Maxwell Alexander Murray (1901-1956) was born in Australia and died there. Early in his career he decided to work his way around the world and stayed in the U.S. laboring in lumber camps, freight yards, and a tugboat for several years. He became a foreign correspondent and served as a scriptwriter and editor for the BBC during World War II. He married author Maysie Coucher Greig, who was previously married to mystery writer Delano Ames.
The Golden Age Detection wiki lists a dozen titles in Murray’s bibliography. The last two were published after Murray’s death. Twilight at Dawn is not crime fiction. According to Amazon, it was written by Murray’s son Bob and is a fictionalized account of Murray’s early years in Australia.
The Neat Little Corpse (Farrar, Strauss, 1950) is Murray’s fourth mystery. It is an involved story with sunken treasure, a large tropical estate with murky provenance, star-crossed lovers, a kidnapping, native specters called duppies, and an exotic setting in Jamaica.
The Dacey family has lived on a plantation in Jamaica for centuries. The family has fallen on hard times and has been forced to accept boarders in their beautiful mansion to help make ends meet. A family legend had it that one of their forebears had sold the estate to his brother but that the ship they were on sunk before they reached shore and the papers associated with the sale went down with everyone else. Whether the bill of sale was actually executed is unknown.
Patrick Fairlie has been hired to search underwater for the missing chest that holds the papers. Supposedly the chest was made of a water-proof iron that keeps whatever is in it safe from the elements. Fairlie is a pleasant young man who has taken in his best friends’ son to raise. Their entertaining pretense that they are pirates plundering the high seas punctuates the occasional intensity.
When Richard Walker, who hired Fairlie, is murdered, Mortimer Talmage identifies himself as Walker’s silent partner and insists that Fairlie continue the search. Talmage makes no pretense about his belief the estate truly belongs to the other branch of the family and his intent of tossing the Dacey family out as soon as he can prove ownership. He is deeply offensive and widely disliked for good cause.
Inspector Mole fastened on Tod Dacey as the likely murderer and is determined to arrest him. Dacey is popular and for his sake and the sake of his mother, who is devastated at the idea of losing the estate and her son, Fairlie tries to find better candidates for Mole’s attention.
The pool of suspects was far too small to hide the culprit but that’s a quibble that can be overlooked for a lively and original story with some nice plot twists. Well worth a look. This book was the basis for the 1953 movie Jamaica Run starring Arlene Dahl and Raymond Milland.
See other comments about this book here:
- https://moonlight-detective.blogspot.com/2012/07/still-life.html
- https://grandestgame.wordpress.com/2024/08/08/the-right-honourable-corpse-max-murray/
- https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=782
