Helen McCloy

Detection: Helen McCloy and the Realist School | Bizarre Events - Hard to Explain | What Is It?: Hard to Identify Objects | Textual Analysis | Dying Message | Missing Objects | Main Murder Mystery vs Subplots | Series Detectives | Doubles and Impersonation

Subjects: Cognitive Psychology | Social Anthropology | The Ancient World | France Between the Wars | Codes | Life History | Troubled Young People | Buildings Full of Menacing Strangers | Architecture: New York City and Elsewhere | Popular Fiction | The Press | Art | Feminism | Wealthy Americans as Nazi Supporters | Advertising | Business and Socialism | Energy | Planes | Birds | Blacklisting | Kitchens | Parties | Twilight | McCloy's Style

Books: Dance of Death | The Man in the Moonlight | The Deadly Truth | Who's Calling? | Cue for Murder | The Goblin Market | Do Not Disturb | Panic | The One That Got Away | She Walks Alone | Through a Glass, Darkly | Alias Basil Willing | Unfinished Crime | The Long Body | Two-Thirds of a Ghost | Before I Die | The Further Side of Fear | Mr. Splitfoot | A Question of Time | A Change of Heart | The Sleepwalker | Minotaur Country | The Changeling Conspiracy | The Impostor | The Smoking Mirror | Burn This

Short Stories, non-series: The Nameless Clue / The Black Disk | Chinoiserie | Dead Man's Code / Not-Tonight-Danger

Short Stories, Dr. Basil Willing: The Singing Diamonds | The Case of the Duplicate Door | Murder Stops the Music | Murder Ad Lib | Murphy's Law | That Bug That's Going Around

A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page

Helen McCloy

Recommended Works:

Dance of Death (1938) (Chapters 1 - 9, 19 - 21)

The Man in the Moonlight (1940)

Cue for Murder (1942)

The Goblin Market (1943)

The One That Got Away (1945)

Unfinished Crime (1954)

The Further Side of Fear (1967) (available on-line, at https://archive.org/details/furthersideoffea00mccl)

The Sleepwalker (1974) (available on-line, at https://archive.org/details/sleepwalkernovel00mccl)

The Impostor (1977) (available on-line, at https://archive.org/details/impostornovelof00mccl)

Burn This (1980) (available on-line, at https://archive.org/details/burnthisnovelofs00mccl)

The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr. Basil Willing (available from its publisher Crippen & Landru)

The Singing Diamonds

The above is not a complete list of McCloy's novels and short stories; it instead contains my favorite McCloy works, those I enjoyed reading, and recommend to others. The lists under the collections do not include all the short stories in the book, just the ones I recommend.

Helen McCloy

Helen McCloy is the American author of numerous mystery and suspense books. She also published a science fiction novel, and a handful of science fiction short stories.

Commentary on Helen McCloy:

Detection

Helen McCloy and the Realist School

Helen McCloy has affinities with the Freeman-Crofts Realist School tradition, especially the scientific detection of R. Austin Freeman. There is a great deal of science of all types in McCloy's works. There are also scientific backgrounds to some of the tales, such as university scientific work in The Man in the Moonlight, the lab and truth serum in The Deadly Truth (1941), and the UFO investigation in "The Singing Diamonds" (1949).

Her psychiatrist-detective Dr. Basil Willing is somewhat in the tradition of Freeman's medical-scientific sleuth Dr. Thorndyke.

Some of McCloy's best known works use approaches to mystery plot construction pioneered by earlier writers in the Realist tradition. McCloy's Through a Glass, Darkly is in the tradition of Realist writer Dorothy L. Sayers' "The Image in the Mirror".

There is an effort to focus on Croftsian timetables, in the early novel Cue for Murder. However, these are not used for alibis, as they are in Freeman Wills Crofts.

Bizarre Events - Hard to Explain

Some of the best mystery plots in McCloy fall into a common category. They involve bizarre, strange events, often quite dramatic or surreal. The events are hard to explain. Motive is especially puzzling: why would anyone want to do such strange things? The events typically involve behavior of one or more people. Eventually, the book comes up with a logical solution, explaining why people are doing these things.

The events are physically possible. These are NOT "impossible crimes" or "howdunits", where the challenge is to figure out how the actions could possibly have been physically performed. Instead, the mystery is to figure out why the actions are taking place. (There are indeed some impossible crime puzzles in McCloy, but those are different from these "what causes the bizarre events" puzzles.)

I don't want to "spoil" these mysteries for the reader. Half of their pleasure comes from their bizarre, out-of-the-ordinary initial premises - so I don't want to summarize these premises here. So I will reference chapters in the books, to identify these puzzling situations:

McCloy's explanations can be quite inventive. The worst one is in The Man in the Moonlight. SPOILER. The explanation in The Man in the Moonlight is that the bizarre opening events are part of experiments by a Psychology Professor. This is an all-purpose "explanation" that could be used to justify anything. Explanations in other McCloy novels tend to be more concrete, and more logically linked to the strange events they are trying to explain.

What Is It?: Hard to Identify Objects

Some McCloy mysteries involve strange looking objects or images. The mystery puzzle is to identify these objects: to figure out what they are. Such mystery puzzles include: The "incuse marks" in "Murphy's Law" are also an "odd visual pattern that needs to be identified". However, they are not treated as the basis of a mystery.

Textual Analysis

"Textual analysis" is a kind of detection. Sleuths look for hidden, meaningful patterns in things people say or write. These patterns reveal hidden facts, or new perspectives on events. Typically the reader gets a full look at the "text" the sleuth is studying, such as a letter, news article or memoir. And can match wits with the sleuth, trying to discover the hidden pattern. (The term "textual analysis" was coined by me. A name was needed to describe this kind of detection.)

Such "textual analysis" detective work was included in mystery fiction long before McCloy started writing:

Helen McCloy works with textual analysis include:

Dying Message

Dying Messages are a popular kind of mystery puzzle plot. (Please click on the link to see my list of examples.) They occasionally appear in Helen McCloy: Some mystery puzzles in The Goblin Market are related to the Dying Message.

Missing Objects

Mystery puzzles about missing objects occur in both Helen McCloy, and other mystery writers. In such tales, an object is mysteriously disappears, or is mysteriously hidden in a clever way, and its location defies intensive search. Both the detective and the reader are challenged to figure out the location of the object, or how it disappeared.

Helen McCloy works with missing object puzzles include:

The hidden necklace in The Deadly Truth has some resemblance to the above puzzles.

Missing object mysteries have a relationship to the "impossible crime". As the object's location stays unknown despite an intensive search, it looks more and more impossible that the object is indeed hidden anywhere. Such mysteries can be called impossible disappearances of an object.

Please see my list and discussion of Hidden Objects in Mystery Fiction.

Main Murder Mystery vs Subplots

Helen McCloy, like several other Golden Age mystery writers, often included both a main murder mystery in her novels, and a number of subplot mysteries, often dealing with mysterious events other than murder.

In many McCloy novels, these subplots are far better than the central mystery of "who committed the murder?". Examples include:

The subplots show imagination, originality and substance. But the murder mystery is often simple, bringing the crime home fairly arbitrarily to one of the suspects. Often there is nothing clever about the murder mystery: it doesn't reflect some hidden pattern that is revealed by the detective during the solution, or a clever murder scheme. It also often is not especially connected with events in the novel: the novel might be full of spies and international intrigue, for example, while the killer turns out to have some simple monetary motive unrelated to spying.

In Agatha Christie mysteries, the main murder mystery about who did the killing, is often the best part of the novel. This is not true in a lot of McCloy books. Readers might well find this disappointing. However, shifting one's attention to the subplots can often produce a far more satisfying reading experience.

Series Detectives

McCloy's first mystery novel Dance of Death introduces her series detective Dr. Basil Willing. It also introduces a whole number of characters connected with New York City law enforcement. Such large casts of police characters appear in S. S. Van Dine and some of his followers, such as Ellery Queen. In Van Dine and Queen, these characters return in novel after novel.

In McCloy's books, only a portion of the law officials from Dance of Death return in later novels. And these only intermittently, instead of in every book. Many of the later Willing tales are set outside of New York City, and the New York cops usually make no appearance in such tales.

The supporting character seen most frequently in later works is Inspector Patrick Foyle. His official title is Assistant Chief Inspector in command of the Detective Division. In practice, Foyle is in charge of police homicide investigations. He is analogous in position to Inspector Queen in the Ellery Queen books, and Inspector Piper in Stuart Palmer. All of these men are the main police contacts of their detective heroes. Foyle appears in such Dr. Willing works as Dance of Death, The Man in the Moonlight, The Deadly Truth (Chapter 12), Cue for Murder, Alias Basil Willing, "The Case of the Duplicate Door". He briefly talks on the phone with Willing in Through a Glass, Darkly (Chapter 14), and is mentioned at the end of Two-Thirds of a Ghost. He sends a telegram to the hero of She Walks Alone (start of Chapter 13), a non-Willing mystery.

In some ways, Foyle anticipates the personality of the policeman contact Max Ritter in Lawrence Blochman's Dr. Coffee tales. Both Foyle and Ritter are earthier in speech than the more educated scientist detective heroes they work with, Dr. Willing and Dr. Coffee. Foyle and Ritter can be a bit what my parents used to call "gut level" in their dialogue. But neither man is vulgar in speech or behavior, and both are intelligent and determined.

The other main recurring detectival character in the Willing tales is Dr. "Piggy" Lambert, the New York City toxicologist. He tends to appear in fewer scenes per book than Foyle. His lab is in New York's famous hospital, Bellevue. His appearances include Alias Basil Willing (Chapter 9, section 2).

By contrast, such characters in Dance of Death as Commissioner Archer or D.A. Morris Sobel don't seem to return in later books.

The unnamed Admiral in US Naval Intelligence who makes a brief appearance in the final chapter of The Goblin Market, seems to return in "The Singing Diamonds". This time, he has a name: Curtis Laidlaw.

Dr. Basil Willing is not an "amateur sleuth". Not only is he a credentialed professional psychiatrist and medical doctor, he is also a paid official consultant to New York City's District Attorney. And during World War II, he works for US Government Intelligence. He is thus unlike the many unpaid amateur detectives of the Van Dine School, such as S. S. Van Dine's Philo Vance, the detective Ellery Queen in the books by Ellery Queen, or Miss Hildegarde Withers in Stuart Palmer. Despite Dr. Willing's official professional status, he often resembles these amateur sleuths in being a highly intelligent man, gifted at reasoning, who is not a policeman, but who works with the official police on murder investigations in New York City. In other words, McCloy's Dr. Willing books can have the "feel" of Van Dine school amateur detective novels, even though Dr. Willing is paid and not an amateur detective.

Basil Willing meets his future wife Gisela von Hohenems in the second McCloy novel The Man in the Moonlight. She shows up in subsequent Willing books. It is hard to describe her as a "detective": I can't recall her doing any sleuthing in the novels. She sometimes interacts with the other characters and suspects, though. Gisela von Hohenems is a likable enough, inoffensive character, but I can't view her as especially interesting. The books stress her beauty and appeal. But she never actually seems to do anything of significance.

Willing and his wife have a daughter, also named Gisela. She is mentioned as a child in Two-Thirds of a Ghost. She shows up as a grown woman in "Murphy's Law" and "That Bug That's Going Around".

McCloy has series sleuths other than Dr. Willing:

Miguel Urizar is Hispanic; Dr. Alfred Neroni's ancestors come from Sicily and are ethnically Greek. Much is made of Dr. Basil Willing as being of Russian descent. All of these men are non-WASPs. They are also all suave social sophisticates.

Miguel Urizar is part of the same "universe" as Basil Willing, as links in his two novels show. But as best I can tell, Dr. Alfred Neroni is not part of this universe.

Doubles and Impersonation

WARNING: SPOILERS in this section.

Both doubles and impersonation are subjects that run through many McCloy works. They often get treated as the basis for ingenious mystery puzzle plots, or startling plot twists. They are also looked at as a surrealist development, something odd and strange that happens to the characters.

Impersonation is a major plot gambit in McCloy's first novel Dance of Death. One very young woman impersonates another. Later McCloy mystery-thrillers like The Long Body and The Changeling Conspiracy raise the possibility of impersonation as a plot twist. In all of these works, impersonation is a clever plot twist, but not actually part of a mystery puzzle, strictly speaking. These stories also resemble one another, in that the person being impersonated is a very young woman: a teenage debutante in Dance of Death.

The start of Alias Basil Willing involves impersonation, the basic facts of which are shared with the reader. The mystery in this book is why the impersonation is taking place.

BIG SPOILERS. Possible impersonations play a role in puzzle plot solutions in The Man in the Moonlight, The Goblin Market, The One That Got Away.

Cue for Murder (1942) breaks new ground, in that one character's strong resemblance to another is part of the solution to a mystery puzzle. There is no impersonation. Instead, the two men involved can be classified as "doubles" for each other.

Vicente in The Goblin Market can be seen as a sort of double for his boss: at least, the two men dress alike, like the two men in Cue for Murder.

McCloy's most elaborate employment of the double theme occurs in Through a Glass, Darkly and Unfinished Crime. Doubles are explored intensively, both as mystery puzzle plot subjects, and as surrealist events.

Subjects

Cognitive Psychology

Dr. Willing is especially interested in human sensory perception, the mechanisms by which people see, hear and feel. These often play crucial roles in the stories. Although the designation of Willing as a psychiatrist might lead one to assume that Willing is a specialist in Freudian psychoanalysis, in actual fact he seems most interested in perception and thinking, what today we would call "cognitive psychology".

A persistent theme of McCloy's work consists of characters who are alone in a private world, one limited and closed off by their perceptions, perceptions of reality that are different from other people's. Sometimes these "private" ways of perception emerge from the character's physical and mental states; in other stories the perceptions are imposed on them by other characters, often the villains of the story up to some nefarious plot. In some of her early stories, it is Dr. Willing who uses his expertise in cognitive psychology to explore and define the parameters of these private worlds. Later on, in a novel like The Sleepwalker (1974), these concerns are woven into the fabric of a suspense novel. I have to be a bit vague about the actual mechanisms and content of these private perceptual worlds; they usually form the basis of either the solution of McCloy's works, or major plot surprises that she throws out midway.

Cognitive psychology is very much grounded in science. So this aspect helps make the McCloy works that employ it scientific detective stories.

There are far too many appearances of cognitive psychology in McCloy to list them all here. Instead cognitive psychology will be examined in detail in the discussions of individual novels.

Willing is also an expert in various kinds of mental illness, their symptoms and diagnosis.

Psychiatrist and psychologist characters other than sleuth Dr. Willing also show up in McCloy mysteries:

Children's imaginary playmates are mentioned briefly in Dance of Death (Chapter 8), Who's Calling? (Chapter 2, section 3).

Poltergeist mysteries, created by emotionally disturbed pranksters, are studied in Who's Calling? and Mr. Splitfoot.

The cognitive psychology of dogs is explored in Panic, "Murder Stops the Music" and Burn This.

Mysteries by other writers that explore aspects of Cognitive Psychology:

See also films:

Social Anthropology

In addition to psychology, the field of Social Anthropology sometimes gets discussed in McCloy. These are usually brief discussions, and often don't play any significant role in the mystery plot: The murder victims in both Panic and The Changeling Conspiracy are older well-to-do scholarly men who have done archaeological work abroad.

The Ancient World

Ancient Greece and its mythology is a key element of Panic.

In addition to Panic, Ancient Greece runs through other McCloy works:

Other parts of the Ancient World also appear in McCloy:

France Between the Wars

Helen McCloy studied and worked for a new service and as an art critic in 1920's and 1930's France. Perhaps inspired by this first-hand knowledge, France in this era pops up as a subject of McCloy books. It is often part of characters' backgrounds, a place they lived before returning to their homes in the USA or Britain: The U.S. public has always been fascinated by France. Americans want read about it. So in addition to her personal connection to France, McCloy could be assured that including French material in her books would appeal to readers.

Other countries appear too. China is the locale for "Chinoiserie", and a subplot in "The Singing Diamonds". In addition, the New York City-set The Man in the Moonlight has a non-stereotyped Chinese character.

Caribbean islands are the setting of all or part of The Goblin Market, She Walks Alone and Minotaur Country.

The Man in the Moonlight looks at Vienna, Austria between the wars, rather than France.

Codes and Ciphers

"The Pleasant Assassin" (1970) is one of a series of late McCloy short stories that center around secret codes. These very short code stories - each is around 10 to 12 pages - are jammed with enough plot and background to furnish a whole novel. Their plotting tends to suffer from coincidence and improbability, but they can be fun to read, anyway.

These code stories seem to begin with "Dead Man's Code" (1954). This piece is signed by McCloy's husband at the time, mystery writer Brett Halliday, and stars his series detective, private eye Michael Shayne. However, Halliday's 1955 introduction to the tale states that it was largely ghost written by McCloy while he was busy with a novel.

McCloy's short story "Murder Ad Lib" (1964) also contains a code.

As discussed below, The Goblin Market (1943) has code elements.

McCloy's novel Panic (1944) has an extensive mystery subplot, dealing with a new kind of cipher. Real-life code expert Étienne Bazeries is mentioned repeatedly.

"Double bluff" ciphers are discussed in The Further Side of Fear (Chapter 7). A criminal scheme is compared to them.

The hero's job in the Army Signal Corps involves some cryptanalysis in A Change of Heart (Chapter 2).

Jargon and slang used by the Mafia to communicate appears in a subplot in The Sleepwalker (Chapter 10). The slang is designed to be incomprehensible to outsiders. It is thus a simple kind of code. McCloy cites speculation that much slang has origins in such thieves' code.

The Impostor is another McCloy novel with extensive material about complex secret ciphers.

The crooks in "Murphy's Law" (1979) use a simple code to communicate.

Some of McCloy's works do not contain actual codes, but link their imagery to the world of cryptography:

Life History

McCloy's characters tend to have detailed life histories. These are often explored and probed over the course of a novel, with new aspects coming to light.

Troubled Young People

Troubled young people, often teenagers, are a frequent McCloy subject:

Buildings Full of Menacing Strangers

An archetypal situation in McCloy is a vulnerable young woman, living in a building full of potentially menacing strangers: The heroine runs a small apartment house in Burn This, but there is not much sense of her being menaced by the tenants.

Architecture: New York City and Elsewhere

Descriptions of elaborate, and sometimes unusual buildings were a common feature in Golden Age mysteries. This interest extended to "landscape architecture": grounds of buildings, college campuses, farm spreads, city street scenes and parks, etc.

McCloy's books have interesting examples of New York City architecture and landscape architecture:

Architecture plays a role in such country-set mysteries as The One That Got Away and Mr. Splitfoot.

A boardwalk runs down to the river, between two tennis courts, in The Man in the Moonlight (end of Chapter 12). It anticipates the alley between two buildings in Cue for Murder.

Popular Fiction

The wife in The One That Got Away (1945) who writes popular fiction is a recurring kind of character in McCloy's books. Earlier, there was a somewhat similar although far less sympathetic woman author of lucrative but low brow popular novels in McCloy's Who's Calling? (1942). In that early book, McCloy seems to follow the standard literary party line, depicting popular fiction as worthless, formulaic pap. By the time of The One That Got Away (1945), McCloy is far more admiring of the skill it takes to write popular fiction. Both women's writing is the main support of their families.

By Two-Thirds of a Ghost (1956), there is a spirited defense of mystery fiction, and a more skeptical look at standard "serious" literature (Chapter 9).

However, there is reason to believe that McCloy had positive feelings towards mystery fiction right from the start. The dust jacket of her first novel, The Dance of Death (1938), contains a quote from McCloy comparing the prejudices facing mystery fiction in the 1930's to those faced by the Novel itself in the 19th Century, and declaring her intention to write many more mysteries.

"The Singing Diamonds" (1949) has a snotty university psychology professor, who denounces "comic books, radio, movies and detective fiction" as harming the minds of the American public. McCloy is perhaps taking a satirical view of such criticisms. The huge real-life attack on comic books is best remembered today, involving a Senate hearing and well-publicized books and articles demonizing comics. Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham had already begun his critique of comic books with a 1948 article in Saturday Review. But radio was also under siege, something noted critically in Cat of Many Tails (1949) by Ellery Queen. Crime tales bore the brunt of this attack, whether in comic books or on radio.

The elderly, shut-in aunt in Unfinished Crime (1954) turns out to be a huge mystery fan, often reading two books a day. She is excellent at figuring out the mystery plot that is happening to her niece! This seems to be attributed to all the "training" she got by reading mystery fiction (Chapter 6). She also mentions Poe's "The Purloined Letter", relating it to her niece's adventures. She later defends mystery fiction, by saying it offers strong portraits of every day life and social customs. something that will be valuable in the future (start of Chapter 10).

