"A Most Satisfactory Murder"

THE DARK GOD.
By John Chancellor.
The Century Company.
1928. 289 pages.
No e-book or print versions easily available.
(According to WorldCat, the nearest known copy is in The Library of Congress, 321 miles away.)

A book suffering from a severe information deficit, with a cover image being nearly impossible to find. Here's the full review (Walter R. Brooks, THE OUTLOOK, May 2, 1928):

Somebody tries to make Jane Dace believe she's sold her soul to the devil. So she's not very much surprised when her aunt is found murdered with her fiance's knife. A most satisfactory murder: "blood was everywhere."

Then in comes Inspector Clawson from the Yard, humming a Strauss waltz, and he hums through the rest of the story, and hums the hero out of jail, and the villain into purgatory, and himself, incidentally, into wedlock.

We rather liked this inspector and his methods, but we hope the next criminal he pursues will dispense with Hallowe'en tricks. They scared Jane, but nobody else was affected, and as for us, not a single hair on our head rose.

For a review of Chancellor's FRASS (1929), go to this MYSTERY*FILE article (Allen J. Hubin, 28 March 2009).

Category: Detective fiction