Too Many Bones

Ruth Sawtell Wallis (1895-1978) obtained her English degree from Radcliffe College in 1919. Later, she went on to graduate studies in anthropology and was employed by the University of Iowa. Wallis started writing mystery novels in 1943, often with her expertise in anthropology to improve her characters and stories. My first experience of Wallis is her first novel, Too Many Bones. It was first published by Dodd Mead in 1943 and re-printed by Dell in 1946. In 2020, Stark House Press reprinted the novel as two-in-one with her 1945 mystery Blood from a Stone.

Too Many Bones features a young anthropologist named Kay Ellis. In the opening pages, readers learn that Kay was referred to the small Midwestern town known as Hinchdale for employment. It is here that she will assist Dr. John Gordon with a unique research on famous bones at the Henry Proutman Museum. In the early 1920s, a large collection of ancient skeletons was smuggled out of Germany. Known as The Holtzerman Collection, these skeletons offer valuable insight into the culture and ancestral behavior of a village of mountainous Romanian people. In a rather bizarre turn of events, this famous bone collection was bought by a millionaire residing in this little rural town in the heart of America. Upon his death, his widow Zaydee Proutman inherited the museum.

When Kay arrives, the museum director is discouraged to learn that his new employee is a female. After some back and forth negotiation, Kay wins the job despite Zaydee's snobbish opposition. Over the weeks, Kay learns about the city - its quirks and subtleties - and her role as Gordon's assistant. As Kay and Gordon begin to have romantic chemistry, she discovers that Gordon and Zaydee are intimately involved. 

In a local restaurant, Kay is repeatedly distracted by a drunk vagabond named Randy. He advises Kay that he was Zaydee's lover and that she threw his life into chaos and left him heartbroken and penniless. But, when Randy's charred body is found in a car, Kay looks like the most likely suspect. The rope begins to tighten when Zaydee goes missing. The readers know that Kay is not the killer, but the chauvinistic sheriff is determined to pin two murders on her. Is it possible for her to find the real killer before she's arrested?

The first half of Too Many Bones is dedicated to Hinchdale and its eccentric residents. It's also a fish out of water story as Kay attempts to settle into this small town. To Kay's chagrin, she is often delegated to the positions below her level of education as an expert in statistics and anthropology. Much of this is due to Zaydee, a pompous, bigoted and dominating millionaire who exists simply to spend her late husband's fortune. She's perfectly designed to be the instant villain you love to hate. 

There are great characters in the storytelling, including touching and sincere attention to two African-American characters. It was rare for the period and a testament to Wallis as a warm and intelligent female author who fought for diversity. The central mystery, once developed, is similar to a cozy locked room mystery. There are suspicions, alibis, pointed fingers and fiery tension as Kay begins to analyze her colleagues, friends and neighbors. Wallis also displays a great sense of humor with some truly outrageous and funny scenes injected into the twisted narrative.

Too Many Bones is a fun murder mystery in a little town with endearing characters and a captivating storyline. Although it was published in the early twentieth century, forensic science and the use of anthropology are parallel to today's crime fiction. Wallis was ahead of her time and Too Many Bones exemplifies that.

Get the book HERE

Disturbance on Berry Hill

Elizabeth Jane Phillips, better known as her pseudonym Elizabeth Fenwick, authored three standard detective novels in the 1940s. In the following decade, Fenwick changed her writing style to feature flawed and vulnerable characters placed into high levels of distress drenched in tight-knit suspense. Often, the setting is a confined space with very little wiggle room to escape the impending doom. 

Like Fenwick's A Friend of Mary Rose (1961), which traps the reader and characters in an attic to contend with a home-invasion plot, or The Make-Believe Man (1963), which confines the compact narrative into a different type of home-invasion suburbia, Disturbance on Berry Hill (1968) has a similar set-up. 

In Fenwick's taut narrative, which she had perfected by this point in her career, the thrilling mystery lies in a small cluster of upscale homes on Berry Hill, a sub-division that was carved out of a sprawling farm in rural Connecticut. These seven homes are mostly owned by affluent, middle-aged couples that fit the mid 20th century mold – husbands journey off to daytime employers and wives remain behind to keep the home fires well lit. But, on Berry Hill someone else is staying behind as well, stalking and menacing these prosperous homes and providing white-knuckle fright for the ladies. 

The novel begins with Maggie Leavis recounting a frightening incident that occurred while she was in the bathtub. From inside the porcelain safety, Maggie hears someone enter the home, walk upstairs, and then methodically stand outside of the couple's bathroom – knowing Maggie is inside. Before you think Michael Myers, Maggie explains that this intruder, who she thinks was a mysterious man, didn't come in the bathroom and instead simply knocked a picture off the dresser and then slowly left the home. The author introduces readers to Berry Hill in a really significant way. Maggie's testimony is bone-chilling. 

When Maggie visits her female neighbors the next day she hears similar stories. In one account, this mysterious man closed a garage door behind a woman and then stood outside as if he (or it!) was daring the woman to open the door. In another incident, a woman is grabbed from behind and squeezed. The attacker then simply runs off. There are a few similar things, like a birthday cake flipped upside down or seeing someone near the creek behind the neighborhood. 

The neighbors all meet one night to discuss the intruder/prowler and what needs to happen next. Should they call the police? Ignore the rather innocent pranks? After the meeting, their concerns are met with an appalling revelation – one of the female neighbors is found dead near the creek. When the police arrive they discover it was foul play. Whoever has been gently plaguing Berry Hill has now escalated their game into cold-blooded murder.

Disturbance on Berry Hill is the proverbial page-turner. Fenwick's approach to the book's first half sets readers on edge with these disturbing intrusions into the sanctity and lives of these well-to-do Connecticut residents. As their white-collar emotional fencing caves, the flaws and vulnerability begin to show. One elderly neighbor is contending with dependency while another couple is dealing with depression and inadequacy. There are also the obvious early dismissals of the complaints by most of the men, who are either too busy to deal with the intrusions or simply believe these are daytime fantasies created by bored housewives. 

Fenwick knows when to increase the pace, tension, and atmosphere for the book's second half. After the murder, fingers begin pointing, accusations are made, and there is a real unnerving, unraveling of the neighborly ties that bind. Someone in the neighborhood is, or knows, the murderer. Through Maggie's experience, the readers delve into the mystery and eventually discover the identity of the killer. 

While the ending left me slightly deflated, Disturbance on Berry Hill was an extremely enjoyable read. The characters, the setting, and the slow atmospheric march to the murder really highlighted the book's opening half. As the book sped to the finish, fans of police procedural crime-fiction will enjoy the investigation and interviews.

Overall, Fenwick continues to impress. If you are wanting to explore her work look no further than Stark House Press's amazing preservation. They continue to focus on Fenwick, and her contemporaries in Jean Potts, Ruth Sawtell Wallis, and Nedra Tyre to name a few (I'm pushing on them to reprint Amber Dean!). You can get Disturbance on Berry Hill as a twofer with her 1961 thriller Night Run HERE.