Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective

HUGH C. WEIR

Publication: The Page Company, 1914, Boston

First edition. of this scarce early collection of stories about a female sleuth. Fine copy in the elusive, lightly soiled, white dust jacket with light restoration to the spine ends, corners and extremities. TAD Volume 10, Number 1, page 73 says "A 'solo' mystery volume and a masterpiece. Weir presents a series of short stories in which detective Mack solves crimes in a manner quite ahead of her times. Weir's book is the only one of its period to contain stories woven in the fashion of the golden thirties--a decade in which suspense, mystery,, adventure, and deductive reasoning all combined to give us some of the greatest mysteries of all time. There is absolutely nothing dated in Weir's stories--all can be read today with much pleasure. The first tale, "The Man with Nine Lives," is a locked-room mystery in which Madelyn gives her formula for success" solving problems like mathematics, adding, and subtracting given factors until the only correct answer is left, and coupling this technique with understanding of the human motives for crimes. Madelyn is sent a letter from a prominent author who fears someone is trying to murder him as he has been shot from ambush, poisoned, and seven other attempts have been made on his life. The next story, "The Missing Bridegroom," features a dying message. A wealthy bridegroom vanishes, then is found a presumed suicide - till Madelyn investigates. Then follows "Cinderella's Slipper," containing a false alibi clue. The well-liked secretary to a senator is found stabbed to death; a woman's slipper and the dead man's spectacles are Madelyn's only clues. The final two stories are good ones about a vanishing corpse ("The Bullet from Nowhere") and a fingerprint that is not a fingerprint ("The Purple Thumb"). 'Tis a pity Weir wrote nothing further in our genre."

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