Earlier this year when I attended Left Coast Crime in San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to visit the Bancroft Library, the special collections library of the University of California at Berkeley, where Randal S. Brandt, Curator of the California Detective Fiction Collection, set up a display for conference attendees. I knew some of the authors who lived around the area but I learned about a few more and added them to my reading list.
One of them is Mary Collins (1908-1979), who wrote six mysteries in the 1940s and then moved on to other pursuits. Finding copies of her books is a bit of adventure, as the print runs were low and another younger Mary Collins is writing historical fiction. Fortunately Stark House Press has re-issued the first books in trade paperback and in ebook with an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. They are available for purchase on the Stark House website with a short biography of Collins here: https://starkhousepress.com/collins.php. See her bibliography with a description of Collins by Gertrude Atherton quoted from Atheron’s My San Francisco: A Wayward Biography (Bobbs-Merrill, 1946) on the Golden Age Detection wiki, http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7930235/Collins%2C%20Mary
The Fog Comes (Scribner, 1941) is set in Carmel, south of San Francisco and on the coast. With a heavy fog outside and the Pacific crashing against the cliffs, Anne Horton plans a quiet dinner at home with her younger sister Toni Sterling and her current admirer, her older brother Tom Sterling, her volatile cousin Laura Tashera, and Bill Tallon, who has been squiring Anne around. Tom’s ex-wife plans to drop in after dinner. After squabbling with Tom all through dinner, Laura decides to go for a late-night walk, despite the weather. She didn’t come home and her body was found the next day, launching an investigation that revealed Laura’s income was largely from blackmail. Laura didn’t get along well with anyone and no one at Anne’s house that night had a really good alibi, giving law enforcement plenty of suspects. The sheriff was confident someone in the family was guilty and he made their following weeks miserable, trying to prove a case that had no real evidence.
The Sterling family is old money with old money standards and expectations, as is their entire social circle. That they should be the center of attention in something as sordid as a murder investigation is mortifying. In many ways they remind me of the old affluent families in the Westchester County of Richard and Frances Lockridge’s mysteries, where money just doesn’t go as far as it used to and the families will do anything to maintain their social position.
Interesting relatable characters, although some of the descriptive phrases were over my head. Laura’s “shining black hair growing a la Robert Taylor” means what? And Anne’s hair is “rich mouse”. Tom is “terribly good-looking in a black-and-white way.” No doubt these expressions were intelligible to readers of the time. The plot is well executed with some excellent diversionary tactics.
I will be adding more of the Collins oeuvre to my reading list. Recommended for fans of mid-century mysteries.