Dell Shannon (1921–1988)
Autor von Exploit of Death
Über den Autor
Hinweis zur Begriffsklärung:
(eng) Dell Shannon was a pen name of Elizabeth Linington. She also used Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill. She also published under her own name. Do not combine her with Del Shannon (1934–1990), the singer-songwriter.
Reihen
Werke von Dell Shannon
The First Linington Quartet: Greenmask!; No Evil Angel; Date with Death; Something Wrong (1964) 22 Exemplare
Forging an Empire: Queen Elizabeth 2 Exemplare
Flash Attachment 1 Exemplar
Schooled to Kill, a Luis Mewndoze Mystery 1 Exemplar
Perché i poliziotti hanno l'ulcera 1 Exemplar
The Anglophile 1 Exemplar
Zugehörige Werke
Run Scared | The 12th of Never | Run to Evil 2 Exemplare
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Rechtmäßiger Name
- Linington, Barbara Elizabeth
- Andere Namen
- Linington, Elizabeth
Blaisell, Anne (pen name)
Egan, Lesley (pen name)
O'Neill, Egan (pen name)
Shannon, Dell (pen name) - Geburtstag
- 1921-03-11
- Todestag
- 1988-04-05
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- USA
- Geburtsort
- Aurora, Illinois, USA
- Sterbeort
- Arroyo Grande, California, USA
- Wohnorte
- Glendale, California, USA
- Ausbildung
- Glendale College (BA|1942)
- Berufe
- crime novelist
historical novelist
writer - Kurzbiographie
- Elizabeth Linington was a prolific novelist and writer, producing about 80 books in her career. Called the "queen of the procedurals," she was one of the first American women to write police procedurals — a male-dominated genre before that. Her novel Case Pending (1960), which introduced her most popular series character, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, head of the Los Angeles Police Department's homicide squad, was awarded runner-up for Best First Mystery Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. Nightmare (1961) and Knave of Hearts (1962), in the same series, both were nominated for Edgar Awards in the Best Novel category. Her interests in archaeology, the occult, gemstones, antique weapons, and languages were reflected in her works. As noted below, she wrote under numerous pen names.
- Hinweis zur Identitätsklärung
- Dell Shannon was a pen name of Elizabeth Linington. She also used Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill. She also published under her own name. Do not combine her with Del Shannon (1934–1990), the singer-songwriter.
Mitglieder
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Matt_Ransom | Jun 15, 2024 |
Matt_Ransom | Jun 15, 2024 | 
In 1960, author Barbara Elizabeth Linington, under the pseudonym Dell Shannon, released Case Pending, a police procedural somewhat different from Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series, but in its own way just as good. Case Pending received runner-up for Best First Mystery Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, and the next couple she wrote in the groundbreaking Lt. Luis Mendoza series, were also nominated for various awards. Over time, Dell Shannon — for those who knew the writer of this fine series was a woman — became known as Queen of the Procedurals, to McBain’s King of the Procedurals.
Having read many efforts in the Mendoza police procedurals many years ago, I revisited the series with the first effort, Case Pending, and remembered why I enjoyed them so much. Besides breaking ground by having the main character be Hispanic, there was a distinctness about the series in the manner Linington chose to present them. They straddled the line between traditional mystery storytelling and police procedural storytelling, which was just being defined by McBain. The Lt. Mendoza stories always had involving side stories which intersected with the main case in some way, though not always evident until the end. They also contained subtle psychological insights (sort of P.D. James-extra light) into not only the main characters, but often those surrounding the crime or crimes being investigated. In some ways, these were just as much short novels as they were police procedurals. Linington was a fine writer, walking the high-wire between the two, and seldom faltering. The Lt. Mendoza series makes a nice contrast to the grittier 87th Precinct novels of McBain.
Not recalling much of Case Pending (it had been decades since I read it) I found it to be terrific. Because it is the first in the series, Mendoza is still single here, Linington defining his character, and setting the template and tone for the series. To her great credit, since there must have been pressure to have Mendoza be exemplary, she writes him as very likable but also flawed. He dresses above his pay grade, for example, drives a Ferrari — albeit a 13 year old Ferrari — and is a bit of a womanizer (which will change as the series progresses and he becomes a family man). He is also more than a touch vain, though he is quite aware of this weakness.
Linington paints Mendoza as an excellent detective, a man not uncaring, but mostly doing his job and taking pride in doing it well. Mendoza isn’t crazy about puzzles and solving them, which makes him refreshingly different from other more traditional cozy detectives. He is compelled, however, to solve crimes because he doesn’t like leaving things undone. Case Pending is also brave — for its time period — in that it flat-out shows that while Mendoza will work with equal vigor to solve the individual murders of two very different girls, he secretly views one of the murders as a greater tragedy, because that girl was going to amount to something, while the other was most likely not. This honest assessment of how police privately view crime, especially because it is coming from a Hispanic cop, is quite bold for the time period.
