Peter Hunt is a Hubin-listed author of three books published in the early 1930s. Hunt is the joint pseudonym of George Worthing Yates (1901-1975) and Charles Hunt Marshall (1901-1986). Yates was an American screenwriter and author. His early work was on serials shown in cinemas; he later worked on feature films, mostly science fiction. Amazon lists four crime fiction books under his name, published in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Marshall was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and died in Mesilla Park, New Mexico. He is shownin the 1930s United States Federal Census living in an apartment in Los Angeles and working as a “property man” in the film industry. In the 1940 United States Federal Census he is living in Hollywood and working as an art supervisor. In the 1950 census he was in Riverside, California, working as a landscape foreman. It is easy to assume he was a victim of the film industry’s post-war downturn due to competition with television and European film makers.
Hubin lists the books written by this partnership as:
- Murders at Scandal House. Appleton, 1933.
- Murder for Breakfast. Vanguard, 1934.
- Murder Among the Nudists. Vanguard, 1934.
Murders in Scandal House is the first appearance of Alan Miller, chief of police in Totten Ferry, Connecticut. He and his family are vacationing in the Adirondack Mountains of New York when he is present at the discovery of a murdered man in a swamp that connects two of the lakes. The victim is a chauffeur working for the large and eccentric Burrell family who live nearby. Lydia Whyte-Burrell is firmly in charge of the clan, although her power is often challenged by her brother-in-law Anthony Burrell. Anthony is the head of a large investment firm that employs several members of the family. The Burrells have high society aspirations and look down on those they consider their social inferiors.
The family fortune was mostly accrued by Edgar Burrell, who died two years ago in an accident. He had upset his status-seeking relatives by marrying his housekeeper Lydia after years as a widower. He enraged them by leaving her his entire estate. The will was soundly drawn and could not be challenged, so the family contented themselves by asking Lydia to fund their various endeavors, which she mostly did. Edgar was known to have fathered multiple children out of wedlock; the youngest that they know of, Grace, is the subject of the family conclave. Lydia, who is a down-to-earth and kind person, wants her treated as a member of the family, the others profess to be scandalized by Grace’s nameless background and want nothing to do with her.
Lydia decides to hire Miller to solve the murder of her chauffeur and he agrees, despite a capable local force and his lack of jurisdiction, just one of the many violations of standard police procedure in this book. Obviously Marshall and Yates did no research.
Keeping track of who is who in this book is a major effort. A character list in the front and a detailed family tree help. Flipping back and forth to understand relationships is a nuisance but I found it necessary.
Someone did a great job with scene setting. The meticulous descriptions of the swamp, the lakes, and the forests are striking. The characters too are vividly sketched. The writing seems much more current than 1932 or 1933. It could easily pass for a 1950s book. I read the Dell Mapback published in 1944 and those are generally true to the original so I don’t think there’s any question of “edited for the modern reader”.
The plot itself is well constructed although I have some reservations about the solution. The book was reviewed by William F. Deeck in 2013 for Mystery*File. The post generated a lively discussion in the comments. https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=20624
Time magazine included a brief mention of the book in its Murders of the Month column, August 28, 1933.
Isaac Anderson reviewed it in the New York Times of September 3, 1933.
Of special interest to students of Golden Age mysteries.