This week for Friday’s Forgotten Books it is Barry’s
turn front and center. The complete list of books is over on Patti Abbott’s
blog at http://pattinase.blogspot.com/ While you are there, check out what is going on with
Pulp Ink 2 and other things of note…
CATSPAW ORDEAL (1950) by Edward Ronns (a.k.a. Edward
S. Aarons)
reviewed by Barry Ergang
Edward S. Aarons, best known
for his Sam
Durell Assignment series
of paperback originals, may not have been a great writer by the purest of
literary standards, or by the standards set by more prominent mystery and
suspense novelists, but he was a first-rate storyteller.
Catspaw Ordeal is among the mystery thrillers he wrote under the
pseudonym Edward Ronns. It deals with one Daniel Archer, a man who would seem
to have it all, but whose dissatisfaction with the good life in Southwich,
Connecticut has led to the possible dissolution of his marriage and reveries
about his more adventurous past—reveries which involve old flame Della Chambers
and the late Burke Wiley, his shipmate aboard the Martin J. Crump on
which Archer served as radioman, who died when the ship was torpedoed.
The novel opens with Archer
getting himself drunk in a local watering hole when the bar's owner tells him
there's a man who's been asking about him. Archer confronts the man, one Skit
Moore, who might be either a private detective hired by Archer's estranged wife
Rosalind or some sort of petty hoodlum. A brawl erupts between them which sets
the story in motion.
Archer later discovers Moore
in his—Archer's—home, bludgeoned to death, and circumstances compel him to help
dispose of the body. Among other surprises, figures from his past, including
Della Chambers, resurface to complicate matters, as well as his brother-in-law
and business partner Stanley Manning, their secretary Louise Camp, the coldly
criminous Clem Holloway, and Holloway's daughter Lisbeth. Much like an
unwitting hero out of a Hitchcock film, Archer must dodge the police long
enough to solve Moore's murder, dodge someone who would murder him, and thwart
a criminal scheme with national and international ramifications.
Many years ago I read but no
longer have a number of the Sam Durell espionage novels. Like those, Catspaw
Ordeal is rapid-fire reading with plenty of action and suspense throughout.
Unlike them, it's also a fairly-clued whodunit—though since it's
populated with so many unsavory characters, a number of whom get their
comeuppances before the final revelation, most experienced readers won't find
it difficult to solve even if they do so by pure guesswork. Read strictly as a
detective story it will likely prove disappointing. Read as a fast-paced,
sometimes noirish adventure story with the bonus of a whodunit aspect,
it's very satisfying.
Barry Ergang © 2007, 2011,
2012
Former Managing Editor of Futures
Mystery Anthology Magazine and First Senior Editor of Mysterical-E,
Derringer winner Barry Ergang's work has appeared in numerous publications,
print and electronic. His website is http://writetrack.yolasite.com/ From a need
to reduce clutter, he's selling many of the books he's accumulated over the
years. You can find the titles and cover scans, along with purchasing
information, at http://barryergangbooksforsale.yolasite.com/
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