A crook lures the hero of "Murphy's Law" into a theft-scheme, by first loaning the hero a fiction story about Raffles the Gentleman Thief, then telling the hero it would be fun to commit a theft in real life, just like in the story. This is rather like the aunt in Unfinished Crime - only she is imitating the detectives of fiction, while the crooks in "Murphy's Law" are imitating a fictional thief.

While some McCloy works take a positive view of mystery fiction, The Sleepwalker (1974) has a brief comment lampooning British Golden Age mysteries of the 1920's for dullness. McCloy claims they have a murder in the first chapter, then nothing more happens.

Alias Basil Willing has a brief but sharp satire of the reviewing of "serious" literature (end of Chapter 5).

McCloy herself was a prominent mystery reviewer. She won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) in 1953 for her criticism. She was also President of the MWA in 1950: the presidency is primarily an honorary position, used to recognize top mystery authors.

The Press

Several McCloy stories take a look at journalism, and various institutions that support it: The (fictitious) Occidental News Service: McCloy had a real-life background as both a journalist and mystery writer.

McCloy's comments on literature, mystery fiction and popular fiction tend to concentrate on the final product: the books themselves, their contents and quality. Plus a look at the personal lives of authors.

By contrast, McCloy's portrait of journalism tends to offer inside looks at journalistic institutions: how a news service works, what a reporter's work is like. The Goblin Market is especially detailed. However, "The Singing Diamonds" does take a look at actual newspaper articles, in examining how the government might manipulate the press.

Art

McCloy's works discuss the visual arts: Doodling and what it reveals, are explored in Who's Calling?, "That Bug That's Going Around".

Black dresses made by Paris designers are considered the ultimate in fashion:

The "little black dress" is still a staple of couture today - although these McCloy books do not use that phrase.

Perhaps in parallel, white tie and tails is considered an excellent outfit for men. It is not linked to designers though:

Feminism

A few of McCloy's works make explicit feminist statements: McCloy shows women as successful at their jobs, running businesses and organizations: McCloy has a special concern with maternity, and women raising children: McCloy's writing is feminist, in that it sometimes endorses feminist ideas, treats working women as successful and admirable, and has some incisive comments on feminist issues. However, feminism is just one of many strands woven through McCloy's books. Her books frequently spend 95% of their time discussing other topics.

I have not made a systematic study of which McCloy works pass the Bechdel Test. I suspect some McCloy novels with male protagonists might fail. Those with female protagonists might be more successful. Unfinished Crime, a novel written from the Point Of View of its heroine, easily passes the Bechdel Test: Caroline, Edna and heroine Sara discuss the ruby at the center of the book's mystery (near the start of Chapter 7); later Caroline and Sara discuss the mystery of the ruby again (middle of Chapter 11). These are substantive discussions, strongly linked to the book's mystery plot.

Wealthy Americans as Nazi Supporters

SPOILERS. Several Helen McCloy novels are among a number of books and films, that suggested rich Americans might be Nazi sympathizers and traitors: All of these were created in 1942-1945, in the midst of World War II. These works have a distinct class attitude: they suggest that the rich, as a social class, are full of Nazi supporters and traitors.

The last chapter of Do Not Disturb sets forth these rich men's far right philosophy. Their conservative politics is directly linked to their support for the Nazis.

Parallel situations and views are expressed by English mystery writers:

See also:

Advertising

Advertising plays a role in: Advertising is generally seen negatively by McCloy.

Business and Socialism

Business organization and innovation are a recurrent McCloy interest: Allan Dwan was a Hollywood director whose films often look at financial processes.

A private company that produces electrical power, and a proposed public agency that would do the same thing and compete with it, are featured in She Walks Alone (middle of Chapter 4, the paragraph on the newspaper towards the end of Chapter 15, Chapter 17). This scenario directly pits private enterprise versus government action.

The One That Got Away (1945) (Chapter 10) links some of its detectives to socialism:

A sympathetic character endorses socialism in She Walks Alone (1948) (middle of Chapter 13). This man is not a Communist: among the books he is shown reading (middle of Chapter 12) is the anti-Communist Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler.

McCloy books satirize well-to-do people who are opposed to socialized medicine:

Energy

Energy and how it is produced and used, are major issues for society in Helen McCloy works: Issues of Energy show up in several mystery and science fiction works by other authors. In mystery fiction: It is notable how many woman mystery writers are interested in Energy (Leslie Ford, Blanche Bloch, Dorothy Stockbridge Tillet, Virginia Perdue, Christopher Hale, Frances Lockridge, Ursula K. Le Guin and Helen McCloy are female).

Key science fiction texts include:

Some mysteries mention electric cars:

There is a new field: Energy Humanities. Scholars contribute to understanding energy, society and the future.

Physics is invoked in detective stories:

One gets the impression that physics was part of the zeitgeist of the period, something intellectuals as a whole were interested in.

Planes

Airplanes are a recurrent McCloy interest: The astronauts who went to the moon, play a role in "That Bug That's Going Around".

Negative views are taken of two men who are World War II paratroopers (both men also express enthusiasm for the word "airborne"):

Glass-walled buildings in New York City are seen as vulnerable to attacks from the air during warfare:

Birds

Birds, especially caged birds, play a role in:

Blacklisting

Academics get fired from their jobs for their alleged left-wing politics during the HUAC-McCarthy era in: Much more briefly: Blacklisting is mentioned in other countries than the USA. Police Captain Miguel Urizar is on a blacklist in Spain, for his activities on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War in The Goblin Market (middle of Chapter 16).

I am impressed with McCloy's courage in discussing this controversial issue. But I also have reservations about her treatment of it. One might note that the real-life HUAC-McCarthy purges were complex, that McCloy's treatment is complex and sometimes ambivalent, and that McCloy's accounts of this subject might not always be completely historically accurate or present all the relevant issues. In addition to such issues of fact, reasonable people might agree or disagree with McCloy's attitudes on blacklisting, and views on what public policy should have been.

Kitchens

Changes in modern kitchens are detailed in Mr. Splitfoot (start of Chapter 7). These are not technological changes, but changes in how kitchens are organized and styled. This is not quite "cognitive psychology", but it does relate to how people structure a working area like the kitchen. McCloy is typically observant, offering one of the mini-essays that dot her books.

Earlier Through a Glass, Darkly (Chapter 2) had a brief discussion about changes in kitchens over time. This discussion also has organizational aspects.

In "Murphy's Law", we learn that impoverished people are cooking in their stove-less rented rooms by using immersion heaters.

Parties

McCloy liked to set mysteries at sophisticated or upper class parties:

Twilight

In Dance of Death, we learn that twilight is Dr. Willing's favorite time of day.

Twilight descends eerily on the campus, giving Inspector Foyle "an irrational feeling anything might happens" in The Man in the Moonlight (start of Chapter 3). It is vividly described. Darkness is linked by the police to criminal activity. Later Foyle is reassured by the coming of full night, and thinks "you can imagine anything at twilight." This links twilight to another favorite McCloy subject, cognitive psychology.

In The Deadly Truth (end of Chapter 10), the melancholy music Valse Grise (Gray Waltz) is compared to twilight on a rainy day. By contrast, when the hydroplane lands at twilight in The Deadly Truth (end of Chapter 12), we get one of McCloy's peaceful, color-rich visual-poetic descriptions of twilight. The book calls it "dreamlike".

Twilight is briefly described in Who's Calling? (start of Chapter 2, section 3).

The city in "The Nameless Clue" is described vividly under low light - it is hard to tell if this is twilight or a very overcast winter day.

The first murder in The Goblin Market occurs at twilight (Chapter 3).

In The One That Got Away (Chapter 2), our first view of the Scots setting is during the long twilight of the Far North, known as the "forenicht".

In The One That Got Away (Chapter 11), the dim light in the Pict house is compared to twilight.

Heroine Gisela takes a walk through the "November twilight", in Through a Glass, Darkly (Chapter 2). Twilight is often peaceful in McCloy - but this episode is full of ominous weather. And twilight is often full of bright colors in other McCloy books - but this one features gray clouds. Still, this episode, a pure contact with nature, offers a respite from the sinister human activities in which the characters are trapped.

The brief description of Basil Willing's Manhattan neighborhood at the end of twilight in Through a Glass, Darkly (start of Chapter 11). Basil finds the neighborhood especially appealing "at this hour".

A brief but vivid description of a twilight in New York City is in Alias Basil Willing (start of Chapter 7). Later, we get a look at dusk at a Long Island country club (start of Chapter 8).

The Long Body contains an unusual discussion about "perceiving" the edge of a cliff at twilight, by the "feel of the wind" (Part 1, Chapter 3). In the twilight and mist, it is impossible to see anything. This "perceiving" involves Cognitive Psychology, a key McCloy subject.

We see the post-sunset colors of the sky in The Further Side of Fear (Chapter 4). There's a second good description of the sky after sunset, which also features color (Chapter 9).

The sky before sunrise is described in A Change of Heart (Chapter 1). It is blue, like the after-sunset in The Further Side of Fear (Chapter 9). The heroine loves to take the ferry in the twilight in A Change of Heart (Chapter 11). This suggests that McCloy's interest in twilight is also based on affection and enjoyment. There is also a less interesting look at Manhattan skyscrapers artificially causing twilight with their shadows, in A Change of Heart (Chapter 4).

In The Changeling Conspiracy (start of Chapter 9), there are vivid views of Manhattan skyscrapers and old Brooklyn buildings in the dusk. This is described as the "best" view of Manhattan.

In "Murphy's Law" (middle of the story), there is a brief description of Cambridge seeming to shimmer in a mist, as seen through the window of Dr. Willing's apartment. This is not twilight - but it is a related idea.

In Burn This (Chapter 1) the end of day is described, along with an Arab proverb about defining daylight and when it ends. Black and white are mentioned, unlike the bright colors of some twilight descriptions in other McCloy books. The proverb involves perception: part of the Cognitive Psychology that is a big McCloy subject.

McCloy's Style

McCloy is a graceful, literate writer. There are descriptive passages of the rain and the ocean in The Deadly Truth, which are really beautiful. McCloy also has the "readability" of the best storytellers: you can read her books in a single sitting.

Dance of Death

Dance of Death (1938) is Helen McCloy's first mystery novel. In Britain, it is called Design for Dying.

Mystery Plot

Dance of Death opens with the body of an unknown woman discovered on a New York Street. The first mystery is: who is she? But when Dr. Willing's detective work results in a tentative identification, it immediately opens another mystery. When this mystery in turn is solved, it too leads to another puzzling, mysterious situation, and so on, with more mysteries posed and solved. This "chain of mysteries" is maintained through the book's long and inventive opening sequence (Chapters 1-9). It also can be compared to a "series of nested boxes": when you open one box, another box is found inside.

By the end of Chapter 9, we know a lot about the situation, but not all. More is revealed in a later section (Chapters 19-21). A pair of ingenious surprise ideas here lead to a more detailed picture of goings on, on the night of the murder.

Just considered as a story, the excellent opening is full of startling, imaginative and often surreal events.

SPOILER. Disappointingly, the actual murder turns out to have little connection, with the bizarre events we have been reading about in much of the novel. The actual murder mystery itself is not very creative. Only the motive aspects offer some ingenuity, in regards to the timing of events in the novel.

Setting and Characters: Links to My Man Godfrey

The wealthy household bears some resemblance to an earlier hit film of the era, My Man Godfrey (1936). My Man Godfrey takes place in a huge New York City mansion of the wealthy, just like the later Dance of Death. Two very wealthy young heiresses live in the mansion, a bit like the heiress in Dance of Death and her poorer cousin. In both works, the older woman who runs the household is a chic Society woman, who keeps a comically repulsive young male artist as a houseguest as her "protege". My Man Godfrey opens with a scavenger hunt; a scavenger hunt is mentioned as being fun by the heiress in Dance of Death.

Both works offer a contrast between these society people, and the Depression with its poor men swirling around them. In Dance of Death, this is an opening chapter showing poor men working for the WPA shoveling snow.

Debutantes

Dance of Death centers on a debutante ball. As shown in the book, debutantes were huge media celebrities in this era, covered in the press, and making celebrity endorsements in advertisements. Other American mysteries also looked at debutantes: Death in a White Tie (1938) by Ngaio Marsh examines London debutantes. It's a very good novel, but the English debutante system depicted is different from the American one, and not immediately comparable to the above books.

It is tempting to point out that McCloy, Chanslor, Caspary and Marsh were all woman authors, and that they were perhaps interested in a popular, prominent social system like the debutantes, that was centered on women. However, this statement could have problems: for example, there might easily be other mysteries of the period focussing on debutantes, and some of them might be written by men.

Chapter Titles

Dance of Death has chapter titles based on kinds of paintings. In McCloy's next book The Man in the Moonlight, all chapter titles are words that begin with E. In Cue for Murder, all the chapter titles are theater terms. These sort of arbitrary or highly stylized titles sometimes appear in other Golden Age mystery writers, such as Ellery Queen and Ngaio Marsh. They seem to disappear in McCloy after these early books. Exception: the three sections of A Change of Heart have titles based on tense in grammar.

The opening quotation in Dance of Death, from which the book's title derives, is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Golden Legend (1851).

The Man in the Moonlight

The Man in the Moonlight (1940) is Helen McCloy's second mystery novel. It is less impressive than her first, but it is elaborately constructed with many subplots and has some well-done material.

It also appeared in the magazine Cosmopolitan in 1940, apparently one of McCloy's few novels to appear in the prestigious, high-paying "slick" magazines.

Mystery Plot: The Main Murders

The Man in the Moonlight is full of mystery subplots. They are frustratingly uneven, ranging from ingenious to uncreative. The core murder mystery - who did the crime? - is unfortunately one of the book's poorest mysteries. Also second-rate: the related puzzle of "who is the man in the moonlight, and why are so many witnesses giving different descriptions of him?". Since both the mystery about the killer, and the title puzzle about The Man in the Moonlight are unmemorable, it is easy to disparage the novel.

Some of the clues to the killer's identity are psychological. They are detailed and carefully thought through. But they also seem rest on ideas about the killer's mind that seem dubious: one could come up with innocent explanations for the killer's attitudes and psychology.

Best puzzle about the main murder: how was it physically carried out? It doesn't look like a murder at all. How did the killer do it? This puzzle is reasonably clever. It is solved midway through the book (Chapter 11). This kind of "how-done-it" is a standard category of mystery puzzle.

One might note that this how-done-it has nothing to do with the puzzle of who did the crime.

Mystery Sub-Plots: The Characters' Secrets

However, there is a series of impressive subplots: mainly mysteries about various characters. These characters have secrets, and there are often clues to these in their behavior. SPOILERS:

Mystery Sub-Plots: The Paper

Both The Man in the Moonlight and Burn This open with a piece of paper accidentally getting blown near good guys. The typewritten text on the paper is dramatic, but mysterious and hard to interpret. The fact the page is typewritten suggests it is locally produced, by one of the characters n the story.

Society

The psychology professor is doing highly unpleasant experiments on his own baby, over the strenuous objections of his wife, the child's mother. This anticipates McCloy's later worries about child rearing in The One That Got Away: that it will be taken away from mothers, and performed instead by a Nazi-like government. This is just one child in The Man in the Moonlight, and the government is not involved. Still, it is frightening to read about, and stands as an eerie precursor to McCloy's later writings.

Universities in mystery fiction of the 1920-1955 era often get surprisingly negative treatment. This psychology professor is a chilling human being. And other professors in The Man in the Moonlight are murder suspects. They are a sinister bunch. There is little sign of any attitude that universities exist to serve the public, or that professors are lovable men who gently train students. Instead, the university in The Man in the Moonlight seems like a remote place, unaccountable to the public, and potentially full of sinister experiments and activities.

The discussion of unemployment among research scientists, suggests the academic world has long been a difficult place to make a living (Chapters 8, last part of 18).

Yorkville University seems entirely fictitious. But Yorkville itself is a real neighborhood of Manhattan, located roughly in the same East Side area depicted in the novel. As best I can tell, it does not contain any real-life colleges that might have served as a model for the book's school.

Europe: Vienna

Quite a few McCloy mysteries look at France between the World Wars. By contrast The Man in the Moonlight looks at Vienna, Austria during the same period. Two major characters came from there as refugees (Konradi, Gisela) and Dr. Willing studied there.

Architecture: Listening Posts

SPOILER. Basement rooms in Southerland Hall allow one to eavesdrop on laboratories above. This anticipates Mr. Splitfoot (Chapter 3), in which similar listening can be done in an attic. The scenes in both novels, in which the listening areas are discovered and explored, are among the livelier episodes in both tales. The ventilator in She Walks Alone also allows eavesdropping.

The campus is nicely depicted. It is one of the landscape architecture locales that run through Golden Age mystery fiction. The campus is the subject of the back cover map in the Dell "mapback" paperback edition.

Cognitive Psychology

The words various categories of killers use, rather than "murder" (Chapter 1).

Testing the baby's reflexes (Chapter 2).

The Inspector's being able to distinguish the sounds of a shot and a backfire (Chapter 2).

How animals treat their young (Chapter 2).

Boasting (last part of Chapter 5).

Seeing and its limitations in the moonlight (last part of Chapter 5).

The psychology of advertising (Chapter 12).

Repeated violent blows (start of Chapter 13).

SPOILERS. Two unusual cognitive experiences (Chapter 14).

Lie detectors (Chapter 15).

Word association tests (Chapters 15, 16).

Color

The Dean's party (Chapter 11) involves color: Amy Salt's bedroom is hyacinth blue and citron yellow (Chapter 13).

Many of the above colors are linked to plants or fruit.

The Deadly Truth

The Deadly Truth (1941) is one of Helen McCloy's poorest mysteries. The tone of the book is unpleasant, focusing on a decadent international socialite and her mean-spirited activities.

Rare for the normally liberal McCloy, there is some bigotry about minority groups. The quote from Balzac (Chapter 12.6) is racist. Dubious, negative generalizations are made about the deaf (towards the end of Chapter 8). Even the "positive" comments on dark people (Chapter 11.2) are odd and over-generalized. Another "positive" but dubious generalization: do black people have an "eye for color" in design (Chapter 9)?

Other problems with The Deadly Truth are discussed in the article below. These include the book's treatment of labor unions. And the mean-spiritedness of the characters.

On the plus side, there is some good mystery plotting. The novel is richly detailed, with several absorbing parts.

Links to The Man in the Moonlight

The Deadly Truth resembles The Man in the Moonlight, McCloy's previous novel: It is hard not to suspect that McCloy planned The Deadly Truth as a novel in the same style and approach as The Man in the Moonlight.

As discussed in detail below, both The Deadly Truth and The Man in the Moonlight have numerous subplots, concerning mysterious secrets in the suspects' and victims' lives. Much of the mystery in both novels revolves around the sleuth's attempts to reveal these secrets.

The Man in the Moonlight mainly takes place in a University setting, and scientific research is depicted or discussed throughout. By contrast, only the opening of The Deadly Truth transpires at a scientific research facility (the Southerland Foundation). Most of the book takes place at a fashionable country estate and an upper crust house party there. The Deadly Truth is poorer for this: I would have preferred more scenes of medical research, and less of the generic country house party.

Cognitive Psychology

The main premise of the book, the truth serum, is based in a favorite subject of McCloy: cognitive psychology. The opening (Chapter 1) explores these psychological aspects in depth. McCloy has thought through this subject in detail.

SPOILERS. The solution to the mystery at the novel's end, is also grounded in cognitive psychology. A completely different set of cognitive psychology ideas than the truth serum premise.

Much weaker: Ideas attributed to the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer deal with the cognitive psychology of color and sound (Chapter 11). The ideas about color seem especially dubious to me. This Schopenhauer episode is one of the poorer disquisitions on cognitive psychology in McCloy.

Science Fiction

The opening (Chapter 1) resembles science fiction: it extrapolates beyond existing reality, to imagine a plausible new innovation (the new truth serum).

Mystery Plot: The Main Murder

The identity of the murderer is indicated by a large number of clues (see the solution in Chapter 15). This gives this plot a certain solid value, although one does not want to make grandiose claims for it.

In many McCloy novels, the solution to the main mystery is not interesting. By contrast, the solution in The Deadly Truth is fairly substantial.

Hidden Object

A necklace is hidden in an out of the way place (Chapter 11.5). This anticipates in a mild way, the better near-impossible-crime mystery puzzles about hidden objects in later McCloy books.

Mystery Sub-Plots: The Characters' Secrets

The Deadly Truth contains subplots. These mainly focus on characters' mysterious secrets, which are eventually revealed. The Man in the Moonlight was also a book focussing on mystery subplots about characters' secrets.

