Patti Abbott, host of FFB each week, declared
today as a Hers or His Day with works to feature either Marcia Muller or Bill
Pronzini. Barry’s Ergang review subject, The Bughouse Affair is by both
authors. After you read Barry’s review, head on over to Patti’s blog and consider the other reading
suggestions for Friday's Forgotten Books this week.
THE BUGHOUSE AFFAIR
(2013) by Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini
Reviewed by Barry
Ergang
The year is 1894, the city
is San Francisco, and Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon, owners and
operators of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, have
been partnered for over three years. “When they had met by chance in Silver
City, Idaho, he had been an operative of the United States Secret Service
investigating a counterfeiting operation, and she had been a Pink Rose, one of
the select handful of women employed as investigators by the Pinkerton
International Detective Agency, at the time working undercover to expose a
pyramid swindle involving mining company stock. Circumstances had led them to
join forces to mutually satisfactory conclusions, and resulted in an alliance
that had prompted Quincannon” to suggest the business partnership—an equal one—to
which Sabina agreed.
In the case under
consideration, Sabina has just been hired by the owner of the Haight Street
Chutes Amusement Park to find and stop the activities of a pickpocket who has
been plaguing the site’s customers. Quincannon, meanwhile, has been hired by
the Great Western Insurance Company to find and stop the activities of a
burglar who has already robbed the homes of three “prominent citizens,” all of
whom are policy-holders. The company suspects that at least three other such
citizens are targets.
When the detectives manage
to identify the objects of their separate pursuits as pickpocket Clara Wilds
and burglar “Dodger” Brown, they wonder if their cases have somehow converged
because Clara and Dodger are known to be—or to have been—a romantic pairing. But
then Sabina finds Clara dead, murdered, and Dodger immediately becomes a prime suspect.
Complicating the
detectives’ lives, Quincannon’s in particular, is an Englishman who claims to
be Sherlock Holmes. Ambrose Bierce has already surmised in his newspaper column
that the man is an impostor because it is well known that Holmes died three
years earlier in a plummet from a Swiss waterfall. Whether Holmes or not, he
insinuates himself into Quincannon’s investigation, which becomes much more
than the pursuit of Dodger Brown. It evolves into the investigation of an
impossible crime when an attorney, Andrew Costain, requests a meeting with
Quincannon at his home. The latter observes someone breaking into the home: “Up
and over the railing there, briefly silhouetted: the same small figure dressed
in dark cap and clothing. Across to the door, and at work there for just a few
seconds. The door opened, closed again behind the burglar.” When Quincannon and
Holmes, the Englishman having watched the house from a different direction,
enter, they find Andrew Costain dead—both stabbed and shot—in a study whose doors and windows are locked from the
inside. The two of them had previously taken precautions to effectively seal
the house against exit or entry, yet their quarry managed to evade capture and
vanish.
As Holmes, or
pseudo-Holmes, sums up the conundrum to Quincannon: “…You are adept at solving
seemingly impossible crimes. How then did the pannyman manage a double escape?
Why was Andrew Costain shot as well as stabbed? Why was the pistol left in the
locked study and the bloody stiletto taken away? And why was the study door
bolted in the first place? A pretty puzzle, eh, Quincannon? One to challenge
the deductive skills of even the cleverest sleuth.”
Count this reader as one
who easily nailed down the identity of the murderer upon spotting a particular
clue, but who did not come close to solving the locked room/sealed house
aspects of the puzzle. The first in a series about the Carpenter/Quincannon
partnership, this well-paced novel melds an enticing puzzle plot with humor,
picturesque characters, and colorful descriptions, based on the authors’
research, of the San Francisco of the 1900s.
Marcia Muller and Bill
Pronzini are Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award-winners. The only
other married couple to achieve that distinction was Margaret Millar and Ross
Macdonald. As much as I recommend The
Bughouse Affair, the meaning of whose title will become evident not long
after one gets into the book, the authors’ reputations, separate and combined,
recommend it far more.
© 2016 Barry Ergang
Among his other works, Derringer
Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, “The Play of Light and
Shadow,” can be found in e-book formats at Smashwords.com
and Amazon.com
2 comments:
This would be the one novel of the series I know I have a copy of somewhere, in the TBR mountains and planetoids. As I note on John Norris’s blog, at least two (and I miscounted, it’s at least three already) in this series have been tapped for this week’s FFB…cool. I’ve read only the Carpenter and Quincannon stories that had appeared in LOUIS L’AMOUR’S WESTERN MAGAZINE and perhaps one or two others (In EQMM, as sieve-like memory recalls)…so clearly it’s past time! Thanks.
I enjoyed THE BUGHOUSE AFFAIR and I've gone on to read the rest of the books in the Carpenter and Pronzini series. Fun stuff! I admire Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini for their productivity and great story-telling skills!
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