As Mendoza, along with his subordinate Hackett, attempt to tie the slayings of the two girls together on the slimmest of evidence, because Mendoza has a hunch, two separate stories begin to subtly interplay with his investigation. One concerns a couple of young boys and a mother, the other a man in a jam whose only way out may be murder. When Mendoza discovers one of the girls had complained of being watched by someone at the skating rink, and then a new doll she’d just purchased went missing from the crime scene, the other stories start to tie in with the case he’s working on. Mendoza also meets pretty Alice in this first entry, and begins to court her.
I highly recommend this if you like a blending of traditional mystery and police procedural. It is extremely well-done and quite involving. It is not, however, as gritty nor as fast flowing as Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. In fact, it leans toward a cozy which just happens to be a police procedural as well. If you do enjoy it, there are a slew of them available on Kindle to supplement — and contrast — the grittier 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain.
On a footnote: the transfer of text to Kindle of this over fifty-year-old novel has some issues. While all the text is justified, there are quite a number of typos throughout which were not in the original. It is by no means even close to the worst I’ve seen, and it’s not as annoying because it’s generally easy to see what is meant or was supposed to be there. You will, however, run across it on a fairly regular basis with the Kindle version. Depending on your tastes, and your affinity for once popular series from prior decades, you might be ecstatic to discover an old/new series you’ll enjoy reading from time to time.… (mehr)
Having read many efforts in the Mendoza police procedurals many years ago, I revisited the series with the first effort, Case Pending, and remembered why I enjoyed them so much. Besides breaking ground by having the main character be Hispanic, there was a distinctness about the series in the manner Linington chose to present them. They straddled the line between traditional mystery storytelling and police procedural storytelling, which was just being defined by McBain. The Lt. Mendoza stories always had involving side stories which intersected with the main case in some way, though not always evident until the end. They also contained subtle psychological insights (sort of P.D. James-extra light) into not only the main characters, but often those surrounding the crime or crimes being investigated. In some ways, these were just as much short novels as they were police procedurals. Linington was a fine writer, walking the high-wire between the two, and seldom faltering. The Lt. Mendoza series makes a nice contrast to the grittier 87th Precinct novels of McBain.
Not recalling much of Case Pending (it had been decades since I read it) I found it to be terrific. Because it is the first in the series, Mendoza is still single here, Linington defining his character, and setting the template and tone for the series. To her great credit, since there must have been pressure to have Mendoza be exemplary, she writes him as very likable but also flawed. He dresses above his pay grade, for example, drives a Ferrari — albeit a 13 year old Ferrari — and is a bit of a womanizer (which will change as the series progresses and he becomes a family man). He is also more than a touch vain, though he is quite aware of this weakness.
Linington paints Mendoza as an excellent detective, a man not uncaring, but mostly doing his job and taking pride in doing it well. Mendoza isn’t crazy about puzzles and solving them, which makes him refreshingly different from other more traditional cozy detectives. He is compelled, however, to solve crimes because he doesn’t like leaving things undone. Case Pending is also brave — for its time period — in that it flat-out shows that while Mendoza will work with equal vigor to solve the individual murders of two very different girls, he secretly views one of the murders as a greater tragedy, because that girl was going to amount to something, while the other was most likely not. This honest assessment of how police privately view crime, especially because it is coming from a Hispanic cop, is quite bold for the time period.
As Mendoza, along with his subordinate Hackett, attempt to tie the slayings of the two girls together on the slimmest of evidence, because Mendoza has a hunch, two separate stories begin to subtly interplay with his investigation. One concerns a couple of young boys and a mother, the other a man in a jam whose only way out may be murder. When Mendoza discovers one of the girls had complained of being watched by someone at the skating rink, and then a new doll she’d just purchased went missing from the crime scene, the other stories start to tie in with the case he’s working on. Mendoza also meets pretty Alice in this first entry, and begins to court her.
I highly recommend this if you like a blending of traditional mystery and police procedural. It is extremely well-done and quite involving. It is not, however, as gritty nor as fast flowing as Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series. In fact, it leans toward a cozy which just happens to be a police procedural as well. If you do enjoy it, there are a slew of them available on Kindle to supplement — and contrast — the grittier 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain.
On a footnote: the transfer of text to Kindle of this over fifty-year-old novel has some issues. While all the text is justified, there are quite a number of typos throughout which were not in the original. It is by no means even close to the worst I’ve seen, and it’s not as annoying because it’s generally easy to see what is meant or was supposed to be there. You will, however, run across it on a fairly regular basis with the Kindle version. Depending on your tastes, and your affinity for once popular series from prior decades, you might be ecstatic to discover an old/new series you’ll enjoy reading from time to time.… (mehr)
“This had been, in all probability, a deliberately planned murder; and contrary to all the fiction, a big-city homicide bureau didn’t run into that sort of thing very often.” — Luis Mendoza’s thoughts
Coming just before Mark of Murder, Root of All Evil is Elizabeth Linington (Dell Shannon/Lesley Egan/Anne Blaisdell) at her crime-writing best; which is to say better than just about anyone before or since. This one is very complex, as a couple of cases take on lives of their own expanding and eventually intertwining. John Palliser has a larger role in this one, his smart hunches and lateral thinking paying off big dividends for Mendoza and Hackett. Commies, a burglar/rapist, a young murdered girl, and a six year old murder will eventually come to a head in Arizona, across the border, as Mendoza tries to figure out how prostitution, blackmail, and a Commie spy named Thronwald brought about the death of young blonde and pretty Valerie Ellis, whose body was dumped on a parochial school playground. Even how her drugged body got there is a mystery for much of this book.
