“I stood staring about the room, and the first disadvantage of living in a basement apartment occurred to me.  Jumping from a window would bring no release”. The much-missed Rue Morgue Press reprinted only four Jeff and Haila Troy novels from husband-and-wife team Kelley Roos. The Frightened Stiff (1942), the third, opens magnificently and wastes barely a word right up to THE END, so let me say this now: someone needs to reprint this series. Not a few selected titles as we’d likely get from the (excellent) American Mystery Classics range, but the whole kit and caboodle. Sure, some will be better than others, but I refuse to believe that they don’t deserve rediscovery.

Having moved into the basement apartment at 39 Gay Street to enable Haila to pursue her dream of acting in New York, the Troys are discomfited by some odd events starting the moment they first arrive: the flat is not ready (there’s not even a lock on the front door…), an old friend of Haila’s who happens to live in the same building is less than excited to see her, and, when they go out to dinner at the restaurant owned by another of the house’s denizens, they hear a man making an ominous-sounding rendezvous in their new abode. And things take an even more ominous turn when that same man turns up dead in their garden the next morning…completely naked.

In a way, The Frightened Stiff is a mixture of two other authors also published by Rue Morgue: sisters Constance and Gwenyth Little — for the ‘shady goings-on in our supposedly-comforting new environment’ theme — and Craig Rice — for the borderline slapstick events that see the plot rolling, almost free-falling, as Jeff takes it upon himself to work out whomst among their new neighbours would have drowned this unknown man in their bathtub. He’s motivated in this by two factors: firstly, someone seems increasingly eager to get into the Troy’s apartment, whether they’re present or not, and secondly homicide detective Hankins seems pretty sure the Troys are mixed up in it all somehow and is rather keen to arrest Jeff for the murder.

To be perfectly frank, my main takeaway from this second reading is that I remember this book being funnier. Indeed, it leans more into the work of the Littles than I realised upon first read, with small events made sinister by simple implications (“[W]hat makes him so positive that Anne is in no danger?”), some good heart-in-the-mouth scene-setting (c.f. Haila’s trip to the basement in chapter six), and a few lovely turns of suspense writing:

There was no sound except for the pattering of bare feet and the pittering of my heart which, at the moment, also felt bare.

The humour is there, but it seems more directed into the depiction of the Troys’ marriage (“As soon as I can afford it I’m going to have you learn Braille.”) and the easy way they banter off each other (“When a pin drops over in Jersey, you wake up and ask me if I heard an explosion in our kitchen.”). Modern readers could, of course, have all the conniptions they want over the moment Jeff makes a fist to dissuade Haila from a certain course of action, but if you want to see any genuine threat behind that then you’re clearly determined to miss the point of just about everything.

As a detective plot this skitters along nicely, though the selection of the murderer feels a little name-out-of-a-hat (it’s reinforced by a late development…but even that could be easily retconned) and the hoops Jeff jumps through require a bit more hand-waving than I remember either here or in the three other Roos titles I’ve read. That it barely stands still for a moment is to its immense credit — that’s where the Rice comparison feels strongest, because the Littles can be leaden-footed in their plotting — and, even if I got fewer belly laughs than I remember, this is still so vigorous even 82 years after its conception that I thoroughly enjoyed ripping through it once more in no time at all.

Some of the clues — like those pertaining to the semi-impossible vanishing (good enough for Adey…) of the dead man’s furniture from his apartment — had stuck with me and remain delightful, and that memorable edge this has over so much that I’ve devoured and forgotten since really does compel. So, c’mon, who wants to bring Jeff and Haila Troy back to the masses? If it can happen to the wonderful — and utterly forgotten — James Ronald then I no longer believe that anyone is out of contention for a new fandom to appreciate them. The Troys are urbane, witty, intelligent, loving, and fun — in other words, great company. That they linger unloved by modern mystery readers is a crime in itself. Here’s hoping 2025 brings news of a renaissance.

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See also

Mike @ Only Detect: The Troys are bright young folk who keep their spirits up, and their marriage intact, by quaffing a steady stream of cocktails and producing a steady dose of badinage. So comparing them to Nick and Nora Charles is hard to avoid… Yet the Troys, even many decades later, come across as freshly realized creations in their own right. Unlike the wealthy and somewhat jaded Charles pair, they embody a kind of cosmopolitan innocence. They’re sophisticated without being cynical, and they make for good company as they march through their big-city adventure.

TomCat @ Beneath the Stains of Time: A genuinely funny, solidly plotted detective novel full with humorous, good-natured banter and a devious criminal scheme at the heart of the story, which ensured the many twists and turns that had to be smoothed out along the way. While not everything was perfectly executed, The Frightened Stiff towers over its screwball contemporaries of the murder-can-be-fun school and more than stood up to rereading.