The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) by Harriette Ashbrook

Harriette Ashbrook was an American mystery novelist who embarked on her underappreciated literary career as a writer of plot-oriented detective stories, penned in the tradition of The Van Dine-Queen School, but she abandoned the puzzle detective in the early 1940s to write suspense fiction – which were published under the penname of "Susannah Shane." During her short-lived career, Ashbrook received "short shrift" from reviewers and was "never taken seriously in the mystery arena."

So, as a consequence, she was ignored by the paperback publishers of the day and her untimely passing, in 1946, ensured her novels would be consigned to obscurity. Not a single one of her detective or suspense novels were reprinted in nearly seventy years!

But was this deserved? Not on your life! I've only read three of her novels and agree with John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, that Ashbrook not only was a good writer and smart plotter, but her ideas were "often very original for the time they were written." I believe it was John who brought her back to everyone's attention with his 2013 blog-post, "The Detective Novels of Harriette Ashbrook." Since that blog-post, she has been slowly clawing her way back onto the printed page.

A small, equally obscure publisher, Jerry Schneider Ent., reissued the fascinating A Most Immoral Murder (1935) in paperback in 2016 and this was followed by a couple of reprints from a dodgy publisher of ill-repute, Resurrected Press – known for altering the original texts of their reprints. A year later, Coachwhip Publishers republished one of her Susannah Shane dames-in-danger suspense novels, Lady in Lilac (1941). These were the first reprints in nearly seven decades, but, after they were published to little fanfare, everything quieted down again. Until a few months ago!

Back in late September, Black Heath Editions reissued all seven titles in the Philip "Spike" Tracy series and this includes one of her more expensive, hard-to-get detective novel, which is the subject of today's review.

The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) is the third novel about Ashbrook's Philo Vance-inspired series-detective, Spike Tracy, who's the smart aleck, playboy brother of the Manhattan District Attorney, R. Montgomery Tracy. This personal relationship allowed Spike Tracy to cultivate a reputation of someone who "goes around nosing into affairs" that aren't his and unearthing closely guarded secrets that doesn't make him exactly popular with "certain parties." This is opinion held by the murderers he helped bring to justice and Inspector Herschman of the New York Homicide Squad.

However, The Murder of Sigurd Sharon finds Spike Tracy stranded in rural Vermont with a dead car battery and there he watches a young woman rushing down a hill in a futile attempt to catch the last train out of the village.

Jill Jeffrey is a woman with a fluctuating personality. One minute she's "a charming, delightful creature" and the next moment she turns into "the most cold blooded, heartless hussy" you'll ever meet – especially for the time. A fascinated Spike is torn between "a desire to kiss her" and "break her neck," but quickly catches on something is going on back at her house. A lonely, isolated house occupied where she lives with her ill, bedridden twin sister, Mary, who she seems to loath. There's also their guardian, Dr. Sigurd Sharon, who used to be a Methodist preacher and a frigid live-in nurse, Miss Wilson. And their only contact with the outside world is their only neighbor, Jerome W. Featherstone, and Mary's physician, Dr. Carmack.

Jill tells Spike that Dr. Sharon is trying to kill her, when the only thing she wants to do is to live, but what he's trying to do is "just plain murder." Spike meets a household who greets him with "frigid politeness" and they resent his presence, but he's stranded there for the night.

During that night, Dr. Sharon is fatally stabbed in his bedroom and Jill is carried out of the room by Featherstone and Wilson muttering that he can never hurt her again, because he's dead. Murdered! However, the case soon becomes increasingly complicated with a false confession and impossible disappearance from the house with all the exists either locked or guarded by policemen. So nobody could have left the house unseen and place is searched, top to bottom, without result. This is followed by an equally inexplicable reappearance and this person tells them that even "Houdini himself would have given millions" for the secret. I think shows how obscure and little-known Ashbrook had been for the better part of a century, because The Murder of Sigurd Sharon is not listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). And this impossible disappearance/reappearance functions as a clue of sort.

However, this is the point where the plot becomes tricky to discuss as time, alas, not been kind to the primary plot-thread of the story, which was very innovative and original for the time, but has since been done to death – robbing the story of the effect of its bewildering premise and surprise ending. A reader today will have no problem figuring out a large chunk of the plot. Fortunately, this came with one (plot-technical) upside. You get to admire how fairly Ashbrook played with her readers throughout the story.

All of the clues and red herrings are present. Some strange, illogical remarks with one line being as good a clue as the verbal-clues from Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1937) and Five Little Pigs (1942). Why everyone in the household was against Jill. The impossible disappearance from a guarded house. There's even a bookshelf clue and in particular a hefty, Danish tome they can't read and gets stolen. Most of these clues spell out a very clear solution to the modern read, but Ashbrook, who knew how to plot a detective story, actually managed to add a twist in the tail of the story that averted an ending now considered cliché!

So even with time completely obliterating the novelty of a truly innovative and original idea, Ashbrook still turned it into a good, old-fashioned Golden Age detective novel towards the end – complete with an unbreakable alibi and surprise ending. And that, my friends, is talent.

The Murder of Sigurd Sharon has most of the hallmarks of the Van Dine-Queen School and could even be given the Queen-ish book-title The Danish Tome Mystery, but I thought the book had a closer resemblance to the work of Helen McCloy than either S.S. van Dine or Ellery Queen. An early foreshadowing of Ashbrook's switch from detective to suspense fiction in the 1940s. So I think admirers of McCloy will get a little more out of this book than the adherents of Van Dine and Queen, but I believe The Murder of Sigurd Sharon is still recommendable as an original piece of crime fiction, possibly a first, from a long, unjustly ignored mystery writer.

I'll return to Ashbrook with my next read, which is going to be a three-cornered fight between The Murder of Stephen Kester (1931), Murder Makes Murder (1937) and Murder Comes Back (1940).