“This is the sort of thing we came to the country to get away from,” Jake Justus laments when, being given a tour of the Jackson County Courthouse in Wisconsin, the dead body of ex-Senator Gerald L. Peveley rolls down an emergency stairwell and lands at his feet. And with the D.A. insisting that “nobody here could have murdered him [because] we all know each other” it’s only a matter of time before Jake finds himself arrested and his wife Helene must enlist the services of Chicago-based lawyer John J. Malone, who has joined the Justuses on four previous murder investigations, to dig them out of trouble…a task that will only get harder as the murders in the town multiply.

Regular readers of The Invisible Event — hello, both of you — will already know that I’m a huge fan of Craig Rice’s writing. However, this fifth book in her excellent series featuring Malone and the Justsues had the extra curiosity factor of being included on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones List, all the more intriguing because no-one ever seems to talk about it (or, indeed, Rice in general). And I can certainly understand Fred Dannay’s interest in this book now, its setting anticipating the Wrightsville milieu he was about to explore for several novels starting with Calamity Town (1942) — “[a] little town like this is all currents and cross-currents…motives are bound to pile up, probably suitable for half a dozen murders”.

Rice explores and exploits the setting well, giving us a suitably imbricated mishmash of lives, frustrated desires, business affairs, and local politics which can be at times a little hard to keep straight but feeds the atmosphere perfectly. And the notion that “there’s something deadly and poisonous going on here in Jackson” is overlaid effortlessly — it would be easily-established enough by the murders which start cropping up on a regular basis, but Rice folds these murders into the fabric of the town, most notably in an extended sequence where Helene wanders the streets at night, culminating in a striking moment of silent horror and suspense.

The potentiality for murder was like a germ that everybody, including all healthy persons, harbored but that never developed unless certain conditions arose. It could happen in any one of these little houses.

It works, too, because the denizens of Jackson are given time to breathe: from Henry Peveley who lost his money in the crash of 1929 and so remains befuddled and trapped in that year in his mind, to the coquettish Cora Belle Fromm who is dismissed by Jake (and Rice) so savagely that I recoiled from the page, via District Attorney Jerry Luckstone, engaged to one woman but in love with another, the range of human life is there before you so that even in the crowd scenes little snapshots of life reach out and grip you (“Someone said something about first aid and having been a Boy Scout counsellor…”). And the Justuses and Malone at the centre of things carry this life with them — see Helene at her most magnificent making an off-colour remark that will doubtless be redacted if this ever gets republished, or lighting a cigarette on the third try in a moment of vulnerability, or see the late scene in which our lawyer-sleuth is reminded of his wartime experiences.

Plot-wise the murders present much which is interesting, not least the variety of methods adopted, although relinquish now any hope that the shooting of Senator Peveley has any sort of impossible element despite the gun apparently vanishing (“You couldn’t have carried a tune out of that courthouse without one of the deputies stopping you.”) because the resolution of this is so uninspired you wonder why Rice bothered with it. There is, though, a pleasingly casual piece of forensic detection straight out of R. Austin Freeman and a wonderfully atmospheric climactic chase through an asylum (following the payoff to possibly the best joke Rice has ever told) to enrich things. There’s a surprising absence of booze in this one, too, perhaps reflecting the confidence Rice has in the plot she’s mapped out, with the only drinking scenes arguably being central to different intentions (and giving rise to excellent comedic writing at the start of chapter 19). You could play a drinking game, though, by taking a sip every time Helene is described as looking pale, and you’ll be sozzled in no time.

I can fault this only in the rather crucial area of the guilty party: not that their actions don’t make sense or the motive proves insufficient, but rather in how Malone fastens on that person as the culprit. Even a line somewhere — especially concerning the capabilities required for the second murder — would resolve this easily, but it falls a little flat when you’re only going to get the guilty party by guessing, since that appears to be what our detective has done. It’s a minor point, but coming so close to the end it leaves a very slight air of disappointment which lingers once the book is closed; go in prepared for that, however, and you’ll doubtless have an excellent time.

Featuring Melville Fairr [a.p.a. by Michael Venning]:

Featuring Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak:

Standalone: