The Hieronomo Clan

"Speaking is silver, silence is gold."

- Proverb

Even occasional readers of detective stories are probably familiar with some of the shopworn tropes and timeworn clichés of the genre, but they can still yield surprising results in the hands of a talented writer – which immediately brings me to The Balcony (1940) by Dorothy Cameron Disney.

Ah, yes, a Disney who indulged in the fine, gentle art of murder and blood spattered corpses. The Strawstack Murders (1939) is a minor masterpiece and Death in the Back Seat (1937) isn't far behind, but The Balcony is altogether a far more soberer affair than its predecessors. There's more emphasis on story telling, characterization and social commentary, which doesn't mean that the "Had-I-But-Known" approach from the previous novels was completely abandoned. Disney's heroin at the helm of this standalone, Anne Hieronomo, still reflects at the opening of the story "it did not occur to me that the dead hand of my great-grandfather would affect my own life and the lives of many others" with some other eerie foreshadowing's.

Anne's great-grandfather, John S. Hieronomo, was a leading figure of the abolitionist movement in the South during the American Civil War and settled down in Maryland – where he build "Hieronomo House" – which he bound to his descendents in what would later be deemed as a very shortsighted will. John Hieronomo's inheritance wasn't enough for the upkeep and the place now lays in gloomy neglect, and run a shoestring budget, but the provision to keep Hieronomo House as a dwelling place for the family for the span of twenty-five years has run out. The family is going to sell the house and the place will be turned into a hotel, but, before saying goodbye, they are going to have one last family reunion. What could possibly go wrong?

Upon her arrival, Anne meets most of her extended and estranged family for the first time, mostly great-aunts and uncles, but soon begins to notice something is not quite right. Or to borrow a phrase from proper literature, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark." A good, long and solid fence separates the estates of the Hieronomo's from the Ayres, who have been entangled in a bitter feud for the past twenty-five years, but here's my one problem with The Balcony. Representing the Hieronomo's neighbors is the blonde, handsome Dan Ayres, who meets Anne in a "cutesy" scene in the snow, slip in reference or two to the work of the Bard and nobody will notice you're gunning for a Romeo and Juliet angle – which is why I hoped Dan would be the second body promised in the story's summary. Hey, sometimes I hate happy endings. This was one of them.

Anyhow, there are more than enough family members for Anne to worry about, wandering in-around the house, beginning when Anne is given the Blue Room by accident. The room that belonged to her great-grandfather, John. There's an all too casual incident with an unloaded gun and, before long, we see some of those HIBK qualities creeping into the story – when the house seems to be filled with would-be-murderers and impending doom. Anne even finds out that picking up, and paying, for a package can look suspicious when her great-aunt, Amanda Silver, suddenly disappears and is found shot in the room she previously spend the night. The family has her back, but Anne's worried what one of them might be concealing behind his or her back.

Dorothy Cameron Disney

Well, as I said before, Disney focused in The Balcony on storytelling, characterization and some historical social commentary on the black slave trade, which she entwined admirably with the plot. The long dead John Hieronomo and his friend, Amos, a black man, were the most interesting characters in the story and how their actions influenced events over the course of a quarter of a century. However, I can imagine the open, brash way Disney approached the subject might have popped a monocle or two in the early 1940s. 

I'll never understand how Serious Critics can dismiss Golden Age detectives, because they were, supposedly, not interested in the socially relevant issues of their time (or some crap like that). As if Darwin Teilhet never wrote The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934), which is set in Germany against the background of a rising Third Reich and describes the early atrocities those silly, goose-stepping Nazi's became so known and reviled for after World War II. I'm sure that counted as broaching as socially relevant issue, because, you know, some countries were already kind of being invaded by the time The Balcony was published. Anyway, moving on...

What I especially enjoyed about the story was how subtle it appeared to be poking fun at the sprawling, remote country house-mystery with a reunion of people going on, but I'm not sure if that was intentionally or Disney just being a professional –  sidestepping the trap of the cliché. For example, there's a reunion at a country house with snowfall, but it isn't a blizzard cutting off the party from the outside world. Before Amanda disappears, Anne hears a sharp sounding click in her bedroom, but when the door is broken down the room is completely deserted. However, there isn't a locked room mystery to be found. The policeman isn't half as dumb and impulsive as he appears. So are the butler, maid and the unknown person lurking in the background. Hell, even racism has a twist in this mystery! Literary nothing is what it seems at Hieronomo House.

