This is Nancy Barr Mavity’s first mystery novel, although prior to publication and afterwards she was a respected journalist, who often worked on crime stories. Her books are not the easiest to find these days, so it is not surprising that she is not so well-known. Interestingly, it been nearly a year since I first tried her work, as last February I reviewed her second book, The Body on the Floor (1929). The remaining four books in her James Aloysius Peter Piper (newspaper journalist amateur sleuth) series are:
- The Other Bullet (1930)
- The Case of the Missing Sandals (1930)
- The Man Who Didn’t Mind Hanging (1932)
- The Fate of Jane McKenzie (1933)
She also wrote a nonseries mystery novel entitled The State Versus Elna Jepson (1937), which is described as a courtroom drama.
I really enjoyed The Body on the Floor, so I was looking forward to reading The Tule Marsh Murder. As well as featuring Peter Piper (he is not usually referred to by his full name in the book), this debut includes a scientific sleuthing figure called Doctor Cavanaugh, who is said to be based on the real person, Edward Oscar Heinrich, “America’s Sherlock Holmes”. I was able to find out more about him in the introduction Randal S. Brandt writes for the American Mystery Classics reprint. He mentions that Nancy Barr Mavity had corresponded with Heinrich and that in 2020 Kate Winkler Dawson wrote a book about him. Barr Mavity seems to have led an adventurous life as:
‘In 1924, she accepted an assignment from Sunset Magazine for a series of articles written while traveling on her own for six months in Japan, China, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. This was a truly remarkable undertaking, as she had to leave her husband at home alone with two young children – their son John Barr had been born in 1921 – in order to pursue this opportunity.’
Is it just me who feels like people in the early to mid-20th century led more interesting lives/careers? I guess it is easy to look at such things through rose tinted glasses, as perhaps what we now see as “interesting” was actually just the result of financial necessity and employment instability. But nonetheless, it is still quite easy to feel like a very boring person!
Brandt also discusses the origins of the story under review today. He says it was:
‘[…] inspired by a real case that had captivated the San Francisco Bay Atea public a few years earlier. In the summer of 1925, a human ear, with bits of scalp and hair attached, was discovered in the saltwater tule marshes of El Cerrito […] The subsequent homicide investigation […] was aided by pioneering forensic criminalist Edward Oscar Heinrich [… He] was quickly able to determine that [… the ear] belonged to a woman, probably in her twenties, whose natural blonde hair had hints of red and brown dyes. He also correctly determined other East Bay locations where additional body parts were likely found, including a pair of jawbones that, through dental analysis, identified her as thirty-one-year-old Bessie Ferguson […] who had gone missing shortly before the ear was discovered.’
Another interesting section of the introduction compares the capers of Peter Piper with Nancy Barr Mavity’s own journalist exploits:
‘Although many of Peter Piper’s news-gathering antics would never be tolerated by today’s law enforcers, anecdotes from Mavity’s own career bear notable similarities to those of her fictional hero. During one trial she was covering, she used a ladder to climb through the window of a vacated deliberation room, after the jury had been dismissed for the day, in order to gather up the contents of the wastebasket, writing a story for the next morning’s edition on exactly how many ballots had been taken and what the votes were. In another, she risked facial burns by keeping her head next to a furnace pipe so that she could eavesdrop on a jury, and for three days fed the newspaper direct quotes from the deliberations.’
Synopsis
‘James Aloysius Piper, mostly known as Peter, is relentless when pursuing a story for his newspaper, the Herald. So when a woman’s body is found burned beyond recognition in the marsh near El Cerrito, he is even more eager than the local authorities to uncover her identity and find out what happened to her. Helping to solve the case is clinical psychologist Dr. Cavanaugh, who uses cutting-edge forensic techniques to glean crucial information from a few strands of the woman’s hair that escaped the flames. After Cavanaugh’s discoveries tie the corpse to Sheila O’Shay, the missing wife of millionaire Don Ellsworth, it’s up to Peter Piper to use all of his craft and charm as a reporter to coax out any secrets the couple may have been hiding.’
