I first encountered James Yaffe via his story ‘The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms’ (1945), but have heard much about his ‘Mom’ stories, in which a police officer’s mother “is usually able to solve over the dinner table crimes that keep the police running around in circles for weeks”. So I was delighted to acquire the complete collection of those tales.

The nine stories here — eight originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine between 1952 and 1968, plus an extra one written for Crippen & Landru, the publishers of this collection — cover a range of mystery subgenres, and, in the best tradition to grow out of the Golden Age, utilise some extremely clever ideas without ever retreading too much ground. So, taking them one at a time, we have…

We begin with ‘Mom Knows Best’ (1952), concerning the murder of a woman of low virtue in her hotel room. Our narrator David (I don’t think we ever learn his last name) is convinced that one of three men who called on Vilma Degrasse that evening is responsible…but which one? This sort of armchair detection is always delightful to watch when done well, and Yaffe does a superb job here, making Mom’s unpicking of the tale feel very achievable — the lipstick deduction is ingeniously placed as a piece of clewing — and her son not seem like an idiot for overlooking the key details.

It makes perfect sense that someone would write this and then want to go on and write a bunch more. Hell, I’d be very excited to stumble unexpectedly across this in an old EQMM, and it’s a great first taste to get you intrigued for what is to follow.

An impossible poisoning confronts us in ‘Mom Makes a Bet’ (1953). How could a bowl of soup which was made to order and tasted by the restaurant’s owner before being served possibly poison the man who it was put in front of mere moments later?

The Miss Marpleness of Mom is brought out a little more here (“This Grady, he reminds me of a cousin of your late father…”) and again the nature of the deductions flows effortlessly, leaning neatly both into information provided openly and that which could be readily called common knowledge. Perhaps its gender politics haven’t aged well…

Women are all the same; even in the middle of a murder case they can’t get their minds off irrelevant details like food and housekeeping…

…but otherwise this is another superb little puzzle, glorious building on the Golden Age’s tradition.

An attempt to set Mom up with a police colleague of David’s parallels a case of a lonely hearts killer in ‘Mom in the Spring’ (1954). It’s a fairly standard story until you get to some of the key psychology in the closing stages, which elevates it above the routine fare you might have been experiencing to that point. And the bit about the Empire State Building is exactly the sort of content I’m here for.

“[A]ll the indications are that little five-year-old Kenneth Fisher is a murderer,” says David early on in ‘Mom Sheds a Tear’ (1954), and the case is a pretty affecting one: the child appearing to have pushed the uncle he’s scared is trying to take his deceased father’s place in the home off the roof to his death.

I’m…less convinced by the psychology of this, despite Yaffe doing some stalwart work to make it all join up. Perhaps it’s the over-reliance on psychological detection — never a favourite approach of mine — or maybe it’s that some of the ideas dismissed herein feel too easily dismissed, I dunno; but this is merely good without being excellent. Imagine that.

It’s Mom’s birthday in ‘Mom Makes a Wish’ (1955), and so of course the conversation turns to the murder of a college professor, found beaten to death with a whisky bottle dropped nearby, suspicion immediately falling on an ex-colleague who, having lost both his wife and job, has turned to drink as a way to cope. But if the man isn’t guilty, why won’t he tell the police where he really was at the time of the crime?

I liked this, with the first deduction that occurs to Mom being a strong one, and the psychology behind those secretive actions well-motivated. Yaffe also folds in the real guilty party and the motive in a way that completely passed me by, and so made for a clever payoff in the final stages.

When one opera-lover seems to poison another in an argument over who is the best soprano in the world (the answer is Renata Tebaldi, btw), Dave is thoroughly confounded: not by who must the guilty, nor the method used, but by the simple fact that no D.A. in the country is going to get up in front of a jury and convince them that such a disagreement could ever be the motive for murder. This is the problem that confronts us in ‘Mom Sings an Aria’ (1966).

