The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) by Harriette Ashbrook

The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) is Harriette Ashbrook's debut as a mystery novelist that simultaneously launched the career of her dilettante detective, Philip "Spike" Tracy, who's a lighthearted, irreverent reflection of S.S. van Dine's Philo Vance – leading only seven of Ashbrook's dozen detective-and suspense novels. Spike makes a memorable entrance.

The Murder of Cecily Thane opens with Spike's older brother, District Attorney R. Montgomery Tracy, wondering out-loud why God allows his troublesome younger brother to live. Or why his little brother lacked the good sense to get himself arrested "in some place besides New York." Spike had been taken into custody on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. So his older brother had to come down town to bail him out.

Ashbrook briefly explained why there's such a stark difference, in personalities and life philosophy, between the Tracy brothers.

R. Montgomery Tracy grew up under "the stern Purnitan rule" of his father, which, combined with an occupation entrenched in "the majesty of the law," gave him a humorless disposition and life, he felt, was "not to be taken lightly" – a mirror opposite of his carefree brother. Mrs. Tracy had enough of her husband Puritanism and picked up her youngest son, Spike, and went to Europe. So he grew up as "a charming hybrid," half American and half continental, who lived an utterly useless, but infinitely amusing, existence. A careless lifestyle backed with "the unceasing flow of dollars from the paternal estate."

So, to nobody's surprise, they ended up with clashing personalities and their verbal exchanges ("Philip, I refuse to permit such levity") reminded me of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (who first appeared in Fer-de-Lance, 1934).

Montgomery dreads that every "damned paper in town" will plaster the story of Spike's arrest on the front page, which comes on the back of editorials chiding him that has three unsolved murders on his desk. And he had been on his way to the scene of another murder when he had to get his brother out of jail. A murder that promises to be a real headline grabber.

Cecily Thane is the wife of a well-known jewel merchant, Elton Thane, who amassed a small fortune as an importer of rare, precious gems which had once "adorned the now defunct crowns of Europe" and Cecily had quite a collection of jewelry – worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cecily's body was found in the bedroom of their brownstone, shot through the heart, with the door of the private wall safe standing wide open. An estimated "$200,000 worth of diamonds, emeralds and pearls" had been taken from the safe!

Interestingly, Mr. Thane allowed Cecily to engage a professional gigolo, Tommy Spencer, twice a week to take her to dances, parties and the theater. Something Mr. Thane didn't care about at all. However, it turns out Spencer was involved in an identical murder, the Schlockenhass case, which had "stirred the city six months before" under different name. A simple, or so it appears, because the house was "simply teeming" with people who had "no particular fancy" for Cecily on the night of her murder. There's her estranged brother, George Griffis. A very old friend and his daughter, Mortimer and Nina Fennel, who had their private reason for hating Cecily. And even her husband is revealed to have had a gem of a motive.

So, when Spike learns his brother has "a murder on the pan," he decides to cancel his elk-hunting trip, to British Columbia, and stay in New York to hunt a murderer instead ("much better sport") – accompanying his brother as an unofficial observer. A vivacious Spike embarks on his first murder case in "a jolly spirit of fun," but everyone soon discovers there's "a quickness of perception" under his cheerfully irresponsible exterior.

Spike's airy comments about the construction workers outside the house, his strange behavior with the lipstick at the crime scene and fiddling with the pillows on the chaise lounge all turn out to have an important bearing on the case. Slowly, but surely, he not only wins the trust and respect of his older brother, but even Inspector Herschman slowly has to adjust his an opinion on Spike. An opinion Herschmen expressed with letting Spike know that the only reason he hadn't thrown into the Hudson River, with a five-hundred pound boulder tied to his feet, is the fact that he's the District Attorney's kid brother.

The Murder of Cecily Thane is a more breezily written detective novel than my two previous reads by Ashbrook, The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) and Murder Makes Murder (1937), which were much closer to the psychological-driven mysteries by Helen McCloy. They also had knottier and original plots. By comparison, The Murder of Cecily Thane is an ultra-conventional with an ultimately simplistic plot that owes some debt to Van Dine's The Benson Murder Case (1926). But even when being highly conventional, Ashbrook couldn't help herself but show flashes of ingenuity.

One of the clues is reproduced in the book and, as John Norris pointed out in "The Detective Novels of Harriette Ashbrook," this is kind of an interactive clue allowing the reader to study the clue in exactly the same way as Spike did. A very innovative idea for the 1930s. Secondly, there's a cleverly done, tricky alibi worthy of Christopher Bush.

So, all in all, The Murder of Cecily Thane is a pretty solid and promising debut from a talented mystery writer who, inexplicably, never got the acknowledgment she deserved. Recommended as a lighthearted take on the Van Dine-Queen School of detective fiction.

I wanted to save the remaining three Spike Tracy novels, The Murder of Stephen Kester (1931), Murder Comes Back (1940) and The Purple Onion Mystery (1941), for next year, but might sneak in one more before the end of the year.