Arthur Wilson Tucker (1914 –2006) was an American author of mystery, action adventure, and science fiction under the name Wilson Tucker. Tucker was also a prominent member of science fiction fandom, who wrote extensively for fanzines under the name Bob Tucker.
He set his books about struggling private investigator and would-be author Charles Horne in Boone, a small town near Chicago remarkably like Tucker’s own Bloomington, Illinois.
Tucker also worked as a movie projectionist and theater electrician. He served as President of Local 193 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and retired as a projectionist in 1972.
Tucker’s first book about Horne is The Chinese Doll (Rinehart & Company, 1946). In a series of letters to Horne’s estranged wife Louise we learn that they are three years into a trial separation while she works as a reporter in Chicago. Horne is anxious for her to return home. While it is obvious from Horne’s letters that she responds to them, the reader never sees her letters and only has his side of the correspondence.
Horne tells Louise in a letter that a Mr. Harry Evans tells Horne that Evans expects to be arrested for an unknown offense soon and retains Horne with $500 ($7800 in 2023) to bail him out and to call his attorney when that happens. Evans does not know why he will be arrested but is confident that he will be. Horne accepts the money and watches Evans leave the building and cross the street, where he is struck by a speeding vehicle that does not stop.
Horne plans to use the money to search for the automobile that ran Evans down. He is startled and intrigued when a similar vehicle pulls up to the corner where he is standing and the young Chinese lady driver tells him to get in. She drives him out into the country to what he believed to be a deserted farm. He enters the barn, meets a couple of questionable characters who pass him along to a gambling operation in full swing. Someone realizes he shouldn’t be there and he is hustled out.
Two days later the drowned body of his driver, the Chinese doll, is pulled from the lake near the farm. Horne now has two murders to investigate and begins cautiously asking about the illicit gambling den operating with apparent impunity on the outskirts of Boone. Someone in local law enforcement has to have been bought off by crime bosses from Chicago and Horne is therefore quite careful about who he talks to.
Epistolary narratives don’t always work but here the letter framework is barely noticeable. The unexpected conclusion that Horne reaches about the murders is not impossible but the evidence is thin. It also isn’t confirmed so in some ways the plot is left open-ended. I intend to find the next book in the series to see if it follows up on the first. Not a fair play mystery but an interesting spin on the theme of metropolitan crime encroaching on small towns.