Alexander Hazard Williams (1894-1952) was born in Washington, DC, attended Georgetown University in his hometown, served in the Army and then in the Air Corps. He worked as a newspaper correspondent, among other things, and became an executive in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Clearly the experience stayed with him and formed the basis of one of the four mysteries he wrote in the 1930s. All four have been reprinted by Coachwhip.
The Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration, was founded in 1935 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to bring the country out of its severe economic depression. It provided paid employment to long-term jobless individuals while expanding the nation’s infrastructure, building roads, parks, and schools, many of which still exist today. At its peak around three million people worked for the WPA.
As might be expected, a government-funded program of that magnitude attracted the shady and the power-crazed, which Williams documented in Murder in the WPA (McBride, 1937; Coachwhip, 2017). While Williams made no claims about his book’s veracity, it is hard not to believe he drew the details from his experience with the program. The references to Fascism and Communism are a reflection of the international political unrest in the mid-1930s and sound a good deal like the Committee on Unamerican Activities in the 1950s.
James Moore, a freelance journalist, was in Washington, DC, looking for copy, when he ran into Ben Cook, an old friend who was the current WPA Administrator. He needed someone he could trust to assess the situation in the WPA district run by Commodore Henry H. Ireton. Ireton was convinced the WPA workforce was rife with Communists, the leaders of the individual projects insisted that Ireton was seeing monsters that didn’t exist. Cook sent Moore to the district to do an independent assessment.
He arrived as a riot was brewing outside Ireton’s office; it exploded into a melee shortly thereafter. When the police finally quelled the mob, Ireton was found strangled at his desk. Of course there were no witnesses and anyone, absolutely anyone, could have killed Ireton and slipped out of the building unnoticed.
This book is surprisingly modern in its thriller overtones. It is not a traditional mystery; there aren’t enough clues offered for the reader to work out the resolution. Williams wrote some great riot and brawl scenes. The description of corruption within the government program is not dated much at all, unfortunately. Perceptive insight into federal management activities in 1930s America as well as a rock-‘em, sock-‘em action story.