The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
On vacation in Hollywood, Miss Withers gets a job—and a case—in a mystery “that will keep you laughing and guessing from the first page to the last” (The New York Times).
Hildegarde Withers—schoolteacher and occasional detective—has just finished planning her grand European tour when Germany invades Poland. Not wishing to join the international conflict, she books a ticket to Hollywood, trading the Louvre and the Vatican for the Brown Derby and La Brea tar pits. She has only been in Los Angeles three days when she’s offered a job in pictures. Not as a starlet—Miss Withers is no ingénue—but as a technical adviser to a film version of the Lizzie Borden story. The job is perfect, for no one knows murder like Miss Withers. On her first day at Mammoth Studios, the screenwriter in the next office dies of an apparent broken neck. To understand why, Miss Withers must contend with a film producer who makes her third graders look like grown-ups—and a killer every bit as vicious as Lizzie Borden herself. The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan is part of the Hildegarde Withers Mysteries series, which also includes The Penguin Pool Murder and Murder on the Blackboard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1941, Palmer's eighth whodunit featuring New York City schoolteacher and amateur sleuth Hildegarde Withers, an entry in Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics series, works best as a Hollywood satire. Hildegarde is on vacation in California when she's approached by agent Harry Wagman, who browbeats her into accepting a job as technical consultant on Mammoth Studios' movie based on the Lizzie Borden case. The gig introduces her to a slew of eccentrics, including producer Thorwald L. Nincom, who considers removing the murders of Lizzie's parents from the story, and left-wing writer Willy Abend, who proposes that the notorious axe murders were motivated by Lizzie's ire at her father's mistreatment of the crews of the Borden family whaling ships. Of course, Hildegarde soon has another homicide to solve that of Saul Stafford, a writer who expressed his fear of being killed shortly before someone broke his neck. The apparent impossibility of an aspect of the crime hasn't aged well, and the ultimate reveal proves less interesting than the characters and atmosphere.