Overall Thoughts
The opening of the mystery begins with the newspapers trying to milk the story of Mrs Don Ellsworth a.k.a. Sheila O’Shay and I liked this way of commenting on this tactic: ‘But an essential factor in a big news story is continuity; the city editor’s abhorrence of a vacuum far exceeds nature’s.’ Yet, surprisingly, for me, the first character we encounter is not Peter Piper, but Dr Cavanaugh, as Don Ellsworth visits him regarding his wife’s disappearance. Dr Cavanaugh is introduced to us as a man who is confident in his ability to predict the behaviours of others. Abnormal psychology seems to be his background, but in this story, he also demonstrates his talents within forensic science. Nevertheless, he does sound a little like a forerunner to Helen McCloy’s Basil Willing:
“The study of human motives has been my professional concern for a good many years […] Clues? Well, we can’t afford to ignore clues, though I’m no expert in that line. But the most revealing clues cannot be put under the microscope – they are in the workings of the human mind.”
Chapter four sees the entrance of Piper and I think Nancy had a lot of fun depicting the newspaper milieu she was so familiar with: ‘The city editor, who on dull days was a man to avoid like a violent and insufficiently caged wild animal at the zoo, was content as a cat in a bed of catnip when a big story broke.’ I found the author imbued her scene setting here with energy and I liked how she described reporters:
“Lord, what an assignment!” Peter groaned aloud. The groan was entirely spurious, because the stimulus of doing difficult things was the wine of life in him. Like all reporters, he affected to be blasé and cynical, and like many of them, though he would never commit the outsider’s solecism of calling newspaper work a game, it really was a game to him, played with immense and carefully concealed gusto.
I feel like this a sentiment that Nancy Barr Mavity personally endorsed.
Peter Piper and Dr Cavanaugh’s paths cross when Peter’s editor gives him the challenging task of getting an interview from the doctor. Along the way Peter meets Dr Cavanaugh’s adopted grown up daughter Barbara, who had been engaged to Don prior to his hasty marriage to Sheila.
There is not much of a body to work with in this case, as the victim has been burnt beyond recognition. This is not an uncommon trope in mystery fiction, especially after the real-life ‘Blazing Car Murder’ which took place in 1930. This incident inspired a wealth of mysteries including, The Gutenberg Murders (1931) by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, The Four Defences (1930) by J. J. Connington, Proceed with Caution (1937), The Platinum Cat (1938) and Doctor Goodwood’s Locum (1958) by John Rhode (although with Rhode not all of the burnt victims are discovered in cars). Obviously, Barr Mavity’s mystery was not inspired by this case, but I am curious as to what earlier examples there are of the “burnt-beyond-all-recognition” trope, pre-1929. Perhaps Freeman Wills Croft’s Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy (1927).
Doctor Cavanaugh is a ponderous character at times, in speech and thought, making the narrative a little wordier than necessary. This is not an uncommon first book problem, but thankfully it is not too problematic an issue here. Curiously, both Don Ellsworth and Sheila’s personal maid, Mrs Kane, refuse to voluntarily give him a sample of Sheila’s hair to prove identification with the discovered burnt body. This certainly raises the readerly eyebrow. Fortunately, he is able to get a sample surreptitiously.
Unlike in The Body on the Floor, Peter Piper is more in the background during the first half of The Tule Marsh Murder. He starts out as a passive character, I would say, who reports what others have discovered. He holds on to the coat tails of the doctor and they don’t work as a team of equals. However, he does have more active sleuthing moments later in the story. From his first meeting with Barbara, Piper clearly fancies her, but can he trust her? This angle has its interesting aspects, but it does feed into one of my bigger irritations with this novel.
Overall, I would say that the first half of the mystery is a very strong read, but the second half of the book sorely peeved me! I would say it was the final 40% which significantly dropped my rating. I don’t want to go into too many details, but let’s just say the sin of withholding information from the reader (and in this instance the majority of the characters) is committed at an annoyingly new level, from a character who should know better. Looking at this in light of the solution, I can see why Nancy Barr Mavity constructed her story the way she did, but I don’t think the end result is worth it, as for me at least it led to frustration and dissatisfaction. The solution deploys a rather cheap trick, which if you are a new writer might seem “cool” and “fun” but for the seasoned mystery reader it can be something of a letdown. However, since I have read the second book in the series, I’m not assuming this is a habitual irritation of the novels, as The Body on the Floor is a highly recommendable read. So, on the one hand I am thrilled that Nancy Barr Mavity is getting reprinted, but on the other hand I wish she had written a different second half to The Tule Marsh Murder.
Rating: 3.5/5