(7/10 stars)

“Elsie seemed to be very calm about the whole thing. She had figured out the reasons—you might even say the excuses—with an astonishing lucidity.

The idea of a woman ‘feeling like murdering her husband’ was not at all inconceivable to her.”

The city of Santa Cruz would rather that no one hear about the dead man on the beach. It is strange that he died of an overdose, yet was found with no pill bottle or personal effects. Still, why disrupt tourist season for what is surely a suicide? The Bladeswells are just passing through town when they happen to overhear a conversation about the death, and two others that have taken place in Yellowstone and Yosemite. “Always middle-aged men an’ no identification, always summer, and in vacation spots, where there’s thousands of tourists coming and going.”

When Mel and Elsie Bladeswell reach the tourist cabins where they have planned to meet their friend Chet, they are amused to find him the target of three husband-hunting widows. The more Mel thinks about those other deaths, however, the less funny it becomes. One of these women may be a little too fond of widowhood. Continue reading “The Three Widows by Bernice Carey (1952)”

 (6/10 stars)

“It was strange how, since it first came up in the Sterling living room, Inez Bailey’s murder had infused his thoughts. The girl had died; but for him at least the crime still lived, as it must live with her murderer, his inescapable companion. Would the twenty-year-old crime emerge even yet to affect the living?”

Two decades ago, Inez Bailey was found strangled beneath the lilacs. It was a shame, everyone agreed, but, after all, she wasn’t exactly a “nice girl.” With some of the most prominent men in Los Alegres rumored to have been involved with Inez, the town fathers quickly shut down the murder investigation. Everyone went on with their lives and forgot about Inez Bailey, except for one person…her killer. Continue reading “The Man Who Got Away With It (1950) by Bernice Carey”