Two Mystery Novels

HERE in a single volume are the two latest works of Mr. Paul. The jacket asserts them to be “ mystery novels,” This is a courtesy and a great convenience as well for the reader, who might otherwise spend a good deal of energy in trying to decide what they are. Indeed, this reviewer found himself seeking several times the reassurance which the jacket definition provided. Lost in Wyoming or deposited suddenly in the Beacon Street mansion of Lancaster Primway, he came to regard the sturdy words “mystery novels” as veritable beacons guiding his faltering eye and mind.

I’ll Hate Myself in the Morning, one hastens to explain, is about Homer Evans, hero of The Mysterious Mickey Finn and other paperbacks in Mr. Paul’s series. This means that the question of who killed Isaac Momblo becomes the vehicle for Mr. Paul’s comments on life in the United States. He settles old scores with the New England Watch and Ward Society, folkways of Boston, racism, Clare Luce, and he even manages a passing kick at Cuban gin. By a genial legerdemain and much out-andout decree, Mr. Paul keeps these ingredients from boiling all over the stove; he is, in all candor, cooking over a very low flame.

Mr. Paul’s fine sense of detail is something else again. Who could resist him when, on flinging two comely Mormon girls into his story, he declares them to be named, respectively, Reeda and Smoota? Who could doubt that great things are afoot when Homer, busy with the nation’s security measures in time of war, proves to be employed not in the lowly G-2 but in a classification whose arcana are so fancy that the branch is known as G-19?

The second “mystery novel,” Summer in December, begins with Mr. Paul in more sober moods. Written in the first person, it takes the author aboard ship for South America. The reader can half believe half of this for a time, especially when the traveler falls in with a troop of Spanish dancers. But there are Nazis in the offing, and their design is no less than the complete destruction of the indispensable nitrate fields on which democracy itself must depend in its struggle against totalitarianism.

By the time the denouement arrives, Mr. Paul is in the mood to assure us that the principal plotter gave himself away by holding cigarettes in his left hand to avoid nicotine stains on the right. The man was a dentist: “His right hand was too frequently in a patient’s mouth or right under his eyes and nose. If that hand were badly stained, his practice would suffer.”

As the only avowed legpuller in the business, Mr. Paul deserves the continued patronage of his readers. Just to make sure of it, he has sprinkled this volume with ample references to his earlier books. Random House, $2.50.

CHARLES W. MORTON