Dolores Hitchens (1907-1973) wrote dozens of mysteries beginning in 1938, publishing them under her own name and under the pseudonyms D. B. Olsen, Dolan Birkley, and Noel Burke. Her series characters include Jim Sader, a PI; John Farrel, a railroad detective; and A. Pennyfeather, an English professor at Clarendon College who was sensitive about his first name. The Murdock sisters and their cat Samantha starred in the most enduring of her series, some 15 books long. Nearly all of her books are set in California. She also wrote around 20 stand-alone mysteries.
Bring the Bride a Shroud (Doubleday Doran, 1945; Mysterious Press, 2021), also published as A Shroud for the Bride, is the first book to feature Mr. Pennyfeather. He’s been summoned to Camp Frey, where his former student Tick Burrell is stationed. Tick, short for Tichenor, has made something of a career out of being in one kind of trouble or another, and Pennyfeather usually feels compelled to help him out.
The will of Tick’s father left him under the guardianship of his aunt until he marries. She is in no hurry to give up the money she’s receiving in that role, and thus far she has declined to give permission for him to marry. She’s chased off at least two young women to whom Tick had proposed, and he does not intend to let her interfere with his current attempt to marry. He wants Pennyfeather to help fend off the aunt while he elopes with a WAC. In the meantime, the previous two fiancés decide to pursue Tick again and converge with their respective chaperones on the hotel where Tick, Pennyfeather, and the aunt are staying.
When they understand the full scope of the problem, Pennyfeather urges Tick to talk to his aunt right away but the aunt is savagely murdered first. The local sheriff decides that Tick is a prime suspect, considering their history of disagreements, and Pennyfeather has an even bigger job than rescuing Tick from multiple determined women.
It occurred to me after I finished this quick read that, despite the light and humorous treatment, it’s really a serious book. There’s a guardian who is acting in her own self-interest, not in the interests of the person under her legal protection. We’ve just seen a similar situation play out in the media with Britney Spears. Then, the fiancés and their companions are conniving and deceptive, willing to go to great lengths to claim Tick and his sizable inheritance. The murders are chillingly brutal, and references to Pennyfeather’s past are sad. Hitchens does a great job in glossing over the grim bits implicit in the complicated plot. Not a fair play mystery, I still don’t see how they identified the culprit. An original story line and characters. For fans of late Golden Age and mid-century mysteries.