Nothing Can Rescue Me

This is an Elizabeth Daly mystery. Its detective is Henry Gamadge, and it is published in a fine paperback edition by Felony and Mayhem. If you like Golden Age mysteries, you'll like this one!

Don't you love to read a book which involves you so much that you just have to sneak a peek at the first line of the next chapter? Even if you really should stop reading to go do something else? Only then you find yourself hooked and don't want to stop reading. Elizabeth Daly and her fictional detective Henry Gamadge do that very thing for me. Florence Hutter Mason wants Gamadge to come to Underhill to solve a riddle for her. She doesn't even think of it as a mystery, its too trivial for that but it is getting on her nerves. So, Florence sends her nephew, Sylvanus Hutter, to talk his old school friend into coming for the weekend to solve her riddle. It is 1942 and Florence has moved her entire family to their country home to avoid as much of the war preparations in New York as possible. There are the servants, of course, but none of them would be playing this joke on her. There is Sylvanus, Tim Mason (Florence's much younger husband), Sally Deedes (recently divorced and an old friend), Evelyn Wing (the Secretary), Susie Burt (the orphaned daughter of Florence's best friend) and Glen Percy (a longtime friend of Susie's - an advertising copy writer who wants to write seriously). In order to pass the time, Florence has begun writing a novel. Over the past week, strange writings have begun to appear in the novel during the night and they seem to be getting more and more threatening. Henry Gamadge is a consutant who makes his living researching and authenticating old books, autographs and inks. He also happens to find himself involved in mysterious happenings on a rather regular basis. At this time, Henry's wife is visiting an aunt of hers who lives out West and so Henry is at loose ends. He agrees to travel to Underhill on Saturday but must return to New York on Sunday afternoon to be at work on Monday morning at his rather hush-hush job concerning the war effort. Underhill is a home he is very familiar with having spent many happy days there during his youth. I am NEVER disappointed with a story by Elizabeth Daly. This one was first published in 1943 but, for me, it is as fresh and exciting as the very first time I ever read it, probably sometime in the 1970's. This book definitely qualifies as a prime example of the "cozy mystery" classification. It is full of money, greed, wills and more wills, "the spirits", automatic writing, planchette and a faithful ladies maid. A mystery to be solved by watching out for the clues and paying attention to all the little details. If you've never read any Elizabeth Daly mysteries, prepare to be hooked!