Faith Baldwin was one of the most successful writers of light fiction, and one of the highest paid. Her stories about strong-willed women of the 1930's - 1950's, reflected the times and entertained. This was published as Love Can Be A Problem and Love Can Be A Surprise - which is why I didn't realize I already owned this when I found a first edition hardcover. With its thick foxed pages, it was a pleasure to read, although mixing romance with mystery was not entirely successful plot-wise.
This story is as cool and bright as the day David Alcott walked to his new job at one of Manhattan's best law firms. His boss Talbot has faith in David.
Headlines proclaim socialite Letty MacDonald "Home from England!" with photographs showing her disembark a European ocean-liner. One of New York's elite at just 22, she always shines in her expensive furs and curly black hair.
Talbot acts as trust fund advisor to wealthy children, and David will take on his client - Letty. "Nuts!" David is instantly adverse to this frivolous girl, especially when she asks for more money, her recent allowance already spent. "Someone has to buy mink coats, you know." He thinks she deserves a good spanking, but golly, she is the most attractive girl he's ever seen.
Enroute to her Connecticut home, she drives into a parked car. It's David to the rescue, but without a license she's given three days in jail! She blames David, "and if she doesn't see him until six years come next Michaelmas it will be centuries too soon."
But - there is an unexpected kiss goodbye, through the cell bars no less, and David discovers his heart yearns for her - so infinitely desirable and entirely maddening, he wants to take her in his arms and shake her, or maybe he just wants to take her in his arms.
Jail shakes her core, and she drops her Princess pretence, confessing what really happened to her allowance. She has a heart of gold, and Talbot vows to act the matchmaker for the youngsters, sending them to dine and dance at the Hawaiian Maisonette.
It's only page 133, so there is plenty of time for the two of them to fall in love, but a new hurdle twists the plot into mystery. The D.A. asks David to help in the case of an innocent man accused of smuggling drugs. Rooting out the heads of the Harlem drug underworld will take David day and night, and Letty is put aside. This is serious business, with taxi drivers fished out of the river, and people shot at close range. David also carries a gun, and the little stray cat he adopted has been killed as a warning.
This has a double plot I did not expect. The first half is like a screwball comedy by Preston Sturges, and the investigation that takes over is very somber. Although her novels are pure entertainment, there are some realistic turns that can surprise. Sometimes it's fun to read a 'boy meets girl', especially when there are nights of dancing at the Hawaiian Maisonette, where they have to sit very close and there isn't much elbow room.
The books of Faith Baldwin are easy to find, she was as prolific as Nora Roberts and continually reprinted through the decades.
I always enjoy them, but if you have read to the end of this post, you already knew that.
1940 / Hardcover / 254 pages
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