Although published in 1976, A Death in the Life exudes a certain late 1950s Greenwich Village vibe. After all, who really said After all, who still really said “dig it” to mean “like” or “understand” by the time Gerald Ford was president?Our protagonist, Julie Hayes, is a second-rate actress who ...
The final novel in Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s Julie Hayes mystery series takes the amateur sleuth from the mean streets of Manhattan to Ireland in search of the father she never knew Julie Hayes is finally making it as a reporter—with a column at the New York Daily ...
In Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s second Julie Hayes mystery, the Manhattan fortune-teller is plunged into a mystery that hinges on a stolen Da Vinci masterworkIt starts innocently enough. Julie Hayes and her husband have just returned to Manhattan from a month in Paris. ...
Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis brings back the beguiling character Major General Ransom Jarvis in this third Mrs. Norris Mystery, a prequel, which immerses the redoubtable crime-solving Scottish housekeeper in a murder investigation in the nation’s capitalWith a new preside...
A well-written, if rather ploddingly paced, procedural with one of those "likable and misunderstood" killers one step ahead of the cops.Tim Brandon's a poor woobikins who, from what I could gather, was out-and-out molested by his mom, hated by his dad for being a sissy poet, and has a real whore-...
Dorothy Salisbury Davis was considered as one of the Grand Dames of crime fiction, but she didn't start out as a writer, working first in advertising and as a librarian. She published her first novel in 1949, The Judas Cat, and since authored 20 novels and received seven Edgar Award nominations. ...
This was an interesting mystery novel. A priest is summoned by a neighborhood boy to the side of a man dying in the basement of an abandoned building. In the few minutes that they talk, the priest is intrigued by this mysterious man. The story is as much about the search for who this man really w...
He was first struck by the resemblance of the place to a calendar picture of an old English pub. A wheel of candle-shaped lights hung over the bar; the dark paneling, the solid benches, and especially the covey of costumed students gathered at a large table in the rear all fit in the Old World se...
When I left Stephanou I walked out and along the road proposing to think about “the man of culture,” Demetrios, and wound up thinking about Byron, the aristocrat, plunging himself and his fortune into the Greek struggle for independence. The problem that had plagued him most was which of the Gree...
THEN WE can relax,” Mrs. Norris said, and then suddenly realized she was relaxing more with Mr. Tully than so short an acquaintance justified. Ah, but it was like the stress of wartime, and like war, it wasn’t the circumstance you welcomed, but the distraction you found from it. Mr. Tully, who mi...
The hands waiting here for the fishermen’s return were for the most part old men no longer equal to the long day’s work or boys who might stray from their fathers’ trade in the daytime, so long as they were on the docks at night to make fast the boats, to weigh in the catch with the commissionmen...
He set his suitcase at the front door, checked his watch with the hall clock, and examined beneath his chin in the mirror. There was one spot he sometimes missed in shaving. He stepped back and examined himself full length, frowning a little. He was getting paunchy and not liking it. That critica...
Once he had been jealous of Stephen, but that was because he was a child in an adult’s world in those days. Now if Peg’s company warmed him, it did not set him tingling. He supposed that was why what he felt toward Alex Taylor was no more than pity. He had tumbled madly in love with an actress, a...
Julie thought, pounding her heels on the sidewalk of Ninth Avenue. Belatedly, she was furious with Russo. Thanks for coming in. She had brought him a direct link among Romano, Pete, and Mack, something it might have taken him a week to turn up without her help. She wasn’t even sure he was glad to...
He bought a coke in the general store and smoked a cigarette. It might be that Barnard was threatened. Or it might be that his wife was plaguing him. Gautier might have been right. He liked the lawyer, but as Joan said once, he liked everyone with the possible exception of Mayor Altman. He was as...
She turned off the radio. Moissac did not want to talk. “Leave it on, maman. I haven’t heard the news all day.” “Lies,” she said. “One thing one day, another the next.” She switched on the radio again and took his coat from him. He went to the sink and while he turned up his cuffs and drew a basi...
When, toward the end of the week, it disappeared altogether for a day, Father Duffy decided that he could wait no longer. He had received an answer to his letter to Little Falls. No one there remembered a Father McGohey. By the time it came, it no longer mattered. He had located a Reverend Walter...
She slipped in, no questions asked, just before the door closed. The overhead lights were a sickly amber making the selected audience look like hepatitis victims. The scented deodorizer failed to cover the smell of stale tobacco. Selecting the nearest seat in an empty row, Julie found herself beh...
when he wanted to leave the party at eleven. It hurt and angered him, but what angered him most was that he hadn’t left right then. He stayed on as though that was going to change her feelings toward him. She’d turned her attention to guys he didn’t even know and didn’t think she did. She said sh...
McMahon lifted the latch on the gate. A hip-high fence of wrought iron bordered a garden of tulips and iris. “I wish I’d worn my uniform,” he said, in the sport jacket again. “I almost wish you had too,” Nim said. “I feel like we ought to be peddling The Watch Tower.” “Not in my uniform.” The doo...
Jimmie insisted. “It’s more important than I can tell you.” “I’m in the habit of getting things right,” Mrs. Norris said. “Mrs. Shaw said she watched the hussy pick him up herself.” “It isn’t her picking him up or putting him down,” Jimmie said. “That amounts to hearsay. But that Daisy Thayer wen...
The only customer was Randy Nichols, there certainly for the company more than for a drink. “File your story, Randy?” “I did. I’d no idea his wife was such a sentimentalist, McGovern.” Phil ordered a drink. “It takes a lot of sentiment to bury him out on the lone prairie,” Nichols drawled. “A buc...
They were to a man, at least to a moneyed man, opposed to Marcus Hogan’s proposal. In a way, Sylvia had herself to blame for the situation. Her own idea in the first place had been to found such a hospital, and she had confided this in her correspondence home, paving the way for what she had then...