SPOILER. The big secret involving the central characters is indeed fairly clever, considered as a surprising plot twist (Chapter 6). But it is also a cruel hoax, and not really fun to think about.

SPOILER. The lack of notes for Michael's writing (Chapter 10.3) anticipates a similar lack of notes or working materials in the author's home in Two-Thirds of a Ghost. Both have similar causes, too. These ideas are developed more elaborately in Two-Thirds of a Ghost.

Mystery Sub-Plots: Secrets of Charles and the Butler

BIG SPOILERS in this section.

A mystery subplot about one of Charles's secrets (start of Chapter 15) recalls the second twist about suspect Ian Halsey in The Man in the Moonlight. Both of these puzzles involve cognitive psychology aspects.

The subplot about the butler's secret (solved at the end of Chapter 8) also has some similarities of the Charles and Ian Halsey subplots.

The butler's secret, Charles' secret, the twist about Ian Halsey in The Man in the Moonlight. all have some broad structural resemblances to the subplot about the purser in She Walks Alone (Chapter 10), and whether he can read.

There are also specific links between the butler's secret, and the intrigue in A Change of Heart about the Russians and translation.

Politics: Labor and Management

SPOILER. The other mystery subplot about Charles (solved in Chapter 14) is politically striking. It shows McCloy's left-of-center skepticism about the rich. It also paints labor leaders in an extremely poor light. This plot shows a fair amount of ingenuity. But is it fair in its depiction of labor leaders? Did any ever act this was in real life?

One villainous labor leader is described as a possible Communist (Chapter 13). Direct references to Communism in McCloy are generally negative.

By contrast, Ted Currie is a sympathetic New Dealer who supports the rights of labor and unions (Chapter 11.3). He is perhaps included to give some "balance" to the coverage of labor issues.

Poetry: James Elroy Flecker

McCloy once again shows her love of poetry. Verses by James Elroy Flecker are woven into the plot. The page found in the fireplace quotes Flecker's "Epithalamion" (Chapter 10.3). The quote at the end (Chapter 15) about "The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea" is from Flecker's "The Gates of Damascus".

The poets quoted by McCloy tend to be Victorian or Edwardian, and write verse in a traditional, non-modernist style. Flecker is a late example of this poetic approach.

Time: Present vs Future

An interest in Time runs through McCloy's fiction. The Deadly Truth (Chapter 12.3) contrasts the present with the future. It says that to lead "the good life", humans must see possibilities in some sort of future. By contrast, living only in the present dehumanizes people, turning them into animals lacking human feelings or thoughts.

Like many ideas in McCloy, this above concept has links to cognitive psychology: how humans think and perceive.

Who's Calling?

Who's Calling? (1942) is mainly a minor book, but with a few interesting aspects. It is a formal mystery puzzle story, but it is better for its colorful storytelling and odd plot developments, than for most of its mystery plot ideas.

HIBK

Who's Calling? falls into the traditions of the Had I But Known School of American mystery fiction (often abbreviated HIBK). This is untypical of Helen McCloy's books. It has such HIBK features as: The house phone system recalls a major HIBK work, The Bat (1920) by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood.

The Writer

A major character in the opening is romance novelist Eve Cranford. She is the most interesting character in the story. But unfortunately she has too little to do in the later sections.

The amusing opening forms a sort of sly burlesque or parody of the romance fiction of the day (Chapters 1,2). The cliches of romance fiction are explicitly evoked, and contrasted with reality, in a self-referential or Pirandellian way.

Mystery Plot: Main Mysteries

The mystery plot is generally second-rate, especially compared with McCloy's best fiction. The main mysteries are: Sure enough, at the end we learn who is doing these things, and their motives. There is nothing very creative about the answers. There is no ingenuity about how the crimes are done, as there is in McCloy's impossible crime stories. Furthermore, they stretch the plot of the book into implausibility.

BIG SPOILERS. It turns out that the person who committed the murder, is different from the person who committed the poltergeist pranks. All other things being equal, having more than one main villain in a mystery can be considered a flaw, or a less than brilliant solution.

Mystery Plot: Better Subplots

As in many McCloy novels, some subplots are better than the main murder mystery. However, even most of these subplots do not rise to the high levels of the subplots in other McCloy mysteries.

The reconstruction of the prankster's movements around Eve's house shows some skill. (The prankster's activities are shown in the end of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and reconstructed by the sleuth in Chapter 9, section 2.) This recalls the Golden Age interest in architecture.

The subplot about Chalkley's activities arrives at a two-part solution (Chapter 9) SPOILERS:

The Chalkley subplot is another of McCloy's subplots focusing on a character's secrets. Chalkley's activities also solve one of McCloy's "hard to explain situations": the riddle of why anyone would want to kill a harmless man like Chalkley (posed at the end of Chapter 5).

Mystery Plot: Mysterious Visitor

A mysterious visitor (Maxim Lubov) shows up at the mansion, then departs (Chapter 5, section 2). Such mysterious visitors are an occasional plot complication in detective fiction, occurring in such HIBK works as Mary Roberts Rinehart's "Episode of the Wandering Knife" (1943), and Leslie Ford's The Woman in Black (1947). The sleuth and the reader typically wonder who this visitor is, and what relationship they have with the other characters. Please see my list of Mysterious Visitors in mystery fiction.

The Strange Development

In Who's Calling?, McCloy comes up with a lollapalooza of a plot development (Chapters 9, 11). It is startling, way out, and the most interesting plot aspect of Who's Calling?. It anticipates later and better McCloy novels, which also have audacious gambits as part of their premise or solution. The idea in Who's Calling? is not as original or creative as the ideas in these later works. And it is not as well integrated with an overall mystery puzzle, as the ideas are in later McCloy works. Still, it shows McCloy moving in the right direction.

Custody Case

A courtroom battle over paternity and custody is discussed (Chapter 8, section 2). The hoopla and media sensation over the book's fictitious case of "Little Frieda", seems modeled on that surrounding the famous real life 1934 custody courtroom battle over "Little Gloria" Vanderbilt. However, the facts of the two cases are completely different. McCloy has introduced a dispute over paternity, something that did not occur in the "Little Gloria" case. This gives a scientific aspect to McCloy's story, with scientists testifying in court.

Cognitive Psychology

An author has a special kind of reader who likes her books, even though most readers don't (first part of Chapter 2).

Being "long" is linked to sadness (start of Chapter 2, section 2).

The discussion of the hypnotic state (end of Chapter 5, section 2). It leads to a demonstration of "automatic writing" (Chapter 5, section 3).

The discussion of "play" (start of Chapter 5, section 4).

The account of Saturnalia (end of Chapter 6).

Camouflage (Chapter 11). This is part of the McCloy theme of "perception".

Cue for Murder

Cue for Murder (1942) is a theater mystery. It is set in New York City, right after the USA's entry into World War II. Dr. Basil Willing begins his war-time role of working in US Intelligence in this book: he is assigned to support the F.B.I. However, spy activities play no role in the book.

The Opening

The opening of Cue for Murder resembles in structure that of Dance of Death. Both novels open with a dramatic event, set among very poor working class people in New York City. In both stories, these working class people are innocent witnesses to the event, honest people who are not any sort of criminals. In both novels, this opening forms a contrast with the rest of the book, which is populated by well-to-do sophisticates.

A Literary Novel

The sophisticated characters introduced at an art show (Chapter 2) recall Margery Allingham's The Fashion in Shrouds (1938). Both novels feature a brainy young woman who is designing clothes for a famous chic-but-superficial stage actress. Both works have an almost suffocating emphasis on characterization of these two women, and "sophisticated" atmosphere. This section seemed a bit dull on first reading - but a rereading shows it establishes many character elements and situations that will play a role in the novel.

However, immediately after we get a long look at the theater itself (Chapter 3). This is the first of three episodes in the novel that describe the play being acted on stage. All three of these sections are remarkably vivid. They offer an in depth look at the theater and its traditions. The later episodes repeat and vary the earlier ones, in a surrealistic way. Such surrealist recurrence of events is a mystery story tradition, found in writers like Ellery Queen and Craig Rice.

Amateurs

McCloy repeatedly makes negative comments in Cue for Murder about amateurs, and their inability to contribute meaningfully to the arts. A similar observation occurs in Two-Thirds of a Ghost, where it is also extended to politics. In the years since, debates about the merits of amateurs have escalated, with the rise of the Internet. McCloy would presumably side with social critics today, who suggest that amateurs and their web sites are contributing little of value to the arts or journalism.

Mystery Plot: The Subplots

The subplot about Vladimir is another mysterious stranger mystery in McCloy. Like the puzzle swirling about the unknown Maxim Lubov in Who's Calling?, this stranger has a Russian name. In neither book, does this Russian connection play any role in the plot. The way Vladimir gets identified by the sleuth, shows good detective work and plotting.

Also good: the way the black coat worn by the figure on the fire escape seems to disappear, despite an intensive search of the theater. This subplot is part of the Impossible Crime tradition.

The burglary at the start leads to two puzzles:

The mysteries that surround young actor Rod Tait's romantic entanglements also fall into the category "bizarre events that are hard to explain". It begins with such an inexplicable event: Rod concealing his engagement (Chapter 2). This subplot too is well done. It is noteworthy as a formal mystery puzzle plot, that doesn't involve murder, theft or any other form of crime: just personal relationships. This mystery has a more elaborate construction than many of McCloy's "explain a bizarre event" mysteries. Typically such puzzles in McCloy start out with a strange, hard to account for situation; then later on, a logical explanation occurs. But Rod's situation is different. It keeps getting apparently explained. Then new complications arise, which make it mysterious and baffling all over again. This shows ingenuity, and skill at construction.

Mystery Plot: The Main Murder Mystery

The mystery plotting in Cue for Murder has some limitations. The main murder mystery is less developed as a puzzle, and has fewer plot surprises, than the numerous well-done subplots. As a whole, this does not affect the overall quality of the novel, which has a lot of interesting plotting. But it can be disappointing on a first reading of the book, when one is expecting some big plot payoff from the murder mystery, and it doesn't come.

Also, some of the clues are suggestive, but not rigorously logical:

Consequently, the solution lacks the hard rigor of some Ellery Queen finales, which logically establish that one and only one person could have committed the crime. These ideas of the sleuth are ingenious - but they are suggestive rather than hard deductions.

Doubles

SPOILER. The young man Basil sees in the bar (start of Chapter 3) is dressed just like him, in similar evening clothes. Sociologically, this is not surprising: men's evening wear in the 1940's was highly standardized by convention. But it does allow McCloy to bring in one of her favorite themes: that of the Double. The way Basil and the young man look just like each other plays a role twice later on in the mystery plot. Both occurrences are small but interesting.

Interpretation of a Text

After interviewing the actress, Leo offers an interpretation of her conversation. He points out that it conceals some hidden meanings, and also that it reflects personal attitudes of the actress. Similar passages occurs in She Walks Alone (start of Chapter 8, end of Chapter 17), where the sleuth interprets a letter a woman has written, showing hidden attitudes in it, and how they lead to distortions in her account. In both cases, the woman's attitudes towards money, wealth and poverty are involved. Such an interpretation has some links to McCloy subjects as Cognitive Psychology, and "personal, private mental worlds". This is specially true of the analysis in She Walks Alone.

Architecture

The vivid description of the theater, the alley and the bar next door are in the Golden Age tradition of creative architecture (Chapter 3). Height plays a role, as it will with the office and street in her next novel The Goblin Market.

The stage set is also described in architectural terms.

The modernist glass-walled cube where the art exhibit is held comes in for some satire (Chapter 2). Nightmarishly, McCloy suggests it is especially vulnerable in wartime.

The Goblin Market

Mystery Plot

The Goblin Market (1943) is one of several novels Helen McCloy wrote with a spy background during World War II. Despite these elements of international intrigue, the book is constructed as a classic puzzle plot mystery. McCloy opens with a murder, and the rest of the novel shows her hero detecting the solution to the crime. Along the way, there are a whole series of subsidiary mysteries; the hero solves these one at a time, in a succession of chapters lasting throughout the book. In some of McCloy's novels, the biggest surprise is not at the finale, but comes half way through the book, usually in the form of a carefully planned plot revelation sprung on the reader. Here, however, there is a steady stream of ingenious twists and revelations throughout the entire story.

There is a tiny flaw in the logic of this otherwise ingenious mystery novel. McCloy does not close her circle of suspects. That is, later in the story McCloy shows that only one of the principal characters in the book could have committed the murder, and there are abundant, well planned clues demonstrating this. However, McCloy never establishes that no outsider could have committed the crime. It seems perfectly possible that some person we had never seen or heard of could have committed these crimes; there is no clue in the story indicating otherwise. Other than this small nit, the book shows an excellent sense of logic, with deduction used to reconstruct the crime, the circumstances leading up to the murder, and the killer.

Code

This is one of several works McCloy wrote centering on codes and ciphers. In The Goblin Market, the "code" is cablese, the shorthand jargon newspaper correspondents use for sending journalistic cables to the home office.

McCloy includes what amounts to a detailed tutorial on how to read and write cables and "cablese" (Chapters 3, 4). Similarly, in Panic there will be a systematic introduction on how various kinds of ciphers work.

The Goblin Market offers many subplot mysteries involving the code. Some, like the "fyi" and "capacity" puzzles, involve the code itself.

Others, like "max" and "NPH", are like the Dying Messages that are a standard gambit in mystery fiction. Like Dying Messages, these are cryptic clues from a murder victim, that need to be interpreted. They differ in that they are not statements from the victim while he is actually dying, but things written by the victim shortly before his death.

A Background: Foreign Correspondents

McCloy had been a newspaper correspondent herself, in Paris, so she was familiar with the profession from the inside. There is a whole Background in The Goblin Market depicting the lives of foreign correspondents. It contains a wealth of intriguing detail, most of which is used to develop ingenious mysteries in the puzzle plot.

The woman reporter gives a strong feminist overview (Chapter 4) about the need for women journalists to break out of the box male editors put them in: writing real journalism instead of the "women's point of view" ghetto male editors want to restrict them to.

Psychology

There is only a little about cognitive psychology in this tale: Chapter 8 of The Goblin Market, "Missing Answers", contains a clever self-parody of psychiatry, and of McCloy's previous works with a psychiatrist-detective. It is good to see McCloy being able to poke fun of herself. It also might indicate a change in direction of her work: Willing would appear less frequently in McCloy's books from this point forward.

The chapter also contains a reference, although not by name, to the "Trojan Horse" episode in McCloy's earlier Who's Calling? (1942). Warning: it gives away the only good mystery plot twist in that novel.

Links to Through a Glass, Darkly

Some elements in The Goblin Market (1943) anticipate McCloy's later novel, Through a Glass, Darkly. Both books: However, there is little of the earlier book's political commentary in Through a Glass, Darkly. Instead, its place is taken structurally by much analysis of psychical research: to me a much less significant subject.

The office boy Vicente imitates and dresses like his boss (opening of Chapter 7): perhaps a simple example of the double imagery that plays such a role in Through a Glass, Darkly and other McCloy works.

Politics

The character Clarence Emmett offers a case study in the ugly right-wing attitudes and behavior of the American rich (Chapters 11, 20). McCloy offers a left-wing critique of the wealthy Right. Her comments are trenchant and quite detailed, looking at many different right-wing policies of which she disapproves. This critique will get extended in her spy thriller Do Not Disturb.

McCloy also criticizes US support for anti-democratic regimes in Latin America (Chapters 9, 11).

There are discussions of the role wealthy American bankers allegedly played in the rise to power of Mussolini, and the creation of Fascism (Chapter 14). The United States is also critiqued for blockading the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (Chapter 14). The novel asserts that broad powerful interests in the US are sympathetic to Fascism.

Energy

The oil tankers and their role in providing energy for World War II, show that Energy was very much on people's minds in this era. McCloy's She Walks Alone will look at the proposed construction of a power system in the Western US.

Maps

Santa Teresa, the book's setting, is an imaginary island in the Caribbean. There are repeated hints that it is near Venezuela. In real life, there are numerous small islands off the coast of Venezuela, some of which are independent countries, like Santa Teresa in The Goblin Market.

I read this book in the Dell "mapback paperback". The back cover of this edition include both a map of the island of Santa Teresa, and a floor plan of the news office where much of the action is set. Both were big helps to me.

Poetry

The title and quotations in the novel, come from Christina Rossetti's poem "Goblin Market" (1859). SPOILER. McCloy's interpretation of Rossetti's "Goblin Market" sees the poem as about commercial trade in illegal and/or immoral goods (Chapter 20). She concentrates in her quotes and commentary on the goblins and what they sell, which symbolize merchants involved with evil selling. McCloy's book might be seen as a look at one of the darkest sides of capitalism.

According to the Wikipedia, much post-1970 academic commentary on Rossetti's "Goblin Market" emphasizes feminist aspects of the poem: something that McCloy does not discus.

The quotation beginning "Sun-girt city!" (Chapter 6) is Percy Bysshe Shelley's description of Venice, from "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills" (1818). McCloy's lush, intense, lyrical descriptions of the island in The Goblin Market, do recall Shelley's equally burning descriptions in his poem.

Mitch's quotation beginning "Eternal spring" (Chapter 20) is from Andrew Marvell's "Bermudas", which appropriately enough, praises an Atlantic island.

The quote "Queens never make bargains" (Chapter 8) is from Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871) (Chapter 9, "Queen Alice").

The poem quoted on the newspaper world (Chapter 8) is Rudyard Kipling's "The Press", This poem discusses the Press as an institution, and the positive role it plays in the world. This is consistent with the generally positive view of the free press and its social consequences, underscored by McCloy in her novel.

Do Not Disturb

Do Not Disturb (1943) is a suspense tale set in New York City and environs. It is much less of a pure mystery than are Helen McCloy's other early novels, and suffers for it; it seems to be the first of many novels of suspense that McCloy eventually wrote. It is the first McCloy book without her series sleuth Dr. Basil Willing.

The book has a spy background linked to World War II, like The Goblin Market (1943) and The One That Got Away (1945).

Police

Like both of those novels, Do Not Disturb is full of political commentary and analysis. Here McCloy zeroes in first on police brutality, in her early chapters, then on right-wing Fascist sympathizers in the US and their campaigns of hatred against racial minorities. As in The Goblin Market, there is more political commentary in the second half of the novel than in the first half; and in both stories, the solution has political significance as well.

In both Van Dine and Crofts school writers, the police are an over-arching source of social authority. They arrive and take charge of everything after a crime. All the different police units of a nation work together as a single large team. By contrast, the handling of the police is very different in McCloy. Each policeman tends to work as an individual agent. His work is largely hidden from the scrutiny of other police units, and he and his subordinates are a law unto themselves. Some of McCloy's policemen are sympathetic, and some are not, but they all tend to have their own personal agendas. Each policeman has his own character and personality, too. He is a functioning character in the tale, not an anonymous official. The police are so individualized that they seem more like suspects in the case, than detectives. The reader studies their motives, and often suspects them of actually committing the crime themselves.

McCloy tends to analyze and judge each policeman's agenda, by a set of criteria that includes whether the policeman's approach makes society more democratic or more dictator like. This is true whether the policeman is a New York City cop engaged in police brutality, or an officer in a third world dictatorship, like that of The Goblin Market.

Politics: Wealthy Americans as Nazi Supporters

SPOILERS. Helen McCloy's Do Not Disturb (1943) was one of a number of books and films, that suggested rich Americans might be Nazi sympathizers and traitors. See the list at the start of this article.

The last chapter of Do Not Disturb sets forth these rich men's far right philosophy. Their conservative politics is directly linked to their support for the Nazis.

Do Not Disturb extends similar portraits of wealthy Americans as Nazi supporters in McCloy's previous book The Goblin Market. The One That Got Away also talks about the wealthy as including Fascists (Chapter 8).

Politics: The Right and Media Control

Do Not Disturb looks at the dangers of rich right-wingers controlling media empires. Related concerns appear in Eleven Came Back (1943) by Mabel Seeley.

Sobbing

SPOILERS. The heroine hears disembodied sounds of sobbing, something she cannot link to a person she sees. It is a disturbing piece of imagery. It returns outdoors in The One That Got Away (Chapter 10).

Mystery Plot

The opening gives two different solutions to the mystery, of "what is going on in the hotel?". Both solutions are fairly ingenious. They are offered right away in the opening, thus clearing up the initial mystery.

Neither solution is figured out by the heroine - instead, various people just offer the solutions to the heroine as explanations. The heroine is not really a detective, and does not do actual sleuthing in the hotel, or deduce any conclusions on her own.

Panic

Panic (1944) is a non-series novel mixing suspense with mystery. It is one of Helen McCloy's less successful books.