The Balcony may not be the twisty, complex and knotted affair of the previous novels, but Disney managed to pen one in which storytelling and characterization actually transcended the plot. And that in a book from nearly 75 years ago! Who would've thought that!? By the way, the plot, by itself, isn't too bad, either, but the story and characters cocooning it made the detective-elements just so much better.

And, finally, this: I hate reading back my old reviews. I really, really do.

Will-o'-the-wisp

"It's a pity," he said, "the walls can't talk. They could tell us a tale of a bold and intricate woman. A clever woman too—a woman who had figured the last evening of her life to the minute and second, a woman who thought she had covered everything."

- Inspector Chant (The Strawstack Murders, 1939).

After an extended excursion to explore the unfathomed nebulas of classically styled, post-1950s detective stories, I decided to take a well-deserved break from that period and head back home – to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

Dorothy Cameron Disney's The Strawstack Murders (1939) showed itself to be an exemplary specimen of that prosperous, illuminating era – in which a rich and complex plot is expertly constructed around a fair distribution of clues and red herrings. And if I were still unenlightened about the contributions made by contemporary, neo-orthodox mystery writers, such as William DeAndrea, Marco Books and Herbert Resnicow, I would've been tempted to lament the fact that detective stories like these followed in the pawprints of the dinosaurs. 

The moving spirit of this novel is a spinster, Margaret Tilbury, who lives with an assortment of relatives at a Maryland estate, known as Broad Acres, and lends her voice to the narrative of this bloody tale of murder and intrigue. The events Miss Tilbury depicts in the opening chapters, from an intensive bout with typhoid fever and the arrival of her nephew to in-law relationships and the entry of an unpopular nurse in the household, have the appearance of unimportant, domiciliary episodes and problems. But in true "Had-I-But-Known" fashion, these purely domestic events form in reality a cleverly disguised prelude to murder!

Dorothy Fithian, an unlikable live-in nurse who temporarily took up residence at Broad Acres to look after Miss Tilbury when she was struggling with the specter of death, becomes the first stiff to be carted-off to the city morgue when, one fateful evening, the household notices a glow emanating from the fields behind the house. When they go out to investigate, they discover the straw stack burning like a friar's lantern and during their attempts at dowsing the fire they drag Dorothy Fithian's limp body from underneath the smoldering stacks – where her nightly assailant left her to die an agonizing death after chocking her into semi-unconsciousness.

But when they return to the house, they find that someone has cut the telephone wires and drained the gasoline from their cars – effectively delaying the proper authorities from taking charge of the crime-scene and gaining valuable time for other nefarious activities. This makes it very clear to the members and friends of Miss Tilbury's family that they have a murderer among them and do everything within their power to sabotage the official investigation, from simply withholding information to burning possible evidence, much to the chagrin of Inspector Chant.

Crime Map on the Back Cover

Back in April, Disney favorably impressed me with her debut novel, Death in the Backseat (1937), which I delineated as a big knotted ball of plot threads that slowly unravels in front of a captivated reader, but during her second outing into the genre she crafted a novel that is nothing less than a minor masterpiece of plotting and misdirection. The plot simply bursts with activity, as characters are constantly moving around and bumping into more trouble as they go along, while clues are inconspicuously dropped along the way – which results in new developments in every odd chapter that ramifies the problems facing them and the reader.

But the greatest achievement here is perhaps the clever and original treatment of a stock-in-trade situation of the detective story that is cleverly hidden at the core of this book. I can't go into exact details, without giving away a vital part of the solution, but it makes you want to stand up and applaud the author for this ingenious display of creativity!

I've become a bit fearful at this point that I might have over praised this story, but I find the flaws, IMHO, negligible. Yes, the HIBK allusions can be annoying or even intrusive at times and most of the characters function more as chess pieces on a playing board than as actual human beings, but these are trifles compared to the quality, ingenuity and originality of the overarching story.

Dorothy Cameron Disney has completely faded away from popular view, which can be partly attributed to the fact that her mysteries are standalones, but that's hardly a justification for this criminal negligence on the part of the reading public. A good detective story is a good detective story, even if it lacks a catalyst such as Hercule Poirot or Dr. Gideon Fell, and The Strawstack Murders is an exempli gratia of the Golden Age Detective novel – in which Disney spun fine meshes from the multitude of plot threads and ensnared both characters and reader in it.

Simply put, The Strawstack Murders provides you exactly with the type of plot that you hope to find when opening a detective story from the 1930-and 40s. A (minor) masterpiece, plain and simple!

Bibliography:

Death in the Backseat (1937)

The Strawstack Murders (1939)

The Golden Swan Murders (1939)

The Balcony (1940)

Thirty Days Hath September (1942)

Crimson Friday (1943)

The Seventeenth Letter (1945)

Explosion (1948)

The Hangman's Tree (1949)

Geniuses at Work

"A picture says more than a thousand words."

