They Buried A Man

They Buried a Man, by Edgar award-winner Mildred Davis:

  “In all respects more impressive than Miss Davis’ debut*…While you are absorbed in the complex subtleties of a suspense story of the modern school, bordering on the straight novel in its illumination of character and motive, Miss Davis adroitly sneaks up on you with a legitimate surprise trick as technically pretty as anything in the pure puzzle-detective story. A highly gratifying book from any angle.”— Anthony Boucher, The New York Times

    * Davis’ debut, The Room Upstairs, won the Edgar in 1948 for Best First Novel

  

  The whole town of Little Forks went into mourning when Selwyn Buoman was killed in an automobile accident.

  A year later, the town’s one newspaper reporter, Gunnard Kerr, was to write: “They buried a man a year ago. A man Little Forks knew and loved for nearly half a century. A man who would mend your fences or give you free medicine or hop out of bed in the middle of the night to take you to a hospital. A man who, if he gave you a prescription you couldn’t afford, would say, ‘The first one is on the house.’ They buried a man a year ago, but they couldn’t bury all the threads with which he was tied to the people he left behind.” Gunnard Kerr had come upon the first of those threads immediately after the accident. He was a newcomer to the town, and so, when he wrote a front page obituary, he went back into the files of the town’s newspaper. There were a lot of clippings for Selwyn Buoman: community activities, welfare work, contributions, his overwhelming election as mayor. Exactly what Kerr expected.

  Until he came to the murder.

  That was the one false note, the one oddity. Somehow or other, years before, the poisoning of the town’s banker had some connection with Selwyn Buoman.

  Kerr began to ask questions, and he found himself up against a solid wall of silence.

  He thought that the town had entered into a conspiracy to prevent justice. Suddenly, he realized that everyone in Little Forks—Selwyn Buoman’s wife, his son, his best friends—everyone believed he was a murderer.

  And so, being a good newspaperman, Kerr went deeper and deeper into the life of Selwyn Buoman and at last found the extraordinary solution of a murder and of the character of a man.


“Absolutely A-1 in every respect”—The San Francisco Chronicle