Mystery Plot

Mystery subplots in Panic are better than the main core murder-mystery.

The code subplot is decently done (Chapters 2, 5, 8). Panic embeds two clues early on, to the secret of how the cipher works. This gives the subplot a solid mystery-with-a-clued-solution construction. In addition, the Background material on codes is interesting.

The subplot about Matt Griggs is pleasant. It anticipates a somewhat related mystery subplot about Jim Sherwood in She Walks Alone. Both of these subplots embody a core mystery idea that is very old and much used. Still, the subplot in Panic is dressed up with a pleasant mystery about the man's voice. SPOILER. The Matt Griggs mystery also eventually links up with another, seemingly unrelated event, to form an overall pattern: something which is always nice in a mystery. The unrelated event has its own small mini-mystery, too.

The main murder plot is uncreative. SPOILER. Much is made of possible spy complications, with the victim involved in US Government Intelligence work during World War II. But these turn out to have nothing to do with the murder. The Intelligence work is just a coincidence: one that stretches coincidence to the point of cheating.

Setting: A Remote Area in the Country

Panic is mainly set in a remote rural area, one with just a few farms and a small village. This anticipates The One That Got Away, that is set in a similarly isolated rural area in Scotland. The country area in Panic is much less colorful, being a generic locale maybe somewhere in upstate New York. Both novels have as protagonist a sophisticated visitor from the big city, who has come to the country region for an extended stay. Both protagonists are helped by a friendly local farm family, who maintain the dwelling where the protagonist stays.

Architecture

Some architectural aspects of the victim's New York City home are mildly interesting, even if they play no role in the mystery plot: The mountain house is so open with windows and doors, that it hardly seems to draw a distinction between indoors and outside.

Politics

The sinister League of Super-Americans organization forms McCloy's negative commentary on right wing pro-Hitler groups in the US before World War II.

The negative depiction of disabled character Ronnie is a big failing of Panic. All his moral failings are shown as being caused by his disability: a stereotyped approach.

Cognitive Psychology

Panic contains some brief but interesting passages, dealing with cognitive psychology. A section discusses hearing, sleep and their connection (middle of Chapter 4).

The sensory world of a blind dog is evoked (middle of Chapter 5). The dog does everything through memories of where furniture is. Motor memory lies behind this. The dog has one of the unusual, "private cognitive worlds" so often the realm of humans in McCloy. The dog's cognitive world also plays a role in the mystery plot.

McCloy discusses the mental attitudes behind mathematics (middle of Chapter 5). While not quite cognitive psychology, it does evoke how unusual thinking can interface with the world of mathematics. I'm not sure everything McCloy says about mathematics is entirely accurate, but the passage as a whole is mentally stimulating.

A passage dealing with the sociology of people being declared mentally ill is also striking (middle of Chapter 6). It is not "cognitive", but it does accord with all the more elaborate descriptions of various kinds of mental illness in other McCloy novels.

Pan

The Greek myth about the god Pan runs through Panic. In mythology, the presence of Pan could lead to "panics": feelings of fear and dread. E. M. Forster wrote a famous fantasy short story about Pan and panics: "The Story of a Panic". It is possible that McCloy knew about and was influenced by Forster's tale.

The material on Pan in Panic is extensive, and well-developed in detail. It affects both the mystery plot, and the literary side of the novel. However, it is also distasteful in its social implications. This whole aspect of the book has to be considered as a failed attempt.

One of the better parts of the Pan theme is the discussion of the "recognition scene", and its treatment as part of the earliest Greek drama (Chapter 7).

The One That Got Away

Mystery Plot: The Child's Behavior

The One That Got Away (1945) contains a series of mystery puzzle plots.

The opening mystery puzzle is of an unusual type: it asks why a child would engage in an unusual behavior. H.C. Bailey had posed the riddle of a child's strange behavior in "The Old Bible", in his collection Mr. Fortune Wonders (collected 1933). Bailey's specific puzzle and solution are quite different from McCloy's. Both stories treat the riddle of the child's inexplicable behavior as a full mystery, one eventually given a logical but surprising solution.

The opening has other features recalling Bailey:

The solution of the child's behavior mystery is a complex variation on a mystery idea that was fairly widely used in the 1940's. McCloy's version is more elaborate, and has some original features, though. It is also supported by good cluing. SPOILERS. Other examples occur in The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) by Anthony Boucher.

Mystery Plot: Impossible Crimes

The book also includes an "impossible disappearance". The mystery involving the child's behavior, and this impossible disappearance, are more central to the story and more inventive as mystery puzzles than the book's two subsequent murders. SPOILER. The disappearance and its solution are variants of one used by Carolyn Wells in The Man who Fell Through the Earth (1919) - although McCloy might well have dreamed this up on her own.

The second murder at first looks like a locked room puzzle: strictly speaking, a locked house. But soon, the sleuths discover that they have simply overlooked an exit from the house. It will apparently not be till The Further Side of Fear (1967) that McCloy will create a true locked room puzzle.

Mystery Plot: Dying Message

The first murder involves a dying message. This message is in French. Dorothy L. Sayers' "The Entertaining Episode of The Article in Question" (1925) is another mystery puzzle involving French, as is Boucher's The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Textual Analysis

Hero Peter Dunbar performs some textual analysis: looking for hidden, meaningful patterns in things people say. First he analyzes the speech of Lord Ness and Margaret (end of Chapter 2). Then he finds an Americanism in Johnny's speech (Chapter 3).

Later, more text is examined (start of Chapter 6, middle of Chapter 10). At the mystery's solution at the end, these texts are analyzed by Dr. Willing (end of Chapter 11).

Textual analysis is a kind of detective work. It sometimes is used by McCloy.

Setting

The One That Got Away has some good descriptive writing about Scotland. It has a lyrical quality, and is full of poetical description of landscape.

Later, Dorothy Gardiner will be another American mystery writer to bring her American detective to the Scots Highlands, in The Seventh Mourner (1958).

The hero makes a night journey on foot across the countryside (Chapter 3). Along the way, both landscape and buildings are vividly described. Such night journeys recall mystery writer Helen Reilly, and such Reilly books as Mourned on Sunday (1941). Perhaps coincidentally, both Mourned on Sunday and The One That Got Away have their protagonists encountering ruined buildings along the way.

Architecture

The farmhouse is two homes, connected together (Chapter 2). In this, it anticipates the two houses in A Question of Time.

The large, gracious home Craddoch House is full of French windows. These seemingly join the inside and outside into a common region. This inside-outside joining recalls the more modest country home in Panic. In Murder's Little Helper (1963) (middle of Chapter 7) by George Bagby, a patio is constructed so that the outside seems to be coming indoors.

The deserted village is a fascinating place (Chapter 3). It has a geometric quality.

Cognitive Psychology

A brief discussion explores how mathematicians think (Chapter 10). Mathematical thinking previously was examined in Panic.

Link to The Long Body

McCloy's The Long Body (1955) will share a plot element with The One That Got Away: A fourteen-year-old boy who runs away from home.

Despite this key link in subjects, the two books are very different:

These differences help make The One That Got Away a better book than The Long Body. The mystery plot of why the boy is running away is a big asset in The One That Got Away. And the treatment of male bonding and male sexuality in The Long Body is unimpressive.

Social Commentary: Anti-Fascism

The One That Got Away has some very sophisticated writing about Fascism in it, which by 1945 was a subject of deep horror to the author (Chapter 8). McCloy's take on Fascism is that it is rooted in woman hatred, and rejection of a mother's tender care of children. She cites the Hitler Youth as examples of how the Nazis wanted to replace the female headed home by public macho-oriented programs of child rearing. This political theme of the book is mirrored in the puzzle plot of the story, which is about a young man who keeps running away from home. In contrast to these Nazi ideas, McCloy includes two female headed households in her work: one run by a widowed Scots farm woman, the other a marriage of two writers where it is the wife who earns the big bucks, and is the financial support of the family. There is also much discussion of the Picts, an ancient Scottish ethnic group wherein descent and property passed matrilineally. I am not sure that this is a complete analysis of Fascism, but it is certainly an interesting set of ideas. McCloy's take on Fascism is oddly similar to Borges' in "Deutsches Requiem", wherein Borges sees the essence of Fascism in the celebration of brutality. McCloy completes Borges' analysis by showing how this brutality is going to be inculcated in children through the destruction of motherhood as an institution. Both McCloy and Borges are also deeply worried that although the Nazis have been defeated militarily, the ideas of Fascism will live on and be incorporated into Western Civilization.

McCloy seems much more interested in current affairs than many of her mystery writing contemporaries, both here and in "The Singing Diamonds". "The Singing Diamonds" succeeds brilliantly as a mystery tale.

Much later McCloy would write a short look at the hippie era college scene, "The Pleasant Assassin" (1970), that is full of detailed observation. Read today, it seems like a time capsule of the period. Like all of McCloy's political writings, it contains disturbing undertones. Here a sinister behaviorist psychology professor is proposing a new society based on conditioning and drugs to control child rearing. Like the viscous Nazi apologist in The One That Got Away, he has surface respectability as he undermines the basic principles of Western society. As in the earlier novel, the story shows his devastating impact on impressionable young people.

A later section of The One That Got Away also offers a critique of Fascism, an analysis rooted in both science and feminism. (Chapter 11). It says that in Nature, differences between men and women are small. But that the Nazis are obsessed with "exaggerating social differences between the sexes". It suggests that this lie might have led to Nazi mental aberrations and cruelties.

The Nazis are perhaps the principal target of this section. But McCloy also bluntly states that human societies in general, exaggerate the difference between men and women, for economic reasons. This is a broad feminist critique of society.

Social Commentary: Communism

The same discussion of Fascism contains brief but negative comments on Communism (Chapter 8). McCloy mocks the "parlor pinks" of the 1920's and 1930's, Western intellectuals who supported Communist ideas, but who in public distanced themselves from a Communist label. She suggests such people were sinister propagandists, lying about their affiliations to promote Communism.

McCloy depicts Fascism and Communism as parallel, evil movements. She does not use the word "totalitarianism", or offer an in-depth look at the parallels between the two movements. Still, her simple critique is consistent with the idea that became prominent in the 1950's, that Fascism and Communism are linked instances of a totalitarian menace.

The One That Got Away does not analyze Communism is any detail. But its brief discussion of Communism is emphatically negative.

Social Commentary: Socialism

The psychiatrist hero wrote a thesis, during his academic days, on the psychology of socialism. When World War II breaks out, he tries to enlist, but is afraid this thesis might keep him out of the US Armed Services. Fortunately, Dr. Basil Willing helps the hero enlist successfully (Chapter 10).

These comments are all-too-brief. One would like to hear more of McCloy's opinions on these subjects. A thesis about socialism is not necessarily a thesis for or against socialism. Still, unless the thesis had contained some advocacy of socialistic ideas, it seems unlikely that the hero would have worried that it might affect his attempt to enlist.

Soon we meet another sympathetic character, who reveals he stands for Labor in Parliament (Chapter 10). The British Labor Party was supported democratic socialism in this era.

Time

Metaphysical and/or paranormal ideas about Time play a major role in such later McCloy books as The Long Body, A Question of Time and The Smoking Mirror. There is a brief forerunner of this in The One That Got Away: when the hero is left alone with the murdered body in the deserted countryside, he begins to get strange feelings. He links this to a feeling that he is about to get an expanded, metaphysical perception of time, beyond today's alleged limited human knowledge of the subject (Chapter 10).

In my opinion, McCloy's treatment of Time is in general a bunch of paranormal hooey. I'm not enthused about this passage in The One That Got Away. However, one has to note that McCloy is hedging her bets here. The One That Got Away is careful not to go beyond the scientific worldview, in its depiction of Time: a good thing in my judgment. It suggests possible future discoveries about Time - rather than the actual paranormal events depicted in A Question of Time and The Smoking Mirror.

The comments on Time in The One That Got Away are linked to that favorite McCloy subject, cognitive psychology (the study of how people perceive and think). She looks at humans' limited perceptions of Time.

Critical Reception

The distinguished film critic and "impossible crime" mystery writer Bill Krohn once told me how much he admired Helen McCloy in general, and The One That Got Away in particular.

She Walks Alone

She Walks Alone (1948) is a non-series mystery, mainly set on a sinister Caribbean cruise. Dr Basil Willing does not appear, but Helen McCloy brings back Police Captain Miguel Urizar of the fictitious Caribbean island of Santa Teresa, who first appeared in The Goblin Market. However, Santa Teresa itself barely makes any sort of re-appearance.

She Walks Alone has some good features. But the book as a whole is not one of McCloy's better novels. The story telling lacks appeal, and many characters are unsympathetic. There are some good mystery subplots - but the novel's main mystery plot is one of McCloy's less successful ideas.

Mystery Plot

Like many Golden Age mystery novels, She Walks Alone has a series of mystery subplots, some better than others.

Best subplot: Where has the murderer hidden the money? This is a good "hidden object" puzzle. As is typical of such problems, the location of the money defies an intensive search by the authorities. "Hidden object" puzzles are related to "impossible crimes": it seems impossible for a villain to conceal an object so that it will not be found by a really good search. McCloy also has hidden objects puzzles in Unfinished Crime.

Also good: Why is such a bizarre approach behind the first death on ship, and how did it happen? It doesn't seem plausible that the killer would use such a method, and it also seems unlikely that the killer would be able to control it, or use it effectively. McCloy comes up with a logical explanation (Chapter 17). This is a sort-of "How-done-it" puzzle.

SPOILER. The subplot about Jim Sherwood is an old gambit, much used by mystery writers (Chapter 17). Still, it is effective and fooled me.

SPOILER. While these subplots are well done, the main puzzle-and-solution of She Walks Alone is problematic. It seems gimmicky. It avoids really explaining what the reader has been led to believe is a real puzzle, "Why was the letter written?". I confess I found this solution to be a stunt and an annoying one.

Politics

The discussion of the problems faced by racial minorities in the United States is interesting (middle of Chapter 10). She Walks Alone shows McCloy as a progressive liberal on the subject of race, and sympathetic to minorities. She Walks Alone appeared at the same time as the earliest stages of the real-life Civil Rights movement, a movement that is not mentioned in the novel.

She Walks Alone has a subplot, a political battle in Washington DC, over the proposed construction of a power system somewhere in the Western US. Some characters want the US government to construct the system; others are opposed to government projects, and want a private corporation to do it (middle of Chapter 4). While She Walks Alone does not mention it, in the 1930's and 1940's such issues involved major fights between liberals and conservatives. Liberals were strong champions of government public works such as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), conservatives bitterly opposed them. Arguments about the economics and politics of the project in She Walks Alone directly echo real-life political comments on the TVA. These debates seem like ancestors of today's battle between liberals who favor government projects, and conservatives who hate government and want to dismantle it.

SPOILER. McCloy eventually implicitly comes down in favor of the pro-government forces, mainly by depicting the private enterprise people in such a negative light. She gives this an elaborate treatment (the paragraph on the newspaper towards the end of Chapter 15, a detailed account in Chapter 17).

SPOILER. The subplot about Tony might be considered as giving a negative view of the upper classes (Chapter 15). Tony is relentless in describing himself and his sordid activities as typical.

Through a Glass, Darkly

Short Story and Novel

This tale exists in two versions: a short story "Through a Glass, Darkly" (1948), and a novel with the same name Through a Glass, Darkly (1949 - 1950). Both versions are very close in terms of plot and character.

According to Helen McCloy's autobiographical comments in the introduction to the short version, "Glass" started out as a long work; McCloy then condensed it down to a short version, for publication in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

The short version shows artistic economy: it is very rich in plot and imagination for its length.

Mystery Plot: The First Murder

The novel includes an extra murder mystery centered around the school. This is not in the short story.

The heroine's alibi depends on the architectural layout of the hotel (Chapter 9). This hotel (Chapters 5, 9) is an example of McCloy's long-term interest in New York architecture. It is also an example of Golden Age mystery fiction's interest in architecture. Both the alibi and the hotel are fun to read about.

When the heroine is inside this large New York City hotel, she is safe. She even gets an alibi. But she is in danger in the countryside: the school at the start, the cottage at the end. This goes against the cliche of "wicked city, noble countryside" some people believe in.

The hotel is far more wholesome than the one the heroine stays in, at the start of Do Not Disturb, where sinister events take place.

Mystery Plot: The Firing

The firing of Faustina Crayle occurs right at the start of the novel. Its motive or cause is not explained. Instead, the unknown cause is treated as a mystery. We get an avalanche of sinister clues to the cause of the firing (Chapters 1-3, 5). But these do still not allow Dr. Willing or the reader to solve the mystery. Finally the solution is revealed: we learn the cause of the firing (Chapter 6).

The unexplained firing offers sinister parallels to the real-life blacklist going on.

Basil Willing: Personal Life

The novel includes Basil Willing's romance with Austrian refugee Gisela von Hohenems, a pleasing addition. Gisela had been introduced previously in The Man in the Moonlight.

A nice comic interlude (Chapter 4) has the couple fleeing the pretentious upscale Crane Club, to find refuge in a neighborhood bar. Basil is in white tie and tails again, as he was in Cue for Murder. The Crane Club returns decades later in A Change of Heart (Chapter 2). The Crane Club is seen a bit satirically there too.

See also the men being in white tie in Who's Calling?.

We also get a look at Basil Willing's career after his return to civilian life after World War 2 (Chapter 4). And soon after learn that Basil Willing had been stationed in Japan (end of Chapter 4).

Color Symbolism

Color symbolism is explored in Helen McCloy's Through a Glass, Darkly: These are all passages where color actually symbolizes something. Color symbolism is part of McCloy's long term interest in Cognitive Psychology.

Metallic colors are associated with the upper classes: the night club, the rich man's car. Metallic clothes would later be democratized by Rock and Roll star Elvis Presley. He wore a gold lamé tuxedo, on the cover of his album 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong (1959).

Cognitive Psychology

Two fears of women are explored (start of Chapter 5).

Curiosity is seen as a fundamental positive trait (first part of Chapter 6).

The effect of neon advertisements (start of Chapter 9).

Daytime sleep (Chapter 9).

What we now call "fusion" music: a pop arrangement of a classical music waltz (Chapter 4). Such music is cognitive, but it might not be "psychology", strictly speaking.

Poetry

The chapter headings all quote from Faustine by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Once again, McCloy favors a Victorian poet. Swinburne's poem Faustine has what seem to me to be anti-lesbian passages in its middle, fairly brief. McCloy does not quote from these sections. Her choice of verses has no queer references.

Euripides is quoted (Chapter 8). The school is putting on his play Medea (Chapter 3).

Crime Fiction: Thrillers

There is a reference to Edgar Wallace, mainly as a writer of thrillers, rather than mysteries (Chapter 8).

A similar reference (Chapter 8) is to the popular radio show Gang Busters. Like Wallace, it is seen as a thrill-based crime saga.

Alias Basil Willing

Alias Basil Willing (1951) is a mystery novel. It has major flaws: its mystery plot lacks adequate explanations; its solution is grim and depressing. Also, it is not one of McCloy's more creative or imaginative books. On the positive side, its first half is quite readable, and there is a decent subplot about a blind woman.

Mystery Plot: The Impersonation

SPOILERS. The book opens with a dramatic impersonation - which gives the novel its title. Why the impersonation is happening is mysterious. The reader expects a detailed solution that will logically explain this impersonation, and why it is taking place. Unfortunately, all we get is a single line on the last page of the book, as an explanation. This explanation makes little sense, and is painfully simple to boot. All of this leaves the book's main non-murder mystery as a mess.

On the positive side: The intricate plotting that surrounds the impersonation in the opening (Chapters 1-4) is solidly done. It raises all sorts of possibilities, as it moves through a series of stages.

Mystery Plot: The Murder

On the murder mystery. SPOILERS. It looks as if it is impossible, for one of the characters to have committed the murder. At the end, we learn how this character did it. The explanation is possible - but also far-fetched and none too workable, in practice. Problems: There is a series of related events, which are linked clues to how the crime was done. Recognizing them as clues, requires the sleuth and the reader to adjust their cognitive categories.

The motive behind the mysteries is depressing and upsetting to read about. The book's introductory blurb says it is "shocking". However, the solution does have political significance.

Mystery Plot: A Sort of Dying Message

The dying murder victim becomes delirious, and babbles about birds. This is a "dying message" of sorts. It resembles more conventional dying messages, in that it is a hard-to-interpret statement about the crime, that gets a full explanation at the end of the book. However, it is unlike a normal dying message, in that it offers no clue to who committed the crime. The interpretation at the end does not offer any sort of plot revelation, either.

The victim's statement is more a poetic addition to the novel. It adds a bit of mystification to the storytelling. But it hardly corresponds to the sort of full-scale dying message found in Ellery Queen.

