Judson Philips, also writing as Hugh Pentecost and Philip Owen, started his literary career with short stories for pulp magazines. His first book about Inspector Luke Bradley, Cancelled in Red(Dodd Mead, 1939), won the Red Badge Prize and his novelist career began. He created 11 series as well as a number of stand-alone crime novels. Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 1973 for lifetime achievement and consistent quality. Published about the same time as the first Inspector Luke Bradley was the first book about Carole Trevor and her ex-husband Max Blythe, introduced in The Death Syndicate (Ives Washburn, 1938).

Max Blythe is a wealthy New York socialite. He married the more serious Carole Trevor and when the marriage failed, he gave Carole a detective agency as a joke, expecting her to sell it. Carole kept the agency and settled down to work. Their first really big job arrived when Fritz Helwig asked them to find out what had happened to the money he sent his sisters in Nazi Germany via The American Enterprise and Banking Company, a large financial firm with international connections. The police were unwilling to investigate and now Helwig is desperate. Carole agrees to look into his missing funds and then Helwig is killed as he leaves her office.

Carole is appalled at the murder and remains committed to fulfilling her promise to the dead man. A conspiracy involving The American Enterprise and Banking Company is far broader than they realize. Carole is first offered a lucrative contract that would take all of her staff out of town for several months, then she is threatened by a thug who breaks into her apartment, and then she and her lead investigator are kidnapped.

Max hovers in the background, coming forward when Carole is in danger, much to the disgust of Mark Hollett, an older man who wants to marry Carole and keep her at home. The love triangle is a strong part of the story line.

This story is set in the years before World War II when Nazi Germany was oppressive but flight was still possible. The emphasis on the conspiracy reflects the general societal anxiety at the time about the spread of repressive regimes.

Careful plotting is obscured by period details–corrupt politicians, unknown poisons, fear of immigrants, criminal gangs–but it’s there. Elements that foreshadow Philips/Pentecost’s long-term series are apparent. Max is a fictional character who appears inept on the surface and turns out to be quite resourceful, something of a stereotype for the time. Think Wimsey and Campion. Carole juggles both men but knows she can’t do it for long. I think this scenario may have contributed to the fact there were only two novels with these characters. A long-running love triangle would be challenging to maintain with any degree of realism.

Recommended especially to students of Golden Age detective fiction and to anyone studying the development of a successful author whose output spans 50 years.