Night Walk

Night Walk / Elizabeth Daly
NY: Dell, 1982, c1947.
189 p.

This was an interesting one -- it's #12 in the Henry Gamadge series; I've only read one of this series previously. But I don't think you need to read them in order, particularly since Gamadge only really appears halfway into this book and any detective could have done for the story.  

This one takes place in the small upstate New York town of Frazer's Mills, a town in which all the mills have closed long ago. It's an isolated, insular village, with some long-term locals (who don't appear much) and some more recent residents, rich and/or cultured in some way. We meet the librarian, doctor, patients at a rest home, a temporary guest at an inn, and the wealthy Carringtons.

As the book opens, on an August night in 1946, night is falling and all over town people are turning in. Except Miss Hattie Bluett, librarian, who has stayed late at the library to record a donation of boxes of books. And the opening chapter is actually quite chilling; old Mrs. Norbury at the rest home swears she hears someone pause outside her door and try the handle. Miss Bluett has the library's screen door closed but allowing the night air to cool her work; thankfully for her, the latch is broken and won't open when she hears a noise and sees the latch jiggling. When she calls out, a shadow passes and disappears. Then a random guest at the Inn hears noises in the hall and his locked door is tried; when he looks out there is nobody there, but a fire ax is laid in front of his door. By morning, there is someone dead in the village. 

From this stark opening, we then start to meet all the characters more fully. We find out why this temporary guest is at the Wakefield Inn; we are introduced to the residents of the rest home and begin to learn their many secrets. Miss Bluett's character is revealed, just as the occupants of the Carrington house are also exposed to the light of examination. 

Each person seems perfectly normal and reacts appropriately to a sudden murder. But the likelihood is that one of them is the murderer, despite their hopes that it was just a passing tramp. Henry Gamadge is called in to figure out who and what and why, and his method of asking questions at a slant makes for a slowly gathering tension as the reader tries to evaluate what all the suspects are actually telling him. 

Every now and then, Daly takes a bit of a shortcut to eliminating a suspect when Gamadge says, oh it's not so-and-so. I feel like this is a bit of a double blind - are we supposed to take his word for it, or is it a red herring, to lull us into complacency? Either way, it's not my favourite technique in a mystery. 

Nonetheless, the mystery is complicated and the characters are memorable. The villian, and the motive, once revealed, make sense especially when you consider that this was published in the 40s. Some social norms of the era must be considered as the reader tries to solve this one. I liked this better than the first Gamadge I read (The House Without A Door) as the mystery was more interesting and there wasn't as much authorial trickery going on. I might read another in this series if I happen across one, but so far, Gamadge himself hasn't really caught my fancy.