While at Left Coast Crime in San Francisco, I visited The Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley, where most of the university’s special collections are housed, including a fabulous assortment of mysteries by California authors. Curator Randal Brandt couldn’t resist showing off a few of the gems in the collection to conference participants who were appropriately appreciative.
Also on display was a poster-sized reprint of a March 2, 1947, article in the Oakland Tribune by Nancy Mavity Barr on the founding of the northern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. The article listed authors I knew of and authors that I noted for further research. Among the latter was Eunice Mays Boyd (1902-1971), who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and who used her years in Alaska before statehood to set the stage for three mysteries about retired grocer F. Millard Smyth. All three were published in the 1940s.
Intriguingly, Boyd’s bibliography doesn’t stop there. Some eighty years later Boyd’s goddaughter Elizabeth Reed Aden was clearing out her mother’s house when she found four unpublished manuscripts by Boyd. The process of getting them into publication is described in a CrimeReads article: https://crimereads.com/publishing-my-godmothers-lost-murder-mystery-manuscripts/ Aden also obtained the rights to the original three Smyth books and all seven are either in print or will be in print soon.
I started with Boyd’s first book Murder Breaks Trail (Farrar & Rhinehart, 15 July 1943), which won an honorable mention in the third Mary Roberts Rinehart Mystery Contest. In September 1941 Senator Thomas Jefferson Lee, his daughter Kilkenny, his secretary Tony Webber, Congressman Michael O’Hara, and Fairbanks Mayor Guy Fletcher are conducting an aerial survey of Alaska. The airplane is staffed by pilot Red Bailey and radio operator Hope Mullen. F. Millard Smyth, a retired grocer and avid mystery reader from Nebraska, who was impulsively invited along, is the eighth passenger.
The airplane sets down to effect repairs to the radio where the passengers discover a deserted village. While they wander around and speculate upon the fate of the people who lived there, someone empties the gasoline tanks on the airplane, trapping the group in a remote frozen wilderness with no communications and no transport.
That someone else is in the area is obvious but they can’t find him. When rescuers don’t arrive right away, figuring out how to survive as winter sets in takes up much of the story. Their lack of information about the outside world as they wonder about the war is also concerning to them. The first murder unnerves everyone. Smyth sees it as an opportunity to practice the investigative methods he has read so much about. Then he begins to find anonymous notes in his coat pocket, offering first one of the group and then another as the potential killer.
My first thought about this closed circle mystery is just how strongly the Alaska territory comes alive in Boyd’s hands. The need for extensive preparation to survive the brutal cold of winter and the depressingly long dark nights is real on these pages. The next thought is how much better the book would be with a strong edit. It’s far too long and the action is glacial in its pacing. Still, the execution of the mystery is good, not perfect but good, and I am wondering if her later books improve.
Here’s a review from a couple of years ago: https://moonlight-detective.blogspot.com/2024/08/murder-breaks-trail-1943-by-eunice-mays.html
The Kirkus reviewer of the first edition liked it. From the July 1, 1943, issue:
No scientific sleuthing this, but a blending of clues, coincidences and concentration by mystery-avid groceryman, Smyth, passenger on a plane, flying Alaska, carrying a Senator, Congressman and a Mayor. Forced to stay in a deserted settlement when gas is drained from their machine, murder and approaching winter produce near-panic among the castaways. Another killing and the problem of the mysterious skier, the abandonment of the colony, imminence of Japanese penetration and Nazi fifth column, add to the questions Smyth must solve before the Army takes over. A better than most brain workout.
First editions can’t be found on the secondary market but fortunately copies of the reprint are plentiful.