The Blind Woman: Plot Ingenuity

SPOILERS. A character is blind, has difficulty walking, but still needs to start activity without any of the people around her noticing. Alias Basil Willing treats this as a problem that the women needs to solve. The book comes up with mildly ingenious ways for her to initiate such activities. This forms a sound subplot. It is not a "mystery and solution"; instead, it is a "problem and clever remedy": a kind of plot that sometimes occurs in mysteries. For another example, see "Campaign Fever" (1964) by Patricia McGerr.

Despite McCloy's longtime interest in cognitive psychology, McCloy does not really explore aspects of blindness that are essentially psychological or cognitive. Instead, Alias Basil Willing explores practical ways a blind person might solve a problem.

McCloy treats this disabled woman with great dignity and respect.

The Opening: Links to Other McCloy Mysteries

Alias Basil Willing opens in a small shop. It provides a bit of working class atmosphere, as a contrast to the upper middle class sophisticates who populate the rest of the book. McCloy used a similar working class beginning in two other mysteries also set among Manhattan elites: Dance of Death, Cue for Murder. However, the opening events in both of those novels were more dramatic and mystery-filled than the simple shop scene which starts Alias Basil Willing.

As in Cue for Murder, Basil Willing begins the main events in evening clothes, like a man he meets. This plays an enabling role in both plots, although in different ways.

The opening, with Basil Willing explicitly having an "adventure" on the mysterious streets of a city, recalls New Arabian Nights (1878) by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The opening chapters of Alias Basil Willing have a structure rather like Burn This. Early in both books, we learn that a startling, mysterious scheme is afoot. We learn a few clues to the scheme - but we are far from getting any sort of clear picture. The details of the scheme, and even its basic nature, are only filled in later. These revealed details function as plot developments.

The Upper Classes: A Negative View

Alias Basil Willing is mainly set among upper class characters. Unlike Cue for Murder, which is set in the theater, and Burn This set in the literary world, the well-heeled gentry in Alias Basil Willing either come from wealth or have somewhat dubious careers. Few do anything socially productive. Only the poet seems like a person of accomplishment.

Without ever doing anything overtly sinister, they come to seem like an ominous bunch.

McCloy is expert at creating a threatening atmosphere around these people. Despite their well-mannered remarks, they seem eerie and disturbing. The more she describes their perfect clothes, perfect furniture and perfect homes, they somehow sound more menacing than a mob of Mafia thugs encountered in a dark alley. Their social correctness can seem very cold and inhuman.

Two non-rich characters who work for a living are perhaps intended to form a contrast. Newspaper reporter Frank Lloyd and paid companion Charlotte Dean are sympathetic, seemingly honest people, who represent the middle classes. They certainly don't have the ominous, death's-head atmosphere that surrounds the upper class suspects in Alias Basil Willing. Unfortunately, neither of these working people really shows much force of character, individuality or heroic goodness. They are nice enough people. But not forceful enough to counter the main, nightmarish atmosphere generated by the evil rich.

Politics: The McCarthy Era, Neo-Nazis

A newspaper headline makes a brief reference to the McCarthy era and its accusations of Communism, in full swing in 1951 (end of Chapter 5).

McCloy reminds us once again that the Nazis were anti-Communist (middle of Chapter 14, section 1).

McCloy's long-time anti-Nazi concerns resurface (end of Chapter 5, middle of Chapter 14, section 1). This relates to McCloy's concerns about the survival of Nazi ideas after the war. SPOILERS. The villain tells us that the crime in Alias Basil Willing is a product of Nazi ideology. While McCloy despises this villain, I think this is intended to be an accurate statement, expressing a theme of the book.

Technology: The Radio Car

Newspaper leg-man Frank Lloyd uses a radio car provided by his paper, something briefly noted (start of Chapter 9). This is an interesting glance at new technology. One wishes McCloy had expanded it to something bigger. I don't recall newspaper radio cars in many other novels.

Cognitive Psychology

The opening has brief flashes of cognitive psychology (Chapter 1). The "little man" is depicted as the kind of person easily swayed by mass propaganda or advertising. He is contrasted with the main patrons of the shop, all of whom buy a custom-made, individualized product there.

The Dress

The dress made out of unique material created for a cloak (Chapter 2) recalls the title cloak in "The Mantle That Laughed" (1935) by Vincent Cornier. (That tale had also been published as "The Cloak That Laughed".) The details of the garments differ in the two works.

Poetry: Kipling

A poem Basil Willing quotes (end Chapter 8) is Rudyard Kipling's "Late Came the God". Kipling was quoted before in The Goblin Market. In both novels, Kipling is referred to, to help define a situation and its meaning.

Unfinished Crime

The suspense novel known as Unfinished Crime (1954) in the USA is titled He Never Came Back in Britain. Its events are wild and implausible - but they are also imaginative and make absorbing reading. Helen McCloy helps make them more persuasive, by setting them against a realistically detailed view of every day life in modern New York City. She makes her heroine be a nice, "normal", conventional young woman. And the police that sometimes show up are as low key and ordinary as possible.

Much of the enjoyment of a book like Unfinished Crime is in its odd situations themselves - not just in their solutions. It is hard to write about a novel without revealing its basic plot premises. Readers would do well to read Unfinished Crime first, before reading the following discussion, which contains SPOILERS.

Mystery Plot

The theft subplot involves a standard kind of puzzle, one on the borderline of the "impossible crime": the disappearance / hiding of an object, so that it eludes an intensive search (Chapter 7). McCloy does this well. McCloy is most interested in the clever avoidance of the object being found during the searches of suspects' persons. She is less concerned with a clever "hiding place" for the object, the focus of many Ellery Queen mysteries on this topic.

SPOILER. The impostor plot is another treatment of the "double", the subject of McCloy's Through a Glass, Darkly. This is clearly a favorite subject of McCloy's, and both novels develop it with exuberance. The treatment in Unfinished Crime is completely different in detail from that of Through a Glass, Darkly, both in the story telling events, and their solution as a mystery puzzle. The solution in Unfinished Crime is not really plausible, but its imagination is good. So is its use of a logical alternative approach to generate a more parsimonious solution (end of Chapter 13). McCloy's calls this "inverting" the situation.

SPOILER. Part of the "double" solution in Unfinished Crime involves the heroine's private perceptual world, also a McCloy theme (start of Chapter 14). Once again in McCloy, perception can be considered part of cognitive science.

The revelation of the villains' identity at the end is not too creative. McCloy shows professionalism and some skill in constructing this solution, but no inspiration or real ingenuity. SPOILER. The involvement of more than one character in villainy, leading to a succession of unmaskings at the end, recalls a previous suspense novel by McCloy, Do Not Disturb.

Ancestors

Unfinished Crime draws on situations found in previous authors. It some ways it seems like a compendium or encyclopedia of "standard situations" from previous writers. Some of these situations were then employed by still other writers, becoming much-used plot premises in mystery fiction. McCloy in Unfinished Crime gives them her own personal treatment. SPOILERS: The basic mystery situations in Unfinished Crime recall all these authors. But McCloy's mystery plots and solutions related to these situations are her own, different from those of earlier authors. So is much of her story telling detail.

The opening is shown from the Point of View of the man-in-trouble; most of the rest of the book is seen from the heroine's perspective. He is fairly "tough"; the heroine and her friends in the rest of the novel are fairly sophisticated. This is a bit like the construction of Dance of Death and Cue for Murder, which open with vignettes showing working class New Yorkers, then move on to Manhattan sophisticates for the rest of their stories. The contrast is perhaps not as extreme in Unfinished Crime.

Politics

A rich woman contributes much money to "volunteer hospitals". At first this looks like pure charity. But we eventually learn that the wealthy woman regards them as a safeguard against socialized medicine! McCloy has her satiric claws sharp in this observation (Chapter 11).

Eras of Time

In "The Case of the Duplicate Door", Dr. Willing sees the oldest part of Manhattan at its southern tip as the Past, and ultra-modern LaGuardia Airport as the Future. Something similar occurs in Unfinished Crime: The heroine visits high-tech environments in the course of the novel: an Automat, a radio broadcast studio.

The Long Body

The Long Body (1955) mixes mystery, suspense and espionage.

I've never enjoyed The Long Body very much. The heroine is often gripped by grim thoughts, anxiety or suspense. She also seems unpleasantly cut off from those around her. Her mind is racing with thoughts she does not share with others. Such feelings make the book not much fun to read.

Settings, Characters and McCloy Traditions

The Long Body is set in the genteel country homes of well-to-do urban sophisticates. In this it recalls Who's Calling?. It also has that book's characters: The characters are given different personalities and professions in the two novels, despite their basic similarities.

The Long Body also recalls the university-set books McCloy wrote. Several of the characters are attending or work at fictitious Blake College. The university and events there are much discussed, but not actually shown "on-stage".

Like the heroine of The Smoking Mirror, and McCloy herself, the heroine of The Long Body lived for a while in Pre-war France (Part 1, Chapter 1). Unlike The Smoking Mirror, France plays only a minor, in-passing role in The Long Body.

Teenagers: Male Sexuality and Male Bonding

SPOILER. The heroine's late husband John, and their macho man neighbor Byrd, had been best friends starting as teenagers (start of Part 1, Chapter 2). Such an intense male friendship between young teenagers, will play a major role in A Change of Heart. Both The Long Body and A Change of Heart have some parallel plotting and attitude towards this pairing. Both works portray a pair of male teenagers with a burningly intense friendship. Both also have what can easily be interpreted as a gay subtext - although A Change of Heart opens with a firm, explicit denial that anything gay is transpiring between the pair. The Long Body also looks at puberty and the development of male sexuality. Ultimately, these books see their characters' male sexuality and male bonding in very negative terms.

I confess that I am unimpressed with McCloy's ideas on all of these subjects. Her treatment seems unreal, and missing many aspects of these enormously complex topics.

The Army: A Flashback to the 1910's

The Long Body contains a detailed look at what US Army life was like during the World War I era, especially the Cavalry. It is humorously contrasted with the much-changed modern Army (Part 2, Chapter 7, with more information in Part 3, Chapter 2). This section shows McCloy's flair for research, and educational passages that inform readers about key points on some subject. She tries to bring out ideas on a topic, bits of information that will help readers think.

The Army is unusual as a McCloy subject, though. McCloy has an affinity with "sophisticated" subjects: intellectuals, psychologists, the arts. A macho topic like the 1918 Army is off her stomping grounds. McCloy's World War II era books had been sympathetic to the Armed Forces: both the handsome young hero of The One That Got Away, and his boss Dr. Basil Willing, were uniformed members of Naval Intelligence. Still, such books showed little in concrete terms of Army life, instead having their heroes investigate a case on location, away from Armed Forces bases or troops.

One suspects that McCloy got most of her Army information from her husband, mystery writer Brett Halliday. In real life, Halliday had run away from home and joined the US Army Cavalry as a young teenager, being stationed first in Fort Bliss, Texas, then with the US Border Patrol on the Mexican Border. This is exactly like the teenage hero of The Long Body.

Military conscription was universal in the 1950's USA, and most men served in the Armed Forces. This helped fuel the popularity of novels and films set in the peacetime Army, such as James Jones' From Here to Eternity (1951), the 1951 novel with the biggest sales. McCloy was perhaps reflecting this popular interest by writing about the Army in The Long Body. She might also have regarded it as a "relevant" topic.

Politics: The McCarthy Era

The Long Body includes one of the most contentious social issues of its era: men fired from their jobs, because they are perceived to be Communist security risks (Part 1, Chapter 5, and end of Part 3, Chapter 2). Senator Joseph McCarthy, who rode such firings to political power, had just fallen in public esteem and been censured in 1954.

The Long Body has its cake and eats it too, in the issue of such firings:

A woman who became a Communist in the 1930's is portrayed unfavorably. She and other woman converts to Communism are dismissed as "pseudo-intellectuals" (end of Part 3, Chapter 2).

The firing of the professor is done to placate rich alumni (end of Part 3, Chapter 2). This recalls McCloy's previous novel Unfinished Crime, and its wealthy woman's opposition to socialized medicine. The rich are seen as a source of right wing politics in the US.

References to the McCarthy era will return in A Change of Heart. Like The Long Body, A Change of Heart has a University professor fired for alleged Communist ties during the McCarthy period.

Mystery Plot

SPOILER. The hiding place of the stolen document about "Miss Lash" recalls the disappearing object puzzle in Unfinished Crime (end of Part 2, Chapter 7).

SPOILER. The Long Body anticipates The Changeling Conspiracy, with speculation that an impostor has substituted for a character's daughter. Both daughters are grown but still very young women.

Cognitive Psychology

A psychological state of the heroine reflects McCloy's interest in Cognitive Psychology (the last section of Part 1, Chapter 6). Dr. Willing later offers some reassuring psychological observations on this (end of Part 2, Chapter 6).

John believes he can "perceive" the edge of a cliff at twilight, by the "feel of the wind". Such an ability is ascribed by The Long Body to members of the Coast Guard (Part 1, Chapter 3). Such a kind of "perception" falls under the rubric of Cognitive Psychology. It also shows McCloy's interest in twilight.

The Long Body

The title phrase, "The Long Body" refers to a concept apparently derived from Eastern thought. It is explained in detail by Dr. Basil Willing (Part 2, Chapter 6). The concept involves thinking of Time as a Fourth Dimension. This anticipates the extensive look at metaphysical aspects of Time in A Question of Time.

The title concept in The Long Body is simply evoked. It is treated as a piece of imagery, or something that is philosophically suggestive. It does not play a large role in the novel. Nor does it affect the plot in any way.

By contrast, the ideas about Time in A Question of Time are extensive. They are also used to justify some hooey about the alleged reality of precognition (seeing the future). The simpler The Long Body has (thankfully) no precognition, or anything else paranormal. The Long Body sticks strictly to scientific reality.

McCloy's account of the Long Body in this novel makes OK reading. But it does not convince me that the concept is accurate, truthful, or has real-life validity.

Good and Bad in Helen McCloy's Fiction: Running Topics

Helen McCloy has topics that run through several of her works.

Some of these running topics I find consistently enjoyable in McCloy's fiction, finding her treatment interesting and good reading: cognitive psychology, social anthropology, the Ancient World, codes, New York City buildings, popular fiction, twilight.

Her treatment of some other topics I consistently don't like: the metaphysical and/or paranormal treatment of Time in The Long Body, A Question of Time and The Smoking Mirror, the view of male sexuality and teenage male bonding in The Long Body and A Change of Heart.

It is time for a "reality check". I am not an expert on most of the above subjects. I am not qualified to evaluate the accuracy of McCloy's ideas on cognitive psychology, codes, time or sexuality. My enjoyment or non-enjoyment of McCloy's ideas is unfortunately not grounded in expert knowledge.

This article offers my responses to McCloy's treatment of these subjects - for what my responses are worth. My ideas might be just plain wrong.

Complicating this discussion: I think that The Long Body, A Question of Time, A Change of Heart and The Smoking Mirror are four of Helen McCloy's poorest books. The Long Body is a bit better than the other three. These four novels seem to be among her least discussed by critics.

Instead, McCloy's most critically admired works are her classical detective stories, with Dance of Death, The Man in the Moonlight, Cue for Murder, The One That Got Away, Through a Glass, Darkly, Mr. Splitfoot and The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr. Basil Willing often singled out by critics as among her best works. I mainly agree with this point of view. My own favorite of her novels is The Goblin Market, and I'm also impressed with such late books as The Further Side of Fear, The Sleepwalker and Burn This.

Two-Thirds of a Ghost

Two-Thirds of a Ghost (1956) is a mystery, starring Dr. Basil Willing.

The title is misleading: there are no ghosts or supernatural aspects to the story, which is strictly realistic. Instead, the title refers to an old real-life parlor game, "Two-thirds of a ghost", which involves questions and answers.

Fiction

Two-Thirds of a Ghost takes place among sophisticated literary New Yorkers, like McCloy's Cue for Murder. It has differences in approach: Two-Thirds of a Ghost centers on a specific kind of fiction: mainstream, realistic novels that are "popular" in that they sell well well among the general public. Such books get prestigious reviews, and are treated as "serious" fiction. Still, they are contrasted with what the book calls "artistic writers": intellectuals who write highly serious novels for other intellectuals, mainly have small sales, and who are part of a literary vanguard (Chapter 9).

The author in Two-Thirds of a Ghost begins his career with a best-selling novel of World War II. In this, he resembles such real-life writers of World War II books as Norman Mailer, James Jones, James Michener, Herman Wouk and many others of the 1946-1955 era. Some of these writers today have literary prestige, some are considered more middle-brow. Two-Thirds of a Ghost doesn't make such distinctions. It looks at "popular" writers of fiction as a unified category.

What Is the Truth about the Author's Work?

Two-Thirds of a Ghost includes several book reviews of the author's work. Some of the reviews are good, others bad. One suspects the negative reviews have some accuracy. However, Two-Thirds of a Ghost never explicitly commits itself to a definitive view of the writer's work. We do not learn "officially" whether his novels are good or bad. Or exactly what they are like. Instead, we get a bewildering diversity of comments pro and con on his fiction, and Rashomon-like, we have to keep them all in mind as possible "truths" about his books.

Such unresolved issues are unusual in mystery fiction, which usually clears up all mysteries in its final chapter. I have mixed feelings about this lack of resolution. I enjoyed the rich detail in which the books are discussed. And think the Rashomon-like effect is interesting, and a pleasant change of approach. But ultimately, I wish McCloy had made some definitive, consistent summation of her ideas on the books, and "popular" literary fiction in general.

Even at the end of Two-Thirds of a Ghost, we get a debate among the characters about the relative importance and quality of the plots of the author's books versus their literary prose style (Chapter 14). This debate is as unresolved as everything else concerning the books. The debate is conducted in much pleasing detail, with interesting sidelights drawn from the history of literature.

McCloy's books are full of fascinating ideas and facts, often derived from history, which she sets forth is an educational manner. The many tidbits about literature and the literary life in Two-Thirds of a Ghost are examples of such McCloy ideas.

Form in Fiction

Young Sidney Pusey's comments about the importance of Form in literature are especially interesting (Chapter 6). I admire Form, too. And wish these comments had been further developed.

I wholeheartedly agree about the importance of Form in literature. However, when we get to the specific role Form might play in the author's novels, Two-Thirds of a Ghost is as ambiguous as it is on every other aspect of the author's books. Are Sidney's comments the truth about the author's books - do the books really show outstanding Form? Who knows? Two-Thirds of a Ghost never commits itself on this point, or even explores it further. The discussion of the writing of the author's books (Chapter 14), does not mention Form, and makes it seem unlikely that Form was much thought about during the book's creation.

The Publishing Business

Two-Thirds of a Ghost gives a detailed look of the publishing business, especially the publishing of realistic novels. Key characters include a publisher, literary agents and book reviewers.

Two-Thirds of a Ghost makes an unusual point, one I have rarely seen in other books. It describes the publishing business as full of people who are in it, because their parents were in it before them. They are described as "inheriting" their positions in the publishing industry (Chapter ).

There are likely autobiographical elements. McCloy's father was a well known New York newspaper editor, William McCloy of the New York Evening Sun. Helen McCloy's entry into the world of journalism, the first part of her literary career, was likely aided by this.

Later, McCloy and her husband Brett Halliday opened both a literary agency, and a small publishing firm of their own. Biographical details are sketchy, but it is likely that both the agency and publishing firm were either in business while Two-Thirds of a Ghost was being written, or were soon to emerge. The depiction of publishing and literary agents in Two-Thirds of a Ghost is thus likely to draw on an insider's point of view.

Hollywood

Hollywood is mainly treated satirically. Hollywood is seen as adding formulaic sex-and-religion to adaptations of novels. This is quite funny. It is also accurate, to a degree: the 1950's and early 1960's were indeed a period of big budget adventures (loosely) based on the Bible or the life of Early Christians in Ancient Rome, in which piety was mixed with sexpot villainesses. This formula was pioneered by Cecil B. DeMille in earlier decades.

However, while partly accurate, this treatment also leaves out a lot. Two-Thirds of a Ghost does not recognize in the slightest that there might be any artistry in Hollywood films.

Two-Thirds of a Ghost makes an interesting point, on the way Hollywood seemed to regard writers as interchangeable (Chapter 10).

Television

The author has a hit television show, on which he interviews and promotes other authors. This subplot seems implausible. Were "author interview shows" really a big deal on TV in 1956? Whether they were or not, the author in Two-Thirds of a Ghost is not shown to have either the intellectual or public speaking skills necessary to make such a show a success.

Before I Die

Before I Die (1963) is a thriller, with elements of mystery.

