Death Down East by U. S. author Eleanor Blake (1899-1952) was first published by Putnam in 1940; reissued by Penguin in 1945, and reprinted again by Coachwhip in 2022. It’s a highly readable story narrated by Kathie Edwards, the youngest of the in-crowd in Sidley’s Cove, a New England summer resort town where the same families have vacationed for generations. This summer the Richmonds of New York City have rented a house and the young men in Kathie’s crowd immediately gravitate to the attractive Richmond daughter, regardless of their formal attachments to some of the other young women. Tension grows over the summer and ends in a death that first appears accidental and a subsequent death that is plainly homicide.
Well written and solidly plotted with the usual romance subplot of the time. Motives aren’t revealed until late in the story, which is my sole complaint. Fair play fans will definitely find fault there. I considered it an easy absorbing read with a polished style that shows the author’s experience.
The Lansing [Michigan] State Journal, Jan 28, 1940, page 10, gives high marks to Death Down East. By this time Blake (Mrs. Benson K. Pratt), a long-time Michigan resident, was living in New York.
K. I., writing in The New York Times, March 17, 1940, The New York Times Book Review, Page 100, also liked it. K. I. may be Kay Irvin, a frequent crime fiction reviewer for the New York Times during the 1930s and 1940s.
The Midland Republican, November 7, 1935, has an extensive interview and bio with photo of Eleanor Blake who wrote a trilogy about the lives of early Norwegian immigrants in Michigan. The article unfortunately was not scanned clearly but it is informative both about the trilogy which shocked some reviewers and about the author herself, who came from a writing family.
The same article appears, more legibly, in the Detroit Free Press, Sunday, March 22, 1936.
Author biography from Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/279531868/frances_eleanor-cox_pratt:
Frances Eleanor Atkinson (1899-1952) was born in July 1899 in Hinsdale, Illinois. Eleanor was the daughter of journalists and authors Francis Blake Atkinson and Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson (author of the 1912 novel Greyfriars Bobby). Eleanor married advertising copywriter George Wallace Cox in 1922 and had two children, Eleanor and Wallace (but soon divorced after her son was born). During the 1930s, she married Benson K. Pratt. Her son was actor Wally Cox (1924-1973). Wally noted in one interview that his mother was nomadic, traveling around the country, and that he attended nine schools in twelve years. She wrote for a Chicago newspaper for ten years. As a journalist for a Detroit newspaper during prohibition, Eleanor wrote a feature story recounting her adventure first riding with a rum runner smuggling alcohol from Canada to Ohio, then joining the Coast Guard as they chased the smuggler.
Writing under the pseudonym of Eleanor Blake, she penned several novels including: Death Down East, Jade Green Cats, and Wherever I Choose.
Eleanor died in West Nyack, New York, January 14, 1952.