Lady In Lilac - A $1,000 Red Badge Prize Mystery!
I have tried to find out more about this prize, and I've found several titles published in the 40's and 50's with this acclaim on the cover. It's also from a series "A Midnite Mystery" from Dodd, Mead publishers, but other than that...
I usually like to see the lists of winning mysteries such as the Edgar Award or the Glass Key, and especially from the 40's, as I usually discover great new authors. Lady In Lilac author Susannah Shane has written six more including Lady In Danger and Lady In A Million. Based on enjoying Lilac, I'd look for other Susannah Shane mysteries ~ However, that is just the pen name of Harriette Cora Ashbrook. From 1941 to her death in 1946 she wrote under the Shane name, before that she was writing "Spike Tracy" detective novels under the name H. Ashbrook. Her characters are amateur investigators, like the reader, who don't have to follow hard and fast police procedures.
As the complications pile up, the plot rolls on at a breakneck pace.
Helen Varney is down to her last dollar and must vacate her rented apartment. She just got a job at a chain restaurant but has low prospects. Suddenly, she smells gas and enters a neighbours apartment to find Joanna Starr collapsed on the bed. After rescuing her, they find they each have what the other wants. Helen wants to be an actress and move into higher society as Joanna has, and Joanna wants to disappear from her life, from the excitement and danger. They look similar, and decide to exchange lives. Suddenly Helen is rich, and the next night has a date to meet a famous director. When she meets him at his home, he is shot dead in front of her. Was it his crazy ex-wife or father who live next door? One of his three lawyers who were also present in the home? Who was the figure lurking in the bushes outside? Why has European film star Trudi Hess returned from Hollywood and what is her attachment to the millionaire victim? And what is Paul Saniel's story, showing up at her new Waldorf-Astoria apartment the day before, a man who knew Joanna intimately and knows Helen is not the real Joanna Starr?
Yes, Paul knows Joanna is gone, but who is this woman pretender - a crime ring kidnapper?
Paul and Helen each think the other holds the key to the murder and to where Joanna has disappeared to. The game of cat and mouse continues until they join forces to investigate the murder scene undercover. They may even solve the famous Charles Newberger child kidnapping, which seems to be connected...
There are plenty of twists as this dame in danger thriller speeds along. It's entertaining, with lots of clues and reveals, even reviewing all the points at the end in case you missed something.
I love these kind of breezy mysteries where fates change on a dime. One day you are a broke waitress in a rooming house; the next night you are in the Waldorf draped in furs accused of murder, with dark blood stains on your lilac shoes and your torn fuchsia handkerchief left next to the smoking gun at the manor house.
I'd recommend it to you, however, even in reprint, it's not a common book to find.
I have a 1941 hardcover copy. Great condition with a nice dust jacket. I would definitely recommend to those who like the fast talking, fast paced gems from the 1940's...
I could hear the swell of orchestra and the closing logo of "Warner Brothers Pictures" as the curtain (and the cover) closed.
1941 / Hardcover / 250 pages
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