Frances Newbold Noyes Hart (1890-1943) mostly wrote short stories for Scribner’s magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Ladies’ Home Journal, although sometimes she branched out into longer fiction. Her first book The Bellamy Trial (Doubleday, Doran, 1927) was so innovative that Howard Haycraft selected it as part of his original definitive list of mystery fiction, later expanded by Ellery Queen. http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/haycraftqueen.htm
This early legal thriller has been reprinted several times, most recently in 2019 by crime fiction authority Otto Penzler in his American Mystery Classics series.
The introduction in this latest edition is written by investigative reporter and award-winning author Hank Phillippi Ryan, who describes the inspiration for the book, the 1922 Halls-Mills murders, short-sightedly at the time called the “crime of the century”. Hart took the account of murder and adultery and turned it into a scandalous tale among the country club set on Long Island, New York.
Told almost completely through courtroom testimony, the story of the bloody stabbing murder of Madeleine Bellamy for which Sue Ives and the victim’s husband Stephen Bellamy were charged unfolds from jury selection through the final verdict. The motive for the crime, according to the prosecution, was the victim’s adultery with Pat Ives, Sue Ives’ husband. Two reporters, a cynical New Yorker who has seen it all and a naïve young woman on her first assignment, provide a running commentary on the judge, the lawyers, the defendants, and the witnesses while indulging in some romantic byplay.
Written years before Perry Mason first appeared, as Ryan points out, the lawyers joust and the judge admonishes in what will become one of the hallmarks of the legal thriller. Witness testimony is full of surprises and contradictions, and the jury has their work cut out for them when they retire to deliberate.
Hart’s melodramatic turn of phrase is typical of the time; up to this point she wrote short fiction for the popular magazines so her over-the-top style is understandable. There’s no investigation and no detective; readers looking for a story with a classic mystery format won’t find it here. Instead, there’s perceptive commentary on the public fascination with murder as well as a groundbreaking new style of crime fiction that Erle Stanley Gardner and later writers will pick up and run with.
Fans of legal thrillers will be interested to know that the Winter 2022 issue of the Mystery Readers’ Journal is all about this fascinating subgenre.