Customer Reviews

She Shall Have Murder

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Delano Ames was born in Mt. Vernon, Ohio in 1906. His father worked at the local newspaper, and his mother was a descendent of the Mayflower settlers. His great-grandfather was Interior Secretary to President Grant. He also had ties to FDR, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ulysses S. Grant, Conrad Aiken, and Alan Shepard. The family moved to New Mexico in 1917, then Ames moved to Greenwich Village upon his first marriage. He later moved to England and married a second time. He worked for British Intelligence during the day and took part in the North Africa invasion in 1942. He eventually ended up back in New Mexico, but traveled between London, Paris, and an "unspoiled Spanish village." He eschewed work, but managed to publish a considerable body of work during his lifetime.

Although sleuthing couples were rare in the literature of the time, Delano Ames created the British detecting couple Dagobert Brown and Jane Hamish. SHE SHALL HAVE MURDER is their first escapade, and interestingly enough it takes place in the law office where Jane works. One of their elderly female clients dies suddenly of a supposed accidental death by gas. Dagobert and Jane are both skeptical, and they embark on their first full scale sleuthing exercise:

"'Meet me at the corner of Church Street in three minutes,' he said. And he rang off to avoid argument.

I was at the corner of Church Street in three minutes.

He said hello briefly and tucked my arm through his. He strode along so quickly I had to take two steps to his one, and he didn't say anything. We entered Kensington Gardens. We had them to ourselves, for it was a grim day. We found a deserted bench and for the first time Dagobert spoke.

'Jane,' he said quietly and without a trace of his usual enthusiasm, 'I'm afraid Mrs. Robjohn was murdered after all.'"

It is always a pleasure to read The Rue Morgue Press mysteries. They take us back to another genteel, in many ways more intelligent, time. Delano Ames creates an easy camaraderie between Jane and Dagobert, making for an easy, elegant whodunit.

Shelley Glodowski
Senior Reviewer

Ames was a top notch practitioner of the Amatuer sleuth school of British Mystery. His series featuring Jane and Dagobert Brown is great fun. This early case starts off the romance as Dagobert helps Jane find the truth behind the mysterious but little noted death of an middle aged lady of limited means.

There are few things I enjoy more than a good, old-fashioned British puzzle mystery. The kind with a limited number of suspects, and whose solution depends largely upon figuring out times and places, and picking up on small clues dropped in dialog. But the mystery also has to have an appealing sleuth. Delano Ames gives us all the elements of an excellent classic mystery, along with a bonus: TWO appealing sleuths.

Jane Hamish is a law clerk at the small London firm of Playfair & Son. Her fiancé, Dagobert Brown, is currently unemployed. A regular client, the extremely paranoid Mrs. Robjohn, has been found dead in her apartment. The death is ruled accidental, the result of the gas jet in the gas heater going on in the middle of the night when gas service is restored after an outage. Dagobert, who visited Mrs. Robjohn earlier that evening with Jane, realizes that the death was actually a murder. With his plentiful spare time, he begins an investigation.

Over drinks, tea and dinners, Jane and Dagobert compare notes about his sleuthing and what she has been able to find out in the office. They have quite a few suspects: Mrs. Robjohn's son, Douglas; his secret fiancée and Jane's office co-worker Sarah; Major Stewart, one of the law firm partners; Rosemary, another co-worker and someone who shares a secret with Major Stewart; Oates, the light-fingered office runner with apparent underworld connections; and old Mr. Playfair himself. Figuring out the culprit will take a lot of devious tricks by Dagobert, and some risky ploys by Jane.

Delano Ames's writing is delightfully wry, and Dagobert and Jane are a lively, smart-talking pair. They're not unlike Nick and Nora Charles in some ways. Dagobert delights in tricking suspects and driving them a little crazy with his antics, while Jane often tries to puncture Dagobert's bumptiousness with a well-placed dart or two. But, unlike Nora, Jane is an active partner in the sleuthing; a supremely intelligent young woman who is up to the challenge of solving the crime.

This is the first book in a 12-book series, originally published from 1948 to 1959. This Rue Morgue Press edition is nicely printed on good paper and is a pleasure to read. Rue Morgue has also published the next two books in the series, Murder Begins at Home and Corpse Diplomatique: A Jane and Dagobert Brown Mystery (Jane and Dagobert Brown Mysteries).