A fun, screwball premise that should have worked, but didn’t.

Mary Fredon’s husband Homer has just run off with their next door neighbor, Betty Emerson. Mary plans to escape to her cottage in the country to recover, so she offers the use of her apartment to her friend, Eugenia Gates.
Eugenia is looking for somewhere to spend a quiet couple of weeks by herself, relaxing. Unfortunately, Eugenia doesn’t even get to spend one moment by herself because Mary has also invited furloughed Army soldier, Ken Smith, and vivacious, middle-aged, bon vivant chaperone, Lucy, to live in the apartment, too. Ken and Lucy immediately decide to throw a party, so Eugenia’s hopes for peace and quiet are soundly thwarted.
Yes, the apartment is definitely packed full of people, and there seems to be evidence that Homer has come back to roost, too; but, nobody actually manages to catch him in the flesh.
Before long, dead bodies begin showing up in the weirdest places throughout the apartment. Is Homer really the homicidal maniac he appears to be? Or is something more sinister going on? And just what is this black eye John Emerson keeps talking about? Eugenia tries hard to solve the mystery before her failed two-week vacation turns into a lifelong imprisonment in Mary’s increasingly crowded, yet immaculately clean, abode.

This story is rife with possibilities for humor and entertaining mystery-solving, but it falls seriously flat for two reasons.

First of all, Ken Smith is an absolutely odious character. Seconds after encroaching on Eugenia’s holiday, he demands to know when his dinner will be ready. Later on he puts his hand around her neck and chokes her, demanding that she give him a smile. As if that’s not bad enough, he then comments that he can’t wait to smack her around. Throughout the book, he orders Eugenia to: do the dishes, make her bed, go to a party, give him a place to stay on his next furlough, go on a date with him, etc., etc., etc. At one point, he claps his hand over her mouth and forcibly removes her from a room. And he also repeatedly tells her to shut up. Isn’t he a peach? And, unfortunately, he is a constant presence throughout the entire book. Although most of the story would have been a fun read, my teeth were perpetually clenched just because Ken was present.

Second, the ending was ludicrous. The murderer’s means and motivations were just downright stupid. There is no other way to put it. The reasons the victims were murdered did not make reasonable sense. And the way they were killed absolutely defied believability. Although it had the potential to be really good, the farfetched ending, coupled with the presence of that colossal creep Ken, made this book an absolutely painful experience.

As always, the Rue Morgue Press edition I read had its share of typographical errors. Having to slog through sentences like “the door dosed” instead of “the door closed” and “it yeas important” instead of “it was important” only succeeded in making this awful book even worse. Rue Morgue Press should be commended for making these old mystery titles available to newer generations of readers; Rue Morgue Press needs to be censured for having no quality control procedures whatsoever. ( )