Milieu

The milieu of Before I Die recalls that of Two-Thirds of a Ghost. Both look at well-to-do men who work in New York City, live in the suburbs with their wives, and who have successful jobs that associate them with the business end of the media. Both books take a jaundiced, mainly negative look at this world. However, the characters in Before I Die are much less intellectual than those in Two-Thirds of a Ghost.

Before I Die equates public relations with advertising - something that seems dubious to me. The hero works for a New York public relations firm, which the novel also calls an "advertising agency" (start of Chapter 1). The firm is known by it initials K., K., D. and V., recalling the way many real-life ad agencies were referred to by initials. However, my impression is that in real-life, public relations and advertising are separate professions. Ad agencies create ads. They did not typically try to get clients good publicity, which was the job of public relations men.

The Evils of Adultery

Before I Die centers bitterly on a no-good middle-aged man who dumps his loyal wife and family for an opportunistic, cheap young woman. This was the subject of Clare Boothe Luce's play The Women (1936), and before that the film A Fool There Was (Frank Powell, 1915).

The husband in Before I Die not only dumps his wife. He also first ignores and then abandons his teen-age son, who is struggling desperately to recover from polio. A sick child with a serious illness will return in McCloy's "That Bug That's Going Around".

Hollywood: Real Life Parallels

The movie actress Louise "Lou" Symington is a thinly disguised version of the real-life movie star Elizabeth "Liz" Taylor. In real life Liz had just stolen her best friend Debbie Reynolds' husband Eddie Fisher, in 1959; in Before I Die Lou has just stolen her best friend Gloria Wayne's husband Dick Grant. Lou is depicted bitterly as Evil Incarnate. There is little "inside" information about Taylor, Reynolds or others in Before I Die; McCloy is likely basing her portrayals on newspaper articles.

People keep saying in Before I Die that these actions will ruin Lou's career at the box office. McCloy is ignoring real-life history: that Liz' scandals seemingly helped make her films huge hits.

Translator

A character works as a translator. This anticipates the translators in A Change of Heart and Burn This.

The Further Side of Fear

The Further Side of Fear (1967) combines suspense, mystery and espionage, a combination familiar from earlier Helen McCloy books.

The Further Side of Fear is absorbing in its storytelling throughout. It shows a resurgence in McCloy's talents, starting the last phase of her writing career.

Mystery Plot: Main Mystery

The best part of The Further Side of Fear is a locked room puzzle (set forth in Chapters 1, 2, solved in Chapter 10). In The Further Side of Fear, a criminal mysteriously disappears from a small apartment, leaving it locked and bolted behind him. While several McCloy tales involve impossible crimes, this seems to be the first actual locked room in McCloy. It would soon be followed by another locked room novel, Mr. Splitfoot (1968). The late 1960's is an atypical era in mystery history for a writer to develop an interest in locked room puzzles.

SPOILERS. The villain is identified at the end, because the villain turns out to be the only person who had a chance to set up the locked room situation. This sort of clue-to-the-villain-in-a-locked-room-mystery, is not uncommon in locked room puzzles.

Mystery Plot: Subplots

SPOILER. A small subplot involves how color is seen differently at night, under artificial illumination. This recalls a similar development in Cue for Murder. Both of these episodes are based in color perception, and show McCloy's interest in cognitive psychology.

SPOILER. The subplot about Josie Smith and her "double bluff" cover in "vice" (Chapters 6, 7), recalls the way being a humorous fool covered Chalkley's activities in Who's Calling? (Chapter 9).

The Opening

The opening has some broad similarities with that of Do Not Disturb. In both, "a genteel woman visiting a big city encounters spooky events at the multi-unit building where she's staying. What she hears is important. This encounter soon gets her involved with danger and suspense. International intrigue plays a role." The details of the two books are very different, however.

The two first chapters of The Further Side of Fear are built around strong narrative arcs:

Cognitive Psychology

The opening discusses how the sense of hearing is highlighted, in the absence of sight.

It also analyzes the "hypnagogic state", between sleep and waking (Chapters 1, 3). See a related idea in Dance of Death (Chapter 1): a drug that produces "twilight sleep", also between sleep and waking.

A discussion stresses the primacy of communication, in the use of language (Chapter 2).

How laughter affects social relationships (the letter in Chapter 3).

The light in England, and how it affected the English tradition of water-color painting and open-air painting (Chapter 5). McCloy had an interest in light, especially during twilight. However, this episode takes place not at twilight, but during the day.

Camouflage and perception are discussed (Chapter 5). This involves the colors black and white, like the proverb in Burn This (Chapter 1).

The cognitive requirements for success in modern society (start of Chapter 6). A related concept: "the cruel ecology of civilization" (Chapter 7).

A discussion of personality, and its changes (Chapter 6).

People not noticing things above eye level (Chapter 8). This is echoed in the solution (Chapter 10).

The title concept The Further Side of Fear is discussed (Chapter 9).

The psychology of driving (Chapter 10).

Cognitive Psychology: Implications for Scholarship and Science

Some Cognitive Psychology passages have implications for Science, and Science's impact on society. These are mainly linked to the book's critique of Science and intellectuals.

"Propaganda by semantics", the use of words to force wrong ideas on readers, is discussed (Chapter 5). There is also a discussion of the mind working against itself.

The limitations of knowledge, including scientific knowledge. Newton is quoted (Chapter 7). The policeman wishes modern scientists had more awareness of these limitations.

How abstract thinking leads to ideology and political violence (Chapter 7).

Social Commentary

The Further Side of Fear extends McCloy's critique of scientists with sinister political agendas and a dehumanized lack of values. The heroine asserts that most of the world's problems are created by intellectuals trying to have an impact on society. She cites Communism and the atom bomb as two products of such intellectuals (Chapter 3).

Critique aside, The Further Side of Fear seems out-of-touch in its portrait of society. Anyone who expresses the slightest opposition to the Vietnam War, is immediately tagged as a possible Communist spy. By 1967, opposition to the war was widespread among "respectable" people.

Characters

The heroine is in constant jeopardy. And she is suspicious of everyone she meets, strangers who might actually be bad-guys-in-disguise. The only sure-not-to-be-criminal allies of the heroine, her two teenage daughters, are rude fools who offer the heroine no support in her crisis. This gives the tale a nightmarish quality, as the heroine is totally cut off from any reassuring human contact. This grimly alienated atmosphere is likely deliberately manufactured to create suspense.

The heroine is another of McCloy's professional woman writers. She writes articles for art magazines, currently on antique furniture. This perhaps echoes McCloy's own professional start as an art critic.

Out of Touch with Young People

The depiction of teenagers (Chapter 4) also seems out of touch with reality. The rich, blandly conformist schoolgirls are obsessed with having the right shade of lipstick and the "right" expensive shoes. Meanwhile, although The Further Side of Fear is set in London, the wild fashions of Swinging Britain and Carnaby Street simply don't seem to exist! Swinging Britain was underway in a big way by 1965, and attracting world wide attention. These teens seem like 1950's Junior Leaguers in training, not teenagers of the late 1960's.

The ultra-square middle-aged heroine is also relieved that the two young male teens wear neckties. In real life, US male teens typically dressed in, say, sweaters and trousers without neckties, at least since the 1940's. Everyone found such sweaters utterly respectable. Anyone who ever visited a high school, or watched a TV show about teenagers like Mr. Novak, would know this.

She also depicts the alleged fact that European teens are wearing their hair "an inch longer" than US teens, as a sinister political protest. This in the middle of the hippie era, three years after the long-haired Beatles made a triumphal US tour. Teens were wearing their hair at all lengths by this time. The whole thing is very strange.

McCloy's excellent later novel The Sleepwalker (1974) shows an author far more in touch with young people. That's a Good Thing.

Links to A Change of Heart

Ideas in The Further Side of Fear will be echoed in McCloy's later thriller A Change of Heart (1973). A Change of Heart is much inferior to The Further Side of Fear, in my judgment.

The villain's story of being lured into corruption is set forth during the solution at the end of The Further Side of Fear. This anticipates a similar account by a villain in A Change of Heart (Chapter 6).

The two schoolboys who are friends, anticipate the more sinister schoolboy friendship in A Change of Heart (Chapters 1, 6). Both pairs are older teens, who go to an elite private school. In both pairs, one is from California. However, the personalities of the two boys and their relationship are quite different in the two books. Instead, the sinister relationship in A Change of Heart seems modeled on the one in The Long Body.

SPOILERS. The mystery subplot about apartment house steward Erskine, anticipates facts that will be revealed about Laurie in A Change of Heart at the book's end.

Mr. Splitfoot

Mr. Splitfoot (1968) is a formal detective novel, starring series sleuth Dr. Basil Willing. Unlike some of Helen McCloy's books, there are no spy or international intrigue aspects.

Links to Panic

Mr. Splitfoot shares subject matter with McCloy's earlier Panic:

Links to Two-Thirds of a Ghost

Mr. Splitfoot, like McCloy's earlier Two-Thirds of a Ghost, deals with an author, his publisher and other workers in the literary and book publishing business. Both novels take place during country house parties at the author's home. However, there is much less detail about the literary world in Mr. Splitfoot, than in Two-Thirds of a Ghost.

Mystery Plot: Impossible Crimes

Mr. Splitfoot has an impossible crime puzzle plot. As sleuth Basil Willing points out (Chapter 18), it is essentially a locked room problem, although technically the room is not actually locked. The murder puzzle - who did the impossible crime and how - is none too original. McCloy uses an approach straight out of John Dickson Carr's "Locked Room Lecture" in The Three Coffins (1935). Because this is a standard, much-used gambit, it is easy to figure out.

Better are two mysteries surrounding the main crime: the raps and the bell. Both of these show mild but solid ingenuity. Both mysteries involve the "production of sound".

The impossible crime aspects of Mr. Splitfoot do not take up many pages. The murder is set forth (Chapters 6, 7) and much later solved (Chapter 18). This is essentially a short story embedded in the novel. Even when adding in the mystery of the raps (end of Chapter 5), it is just a small percent of the book.

Fake Supernaturalism

The impossible crimes in Mr. Splitfoot are surrounded by a "fake supernatural" atmosphere: in other words, the crimes are seemingly done by supernatural forces, but are given a rational scientific explanation at the end of the book. This is a common approach in impossible crime tales, in authors like John Dickson Carr and his follower Hake Talbot. McCloy lays on the fake "supernatural" material with a trowel, including both poltergeists AND a haunted room. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy McCloy's "supernatural" material. It wasn't fun to read or think about.

McCloy's earlier impossible crime puzzles generally did not employ such a "fake supernatural" approach. However, Through a Glass, Darkly concerns the legend of the Doppelganger, which is perhaps close to the "supernatural".

Mr. Splitfoot has a big reputation among some critics, who like it more than I do. One can speculate that "fake supernaturalism" is a favorite among some readers, and that these elements of Mr. Splitfoot have enhanced the book's reputation.

What Is It?

A strange, hard to identify object is found in the fireplace (Chapter 8). Sleuth Willing and the reader have to figure out what the object is, and how it relates to the crimes. McCloy had earlier developed a puzzle of the same kind in "The Nameless Clue", with the strange disk found in that story.

Dying Message

There is a dying message puzzle, that doesn't seem very creative. It involves a foreign language, like the dying message puzzle in The One That Got Away, and the quasi-dying-message puzzle of NPH in The Goblin Market.

More interesting is a non-mystery aspect of the dying message: the personage who speaks it. This is witty and clever. It plays no role in the puzzle, though.

The Crimes in the Past

There is a detailed account of a series of crimes in the past (Chapter 5). McCloy immediately offers a tentative guess at who did the crimes and why. I thought at first we might learn more about these killings later in the book, and that there would be surprise twists about who committed them, or how. But this is not the case, and the crimes are rarely referred to again. They form what is essentially a short story within the novel.

The account in this section is well-detailed, and logically constructed. The choice of killer is mildly surprising. On the whole though, while I respect this subplot's craftsmanship, I think it is a fairly modest achievement.

This account is a mystery set in a historical period. Historical mysteries are common today. But they were still quite rare in 1968 when Mr. Splitfoot was published, when most mysteries were set in contemporary times.

Architecture

There is a detailed look at unusual architectural aspects of the old house (Chapter 3). This is in the Golden Age mystery tradition of an interest in architecture. I enjoyed this section. But the architectural aspects in this chapter actually play little role in the mystery puzzle.

SPOILER. One of the impossible crimes has a solution that does involve architecture, different from that in Chapter 3. This is also appealing.

Cognitive Psychology

An odd optical illusion is discussed, with the chimes (middle of Chapter 7).

The various attitudes caused by success and failure are briefly mentioned.

A Question of Time

Problems: A Paranormal Novel

A Question of Time (1971) is my least favorite of all of McCloy's novels. It has two central problems. One problem concerns a deja vu or precognition experience that is central to the book. A Question of Time is billed as a "novel of suspense", and one expects the precognition episode to be given a logical explanation and solution at the book's end. Instead, at the end we are simply told that the precognition is genuine. The book thus turns into a paranormal thriller. There is no warning this is going to occur: one thinks one is reading a mystery story in which everything will be explained logically by real science. Instead, the book simply offers us a lot of hooey.

The other problem is how depressing the story is. Much of it turns on kids having nightmarish, tragic experiences. This is unpleasant and depressing to read about.

Links to "Silence Burning"

"Silence Burning" (1957) is a science fiction short story McCloy wrote. It has links in subject matter to A Question of Time. "Silence Burning" includes time travel among its subjects; A Question of Time has much metaphysical and paranormal material about time. The purely scientific approach in "Silence Burning" seems preferable to me. In general, science is vastly superior to paranormal claptrap.

Both "Silence Burning" and A Question of Time look at family life and loss. Both stories are structured to take place over a long series of years. Family members we meet in early sections in both works, are dead by the time later sections open. Both stories explore the sense of loss this brings. "Silence Burning" is more idealistic, in urging us to treasure relationships while loved ones are alive. A Question of Time is more morbid in looking at the angst involved. A Question of Time also has more of a sense of betrayal, with relatives and parents failing the people depending on them.

"Silence Burning" is far from a classic science fiction tale: its ideas are routine and much used by other sf authors. But it is generally superior as a treatment of time and its effects to A Question of Time.

Mystery Plot: What Causes the Victim's Terror?

Since most of what we are reading is just paranormal events, there is not as much actual mystery in A Question of Time as in most McCloy books. The murder doesn't occur till the second half of the novel. It has a bit of a puzzle: why is the murder victim so terrified? McCloy eventually comes up with a solution. This is not a great puzzle, but it is least an actual mystery-puzzle-with-solution. And it does have a fair play clue. I didn't find the solution to be psychologically plausible, unfortunately. This puzzle about a cause-of-terror relates to McCloy's long term subject of cognitive psychology.

The victim is scared in a room that is locked. This can be seen as tangentially related to the "locked room mystery". Although this is a stretch, and A Question of Time is hardly a conventional locked room puzzle.

Mystery Plot: The Disappearance

SPOILERS. A second mystery puzzle involves a man who disappears on a public street (Chapter 6). It is mainly solved right away. This too is not-classic-but-at-least-it's-real-mystery.

Other McCloy novels have scenes of the heroine stalked, only to have her stalker suddenly disappear: see Panic, or the apartment intruder in the opening of The Further Side of Fear. In terms of storytelling and atmosphere, the disappearing stalker in A Question of Time is similar. But its mystery puzzle is different.

A character vanishing while walking out in the open, recalls a puzzle in The One That Got Away. The solutions of the two puzzles have a bit of similarity, although they are different.

There are "vanishing on the street" puzzles by Carolyn Wells in The Man who Fell Through the Earth (1919) and Richard Ellington in Exit for a Dame (1951). A different but related kind of impossible crime is in "The Theft of the Faded Flag" (1988) by Edward D. Hoch.

Mystery Plot: Deja Vu

The deja vu / precognition episode is given an attempted rational explanation by the children (Chapter 2). As the book points out, this solution might explain some of the deja vu aspects, but not the sense or terror or the precognition aspects. It is not bad as an attempted explanation, though.

Fake Daughters

SPOILERS. There is speculation (Chapter 1) that young Lisa is not actually a man's daughter. The plot issues are elaborate, and involve that McCloy favorite, extensive life histories. Unfortunately, nothing more is done about this in the novel, and this plot thread peters out.

This relates a bit to the speculation in The Long Body and The Changeling Conspiracy, that an impostor daughter has been substituted for a real one. The situation in A Question of Time is different, however: there is no question of an impostor or two different girls, rather simply the issue of whether the sole girl in A Question of Time is indeed a man's real daughter or a phony candidate.

Greek Mythology

A Question of Time recalls Panic, in that events are related to Greek mythology. Unlike Panic, in A Question of Time this is not extended to any puzzle plot mysteries.

A Change of Heart

Limited Mystery

A Change of Heart (1973) is mainly a suspense novel. It has some mystery: the villains behind the events are revealed only at the end, although they are none too surprising. A Change of Heart is not structured as a "mystery solved by detection": the good characters spend more time reacting to events and threats, than they do on any sort of detective work or investigation into the book's mysteries.

A Change of Heart is quite readable. It displays McCloy's storytelling skill. It discusses several interesting subjects. However, A Change of Heart has many problems that sink the novel. It is one of McCloy's lesser books.

The Meeting

The main premise of the opening is the meeting arranged between the two men. This recalls "After Twenty Years" (1906) by O. Henry. In both works, the meeting leads to plot twists - although the specific plots twists are completely different in both tales.

The night club that has gone out of business in A Change of Heart, recalls the torn-down restaurant in "After Twenty Years".

The Book's Universe?

The night club in A Change of Heart (Chapter 2) is the Crane Club. The Crane Club previously appeared in the Basil Willing tale Through a Glass, Darkly (Chapter 4).

In contemporary fiction, such a reference would be used to indicate, that A Change of Heart is set in the same "universe" as Through a Glass, Darkly. However, I'm not sure that McCloy was doing this by the reference in A Change of Heart. She might simply have been developing her fictional ideas about the Crane Club. Or creating a bit of literary nostalgia for Through a Glass, Darkly.

Cognitive Psychology

What features might be preserved throughout life, in gait, attitude, emotions and thinking (Chapter 4). SPOILER. An example of this: A character's consistent problems throughout his life with French grammar are cited as a clue in the solution (Chapter 17).

The psychology of collecting (Chapter 6). This analysis seems dubious to me: it is based on a doubtful generalization about males' sexual behavior.

Conglomerates

A Change of Heart takes us inside a business world phenomenon of the era: the conglomerate. McCloy was always interested in trends in society. The later sections show us life in the corporate business world, and analyze the conglomerate as a new development in Capitalism.

McCloy deserves some polite applause for trying to explore business and society. Unfortunately, A Change of Heart doesn't have much new or insightful to say about conglomerates or business in general. Conglomerates were much discussed in the popular press of the era: Newsweek had a major cover article on them in October 9, 1967, concentrating on a famous conglomerate of the time, Ling-Temco-Vought. McCloy doesn't go much beyond such press accounts.

In A Fine and Private Place (1971) by Ellery Queen, the business empire is a conglomerate. This lends some contemporary realism to the book's brief business discussions. But conglomerates are not explored in depth.

McCloy makes some interesting points, about big shots' need to see themselves glorified by followers. These relate to her long term interest in psychology. This idea seems related to the brief-but-incisive remark in The One That Got Away (Chapter 10), that Dr. Basil Willing was "the only successful man I ever knew who was not conceited."

McCarthyism

A Change of Heart returns to the subject of the anti-Communist purges of the 1950's, which McCloy previously examined in The Long Body (1955). The book's hero lost his professorship for defending a student of his charged with Communism. Eventually, the student is shown to be innocent of Communist involvement. But by then, it is too late for the professor's ruined career: he is permanently barred from the academic world, and stuck in a miserable business job.

The Long Body was ambiguous in its treatment of the McCarthy era anti-Communist crusade. A Change of Heart shows complexities:

The Soviets

A Soviet Trade Delegation is visiting the US corporation in A Change of Heart. The delegation members are slick, intelligent, highly trained and skilled, and are possible suspects, possibly engaged in espionage or trade secret theft - or possibly not.

The heroine is a professional linguist, and the presence of Soviet characters gives McCloy a chance to explore situations involving communicating in more than one language. McCloy gets some pleasant plot mileage out of such scenes. They relate perhaps to McCloy's long time interest in codes.

Less successful is the depiction of the Soviets in political terms. The serious problems of Communism and the Soviet Union are skipped over. This is badly inadequate, as any sort of account of the Soviet Union as a political system.

The Villains

The ending, like most mystery novels, reveals who is guilty and who is innocent.

