The Hangman's Tree (1949) by Dorothy Cameron Disney

Dorothy Cameron Disney was an American journalist, writer and columnist whose column, "Can This Marriage Be Saved," ran for three decades in Ladies' Home Journal, but she also authored nine detective novels – published between 1936 and 1949. I remember some were amused a woman named Disney wrote suspenseful, bloodcurdling tales of murder and detection when her work briefly resurfaced in the early 2010s. Disney's Death in the Backseat (1937) and The Strawstack Murders (1939) showed her novels aren't novelties on account of the name on the cover.

Mike Grost called Disney "one of Rinehart's most gifted followers" who "deserves to be revived." I highly rated Disney's two aforementioned novels, but, despite recent reprints from Wildside Press and Stark House Press of Death in the Backseat, Crimson Friday (1943) and The 17th Letter (1945), she remains largely forgotten, mostly out-of-print today. It probably didn't help Disney was not a wildly prolific writer who only wrote standalone mysteries. I honestly forgot about Disney as well, until I recently came across my copy of The Hangman's Tree (1949). Disney's ninth and final mystery novel. So decided to give it a go as it practically guarantees something good and different.

The Hangman's Tree brings a holidaying Dr. Victoria Grant from Connecticut to Charleston, South Carolina, to stay with an old friend during the town's Azalea Festival. Victoria's old friend is Margaret "Maggie" Fairlee, a rich woman, who abandoned a successful, self-made retail career to become the second wife of an old Charlestonian widower, Tradd Fairlee – whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. She arrives when Charleston had already began its week of celebration and parades. Flags flying every where, battleships in the harbor open to the public, bomber squadrons flying above the city in formation and "contingent of pretty girls" who "were flocking in from small towns over the state to reign as Azalea Queens at the week-long festival." Pretty soon, Victoria notices something is brewing underneath the festive atmosphere.

She hasn't seen Maggie for years and finds her not only completely changed, but her physical changes appear to be a conscious copy of the looks and style of her predecessor, Rose Fairlee. Maggie has also desperately been trying to find out what, exactly, happened to Rose. And why there's a veil of mystery surrounding her passing. But a marriage haunted by her memory is not the only problem festering in the Fairlee household.

Maggie has a stepson, Stephen, whom she has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart, Valeria Trevelyn, because it was "the dearest dream of Stephen's mother to see them married." There are, however, two problems. Valeria is returning to Charleston to ride, as the Queen of Bodes Crossing, on the Azalea Parade, but the crown was handed over to her after it had been awarded to another girl – something Maggie fixed with the mayor of Bodes Crossing. So now Rena Mae Thripp, the girl in question, has come to Charleston to raise hell ("...I'll kill her and then I'll kill myself"). There's another woman, Deborah Parr, who arrived in town with designs of her own involving Stephen. So enough emotions, strained nerves, closely guarded secrets and potential motives for something bad to happen. Something bad happens when somebody is given a fatal dose of morphine and dies in Victoria's arms. A death that looks more like murder than suicide. That's when the problems really begin as nobody is willing to tell the truth, while a second dose of the stolen morphine and a loaded gun remain unaccounted for.

Victoria is determined to get to the bottom of the matter, but, in a place like Charleston, she very much is the trope of the outsider-on-the-inside ("...a visiting northerner, an outsider..."). Not merely an outsider to a close-knit group of family, friends and neighbors, but a close-knit community with its cultural heritage, history and families as a bulwark against any outsiders wanting cause trouble. Even if that trouble is someone trying to find the truth or help. Some of these people wouldn't turn a hair at the thought of covering up a murder or blackmail, but turn pale at the thought of scandal and the generational damage it would do their reputation and family's standing. She's not the only person who has to watch their step. The victim was the cousin of Lieutenant Sanford Clayton, of Homicide, but "acked the backing of the Charleston police force" on even this case ("...he didn't represent the law, but merely himself"). So this allows Victoria to eventually do some actual digging and amateur detective worked helped by a lucky break, or two, by being in the right place and time to see or overhear something she wasn't supposed to.

This case not involves a poisoning, long buried family secrets and other relatives, but also a bit of blackmail, a second murder and the dreary hangman's tree near Harmony Hall – a local hotel run by Penelope and Philo Higgs. The Hangman's Tree is tightly packed novel perhaps more reminiscent of those early, small town American mystery-thrillers like Herbert Brean's Wilders Walk Away (1949) and Hardly a Man is Now Alive (1950) or Theodore Roscoe's "Four Corners" series rather than the "Had-I-But-Known" writers Dorothy is associated with. Not a bad one either! I know The Hangman's Tree is not one of Disney's most celebrated novels as some have commented it's simply not as good as her earlier novels like Death in the Backseat, The Strawstack Murder or even The Balcony (1940). Suppose it helped not being able to clearly remembering those early novels, but genuinely enjoyed The Hangman's Tree. Disney even succeeded to sneak something pass my attention (because I can be shockingly dense at times) that sprang a genuinely surprising twist on me. I always appreciate a good twist. While the question of who-and why ran along more or less expected lines, it all holds together nicely.

I'm sure if I reread Disney's Death in the Backseat or The Strawstack Murder next, I would find them to be better detective novels, but by itself, The Hangman's Tree is not a bad if you can enjoy a small town mystery-thriller – served with a thick slice of Americana. Nor is it a terrible novel to go out on. This genre, of ours, has seen some truly terrible swan songs from once respected mystery writers. Disney's The Hangman's Tree is not one of them.