When I looked up this light mystery online, I couldn't find any information - not even a decent cover image of the book. With a title like You Leave Me Cold! I was intrigued, and with other novels by Samuel Rogers titled You'll Be Sorry! and Don't Look Behind You! I knew I had to read this.
This is a new Professor Hatfield mystery, although technically it stars his nephew John Fraser, whom I liked much better.
"It's a big old house on the lake. But the atmosphere - you would surely find it strange."
When John visited the University town, Professor Hatfield recommended he rent a room in Dr. Chardwicke's home to help him out, and to place someone on the inside to help him decipher some strange goings on. Besides the doctor and his wife, there are other renters - Douglas, a medical student; Ellen, a pretty niece; and Frances, whose fiancé lies upstairs stricken deathly ill with a mysterious disease. Ronny was a student of both Chardwicke and Hatfield and is so far gone as to accept he will never recover. Despite Dr. Chardwicke's strange insistence as his singular physician that he have no visitors of any kind, John befriends him and is there when he loses the fight. Slowly, the house suspects Dr. Chardwickes scientific studies into tuberculosis-like cultures, and any one of them could have taken the keys to his lab and infected Ronny.
As John gets to know the others in the house, suspicious events happen happen around him, like a nighttime prowler locking him in the dark basement. He continues to consult with Professor Hatfield, and it looks like he will be the next victim to become infected with the disease - perhaps by using a tainted razor blade while shaving! And so, they plot to set a trap and catch the killer...
Set against the chilly winter in some American town, You Leave Me Cold! was rich enough to pull me into the mystery, but light and fun - in a ghoulish way - to discover who was the deadly poisoner. I'd like to say I would look out for more Samuel Rogers novels, but the character of the nephew was much more interesting than his main character of Professor Hatfield, amateur criminologist.
Still, how could you pass up a title like Don't Look Behind You!
I mean it. He's right behind you.
An interesting curio that someone else might find in a bookstore and check the internet for information about - and here is a nice cover picture from the dust jacket for you. You're welcome.
1946 / Hardcover / 246 pages
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