Give Me Death (1934) by Isabel Briggs Myers

Last year, Chosho Publishing reprinted Murder Yet to Come (1929/30) and Give Me Death (1934) by the co-creator of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Isabel Briggs Myers, whose debut earned her a controversial $7500 cash prize in a writing contest – originally won by Ellery Queen's The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). A decision that was overturned when the organizer, New McClure's Magazine, folded and absorbed into a women's magazine called The Smart Set.

Between her first and last novel, Briggs Myers worked on a three-act stage play, "Death Calls for Margin" (1931), starring her two detective characters, Peter Jerningham and John MacAndrew. Not much can be found online about "Death Calls for Margin," except for a notice from the April 21, 1931, publication of the Swarthmore Phoenix offering a tantalizing glimpse. "Death Calls for Margin" takes place in Philadelphia "just after the stock market crash" with "two of the same characters in Mrs. Myers' book making their reappearance." Another scrap of information (PDF) reveals Myers was part of the original cast ("Author Convincing in One of Leading Roles") and a copyright notice describes it "a murder mystery in 8 acts." Possibly the play has a longer and shortened version intended for smaller venues. Would love to take a look at it!

Three years later, Briggs Myers published her second, and last, novel-length mystery novel. While obscure and practically unknown today, Give Me Death continues to be dogged by controversy and some interesting, but mixed, reactions.

Curt Evans reviewed Give Me Death, back in 2012, praising its "exceptional virtues" ("...pulling off some Christie-Carr level slight of hand...") and noting Briggs Myers was a better writer, trickier plotter and better at creating characters than S.S. van Dine – on whom she modeled her detective novels. Curt also pointed out the book has a notable failing likely to run some readers today the wrong way. This notable failing has been hanging around the book like a millstone as Stephen Pierce chimed in on the comments saying Give Me Death "is already kind of an in-joke on the Honkaku Discord, mostly just referred to as the racist book" based on a spoiler from her Wikipedia page. I thought that was too hasty a dismissal. Only for Scott to enter the comments with a book report admitting "the whodunit and reversal at end were clever," but the "over the top histrionics that trigger the events ridiculous" leaving a bad taste. Add to this a contemporary review calling Give Me Death the very best in then recent mystery fiction and became more than a little curious. Curious enough to snatch up the reprint.

Give Me Death is once again narrated by John MacAndrew, "Mac" for short, who's the personal secretary and occasional Watson to famous playwright and sometimes amateur detective, Peter Jerningham. The story finds them putting the finishing touches to the manuscript of Jerningham's latest stage play when they receive two visitors.

One of these visitors is young Stephen Darneil, of the Darneil dynasty, who looks like a corpse and came to Jerningham for help, because his father is dying with a bullet in his brain – which poses an unusual problem. Gordon Darneil, head of the Prudential Trust, has an impeccable reputation, personally and professionally. His bank "had proceeded on its conservative way unshaken by crash or panic," because it "had nothing to apologize for." There appears to have been no reason why a perfectly healthy, financially secure and morally upstanding man looking forward to the marriage of his two children suddenly decide to pick up a gun to shoot himself. Stephen believes his father shot himself and the idea frightens him, which is why asked Jerningham to either hush it up or find a different answer. However, the physical evidence irrefutably points towards suicide with the investigation quickly turning on the question what, or whom, drove him to take his own life.

They know Gordon Darneil received some kind of disturbing news or unsettling information, which completely changed his mood and ended in suicide. Gordon Darneil is not the last of his family to do the same upon learning that dark, dreadful secret.So the premise of Give Me Death has a wrinkle of originality in setting up 1930s detective novel investigating a suicide rather than a murder and "Chapter XI: The Last Motive" even has a short lecture on suicide motives – listing all the reasons from A to K. Briggs Myers honestly tried to deliver on the premise with twisty ending. Something that might have worked had it not been for everything between the opening and closing chapters.

Firstly, there's that dark, all-consuming dreadful secret driving the Darneils to an early grave. Conceptually, the premise works with an idea, a hazardous information, which in 1934 was ahead of its time. Not what generally passes for dangerous information in crime fiction, but something like a domestic version of Roko's Basilisk. It could have made for something truly special had the secret not been so ridiculous to the point where it aged into a parody. I mean, they eventually find a letter from Gordon divulging the dreaded secret and honest to God opens with this dryly stated, unintentionally hilarious line (SPOILER/ROT13), “vg unf orra cebirq gb zr orlbaq ubcr bs dhrfgvba gung gurer vf va zl irvaf n fgenva bs Arteb oybbq.” That line caught me off guard and just cackled like a long-lost demented relative of the Darneils, holy shit! Secondly, the incredibly annoying, over the top histrionics of the Darneils to this secret, but that even turned into a parody of itself. As if the secret had activated the self-destruct mode on a bunch of Manchurian candidates. Like a Monty Python sketch! Thirdly, Jerningham doesn't shine at all as a detective here. On the contrary.

Brigg Myers tried to pull everything together by the end and there's a rather brilliant line, hidden somewhere in this mess, doubling as a tell-tale clue, but it's too little too late. Not to mention that the convoluted twisting and turnings of the plot happen so late into the proceedings, it's simply hasn't enough room nor time to make it work effectively. So everything to make a good, even original, detective story were present, but the executions of those ideas ended up being a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Give Me Death closed the book on Briggs Myers stint as a detective novelist, but would have liked to see if she could have rebounded. I noted in the review of Murder Yet to Come how it reminded me of the work of two other female Van Dinean mystery writers, namely Harriette Ashbrook and "Roger Scarlett" (Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page), who also started out as Van Dinean imitators – e.g. Ashbrook's The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) and Scarlett's The Beacon Hill Murders (1930). Ashbrook would go on to originate a now worn-out, but then startling new, trope in The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) and Scarlett's final novel, In the First Degree (1933), severed itself from its Van Dinean roots. You can see elements of both in Give Me Death in trying to do something different within the Van Dinean detective story. Yes, it was poorly conceived, poorly done, poorly executed, aged poorly and many today would argue it was done in poor taste. I'm just curious if she could have rebounded from it and at least returned to the level of her first novel. But as it stands, I agree with Scott that Murder Yet to Come is the superior detective novel and the one for which Briggs Myers should be remembered. So don't let the not undeserved reputation of Give Me Death dissuade you from reading it.