Meanwhile, Hackett and Palliser are desperately searching for a rapist/burglar the papers are calling Lover Boy. All they know is he’s a big black man with a pockmarked face. Because there was much racial tension at the time — this one is from 1964 — Hackett is trying not to stir up more trouble in Los Angeles’s black community than the Muslim factions within same community are already stirring. But he has a job to do, and he intends to do it. The Commie angle comes to light fairly early in the Valerie Ellis case Mendoza is working, as does her hooking. When Valerie’s notebook comes to light, and the Feds become involved, Mendoza is more surprised that the cool and seemingly uninterested-in-sex rich girl Valerie Ellis was hooking, than he is at her falling in with Commies. Mendoza’s unspoken thoughts:
“Because, look at it from that angle — Valerie, spoiled, used to having money, and only nineteen — a lot of mixed-up kids that age got caught up by the ideals of Communism. The impossible ideals. Communism, Socialism — two sides of the same coin. Sounding just fine, a wonderful idea — only the catch was, neither remotely workable until human nature got entirely changed around.”
There is blackmail, false leads, a bottle of drugged wine, two lovers of foreign folk music, a phone conversation that has a bearing on both cases, and a murder at first attributed to the rapist/burglar. Intricate and complex, Linington uses both Mendoza and Hackett to comment on society and its relationship to the law, and policemen, who carry out the arduous and difficult task that often goes thankless by those they are protecting. When interviewing a girl Luis is certain knew about a badger game Valerie was running with a pimp, he ruminates, not for the first time in the series, on why he hasn’t quit the force, since he and Alison are secure financially. His thoughts go on for three or four paragraphs, in a sharp and damning indictment of the honest citizenry, who are not only unappreciative of the muck and mire cops have to probe in so that honest citizens can sleep safely at night, but ready with glee when one of them falls victim to it. Just like Mendoza’s insightful musings on Communism and Socialism, and its appeal to the inexperienced and naive youth, his thoughts are as apropos for current times as they were in 1964. Perhaps even more so. Mendoza's thoughts on cops and the honest citizenry they protect become much too lengthy and insightful to quote, but here’s how it concludes in Mendoza’s head:
“For some five seconds Mendoza succumbed to a prevalent disease among police officers and hated the honest citizenry with a beautiful savagery.”
As Mendoza learns more and more about Valerie Ellis in life, through interviews and evidence, both Mendoza and the reader form a picture of her —
“I’ll tell you no lie, gentlemen, that one was bad medicine. There was a streak in her kind of scared me, you want to know. A wild streak — real wild. Especially when she was lit up a little.” — Eddy Warren, Valerie’s pimp
Mendoza wonders if it was her wildness or her greed that got her killed. Or was it the Commie angle? How wild was the cool young blonde?
“Anything went with Valerie, so long as it brought in the cold cash. — I remember once she was telling me how a guy passed out on her, and she laughed and said all of a sudden she wondered how it’d feel to stick the bread knife in him. That kind of wild…” — Eddy Warren
Nothing here is a spoiler. I could quote pages from this one and you still wouldn’t figure it out, because the cases have so many tendrils, and unexpected connections. One case ends in a way which will offend the delicate sensibilities of some, but it rings true for the time period, and is actually quite sad. Luis’s case turns out to have at its core a story-line which could have been ripped from today’s headlines, yet still comes as a surprise to the reader because of Linington’s deft slight of hand. But there is still that tip, the phone call. How does a six-year old murder play into it all, and what murder? If this fabulous Luis Mendoza mystery had ever been published with an alternate title, it might well have been Blackmail City.
Linington always weaved the domestic life of her cops into the narrative, and there is just as much happening on that front as with the various cases! Alison’s had the twins, and they’re keeping Luis and Alison up at night. Luis wants Alison to get a nanny, but that proves to be no easy chore. One nanny even dares to kick Bast, one of the Mendoza’s four cats. Sheba and Nefertiti don’t see a lot of action in this one, but the half Siamese, half Abyssinian cat El Señor’s encounter with a big stray tom in the neighborhood will finally lead Alison straight to her nanny. And it will be that encounter which gives Luis the final piece of the puzzle he needs to wrap everything up tidily, just as he likes. Except this time, Luis both likes and sympathizes with the person he’s caught, even has respect for what they were doing, and the reasons why.
