hardy-guttene og den stjålne frimerkesamlingen) – though I expect all are of the revision.

Related posts:

Here's to Missing Chums

Gone Fishin' (without Frank and Joe Hardy)

The Boy Who Cried Truth

The Calgary Herald, 26 October 1963

The Weird World of Wes Beattie
John Norman Harris
New York: Harper & Row, 1963
216 pages

Wes Beattie was born with a Woolworths spoon in his mouth; father Rupert's came from Birks. The vast difference in fortune is best explained by youthful folly and libido. Rupert had been the favourite son of Toronto's wealthy Beattie family until he had the misfortune of attending a stag party during his sophomore year at Trinity College. There he met a sixteen-year-old tap dancing accordion player named Doreen. She was so unlike the Rosedale girls he'd grown up with that he couldn't help but be captivated. Within nine months, Mr Maggs, Doreen's dad, came calling at the opulent Beattie home demanding money. Ever the romantic, Rupert thwarted the wishes of both sets of parents by marrying Doreen. She gave birth to a baby girl, and Rupert went from golden child to black sheep. Disowned, he became a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman and Doreen turned to drink. When war was declared in 1939, he was only too happy to enlist and be shipped overseas. Son Wes may have been the result of a fond farewell.

Wes Beattie never met his father, though he'd come to know all sorts of very nice servicemen who visited his mother. After Rupert was killed in Italy, his remorseful mother gave Doreen a nice payout and brought the her grandchildren into her home. Jane, the baby girl whose existence had caused the rift, rebelled, while younger brother Wes just wanted his mummy.

Backstory, all of the above is relayed in much more detail – and much more entertainingly – in the seventh of this novel's eighteen chapters. That it comes roughly half-way through the novel, speaks to its complexity.

Wes Beattie himself is a complex character. Though just twenty-three, recent adventures have made his life such a tangled mess that he has drawn the attention of psychiatrist Milton Heber, who lays all out in a seminar attended by doctors, lawyers and social workers. Heber's assertion is that Wes lives in a "weird world" of his own making; he is a fabulist unable to differentiate fantasy from reality. Wes has been charged with two crimes, the first involving a purse he took from a car parked outside the Midtown Motel. He served two months for that offence. The second, much more serious, is the charge that he murdered his beloved Uncle Edgar for fear of being cut out of his will. Lawyer Sidney "Gargoyle" Grant, one of the attendees, is so bothered by a seemingly insignificant detail in Heber's talk that he begins his own investigation.

Grant's efforts bring such small rewards that it would be easy to write at length about The Weird World of Wes Beattie without revealing much. To detail how it all fits together would take thousands of words. Your time is better spent reading the novel.

The Weird World of Wes Beattie is not "The First truly CANADIAN Mystery" as current publisher claims, but it is one of the very best.

What's more, it will make you laugh.

About the author: The life of John Norman Harris (1915-64) is worthy of a biography; consider the introduction to the John Norman Harris fonds housed at the University of Toronto. Is the "Wooden Horse" escape from Stallaf Ludt III not enough?

The author died alone on 28 July 1964, not one year after The Weird World of Wes Beattie was published, suffering a heart attack during an early morning walk in rural Vermont. This brief bio, attached to the 13 October 1963 Star Weekly bowdlerization of The Weird World of Wes Beattie hints at what we missed.

Trivia I: Though the novel makes much about Wes Beattie facing the gallows, the last execution in Canada took place on December 11, 1962. Capital punishment was abolished for murder in 1976. In 1999, it was abolished for all other crimes. 

Trivia II:

The Globe & Mail, 14 March 1964

Trivia III: Announced by Warner Brothers in 1965 as a forthcoming Merwin Gerard production.

And still we wait.
 
Trivia IV: John Norman Harris's last address was 45 Nanton Avenue in Toronto's Rosedale, the very same neighborhood in which Wes Beattie is raised.

The house, described in the 17 September 2004 Globe & Mail 'Home of the Week' real estate column as a being of a "rambling English-cottage-style," has had several notable inhabitants. Its first owner, lawyer Edward Brown, was the son of John Brown, who became editor of the Globe after his brother George (Edward's uncle) was shot by a disgruntled former employee.

Future Pearson Minister of Finance Walter L. Gordon lived in the house during the Great Depression, only to leave after a ten percent increase in the rent. 

It was at 45 Nanton that Harris wrote The Weird World of Wes Beattie, though you wouldn't know that from the Globe piece:

In 1959, it was owned by John Norman Harris, a writer who was also a public relations officer for the Canadian Bank of Commerce, which was poised to merge with the Imperial Bank to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. 

Mr. Harris offered the home as a venue for the secret negotiations, and the deal was signed in a large second-floor bedroom in 1961.

Bankers in bedrooms! Meeting secretly! Do tell!

The address's connection to things literary doesn't end with Harris. Apparently, playwright Tom Hendry rented a third floor room in the 'seventies. The only reason for the Globe piece is that the house had been put up for sale by children's author Kati Rekai.

This is the house as it was ten years ago.

Note the Heritage Toronto plaque on the fence. It has nothing to do with Harris, Hendry or Reikai, rather J.J.R. MacLeod. Because it's hard to read, I share this template from the Heritage Toronto site.

A man worthy of more than this honour alone.

Object: A solidly constructed hardcover with burgundy cloth and pale orange boards. The endpapers remind that this is a HARPER NOVEL OF SUSPENSE, which explains why the back jacket features no author photo, rather promos for other novels in the series:

Love in Amsterdam - Nicholas Freeling

The Fifth Passenger - Edward Young

A Dragon for Christmas - Gavin Black

It's Different Abroad - Henry Calvin

Access: First published in Canada by Macmillan, in the United States by Harper & Row, and in the United Kingdom by Faber & Faber. I see no evidence of second printings for any of of these editions, though as noted in the previous post the novel has reappeared a few times through the years, French and Spanish translations included.

The book isn't easily found in Canadian bookstores; online booksellers are your best bet. At £2, the cheapest edition is the 1966 Corgi, listed by a bookseller in Boat of Garten, Scotland who dares charge the equivalent of $35 to ship a mass market paperback to Canada.

The cheapest Faber & Faber edition – "Condition: Good" – is offered at €14.90 by a Dublin bookshop. It will ship to Canada for roughly $24.50.

The Harper & Row, with jacket, can be purchased for US$40 from a New Jersey bookseller.  

If I were a rich man, or reasonably comfortable, I'd buy the signed copy of the Macmillan offered at US$150 by a Stoney Creek, Ontario bookseller. There can't be many signed copies out there.

Underpriced, if not sold by this time tomorrow I will be greatly disappointed.

Related post:

The Weird Covers of Wes Beattie

The Murder of George Brown: He Died with Grit