While Mom’s insistence that “To solve this case you have to think like an opera lover” doesn’t quite carry the same weight as G.K. Chesterton’s reflections on judges and poets, there’s a good clue in the midst of this, and the argument inevitably put forward to resolve Dave’s issues is solid…though you can’t help but wonder how the killer expected to get away scot-free. Still, a firm, sensible puzzle plot from an era that did not celebrate such ideas, so let’s not cavil too loudly.

‘Mom and the Haunted Mink’ (1967) finds Davie, Shirley, and Mom out for dinner at a restaurant, where the ever-brewing discontent between mother and daughter-in-law sees some distraction needed and so the story of Laura McCloskey’s haunted coat is trotted out. The problem is a good one, too, with an apparently ghostly curse seeing the mink behave in stranger and stranger ways, and Shirley leaning in a psychological direction (“Subconsciously Mrs. McCloskey rejected and despised the materialistic side of her nature…”) that it feels crime fiction started to take as its True North more and more in this era.

The eventual solution isn’t bad but, like some of Paul Halter’s o’er-reaching stories, tying such a wide range of activities into one simple explanation is always going to underwhelm. The deduction about the box is brilliant in its minor stature, though, and ties up a slightly woolly tale very neatly.

‘Mom Remembers’ (1968) might as well be called ‘Mom: Origins’, since we go back to her very first case…one that happened to involve her husband on the very morning they were due to get married…and which her own mother untangled.

The use of dual timelines here is very clever, and the drawing of parallels between the two works surprisingly well, the much greater length of this perhaps presaging the leap to novels that the character would make in four books published between 1988 and 1992. Yaffe’s emotive writing is powerful, too — effective without being schmaltzy, and once again bringing great life to what could otherwise be an easy archetype.

It was, if I understand correctly, the collection of the preceding stories which saw Yaffe recalled to this series — in short form — with ‘Mom Lights Candle’ (2002), an excellent little mystery set several years after the others (I don’t know how this ties into the novels, and will hope to find out in the years ahead). The shooting of an unwelcome relative over Hanukah raises the prospect of just how many people disliked him enough to want him dead…and, once more, Mom’s canny psychology saves the day.

There’s also a nice late twist here, and a nifty closing fillip, making it feel like Yaffe has finally achieved the ending he wants for these characters. And that’s a lovely feeling to go out on, not least because of how enjoyable it’s been to spend time in this setup. A wonderful body of work, and wonderful to think he got to end it on his own terms.

So, a top five in a collection with only nine stories? Sure, why not?

1. ‘Mom Makes a Bet’ (1953)
2. ‘Mom Lights Candle’ (2002)
3. ‘Mom Makes a Wish’ (1955)
4. ‘Mom in the Spring’ (1954)
5. ‘Mom Remembers’ (1968)

Overall, these stories are an excellent example of the crime writer’s art, with the narrow tramlines the characters operate between being perfectly drawn up so that the limitations of this style of catch-and-release storytelling are explored fully and to wonderful effect. It feels a little as if Yaffe is veering into parody at times, but it’s also to be commended how strongly you get a sense of his characters in what are, after all, pretty plot-heavy undertakings that rarely waste much time in setup, exploration, or explanation.

I’m intrigued to see how the characters made a leap to novel-length stories, too: does Mom become more active in her investigations, or are the puzzles sufficiently dense that David is able to bring her a new facet on successive days, always to be discussed in the comfort of home? My understanding of the chronology is below, and I’ll update these to links as, if, and when I’m able to find the titles in question. All told, however, this is an excellent collection in which James Yaffe really does show off how mystery writing can be deployed as an art form at the highest level; how lucky we were to have him.

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The ‘Mom’ novels by James Yaffe:

1. A Nice Murder for Mom (1988)
2. Mom Meets Her Maker (1990)
3. Mom Doth Murder Sleep (1991)
4. Mom Among the Liars (1992)