Just a terrific mystery read, with tons going on. As always Linington blends the domestic life of Luis and Alison brilliantly with the police procedural elements. Linington didn’t just find her own water level, as musician Herb Alpert always talks about, she seemed to be the only one in the water, because no one else was doing it quite like her. You’ll start off thinking this one is slightly dated because of the Iron Curtan angle, but before it’s all over, you’ll find many aspects of the story could easily have been ripped from any newspaper in any big city only yesterday. Just terrific stuff from a great crime/mystery writer. Whether she was writing as Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan, or Anne Blaisdell, Elizabeth Linington was in a class all her own.… (mehr)
Coming just before Mark of Murder, Root of All Evil is Elizabeth Linington (Dell Shannon/Lesley Egan/Anne Blaisdell) at her crime-writing best; which is to say better than just about anyone before or since. This one is very complex, as a couple of cases take on lives of their own expanding and eventually intertwining. John Palliser has a larger role in this one, his smart hunches and lateral thinking paying off big dividends for Mendoza and Hackett. Commies, a burglar/rapist, a young murdered girl, and a six year old murder will eventually come to a head in Arizona, across the border, as Mendoza tries to figure out how prostitution, blackmail, and a Commie spy named Thronwald brought about the death of young blonde and pretty Valerie Ellis, whose body was dumped on a parochial school playground. Even how her drugged body got there is a mystery for much of this book.
Meanwhile, Hackett and Palliser are desperately searching for a rapist/burglar the papers are calling Lover Boy. All they know is he’s a big black man with a pockmarked face. Because there was much racial tension at the time — this one is from 1964 — Hackett is trying not to stir up more trouble in Los Angeles’s black community than the Muslim factions within same community are already stirring. But he has a job to do, and he intends to do it. The Commie angle comes to light fairly early in the Valerie Ellis case Mendoza is working, as does her hooking. When Valerie’s notebook comes to light, and the Feds become involved, Mendoza is more surprised that the cool and seemingly uninterested-in-sex rich girl Valerie Ellis was hooking, than he is at her falling in with Commies. Mendoza’s unspoken thoughts:
“Because, look at it from that angle — Valerie, spoiled, used to having money, and only nineteen — a lot of mixed-up kids that age got caught up by the ideals of Communism. The impossible ideals. Communism, Socialism — two sides of the same coin. Sounding just fine, a wonderful idea — only the catch was, neither remotely workable until human nature got entirely changed around.”
There is blackmail, false leads, a bottle of drugged wine, two lovers of foreign folk music, a phone conversation that has a bearing on both cases, and a murder at first attributed to the rapist/burglar. Intricate and complex, Linington uses both Mendoza and Hackett to comment on society and its relationship to the law, and policemen, who carry out the arduous and difficult task that often goes thankless by those they are protecting. When interviewing a girl Luis is certain knew about a badger game Valerie was running with a pimp, he ruminates, not for the first time in the series, on why he hasn’t quit the force, since he and Alison are secure financially. His thoughts go on for three or four paragraphs, in a sharp and damning indictment of the honest citizenry, who are not only unappreciative of the muck and mire cops have to probe in so that honest citizens can sleep safely at night, but ready with glee when one of them falls victim to it. Just like Mendoza’s insightful musings on Communism and Socialism, and its appeal to the inexperienced and naive youth, his thoughts are as apropos for current times as they were in 1964. Perhaps even more so. Mendoza's thoughts on cops and the honest citizenry they protect become much too lengthy and insightful to quote, but here’s how it concludes in Mendoza’s head:
“For some five seconds Mendoza succumbed to a prevalent disease among police officers and hated the honest citizenry with a beautiful savagery.”
As Mendoza learns more and more about Valerie Ellis in life, through interviews and evidence, both Mendoza and the reader form a picture of her —
“I’ll tell you no lie, gentlemen, that one was bad medicine. There was a streak in her kind of scared me, you want to know. A wild streak — real wild. Especially when she was lit up a little.” — Eddy Warren, Valerie’s pimp
Mendoza wonders if it was her wildness or her greed that got her killed. Or was it the Commie angle? How wild was the cool young blonde?
“Anything went with Valerie, so long as it brought in the cold cash. — I remember once she was telling me how a guy passed out on her, and she laughed and said all of a sudden she wondered how it’d feel to stick the bread knife in him. That kind of wild…” — Eddy Warren
Nothing here is a spoiler. I could quote pages from this one and you still wouldn’t figure it out, because the cases have so many tendrils, and unexpected connections. One case ends in a way which will offend the delicate sensibilities of some, but it rings true for the time period, and is actually quite sad. Luis’s case turns out to have at its core a story-line which could have been ripped from today’s headlines, yet still comes as a surprise to the reader because of Linington’s deft slight of hand. But there is still that tip, the phone call. How does a six-year old murder play into it all, and what murder? If this fabulous Luis Mendoza mystery had ever been published with an alternate title, it might well have been Blackmail City.