BIG SPOILERS. A wealthy US businessman turns out to be evil; the Soviets turn out to be innocent. Possibly this is a just a mystery solution, with no political commentary intended. Still, A Change of Heart leaves the impression that the US business world is a bad or at least a highly flawed place. And as I noted above, the novel's treatment of Communism is incomplete and inadequate.

The Sleepwalker

The suspense-mystery novel The Sleepwalker (1974) is one of McCloy's best later books.

Mystery Plot

The Sleepwalker can be recognized right away as about a standard sort of plot in suspense fiction: a woman in jeopardy. One can tell immediately that the heroine is a "nice woman who through no fault of her own is in big trouble". While this plot subject is a cliche, and cliches are supposed to be bad - in The Sleepwalker it helps to root the novel. Whatever happens, we know in very broad terms what is going on: an innocent heroine who is menaced by dark forces. This core situation helps give direction to the story.

Neither the reader nor the heroine has any idea what lays behind the book's happenings, or who is causing them. We don't know who is menacing the heroine, or why. We only learn more through the course of the novel, with everything being fully explained at the end. This gives The Sleepwalker the structure of "a mysterious situation which is eventually solved": in other words, The Sleepwalker is a mystery as well as a suspense novel.

MILD SPOILER. A mysterious murder eventually occurs. But as in many other McCloy books, the mystery of the murder is much less creative than the mysteries involving non-murder events in the novel. Learning about what is causing the heroine's problems and why, is far more interesting than who did the murder.

The Sleepwalker is enough of a formal mystery, that the solutions point out fair play clues that have been concealed in the narrative. There are clues to the mystery of the heroine's situation (middle of Chapter 7), and to the identity of the murderer (Chapter 10).

The Doctor: A Series Detective

Sympathetic Boston medical doctor Dr. Alfred Neroni returns from A Question of Time (1971), where he also had a supporting role. His work often involves a cross between medicine and psychology. He has a deep knowledge of unusual psychological phenomena.

Dr. Neroni is intelligent, perceptive, and kind. He goes a long way towards unraveling the mysterious events in The Sleepwalker. In some ways he is the story's "detective".

However, he concentrates on medicine and psychiatry. He is not quite as full-fledged a detective as Dr. Basil Willing.

And we do not see him "on stage" throughout The Sleepwalker, the way investigator Dr. Basil Willing is in many of his cases. Dr. Neroni is more of a supporting character, than the star of The Sleepwalker.

Non-Profits

The Sleepwalker looks at social groups and institutions that tend to be ignored in books and films. Many of the characters are involved with a non-profit institution. It's a small, "unimportant" non-profit, but one full of colorful detail. While the United States has always had a mixed economy, with businesses, cooperatives, non-profits and the government all playing economic roles, much mystery fiction has only spotlighted businesses. This is especially true of contemporary mysteries, especially "cozies", which are almost obsessively set in small businesses. The Sleepwalker thus has a fresh and fairly new background to work with.

Poor Young People and the Counter-Culture

Also novel is the social class into which many of the book's young characters fall. They tend to be young people just getting by, not well established in careers or society, and without much money. Many have some counter-cultural manners or attitudes. But they are far from the radical political activists or committed social innovators one associates with the term "counter-culture", strictly speaking. Instead, they are a section of society without money or good jobs, that has drifted vaguely into the fringes of the counter-culture simply "because it is there" and widespread in 1974. The novel looks at more how "ordinary" people without money were affected by the counter-culture and other social trends, rather than directly depicting the counter-culture itself.

McCloy is largely sympathetic to these young people. She doesn't endorse them as an ideal. But she suggests they are just a mainly harmless class of people without money or advantages. She neither strongly advocates for nor demonizes the counter-culture. She merely depicts it as an aspect of this social class' lives. Sometimes she is sympathetic to aspects of the characters' idealism; other times she is satirical of their attitudes. Sometimes, she sees young people's experiences as sad.

The Sleepwalker does not rush to extremes, or attempt to endorse everything Mod. It often suggests modern life is troubled and full of difficulties.

In The Further Side of Fear (1967), McCloy came across as a writer who understood little if any of the counter-cultural attitudes of the 60's, and who was becoming out of touch with contemporary life. By contrast, The Sleepwalker (1974) shows a writer cognizant of current life and society, and who can write in detail about people's experiences.

Links to Previous McCloy Works

BIG SPOILERS in this section. Please read The Sleepwalker first!

The dreams in The Sleepwalker draw on imagery used earlier for McCloy's short story "The Other Side of the Curtain". However, the imagery in The Sleepwalker is better developed and more interesting.

The Sleepwalker also has some broad similarity to the plot of "The Other Side of the Curtain", in that both involve the cognitive psychology of the heroine. The plot of The Sleepwalker is much better than the plot of "The Other Side of the Curtain". It is more plausible scientifically, as psychology. It is much more complex and more imaginative as a mystery plot.

The mystery in The Sleepwalker relates to material McCloy included as a subplot in Who's Calling?. The treatment is better in The Sleepwalker, especially in its use to create mystery plots.

Minotaur Country

Minotaur Country (1975) is a combination political thriller and mystery novel.

Minotaur Country is a readable book. Among its assets: It deals with interesting subjects; has lots of detailed story and characters; and vivid atmosphere. However, its mystery elements are middling. And there are objections, outlined in detail below, to its treatment of politics.

As I whole, I do not recommend Minotaur Country. It does not achieve outstanding virtues.

The Title: A Metaphor for Politics

The title Minotaur Country is designed to suggest that the political world is a fantastic place, where anything bizarre or outre can happen. The Minotaur was a fantastic beast in Greek mythology; the title suggests that modern-day politics is almost as fantastic as Greek mythology.

However Minotaur Country is a "realistic novel", with no fantasy elements. The Minotaur of the title is just a metaphor.

Real World Analogues

Minotaur Country describes a Governor of a US State in 1975. But its characters and situations keep recalling US national politics around 1960: The whole effect is odd. It gives Minotaur Country a dream-like feel, of replaying a national myth.

The transfer from real life national politics to the state level action of Minotaur Country produces some odd effects. It is normal for US Presidents like Kennedy to deal with other countries, such as Cuba. It is much rarer for state governors to be concerned with foreign relations, such as with the island in Minotaur Country. At first, this just seems odd in Minotaur Country; but eventually one realizes that one is dealing with a reflection of the Kennedy era and his conflicts over Cuba.

I might simply be showing my personal prejudices: but I have never been fascinated by the mystique of the Kennedys. Nor am I interested in charismatic politicians in general. I vote according to the issues and political agendas of parties, rather than looking for a charismatic or sexy or glamorous Leader. Consequently, I might not be an ideal audience for Minotaur Country, having little interest in its Kennedy subject matter.

Please see the discussion of Is There a Traitor in the House? (1964) in the article on its author Patricia McGerr, for a detailed analysis of the broad similarity of some of its characters to those in Minotaur Country. Is There a Traitor in the House? is a political thriller with a Kennedy-like congressman.

Links to Previous McCloy Works

Minotaur Country shares imagery with Cue for Murder: Minotaur Country shares even more imagery with The Goblin Market:

Island Politics

The fictitious island in Minotaur Country has a history and politics recalling Cuba in 1960.

Different political factions in Minotaur Country debate whether the island's new government is Communist, or simply a liberal reform movement. The question plays a key role: how the Governor should behave towards the island depends on whether it is actually Communist or not.

Unfortunately, Minotaur Country fails to answer the question. The reader never learns if the island is actually Communist. This is an artistic failure of Minotaur Country, on two levels:

In real life, there was indeed some ambiguity for a few months after Castro seized control of Cuba in 1959. It was unclear to the world at large whether Castro was some sort of liberal reformer, or was a Communist. These are exactly the alternatives about the island in Minotaur Country.

However, after a year in 1960 it became abundantly clear to everyone that Castro's government was Communist, and a close public ally of the Soviet Union. In general, there has rarely been any real world, long term ambiguities about any government's Communist ties. Most governments are either clearly Communist, or clearly non-Communist. Therefore, the situation in Minotaur Country is not realistic, and has little relevance to real world politics. This limits the value of Minotaur Country as a political novel.

Gay Villains

Two villains in the book are gay. These are not the main villain of the mystery, whose identity is hidden until the solution at the book's end. Instead, the gay pair are lower-down henchmen, clearly marked as bad guys upon their entrance into the story.

I can't see any artistically worthwhile aspects to these characters, or ways in which they benefit the novel. They simply seem like an expression of anti-gay bigotry.

Political Writing

The book jacket says "Helen McCloy was a member of a speech-writing committee of a Vice-Presidential candidate a few years ago and so has had a backstage view of political campaigning".

Technical aspects of speech writing are discussed in Minotaur Country (Chapter 9). These presumably give us some of McCloy's views on speech writing. Minotaur Country thus becomes one of several McCloy works which offer an inside look at the world of professional writing. I would have welcomed more of this kind of material in Minotaur Country.

We see the young heroine quit the highly successful career she has built up as a newspaper columnist, and take a job as a speechwriter. This seems implausible. Any sort of newspaper columnist job is a plum assignment, one most newspaper writers struggle for years to achieve, often unsuccessfully. Few columnists voluntarily give it up. Columnists often augment their careers by writing books or articles on the side, in addition to their column. But they rarely relinquish their columnist career. Unfortunately, the treatment of column writing and newspaper work in Minotaur Country is superficial.

Mystery Subplot: The Governor's Wife

In the first chapter, a mystery is set-up: politicians at the Governor's mansion are pushing for the Governor's wife to give an interview, even though she has generally avoided this in the past. The reporter heroine, her editor boss, and the reader know this change is occurring, but have no idea why.

Much is made of this mystery. The reporter and the reader keep their eyes peeled, looking for clues as to why the interview is occurring. Unfortunately, after the opening, this mystery is simply forgotten. We never get any explanation as to why the interview takes place. And there are no hidden intrigues among the politicians that are causing the interview, or hidden relationships between the politicians and the Governor's wife.

This mystery and its non-solution are simply a botch. They form a rare failure of mystery craftsmanship on McCloy's part.

Minotaur Country has a second mystery about the Governor's wife, also set forth in the first chapter. SPOILER. The Governor's wife is behaving oddly, and frequently disappears from view. This is not obviously criminal, but it is a mystery.

The mystery of the strange behavior of Governor's wife is solved half-way through the book (Chapter 11). The solution is none-too-creative. It is also simpler than the intrigue in the novel's first half might suggest. The intrigue at the mansion in the book's first half hints at a complex political conspiracy: something that unfortunately never materializes. The intrigue is often fascinating as a story - but the solution is disappointing.

SPOILER. This solution has Scientific aspects. Even at this late date, McCloy is sticking to the approach of the Scientific Detective story.

Mystery Plot: The First Crime

The dramatic crime events (Chapter 12) have a mildly interesting how-done-it mystery and explanation (clue in Chapter 13, solution in Chapter 16). SPOILER. The explanation has some family resemblance to that in "Murder Stops the Music", although differing in detail. The explanation in "Murder Stops the Music" is more creative; the explanation of this subplot in Minotaur Country is a bit more conventional.

SPOILER. This solution has Scientific aspects.

Mystery Plot: The Second Crime

The choice of killer at the end is based on motives, legitimately disguised until the end (solution in Chapter 18). There are two motives, one for the henchmen and their employers, one for the main criminal who is the brains behind the crime. The motives are clever. And they are well-disguised, but still fairly and logically present in the novel. They are one of the better parts of Minotaur Country as a mystery.

The alibi aspects are not bad, but far from classic (solution in Chapter 18).

The Changeling Conspiracy

The suspense novel known as The Changeling Conspiracy (1976) in the USA is titled Cruel as the Grave in Britain (after a quote from The Song of Solomon, Chapter 8, verse 6). It deals with a kidnapping, one with political dimensions and a radical group, in the 1970's manner. It is not very good. It has only a few mystery features, being mainly a thriller.

The C.I.A. and The Mob

Although they have no connection to the plot, McCloy manages to bring in the C.I.A. (known as "the Agency" in the novel), and the Mob (known as "the Family"). They seem to be there because they are staples of thriller novels. They relate to the life history of the hero, and an informant: life histories being a McCloy tradition.

The Mob informant (Chapter 10) lives a lavish lifestyle, is overweight and has an addiction to fancy candy, recalling Chalkley in Who's Calling?.

Mystery Plot

The main mystery puzzle aspect is a hidden villain. SPOILER. It manages to bring the crime home to a person I for one did not suspect (Chapter 17). Unfortunately, the choice of villain is simply, if fairly, clued, and does not involve more than some simple plotting. This choice of villain also relates to the hidden motive of the killing, which had seemed fairly arbitrary up to that point.

The other most important subplot is another mystery of identity: who is the Old Man of the Mountain, the villainous group's leader? This mystery mainly involves the structure of the group, unlike the who-done-it puzzle of the murder. which centers on clues to a concrete character.

McCloy flirts with suggesting that the kidnapped victim has been replaced by an impostor: the victim now has a new personality, which might be caused either by brain washing, or by substitution of an impostor. Unfortunately, the book never does anything clever with this. In a simple way, this echoes the perennial McCloy theme of the Double. It also gives the book its title, a changeling being an impostor substituted for a young person.

The Hero's Mysterious Past

One problem in general with the novel's mystery puzzles. Both the heroine's family history and the hero's mysterious past are complex and sometimes mysterious. SPOILER. They turn out to have nothing to do with any of the book's mysteries. Their presence is simply an unrelated coincidence.

SPOILER. The way the hero got a new identity through his Intelligence work, recalls similar events for the hero of McCloy's novella "Better Off Dead" (1949).

Architecture

The heroes evade a man tailing them, by cutting through some New York City buildings (opening of Chapter 10). This pleasant sequence involves a bit of the Golden Age interest in architecture. At the end of the same chapter, a description of a deserted subway station explicitly invokes surrealism. This chapter is one of the best parts of the book.

More walking through odd backways of New York buildings occurs, in the strange passage in the Hotel Moxon (end of Chapter 15).

There are some vivid descriptions of Manhattan and the Brooklyn buildings in the dusk (start of Chapter 9).

An author's note at the start states that the Hotel Moxon and the Brooklyn buildings at Jefferson Place are based on real New York locations, although given new fictitious names.

Psychology

McCloy has a long time interest in psychology. There is much about the abnormal psychology of hostages (Chapter 6). I didn't feel this was adequate to explain the strange behavior of the hostage in the novel. Or that of the famous real life case that is clearly the model for the book.

She also covers interrogation techniques (Chapter 2), human attitudes to the Moon and "jamais vu" (last part of Chapter 4), and the psychology of domination by leaders (middle of Chapter 12). The psychology of the Moon seemed especially interesting. This section has a poetic quality, later apparent in her description of the subway station (Chapter 10). It also recalls nocturnal passages in other McCloy novels, and their descriptions of the effect of low light.

Politics

The hero condemns the use of violence by revolutionaries. He says it leads states after revolution down paths to unforeseen and really bad ends (Chapter 15).

Based on Real Life

The core kidnapping premise is clearly based on a famous real-life case. I don't name this case here, so I won't get sued! But most readers will recognize this 1970's real-life case right away. It was ultra-famous in the 1970's, and The Changeling Conspiracy is a novel "ripped from the headlines", as the saying goes. However, the details of The Changeling Conspiracy are developed quite differently from those of the real-life events.

Elements of Who's Calling? are clearly based on the famous real-life 1934 custody courtroom battle over "Little Gloria" Vanderbilt. McCloy sometimes used famous real-life events as source material for her books.

The Impostor

The Impostor (1977) is a suspense novel.

Mystery Plot

The Impostor has mystery elements: the heroine does not know or understand what is going on, and discovers the answers in the last third of the end of the novel. However, the book is more of a suspense tale than a fair play mystery.

Once again, while a murder-by-an-unknown-person occurs midway through The Impostor, it is not especially important in terms of the book's plot. The non-murder elements are more important, and more interesting as mysteries.

Society: A Conglomerate

The social background of The Impostor recalls A Change of Heart (1973). In both books: Helen McCloy is less interested in the financial aspects of conglomerates in The Impostor than in A Change of Heart. She presumably said what she had to say about conglomerates in A Change of Heart, and the treatment in The Impostor is less detailed.

The conglomerate and its business rival in The Impostor are both painted as evil places, that have a negative impact on society. While McCloy doesn't say so, a logical implication is that capitalism has negative possibilities within it.

Cognitive Psychology

The events involving Thereon are based in Cognitive Psychology (Chapter 14).

The discussion of alienation is on the borders of Cognitive Psychology (Chapter 14).

Codes

There is much about codes, a long term McCloy interest, in The Impostor. Her Postscript explicitly links The Impostor to Panic, the earlier McCloy novel with her most detailed treatment of secret codes.

SPOILER. The Goblin Market linked "cablese", the jargon newsmen use to write telegrams, with hard-to-interpret messages. The Impostor briefly invokes scientific technical jargon and acronyms, to add baffling material to a code message (Chapter 12). This is one of the more ingenious mystery plot ideas in The Impostor.

Sinister Modern Weapons

SPOILERS. The Impostor eventually looks at frightening new weapons of mass destruction (Chapter 12). In this it anticipates McCloy's short story "That Bug That's Going Around" (1979), which looks at a different group of such weapons. Both tales shows McCloy's interest in science. Both paint alarming pictures of new developments in weaponry.

McCloy earlier published a science fictional, or at least futuristic novel The Last Day (1959), which warns about the consequences of nuclear war. These late stories continue such warnings, linked to weapons other than the atomic bomb.

The Smoking Mirror

Problems: A Paranormal Novel

The Smoking Mirror (1979) is a suspense novel, with mystery aspects. It is a terrible novel, one of McCloy's poorest.

SPOILER. The Smoking Mirror returns to the material of A Question of Time (1971). Both novels involve paranormal material about time, and people being able to foresee the future. Both novels have a similar problem. The books each propound a mystery, then "solve" that mystery by pseudoscientific paranormal "explanations". This is a complete cheat. Neither novel unfortunately gives any warning that one is NOT reading a conventional mystery, until they move towards their pseudo-solutions.

A Question of Time is my least favorite of McCloy's work, and The Smoking Mirror is almost as bad. But aside from their paranormal subject matter, the two books are drastically different:

Why McCloy wanted to spend her time writing bad novels about pseudoscience is beyond me. By contrast, her genuine mystery novels from this era such as The Sleepwalker (1974) and her last book Burn This (1980) are much, much better.

More Problems

Other aspects of The Smoking Mirror annoy me too:

Historical Fiction

The Goblin Market (1943) was a contemporary mystery, published during World War II. The Smoking Mirror has a little of the same feel, also being set in the World War II era. As the book jacket points out, McCloy had actually worked as an art critic in 1930's France, so the book reflects first hand knowledge of its time and place.

The Smoking Mirror is a historical novel by any definition. But doesn't much recall today's "historical mysteries", heavily researched books that are often set in Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages or Victorian England, places authors and readers have never actually seen. Instead, it is a novel set in a era and locale from the author's own life.

The heroine in The Smoking Mirror is trying to get a job at the fictitious Occidental News Service. She fails, and the Occidental makes only a brief appearance in the novel (Chapter 3). This does link the book to The Goblin Market, in which the Occidental News Service plays a central role.

The discussion of American Consuls (Chapter 3) is an interesting historical sidelight. It has a few Cognitive Psychology aspects, discussing how "withdrawn" they are. (In general, Chapter 3 has some of the best historical sidelights in the book.)

The "Nansen passport" is also a good touch (Chapters 1, 3). Its inventor Fridtjof Nansen is referred to admiringly in The Case of the Solid Key (1941) by Anthony Boucher.

Mystery Plot

A clue involves the scent of a character, recalling Through a Glass, Darkly.

The little mystery subplot about the missing ring is decently done. It is not a "hidden object" mystery, but the account of its vanishing has a bit of a similar feel, at least in terms of story telling. The solution is based on on of the "informative facts" that run through McCloy novels. This particular fact has a Cognitive Psychology feel.

The Smoking Mirror has a Dying Message subplot. The solution to this mystery involves a different approach from the majority of the Dying Messages in mystery fiction. SPOILER. The message refers to an obscure historical fact, which gives the message its meaning (see the last pages of the novel). Dying Message puzzles in other authors more often depend on some twist of interpretation, such as a homonym or ambiguous visual pattern.

BIG SPOILER. Some of the characters turn out to have hidden backgrounds and roles, linked to the plot. This recalls the solution of The Sleepwalker. Unfortunately, I didn't notice fair play clues in The Smoking Mirror to this aspect of the solution. Since this aspect includes the mystery of "who committed the murder", this lack of fair play cluing is a limiting factor for the book as a murder mystery.

