The Inconvenient Corpse-Murder In Haste

There was time: the 1940s up until the early 1970s, when you could purchase crime novels in bookstores, drug stores and just about every other retailer outlet. Usually the paperback novels were displayed in a large spinning rack.

I vividly remember buying crime novels for around 35 cents. They always offered thrilling tales of crime and punishment, truly memorable characters (both criminal and law-abiding), suggestive cover art and sometimes two novels would be published in one paperback. Such a deal.

In Stark House Press’s and author Elizabeth Fenwick’s The Inconvenient Corpse-Murder In Haste classic reprint softback contains twin tales of murder and mystery.

The Inconvenient Corpse centers around missing actress Anna Rose. Maggy: assistant to columnist Sebastian accompanies her boss to a holiday party where they both meet Anna.

Maggy investigates her disappearance and discovers some unsettling facts

While in Murder In Haste student Gerald Chase comes up missing and his body is discovered at the bottom of a cliff behind the school he attends. As the story unfolds startling truths about his fellow students, the faculty and others are revealed. But who is the killer?

Both cases have similarities but are profoundly different in their context.

Writer Elizabeth Fenwick pulls the reader in, drops subtle clues throughout the stories and creates solid characters. I highly recommend The Inconvenient Corpse-Murder In Haste double novelettes to any murder/mystery fan.

Talk about nostalgia!  The twin stories were definitely products of their time.  No fancy crime-solving technology, vast databases of criminal records or forensic hocus pocus.  Solving murders demanded lots of legwork, extensive and exhaustive research and dogged determination.

Elizabeth Fenwick may not be a familiar name to most mystery novel readers. She began writing mystery novels in the 1940s and continued until the early 1970s. It hasn’t been until recently that her work has begun to be appreciated for their clever plots, solid characters, powerful descriptive quality and the clever way she took a common and formulaic media and twisted it, tweaked it and gave it her own unique style.

Ecclesiastes 12:7Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.