Linington always weaved the domestic life of her cops into the narrative, and there is just as much happening on that front as with the various cases! Alison’s had the twins, and they’re keeping Luis and Alison up at night. Luis wants Alison to get a nanny, but that proves to be no easy chore. One nanny even dares to kick Bast, one of the Mendoza’s four cats. Sheba and Nefertiti don’t see a lot of action in this one, but the half Siamese, half Abyssinian cat El Señor’s encounter with a big stray tom in the neighborhood will finally lead Alison straight to her nanny. And it will be that encounter which gives Luis the final piece of the puzzle he needs to wrap everything up tidily, just as he likes. Except this time, Luis both likes and sympathizes with the person he’s caught, even has respect for what they were doing, and the reasons why.
Just a terrific mystery read, with tons going on. As always Linington blends the domestic life of Luis and Alison brilliantly with the police procedural elements. Linington didn’t just find her own water level, as musician Herb Alpert always talks about, she seemed to be the only one in the water, because no one else was doing it quite like her. You’ll start off thinking this one is slightly dated because of the Iron Curtan angle, but before it’s all over, you’ll find many aspects of the story could easily have been ripped from any newspaper in any big city only yesterday. Just terrific stuff from a great crime/mystery writer. Whether she was writing as Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan, or Anne Blaisdell, Elizabeth Linington was in a class all her own.… (mehr)
“And, like most cops Varallo was not among those who disapproved of the death penalty per se — for one thing, so much more economical; but, not exactly a fair exchange, for the Brandons or for Paul. If the sentimentalists were right in saying that the death penalty was nothing more than crude revenge, well, my God, he thought, could it ever be enough revenge — for a bright ten-year-old boy?” — Varallo
Run to Evil is the second in the Vic Varallo series from the pen of the prolific Elizabeth Linington, who also wrote under the Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan, and Anne Blaisdell monikers. She was a long-time favorite crime writer of Anthony Boucher, during a period when so many of the great crime and detective writers were around. While her Luis Mendoza series was her most famous and long-running, her Vic Varallo series, and the Ivor Maddox/Susan Carstairs series were also very, very good.
The rose-loving Vic is finally moving upward — if slowly — within the Glendale Police Department. Laura is four months pregnant as this one opens, and a young precocious boy named Brandon seems to be inserting himself into the lives of everyone in the neighborhood. He can be annoying, but Linington gradually shows him to be a good kid, as both Vic and Laura become somewhat fond of him, even in his intrusiveness. And then suddenly, just as happens in real life, he’s dead. The streets of Glendale are getting an overhaul, and he’s been trapped in a hole in a tragedy. Or has he?
Vic quickly concludes it’s murder, convincing his pal Charles O’Connor, the burly Irish counterpart to Vic’s tall Northern Italian heritage, to help him find the killer of a ten year old boy. It was no wonder that Paul knew everyone’s secrets, due to his nosiness, but which secret got him killed? It would seem to have little connection to a particularly vile kidnapping and murder gone sour elsewhere, and much more to do with a coded diary in which Paul wrote things down. The code is easily cracked, revealing many suspects, too many, in fact. And then the coin is found in the hole where Paul was dumped after being murdered, and some surprises follow.
O’Connor romances a school teacher who is far from his type in this one, and what Katheryn discovers about Paul’s only friend Gordon will unearth more mystery. Linington shines as she gets into the head of both Paul and Gordon, with not a false note to be found. Other crimes are going on simultaneously as usual in a good police procedural, including some odd break-ins to the school. What can it all mean?
What it means for the reader is a solid police procedural blended with the personal lives of the cops. Vic and Laura are a nice couple, and this one’s a bit sad, but also very good. Not quite as good as The Borrowed Alibi, but a very solid four-stars for the way Linington blends the various elements of police procedural with cozy mystery, and her terrific writing. Linington loved cats, and in this one, Vic and Laura get one from Paul and name him Gideon Algernon Cadwallader! Good stuff from the early 1960s.… (mehr)
Run to Evil is the second in the Vic Varallo series from the pen of the prolific Elizabeth Linington, who also wrote under the Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan, and Anne Blaisdell monikers. She was a long-time favorite crime writer of Anthony Boucher, during a period when so many of the great crime and detective writers were around. While her Luis Mendoza series was her most famous and long-running, her Vic Varallo series, and the Ivor Maddox/Susan Carstairs series were also very, very good.
The rose-loving Vic is finally moving upward — if slowly — within the Glendale Police Department. Laura is four months pregnant as this one opens, and a young precocious boy named Brandon seems to be inserting himself into the lives of everyone in the neighborhood. He can be annoying, but Linington gradually shows him to be a good kid, as both Vic and Laura become somewhat fond of him, even in his intrusiveness. And then suddenly, just as happens in real life, he’s dead. The streets of Glendale are getting an overhaul, and he’s been trapped in a hole in a tragedy. Or has he?
Vic quickly concludes it’s murder, convincing his pal Charles O’Connor, the burly Irish counterpart to Vic’s tall Northern Italian heritage, to help him find the killer of a ten year old boy. It was no wonder that Paul knew everyone’s secrets, due to his nosiness, but which secret got him killed? It would seem to have little connection to a particularly vile kidnapping and murder gone sour elsewhere, and much more to do with a coded diary in which Paul wrote things down. The code is easily cracked, revealing many suspects, too many, in fact. And then the coin is found in the hole where Paul was dumped after being murdered, and some surprises follow.
