THE TULE MARSH MURDER

A millionaire California singer/songwriter meets a bad end in 1929, courtesy of the author who covered the real-life story her murder is based on.

When wealthy heir Don Ellsworth tells Dr. A.G. Cavanaugh that his wife, musician Sheila O’Shay, went missing a week ago, the two questions Cavanaugh has are why he hasn’t reported her disappearance to the police, and why it’s taken him so long to mention it to Cavanaugh, “the greatest psychiatrist in America.” It turns out that Ellsworth and his wife were less close than most couples married only a year, maybe because Sheila had already been married before, maybe because she never divorced her most recent husband, David Orme, maybe because Ellsworth broke his engagement to Barbara Cavanaugh, the psychiatrist’s adopted daughter, and married Sheila only when she threatened him with a breach-of-promise suit. When a bit of scalp and hair from a corpse is retrieved from Tule Marsh, Ellsworth refuses to help Cavanaugh determine whether it’s Sheila’s by giving him a strand of her hair. So does Nellie Kane, Sheila’s dresser. After the police identify the remains as Sheila’s and arrest Orme for her murder, Cavanaugh supplies a crucial piece of evidence at his trial, but it’s up to insouciant Evening Herald reporter James Aloysius “Peter” Piper, who’s sweet on Barbara himself, to identify the killer in the first of his six recorded cases. Oakland journalist Mavity (1890–1959) keeps the list of suspects nearly as short as the body count, relying on brightly written dialogue to move the story along. Randal S. Brandt’s introduction makes it clear that her modest inaugural mystery is based on a real-life case she covered.

It’s a safe bet that you’ll finger the culprit before the hero.