Burn This

Burn This (1980) is a detective novel, and McCloy's last published novel. It is a pure detective story, with no espionage, and only mild and occasional elements of suspense. It is a recommended book, and entertaining to read.

Literary People

Burn This takes place among the world of writers and publishing. In this it recalls Two-Thirds of a Ghost. The writers in Burn This seem less successful and affluent than those in Two-Thirds of a Ghost. The authors in Burn This are mainly experiencing career difficulties. The book allows McCloy to examine some of the tougher problems facing professional authors.

McCloy's fiction as a whole is full of self-reflexive commentary on mystery fiction. There is a little of this in Burn This: one of the characters is a mystery writer. But Burn This concentrates far more on writers of other kinds: war novels, historical fiction, poetry and translations, book reviewing.

All of the writers in Burn This are living in modest apartments. They are all commercially published and reviewed; all are known in literary circles. But clearly none of them are making big money.

Just how financially successful writer Tristram Purdy is, is the subject of conflicting indicators in Burn This. When first introduced (Chapter 2), we learn that Tristram Purdy is regularly interviewed on television: the mark of a well-known, successful author. (Back in 1980, TV talk shows still regularly promoted famous writers.) But later information reveals that Tristram Purdy is in need of money.

The Return of Basil Willing

Burn This marked the return of McCloy's series sleuth Dr. Basil Willing. His last book appearance was Mr. Splitfoot (1968); he was seen in the short story "The Pleasant Assassin" (1970). In 1979, McCloy had brought Willing back in a pair of short stories, "Murphy's Law" and "That Bug That's Going Around". These had established that Willing had moved to Boston from New York; that his adult daughter and her husband lived nearby and had a close relationship with Willing; and that he was now a widower. The tales show that Willing is now a psychiatric consultant with the Boston Police.

Burn This continues this life situation for Basil Willing. We see his new Boston office and apartment, and briefly meet the staff of his psychiatric office (start of Chapter 11). Burn This and the 1979 short stories suggest that McCloy might have been planning a new series of Dr. Willing books, set in Boston. Burn This and the short stories are so good that one regrets that McCloy apparently never published fiction after them.

Links to the Boston Novels

McCloy had published two earlier books set in Boston, A Question of Time and The Sleepwalker. These had starred her series doctor-detective Dr. Alfred Neroni, rather than Basil Willing. Both have similarities in feel and subject matter to Burn This.

A Question of Time and Burn This are set in Beacon Hill, an upscale, historic neighborhood in the heart of Boston. The book jacket of Burn This states that McCloy lived in Beacon Hill. There is much Beacon Hill atmosphere in both books.

Both The Sleepwalker and Burn This are set in small Boston apartment buildings. The feel of these places is more like a 1930's rooming house, than an anonymous modern-day apartment complex. The buildings are small, essentially converted homes. Everyone who lives there knows the other tenants, and often socializes with them. They have been personally picked as tenants by the landlady-owner. All the tenants promptly become the chief suspects when the mysteries ensue.

SPOILER. Both The Sleepwalker and Burn This have mothers who are concerned over missing grown children. Both vanished children's problems are related to current social situations: the counterculture in The Sleepwalker, the Vietnam War in Burn This.

Cognitive Psychology

Burn This involves that McCloy favorite, cognitive psychology. SPOILERS: The poems quoted (end of Chapter 3) are "The Amateur Orlando" (1875) by George T. Lanigan, and "Uriel" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A Gay Character?

The writer of historical fiction Tristram Purdy is depicted as a super-elegant sophisticate, with courtly speech patterns and elaborate styles of dress. It is unclear whether McCloy is trying to signal that Tristram Purdy is gay, or not. Nothing explicit is ever said stating that he is gay. And his elegant, elaborate style might just indicate that he is living in the past, like the characters in his novels.

The name "Tristram Purdy" recalls Truman Capote, the most famous real-life gay writer of his era. However, Capote's fiction is mainly set in the present day (or occasionally the world of his childhood), while Tristram Purdy writes historical novels.

SPOILER. Tristram Purdy is involved in some lurid writing activities, we eventually learn. McCloy gives vague hints as to the nature of this writing, but she never spells it out in detail. Presumably, she (or her publishers) are trying to be tasteful and restrained. But she is so darned coy in her hints, that I for one failed to understand exactly what sort of material is in Purdy's writing. It is described as pornography (Chapter 13) and "blood-soaked" (Chapter 14).

Mystery Plot

SPOILER. Several of the characters have hidden secrets. This recalls The Deadly Truth.

The Nameless Clue / The Black Disk

Helen McCloy's long short story "The Nameless Clue" (1941) was republished as "The Black Disk" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine April 1961). I read it in this reprint.

Pulp Fiction

"The Nameless Clue" was originally published in a pulp magazine, Five-Novels Monthly (Volume 57 #2, November 1941). It seems to be one of Helen McCloy's few pulp publications. "The Nameless Clue" shows some features common to pulps, such as: While women writers were rare in the pulps, McCloy's name and story were on the cover of the issue containing "The Nameless Clue", one of two writers featured on the cover that month.

Cover paintings in Five-Novels Monthly concentrated on scenes of men in tough action. The issue with "The Nameless Clue" showed a football tackle: something not from McCloy's story. Other tough sports scenes, or men in military action, were on other covers of Five-Novels Monthly in 1941.

Links to The Goblin Market

"The Nameless Clue" has features that look like a rough sketch for her soon-to-be-written novel The Goblin Market:

Links to Do Not Disturb

"The Nameless Clue" also seems like an early rough draft for ideas in Do Not Disturb. SPOILER. Both The Goblin Market and Do Not Disturb show wealthy Americans as secret supporters of Fascism; both tales are anticipated in this aspect by "The Nameless Clue", which shows the wealthy as secret supporters of corrupt regimes analogous to Fascism.

"The Nameless Clue" and Do Not Disturb both criticize police brutality.

The hero goes to a hotel and gets involved with eerie goings-on there, at the start of both "The Nameless Clue" and Do Not Disturb.

Clues and Cognitive Psychology

The clue of the title is an object that the hero can see and hold, but not identify. This is an unusual concept. It relates to cognitive psychology: the hero's attempt to understand the world around him, classifying and naming objects.

Dialogue suggests that the object might be hard to identify, because it is might be only a part of some larger configuration. This is a good idea, also rooted in cognitive psychology. However, this does not actually have anything to do with the actual solution of what the object is.

McCloy uses strict, sound detective work at all stages, showing the hero run down what the object is, and then trying to link it to the killer.

One eye-witness testimony has an object look a little different in low light at night: a common McCloy trope.

Chinoiserie

Helen McCloy's short story "Chinoiserie" was reportedly written in 1935, but not published till 1946.

Setting

"Chinoiserie" is set in traditional China, circa 1900. As a mystery set in a richly described third world country, but full of characters from Europe and the United States, it resembles The Goblin Market.

Descriptions of the Manchu aristocrats of the era are none too flattering. They are shown as haughty and obsessed with ritual status symbols. However, villainy in "Chinoiserie" is mostly concentrated among the white characters. McCloy is a political liberal, and "Chinoiserie" is emphatically not created to defame its Chinese or Tartar characters.

Art

There is much about Chinese painting in "Chinoiserie". The young McCloy was working as an art critic when this tale was apparently written. The descriptions of Chinese paintings are in full art criticism mode.

Painting themes occasionally return in later McCloy: the art teacher heroine of Through a Glass, Darkly, the Goya painting in A Question of Time. The chapter titles in Dance of Death are based on genres of paintings.

Plot

The central mystery recalls in general terms McCloy's first novel, Dance of Death. However, the details of the solution are quite different.

SPOILERS. Some common features of "Chinoiserie" and Dance of Death:

"Chinoiserie" has many interlocking puzzles and riddles. Unlike most of McCloy's later works, these puzzles are all interconnected, instead of being separate subplots. In this "Chinoiserie" resembles Dance of Death, whose numerous mysteries also interlock.

However, the plot structure of Dance of Death has a "nested" quality, with each new mystery being contained "inside" the previous one. "Chinoiserie" does not have such a "nested" construction.

Dead Man's Code / Not-Tonight-Danger

The short story "Dead Man's Code" (1954) was republished as "Not-Tonight-Danger" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Sept 1957). I read it in this reprint.

This piece is signed by McCloy's husband at the time, mystery writer Brett Halliday, and stars his famed series detective, Miami private eye Michael Shayne. However, Halliday's 1955 introduction to the tale states that it was largely ghost-written by McCloy while he was busy with a novel.

The Publisher

A publisher from Boston is a main character. This is an early example in McCloy of Boston, which would be prominent in her later fiction.

The middle-aged publisher is in McCloy's version of New England businessman-intellectual gear: thinly polished shoes and a bow tie. McCloy has indeed caught the uniform of upper middle class WASPs of the era. But these clothes also suggest a lack of exciting sexuality, compared to a more phallic conventional tie and highly polished shoes.

The publisher, a highly proper and honest man, suddenly gets involved in a theft. This anticipates later McCloy works about honest men who get lured into theft: A Change of Heart and "Murphy's Law".

Code

SPOILER. The codes depend on a system developed for a specialized communication profession, as in The Goblin Market.

The meaning of the coded message also reflects, in a simple way, some specialized approaches.

The Singing Diamonds

Helen McCloy's short story "The Singing Diamonds" (1949) is one of her best works. Like much of McCloy's fiction, it mixes mystery with spy fiction. The story is richly detailed, and incorporates many kinds of disparate material.

Mystery Plot

Much of the mystery plot is science-related, as is common in McCloy. Cognitive psychology plays a big role.

SPOILER. A small aspect of the richly complex plot seems inspired by "The Avenging Chance" (1929) by Anthony Berkeley.

SPOILER. "The Singing Diamonds" anticipates mystery plot aspects of Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse (1961).

Textual Analysis

The solution uses "textual analysis", a technique that runs through McCloy: Willing analyzes some text (in this story, newspaper articles) and finds hidden patterns.

SPOILER. The tale's first half ingeniously employs what might be called "textual analysis in reverse". Naval Intelligence adds some hidden patterns to text. These are later explained. Most textual analysis involves the sleuth discovering hidden patterns that have been put there accidentally, caused by underlying mental processes or attitudes of the person writing or speaking the text. By contrast, these patterns are deliberate, a conscious shaping of the text. Still, when they are explained to the reader, they also have the effect of "hidden patterns concealed in a text, finally revealed", just like a standard piece of textual analysis.

The look at how Naval Intelligence is modifying news reports is detailed, and full of concrete examples. It thus resembles a bit the concrete tips on speechwriting in Minotaur Country (Chapter 9).

McCloy was sometimes interested in jargon. There is a statement by a psychologist, filled with abstruse technical terms.

Relationships

A relative who has been adopted as a son, recalls The One That Got Away.

Dialogue between Willing and Tamara, and events at the end, look at complex relationships in the family, and the family circle. Tamara discusses both relationships that are well-established facts, and possible connections between people she only suspects might be occuring. This is a plot technique that also appears in The One That Got Away. Both works explore different potential relationships within a family and its friends, considered as possibilities, speculated on, or suspected.

The riddle of why superficial society sophisticate Clare Albany wants to be friends with this academic family, recalls the mystery in The Deadly Truth, of "why do wholesome young woman Peggy and decadent rich socialite Claudia Bethune associate?" Both are examples of a kind of mystery McCloy likes: "bizarre events that are hard to explain".

Setting

"The Singing Diamonds" is set at fictitious Manhattan University. This recalls The Man in the Moonlight, which is also set at a (different) imaginary New York college.

Both stories have an international cast of characters, with people with origins both in Europe and Asia, especially Austria and China. McCloy's treatment of Asians is dignified and non-stereotyped.

The tale's second half takes place at a perennial McCloy setting, a sophisticated dinner party, as in Who's Calling?, Two-Thirds of a Ghost, "That Bug That's Going Around". Oddly, several of these dinner party tales have scientific subjects and/or guests: "The Singing Diamonds", Who's Calling?, "That Bug That's Going Around".

The garden is geometric, unusual in that it is rounded.

Politics and Society

The political situation centers around the US-Soviet rivalry. The goals of the US agents are entirely directed at containing and beating the Soviet Union. However, Communism as a political system is not discussed.

US Naval Intelligence feels that it is completely justified in manipulating and distorting the press. This makes for some entertaining, clever plot twists. But its political ramifications are disturbing. Is this really responsible behavior? Isn't it an attack on democracy? McCloy rarely if ever returned to this approach in subsequent fiction: a good thing, in my judgment. It's a fun one-time stunt, and I can live with that. But I'm glad it's not a standard feature of her work.

SPOILER. Part of the solution draws on a marketing innovation that was becoming popular in 1949: mailing lists for direct mail advertising. McCloy liked to look at new features of business and economic life.

The Case of the Duplicate Door

"The Case of the Duplicate Door" (1949) is an "impossible crime" mystery short story.

"The Case of the Duplicate Door" was originally written to accompany a jigsaw puzzle. Reportedly, when the puzzle was assembled, the complete picture contained a clue to the mystery. This is hardly the only example of such a puzzle. Such jigsaw mysteries were still being sold in the 1990's.

Links to The One That Got Away

Subjects in The One That Got Away (1945) return in "The Case of the Duplicate Door":

Murder Stops the Music

"Murder Stops the Music" (1957) is a short but plot-rich mystery short story.

The beach cabin setting, with Dr. Basil Willing one of the residents, recalls The Deadly Truth. This beach seems to be in or near Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It is an early example of a Massachusetts locale in McCloy, who would later set books in Boston.

A look inside the cognitive world of a dog, recalls Panic.

SPOILER. The sending of messages, and a mystery sub-plot related to this, recalls The Goblin Market.

Links to The One That Got Away

A mystery puzzle subplot recalls The One That Got Away. SPOILERS: Both tales take place in pretty countryside areas.

Murder Ad Lib

Mystery Plot

"Murder Ad Lib" (1964) is a little mystery story. Its mystery puzzle is not so much "Who done it", as "how was information communicated?" This is a kind of puzzle with long roots in mystery fiction. McCloy comes up with a simple but solid answer.

More complex is the alibi situation. This is not presented as a puzzle to the reader. Instead, we know all the sleuths' thinking as they explore the ramifications of the possible alibi. But the alibi is complex, and leads to a clever trap. McCloy spent a lot of work, setting up this situation. Alibi problems are rare in McCloy.

"Murder Ad Lib" is another McCloy work in which subplots (the alibi) are more complex than what seems to be the central mystery (the communication puzzle).

Show Biz

The performing duo combine features of two popular stage and TV acts of the era, without being an exact match for either:

Setting: Malibu

Basil Willing is back at a beach cottage, just as in The Deadly Truth and "Murder Stops the Music". Only this one is in Malibu near Los Angeles, far away from his usual East Coast stomping grounds. The is perhaps set in Los Angeles to make the show business professions of the characters plausible.

Most of McCloy's American-set books are in the Boston-to-New York-to-Washington corridor, the region known to geographers as BosWash or the "Northeast megalopolis". "Murder Ad Lib" is a rare exception.

Murphy's Law

Mystery Plot

Helen McCloy's short story "Murphy's Law" (1979) starts out as a "big heist" tale, but eventually turns into a puzzle plot murder mystery. This is a sort of plot structure familiar from the Nick Velvet tales of Edward D. Hoch, which typically start with a planned theft, which unexpectedly triggers a murder mystery.

This unpretentious short story is surprisingly rich in mystery. In addition to the whodunit murder mystery, there are three subplots with mystery elements. McCloy's novels are full of such subplots: here they are in a short story too.

As in many McCloy works, the subplots are more ingenious than the riddle of whodunit, which is not especially clever or well-clued. SPOILERS:

The subplots about the Government letter and the archaeological aspects of the coin, are not presented to the reader as mysteries. during the body of the story. Instead, the reader only learns during the solution that these subjects have hidden, surprising aspects. These surprises show mystery plotting ingenuity. However, it might be inaccurate to call them "puzzles". "Who committed the murder?" and "Where is the missing coin?" are puzzles presented to the reader, which the reader is invited to solve. By contrast, the reader only learns at the tale's end that there is anything mysterious about the Government letter or archaeology.

Code

The crooks use a simple code to communicate, a long-time McCloy subject. This is not used to develop any mystery puzzle plots, though.

Incuse Marks

The "incuse marks" on the old coin, are something I've never heard of before. They form a visual pattern that needs to be identified, and which turns out to be something obscure. McCloy sometimes built mysteries around "hard-to-identify-objects". However, the incuse marks are not treated as a mystery. Rather, they are an odd sidelight that get explained throughout the story.

Cognitive Psychology

"Murphy's Law" starts with a look at Murphy's reading, and how some phrases "stand out". This examines reading as a cognitive process.

Two women are characterized in terms of their cognitive psychology, an interest of McCloy. However, this characterization plays little role in the mystery plot:

A man wears what the story calls a "psychedelic" tie. He is far from being any sort of hippie himself, however. This shows the "fringes of the counter-culture" perspective found in The Sleepwalker, in which counter-cultural ideas affect people who are otherwise marginal to the counter-culture.

Canary

Emilia has a canary, recalling Minotaur Country and Cue for Murder. However, unlike those books the canary plays no role in a mystery plot.

Setting: Lower Middle Class Rental

The three non-affluent main characters rent cheap rooms at the top of a run-down hotel. This recalls the financially marginal young people who rent rooms in the converted house in The Sleepwalker. However, the characters in "Murphy's Law" are retirees, not young people.

That Bug That's Going Around

Scientific Detection

"That Bug That's Going Around" (1979) is a pure scientific detective story. It weaves five different scientific situations into a coherent plot: an achievement. As McCloy states repeatedly in the story, this scientific information comes straight out of newspaper articles. Then McCloy has developed fictional variations on the core situations.

McCloy has long included educational passages in her work, that inform readers about some intellectual subject. These scientific situations and their real-life background data reflect her practiced skill at incorporating such knowledge-based patches into her work.

Some earlier McCloy works offered feminist critiques of journalism and discrimination against woman reporters. "That Bug That's Going Around" takes a feminist look at bad treatment of woman scientists. This is clearly based on a famous real life case: Rosalind Franklin getting cheated out of recognition for her work on DNA.

Social Commentary

"That Bug That's Going Around" will never be a favorite story of mine. As Willing points out, it is unnerving, and something the doctor wants to forget. Still, ignoring this will not make it go away.

McCloy (accurately) compares the sinister attitudes of the villain to the Nazis.

Fever

The way that sick people are feverish and radiate heat, recalls the opening murder in Dance of Death.

Mystery Plot: Identifying an Object

The actual mystery elements are simple.

Basil Willing explores doodling and what it reveals again, as in Who's Calling?.

Whatever the doodle represents, it does not look like any real object most people are familiar with. This recalls the mysterious object in "The Nameless Clue", which the hero can hold and look at - but not identify. However, the solution identifying the object in "That Bug That's Going Around" is drastically different from the solution in "The Nameless Clue". The two solutions use fundamentally different approaches.

Mystery Plot: Life Histories

After the doodle is identified, the mystery puzzle turns to attempts to link the subject of the doodle, with various characters' life histories.

McCloy often bases mystery plots on characters' life histories. In "That Bug That's Going Around", one of the characters Philip Keene is a biographer writing about the other suspects. He is always supplying information about their past lives. This is a clever way to work such life history detail into the story.

Mystery Plot: Hiding a Leaf in a Forest

Keene refers to "a leaf in a forest", in his explanation of the murder. This refers to a famous quote by G.K. Chesterton, from his "The Sign of the Broken Sword (1911) in The Innocence of Father Brown.

Time

Willing's first book is mentioned: Time and Mentality. Since Willing is a psychologist, this is presumably a book about how time intersects with human thinking. This is consistent with the interest in time that runs through McCloy's fiction. (Time and Mentality was already mentioned as far back as Who's Calling? (1942) (Chapter 6).)

Cognitive Psychology

At least twice, changes in young Peter's behavior and especially attitude, are linked to his illness affecting how he thinks and feels.

Science Writer

Young science writer Philip Keene is dressed in what would soon be called the "preppy" look - although McCloy does not use that term. Preppy fashions emerged in the late 1970's, so McCloy is picking up on a trend that is red hot. McCloy associates this look with New York City, and the way its inhabitants are highly fashionable.

In real life, preppy fashion reportedly started in the gay community, before spreading more widely. Is McCloy trying to suggest Philip Keene is gay? He does seem to admire the scientist Jason Blair whose biography he's writing.

In any case, the biography is another example of the journalism that McCloy often references. So are the scientist's television appearances.

Imagery

The character with a hoof-shaped cast on an arm, recalls the "humans with hoofs" imagery in Panic and Mr. Splitfoot.