O’Connor romances a school teacher who is far from his type in this one, and what Katheryn discovers about Paul’s only friend Gordon will unearth more mystery. Linington shines as she gets into the head of both Paul and Gordon, with not a false note to be found. Other crimes are going on simultaneously as usual in a good police procedural, including some odd break-ins to the school. What can it all mean?
What it means for the reader is a solid police procedural blended with the personal lives of the cops. Vic and Laura are a nice couple, and this one’s a bit sad, but also very good. Not quite as good as The Borrowed Alibi, but a very solid four-stars for the way Linington blends the various elements of police procedural with cozy mystery, and her terrific writing. Linington loved cats, and in this one, Vic and Laura get one from Paul and name him Gideon Algernon Cadwallader! Good stuff from the early 1960s.… (mehr)
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Linington wrote all her procedurals with class, never resorting to gore or graphically described violence or crass vulgarity to tell her riveting and enjoyable stories; Linington didn’t need to because she had talent, a splendid work ethic, and a moral compass so lacking in mainstream writers of today — a reflection of society’s decay.
Reading a Luis Mendoza or Ivor Maddox police procedural will in fact make you lament what passes for police and detective stories in our day. Police procedurals today are filled with hideous content, and usually focused on a single case or perpetrator, often told in graphically violent scenes, sometimes even through the eyes and thoughts of the psychotic.
Linington’s cops juggled many cases at once. Overwhelmed at times, they worked tirelessly, tracking down every lead in order to serve and protect their city — even when liberal judges and courts seemed to be working against them. The complaints from her cops about such, and the moral decay of society, the abandonment of common sense, make these refreshing reading, even more pertinent now that when they were written.
Linington didn’t need to insert torture porn into her narratives because she was an excellent writer with a fine work ethic, and she cared about her characters. Her reasoned moral and traditional views came through loud and clear through the voices of her cops, who were decent men and women who had lives like everyone else, but served the citizenry despite the often resentful attitude of the public.
Though I recall some of the doings in the stellar Coffin Corner, too much time has passed for me to do it justice here. The other three included in this compilation however, I have re-read and reviewed over the last few years :
ROOT OF ALL EVIL —
“This had been, in all probability, a deliberately planned murder; and contrary to all the fiction, a big-city homicide bureau didn’t run into that sort of thing very often.” — Luis Mendoza’s thoughts
Coming just before Mark of Murder, Root of All Evil is Elizabeth Linington at her crime-writing best; which is to say better than just about anyone before or since. This one is very complex, as a couple of cases take on lives of their own expanding and eventually intertwining. John Palliser has a larger role in this one, his smart hunches and lateral thinking paying off big dividends for Mendoza and Hackett. Commies, a burglar/rapist, a young murdered girl, and a six year old murder will eventually come to a head in Arizona, across the border, as Mendoza tries to figure out how prostitution, blackmail, and a Commie spy named Thronwald brought about the death of pretty young blonde, Valerie Ellis, whose body was dumped on a parochial school playground. Even how her drugged body got there is a mystery for much of this book.
Meanwhile, Hackett and Palliser are desperately searching for a rapist/burglar the papers are calling Lover Boy. All they know is he’s a big black man with a pockmarked face. Because there was much racial tension at the time — this one is from 1964 — Hackett is trying not to stir up more trouble in Los Angeles’s Black community, than the Muslim factions within same community are already stirring up. But he has a job to do, and he intends to do it. The Commie angle comes to light fairly early in the Valerie Ellis case Mendoza is working, as does her hooking. When Valerie’s notebook comes to light and the Feds become involved, Mendoza is more surprised that the cool and seemingly uninterested-in-sex rich girl Valerie Ellis was hooking, than he is at her falling in with Commies. Mendoza’s unspoken thoughts:
“Because, look at it from that angle — Valerie, spoiled, used to having money, and only nineteen — a lot of mixed-up kids that age got caught up by the ideals of Communism. The impossible ideals. Communism, Socialism — two sides of the same coin. Sounding just fine, a wonderful idea — only the catch was, neither remotely workable until human nature got entirely changed around.” Like I said earlier, these procedurals are realistic and filled with common sense lacking in much of today’s society.
Blackmail, false leads, a bottle of drugged wine, two lovers of foreign folk music, a phone conversation that has a bearing on both cases, and a murder at first attributed to the rapist/burglar all play a part in this intricate and complex narrative. Linington uses both Mendoza and Hackett to comment on society and its relationship to the law, and policemen, who carry out the arduous and difficult task that often goes thankless by those they are protecting. This moment is a staple of all Linington’s police procedurals.