While browsing through my files, I came across the following snapshot – depicting ten core members from the early days of the Mystery Writers of America who were evidently hard at work and strenuously taxing their mental dexterity. You have to love the fact that Pat McGerr, who was known for fooling around with unidentified bodies, completely immerged herself in the role of corpse in this picture. What dedication! ;-)

The Gang: Georges Simenon, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Blochman, Harold Q. Masur, Burke Wilkenson, Dorothy Cameron Disney, Fred Dannay, Leslie Ford, Manfred Lee and Pat McGerr.  

Update: I was searching for a website to attach to Burke Wilkenson's name when I found the place I originally snatched this picture from, but I still haven't the faintest idea who he was or what he did.

Not What You'd Expect From a Disney

Contrary to what the title might suggest, this is not a belated rant on Disney's inane scheme for a modern rendition of the Miss Marple character – plucking her from a quiet village in the British countryside and dumping her in the Big City in the guise of a present-day version of a 1920s flapper.

I will not drop any embittered comments on how Agatha Christie's grandson is pimping out her estate and that everyone with a pocketful of loose change can take Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple for a ride. Nor shall I make poor attempts at sarcasm by saying that the next major announcement will probably be that Harlequin Publishers has acquired the rights to The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930), and are in the process of revising them into full-length romance novels – with all the detective stuff cut out of them, of course, but to make up for the lost of authenticity they will slap the name of Mary Westmacott on the covers. Nope. Not a peep out of me on that subject.

The Disney I'm referring to is Dorothy Cameron Disney, one of the many shamefully neglected names in the field, who specialized in blending detection with atmospheric scenes of suspense and eerie foreshadowing sequences – commonly referred to as "Had-I-But-Known." This term is used to describe the books of Mary Robert Rinehart and her followers, who usually have their heroine reflecting back at the start of their novels, "had I but known that my surprise visit to my Great-aunt Agatha would expose a dark plot leading to the death of four people, I would never have gone to Rockport." Or something that runs along similar lines.

To be fair, this particular sub-genre never really appealed to me, sounding just a little bit too much as cozies with some doom and gloom added to the mix, but the descriptions and reviews of Dorothy Cameron Disney's mysteries, suggesting complex plotting wrapped up in a thick, atmospheric blanket, did catch my attention – and after reading her first book, Death in the Back Seat (1936), I'm glad that, once again, I succumbed to temptation.

Death in the Back Seat opens with a young couple, Jack and Lola Storm, taking a break from their expensive New York lifestyle, and settle down for while in the quiet town of Crockford, situated in rural Connecticut, where they rent a small cottage from the unsociable Luella Coatesnash – a stout, old-fashioned woman who's somewhat of an unofficial sovereign of the region.

But peace and quietness simply cannot be allowed to reign long in a detective story, and when a mysterious telephone call, more or less, orders the Storms to pick up a business acquaintance of their landlady, who, at that moment, is visiting France with her companion, they're unwillingly dragged into a vast and dark plot – leaving them with a corpse on the rumble seat of their car and a bag in the front seat stashed with cash.

And that's just for starters. Crockford, being the small town it is, are prejudiced against the suspicious outsiders and it doesn't exactly help that their cottage, and the grounds immediately surrounding it, are the center of all the criminal activity in the region – from a burglar, his face blackened with charcoal, stumbling from their closet and fleeing into the night to charred fragments of bone in a furnace.

Crime Map on the Back Cover

However, they're not making things exactly easy for themselves, either, purposely stumbling from one dangerous situation into another – all the while finding clues, uncovering hidden relationships, and, more importantly, not trying to get themselves killed. The only thing you can say against them is that they don't do it with the same joie de vivre as the Troys and the Browns, but then again, this not that type of mystery.

This book is really one big knotted ball of plot threads that slowly unravels in front of a captivated reader, and the best part is that you can play with it yourself, by trying to unsnarl it before Jack and Lola do, or, uhm, just sit back and enjoy the ride.  

On a final note, Mike Grost notes on his excellent website that Disney completely ignored one of Van Dine's sacred rules, and I have one thing to say about that: good for her!

There are, IMHO, only two rules for writing a good detective story: it has to play fair with the reader and there has to be a plot (or at the very least an attempt at creating one). I see no discernible reason why a detective story should exclude sinister societies, monstrous conspiracies, tough gangsters or a genuine love interest. It just depends on how well an author can work these elements into a story, and some do it better than others. Disney is one of them and scores full marks for this effort.