THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE was Mary Roberts Rinehart's second mystery book. It has nothing to do with the classic horror/film noir movie, 'The Spiral Staircase,' but it's still a very good story.

Sunnyside is a large country house rented for the summer by a spinster, Rachel Innes. For 13 years she's been the guardian of her late brother's children, Halsey (now 24) and Gertrude (now 20). They're the reason she rented the house. Miss Innes assures us that she's never reproached them for that, despite what happened. It certainly was no quiet summer!

The summer starts off well enough with Rachel and her servants moving to Sunnyside on May first. By May third all the servants but Liddy have left. The revolving servant problem will continue. Is the house haunted, as city born-and-bred Liddy thinks? It's 1908. Halsey and Gertrude show up later in Halsey's car, the Dragon Fly. There's a landline phone in the house and electricity -- but the Casanova Electric Company shuts off the power promptly at midnight. Good thing there are plenty of candles and oil lamps. Would you care to roam 22 rooms and 5 bathrooms in the dark, with just a candle, if you heard a strange rapping sound? Not I. The peace is already over by chapter 2. The first death -- murder or manslaughter? -- occurs before chapter 5. Of course the body is found at the bottom of the circular staircase.

NOTES:

Chapter I: Sunnyside is described. The circular staircase is outside the cardroom. There's a door to the east veranda in the hall to the staircase.

Chapter II: Liddy finds part of a fancy cuff link on top of the linen hamper.
Mention: Drummond's Spiritual Life, Joe Jefferson (actor Joseph Jefferson III, noted for his portrayal of Rip Van Winkle)

Chapter VI: Sunnyside has a clothes chute for dirty laundry. My grandparents had one. No, we were not allowed to slide down it.

Chapter IX: Miss Innes compares their ancestry to the Armstrongs' -- and not in the latter's favor.

Chapter X: Bad news about the Traders' Bank in the days before federally insured deposits, thanks to Mr. Jacob Trautman, President of the Pearl Brewing Company. (Halsey explains how 80% of the stolen bonds' value could be realized.)

Chapter XI: Miss Innes mentions two rumors she's heard since the body was found.

Chapter XIII: Miss Innes compares Dr. Stewart, favorably, to Dr. Wainwright, the family practitioner of her youth.

Chapter XVII: We get the gist of the inquest.

Chapter XXII: It's probably the biggest fire the village of Casanova has seen in years. Miss Innes fires a revolver.

Chapter XXIX: Riggs, Dr. Walker's chauffeur, has some information he didn't learn from the 'Casanova Weekly Ledger'.

Chapter XXX: Miss Innes is paid the compliment of being asked to be a witness to an action not normally considered fit for a lady to see.

Chapter XXXII: We get Anne Watson's backstory.

Chapter XXXIII: Why the inhabitants of Casanova think it's bad luck to throw a stone at a black cat.

I like Rachel Innes, except for her beliefs about Blacks. Yes, expect the casual racism and dialect of the period, although no one is rude enough to use the N-word. There are two named Black characters in this book. If Thomas Johnston the old butler is superstitious, he's loyal. Sam Bohannon, hired from the Greenwood Club to help watch Sunnyside at night, is intelligent.

Sunnyside needs watching. I haven't bothered to keep track of how many times someone breaks in, but there are plenty. Three of the book's deaths occur in the house and what's going on led to the other two. No wonder Miss Innes is having trouble keeping servants. A good deal of trouble would have been saved if the various characters kept each other informed, but where would be the mystery in that?
I agree that The Circular Staircase deserves its classic mystery status.

Dog lovers are out of luck, but cat lovers get to enjoy a black cat named Beulah.
Horse lovers might enjoy the brief role of a horse named Flinders. ( )

I had never heard of Mrs. Rinehart's work until they were referenced in another mystery series that I enjoy. The (fictional) bookstore owner randomly talks about some of her favorite authors and, trusting her judgement as if she were an actual living book lover, I have already read several authors that she deems worthy. (This isn't such a stretch, really, because I assume the opinions the character shares are also held by the author, and therefore are coming from an actual living person, in a sense.) I plan to continue pursuing other mysteries referenced in this book - Death on Demand, for the curious - because every title that I have read based on its recommendation has been worthwhile.

As for Rinehart, her mysteries are highly enjoyable. They are old fashioned whodunits that focus on the clues and suspects; some of the action always occurs in a large house with multiple rooms, stairways, and hidden entries that are ideal for chases and mysterious disappearances. The main characters are of the genteel upper or upper middle classes, and they have a host of servants, friends, and enemies, all of whom serve as suspects. In each story, some hair-raising incident has to happen in the night; usually, more than one night adventure occurs.

Since this book is a collection of four different stories - three novels and one novella - I can generalize and say that these are all trends of Rinehart's writing. Everything I described above was included in all four tales. Of course, each story has its differences, too: two of the narrators are male, two are female, one mystery surrounds a disappeared politician, one involves inexplicable hauntings of a house that a respectable spinster has rented for the summer, the third features a crazy mystery of moved bodies and missing papers aboard a train, and the novella is about the strange disappearance and reappearance of a young socialite. The trimmings differ, but the way clues unfold and the type of personalities created bear a lot in common. Since mystery writing is frequently formulaic, this didn't bother me; as long as the formula is a good one, I don't mind stepping into it time and again. Give me enough difference that it is a new story, make me like the new characters, and let each mystery be different and have a new resolution, and I will gladly accept a repetition of some of the same tricks to draw all these pieces together.

Simply put, I enjoyed reading these mysteries. They didn't astound me, nor have her characters made my favorite sleuth list, but they were fun. She had her flaws, much of which reflect her time. Her attitude toward African Americans, for instance, was highly demeaning, and her attitude toward women, while not from the dark ages, was still underwhelming; but I can understand that she is a product of the era in which she lived. The mysteries, though, kept my interest and presented a fun few hours of reading. If you are a mystery buff interested in reading new authors, I'd recommend giving Rinehart's work a try. ( )