When interviewing a girl Luis is certain knew about a badger game Valerie was running with a pimp, Mendoza ponders why he hasn’t quit the force, since he and Alison are secure financially. Mendoza’s thoughts on this subject go on in fact, for three or four paragraphs. His thoughts are a sharp and damning indictment of the honest citizenry, who are unappreciative of the muck and mire cops have to probe in so that honest citizens can sleep safely at night. Worse, that same citizenry react with glee when a single cop occasionally falls victim to the muck. Just like Mendoza’s insightful musings on Communism and Socialism, and its appeal to the inexperienced and naive youth, his thoughts are as apropos for current times as they were in 1964. Perhaps even more so.
“For some five seconds Mendoza succumbed to a prevalent disease among police officers and hated the honest citizenry with a beautiful savagery.”
As Mendoza learns more and more about Valerie Ellis in life, through interviews and evidence, both Mendoza and the reader form a mental picture of her —
“I’ll tell you no lie, gentlemen, that one was bad medicine. There was a streak in her kind of scared me, you want to know. A wild streak — real wild. Especially when she was lit up a little.” — Eddy Warren, Valerie’s pimp
Mendoza wonders if it was her wildness or her greed that got her killed. Or was it the Commie angle? Just how wild was the cool young blonde?
“Anything went with Valerie, so long as it brought in the cold cash. — I remember once she was telling me how a guy passed out on her, and she laughed and said all of a sudden she wondered how it’d feel to stick the bread knife in him. That kind of wild…” — Eddy Warren
Nothing here is a spoiler. I could quote pages from this one and you still wouldn’t figure it out because the cases have so many tendrils and unexpected connections. One case ends in a way which will offend the delicate sensibilities of some, but it rings true for the time period, and is actually quite sad. Luis’s case turns out to have at its core a story-line which could have been ripped from today’s headlines, yet still comes as a surprise to the reader because of Linington’s deft slight of hand. But there is still that tip, the phone call. How does a six-year old murder play into it all, and what murder? If this fabulous Luis Mendoza mystery had ever been published with an alternate title, it might well have been Blackmail City.
Linington always weaved the domestic life of her cops into the narrative, and there is just as much happening on that front as with the various cases! Alison’s had the twins, and they’re keeping Luis and Alison up at night. Luis wants Alison to get a nanny, but that proves to be no easy chore. One nanny even dares to kick Bast, one of the Mendoza’s four cats. Sheba and Nefertiti don’t see a lot of action in this one, but the half Siamese, half Abyssinian cat El Señor’s encounter with a big stray tom in the neighborhood will finally lead Alison straight to her nanny. And it will be that encounter which gives Luis the final piece of the puzzle he needs to wrap everything up tidily, just as he likes.
MARK OF MURDER —
“She spoke like a woman of some education; but he thought that, whatever emotions she’d once had, they’d been driven out of her, or wasted away, somehow, for some time.”
Mark of Murder is the eighth entry in the terrific Lt. Luis Mendoza series, which spanned the ‘60s, ’70’s and ‘80s. This entry from the Queen of the police procedurals is from 1967, when the prolific Elizabeth Linington was writing several series at once, under various pseudonyms; Dell Shannon is the best remembered today, with Lesley Egan not too far behind.
The Mendozas have embarked on a cruise to the Bahamas, Luis taking vacation for the first time in many years. While Alison is enjoying the sparkling sea air and a rest from the twins, Luis feels uncomfortable sans suit and tie, and can’t keep his mind away from the squad room in Los Angeles. Having to duck the boring Kirchners aboard ship doesn’t make the prospect of being out of touch for three weeks any more appealing to Luis. The detective has trouble even finding a paper, but once he does, things begin happening quickly. A little hotel murder he left Hackett, Palliser and Higgins to attend to has turned into something major, with a slasher is on the loose in the City of Angels. And then comes the call…
Hackett is near death in the hospital, and they have no idea how it happened. Hackett can’t tell them, because he’s in a coma and might not wake up. Needless to say, Mendoza’s vacation comes to an abrupt end.
Mendoza tries to figure out whether a doctor’s murder or something connected to the slasher case got Hackett into more trouble than even a cop of his size and experience could handle. Because Linington was never afraid to kill off a major character, we really don’t know how it will turn out for Hackett. His wife, Angel, whom Luis has never been fond of — and likewise — shows herself to be of more import than Luis believed, earning his respect. In turn, Angel sees Luis working around the clock to find out who did this to Hackett and also changes her mind about him.
While Linington never shied away from showing that some cops were better or more qualified at their jobs than others, there was always a respect for the tough job in her work. Cops were refreshingly shown in a positive light, a force for good unappreciated by the public it served to protect. There’s a big dose of that here as Hackett’s situation has everyone working feverishly to find out what happened. It’s the same feeling conveyed sometimes by Ed McBain in his 87th Precinct series, but Linington focused even more so on the domestic life of her cops, correctly portraying them as human beings with families and lives outside the badge.
While Mendoza attempts to figure out what Hackett saw or did that led him to be attacked, he must deal with a disfigured slasher with a twisted grudge against everyone, and a doctor’s murder. Luis, who has been on the force for twenty-two years, tells Alison that he’ll retire if Hackett dies. But Luis hasn’t retired yet, and he realizes too late that the media reports might lead the slasher to escalate his attacks. Also, there is a seemingly insignificant clue:
“Now this I don’t believe. The clue straight out of Edgar Wallace.”
It proves to be an important clue, however, one which might lead Mendoza to Hackett’s attacker. How it does, or why, will have to remain a mystery. Mark of Murder contains a very well-written and exciting shootout and chase involving the slasher.
Seven people go down in Mark of Murder — some of them cops — but the ending is worth it. Definitely a top-notch entry in this long-running series. The blending of cozy mystery, domestic life and police procedural was never done better than by Linington, which is why this popular series spanned decades, not just years.
THE DEATH-BRINGERS —
“Death was wanton. There was no sense at all to where or when or how death came.”
The Death-Bringers from 1964 is one of the most exciting and enjoyable entries of the Luis Mendoza series. Hackett is still in the hospital following the events in Mark of Murder, so Palliser and Higgins are more prominent in this one — though even in a hospital bed, Hackett doesn’t stop being a cop, and helps out. Bert Dwyer also plays a more prominent role in this one, which has three main cases, each as baffling and hard to solve as the other — even for Mendoza, with his famous hunches.
Lead after lead is run down, hunch after hunch explored, solid police work on each case ending up in blind alleys. And then Luis loses one of his own, the dying cop’s last word “Two” hanging over the lives of those he left behind. Linington poignantly portrays the dangerous and difficult life of police officers, especially those in Los Angeles. From the narrative, and Luis Mendoza’s thoughts :
“The city had tripled its population in the last ten years; the chief was clamoring for more money to hire more cops. The city was policing a territory ten times the size of New York City with a quarter as many cops, and the city had the top police force in the world; but it could only stretch so far and do so much. And of all the public services the city fathers granted money to, the cops were always last on the list. Naturally.”
Refreshingly, though Linington didn’t shy away from showing the bad with the good, she always portrayed the vast majority of cops in the favorable light they deserve; they were the good guys trying to keep a lid on things in her police procedurals. They were human being, and not without compassion, but they also had a job to do. By putting their domestic lives much more prominently in her narratives than McBain did the boys of the 87th, Linington put a human face to those charged with keeping law and order. And as she did so, Linington showed Los Angeles as it was then, and is now :
“It was an old frame house on a block of old frame houses. This was one of the oldest sections of L.A., and while you couldn’t exactly call it a slum, you couldn’t exactly say it wasn’t, either. Whether or not a given block fell into the category of slum depended a lot on what kind of people lived there. Negro section or white section or Oriental, that held true.”
It’s a still very hot September as this entry opens, and Luis and his team are soon engulfed in several separate mysteries. The fourth bank robbery in 27 days has just occurred, and there has been violence. They’re calling the robber Invisible; no one seems to remember him in exactly the same way. Meanwhile a skid-row drifter has been murdered, and a young gas station attendant has been tragically and needlessly killed in a holdup gone wrong. Saddest of all, a young pretty colored girl named Carol, in her second year of college because she wanted to be a teacher, has been shot dead in her home, with no apparent reason, or suspects. Each of the cases has leads that go nowhere; the search for a Ford Anglia DeLuxe; the search for the “right” owner of a special gun, which has a broken trigger-guard; and the dying clue from one of their own which leads the detectives astray until something finally clicks for Luis.
Best Sellers said of this book in real time, “Well done, so well done that one feels a part of the force.” That aptly describes The Death-Bringers. The reader hangs on the effort made by Luis and his team as they scatter in every direction trying to bring about justice. Linington and her skill allow us to feel their anguish and frustration, but also their determination. And when a detective who has been a regular in the series goes down shooting, and with his last breath tries to point them in the right direction of the bank robber(s), the reader feels his loss.
Of course we also get the domestic side, with Luis and Alison and their young kids, Terry and Johnny. And of course, for anyone who follows this series, their four cats of various lineage and temperament are always around when Luis is home.
There isn’t one climax, but three in this one, and it’s extremely rewarding for the reader. There is a bit of coincidence in one case for a few to whinge on about, but this is a terrific and involving police procedural. Linington was a wonderful writer. Her sense of movement within the narrative, her ability to strike a balance between the domestic and the day-to-day life of cops, and her ear for dialog — having people speak as they actually do, rather than how other writers have them talk in books — is superlative. She is my go-to crime writer when I just want to enjoy myself.
While my favorite series by Linington is probably the Ivor Maddox/Sue Carstairs police procedurals, the Luis Mendoza series was her longest-running and probably most popular for good reason. I’ve yet to read a procedural in any of her series that wasn’t a good one, and some of them are better than good. Just a fabulous writer beloved for decades by mystery lovers, who devoured everything she wrote. Linington today has sadly become a literary casualty of political and social bias by those who believe that the insertion of morality, God, traditional values, and common sense truth in her narratives, and in the thoughts of her cops, has made them out of date…
Fabulous, and highly recommended!… (mehr)