Will Levinrew (–1951)

Mixed bag of a murder mystery. One of the protagonists, a Newark, New Jersey police detective, affects a Scottish accent that he can turn on and off, and that can be quite annoying. He and a reporter for an evening newspaper in Newark try to unravel a series of suspicious deaths, all of which are tied to a rather mysterious doctor -- one who apparently advertised his expertise at murder. The tracing of the evidence is fairly well done, but as usual with a lot of mysteries at the end, the ending is a bit contrived and strange, and also, at one level, not particularly satisfactory. At least one other novel "Levinrew" wrote (it's apparently a pseudonym for a mysterious William Levine) was set in New Jersey. (As it turns out, William Levine was a dentist who practiced in various places in North and Central New Jersey, and his obituary in a Passaic newspaper specifically identifies him as "Levinrew.")… (más)

An aspiring politician is about to be found guilty of the cyanide poisoning of his fiancée when the foreman of the jury drops dead---also of cyanide poisoning, though no-one can tell how it was administered. What started as a single death becomes an epidemic as people from all walks of life, and with nothing in common, succumb to poisoning. As the attention of District Attorney McCall and the police is drawn away from the murders themselves to the growing panic and civil unrest that are causing outbreaks of violence across the city, they are forced to ask for help from the irascible and reclusive but brilliant scientist, Professor Herman Brierly... This first series work by Will Levinrew (real name, William Levine) is a bizarre and extravagant story, offering a plot and a hero of about equal eccentricity. The outbreak of poisonings described here (in 1929!) rather eerily foreshadows the Chicago Tylanol tampering case of the 1980s, but in this instance no-one can tell how the cyanide is reaching the victims. The body-count in this novel is staggering, and the descriptions of the escalating mob violence disturbing: there is no belief here that people show their best in a crisis, au contraire; in addition to the cyanide murders, we have people crushed in stampedes and beaten to death upon becoming suspects. However, the horrors of the narrative are somewhat offset by the amusing improbability of this mystery's detective---though he wouldn't thank me for calling him that. Personally, Professor Brierly is such a bundle of idiosyncrasies, he makes Sherlock Holmes seem positively dull by comparison; while professionally he puts us in mind of a 50s B-movie scientist, in that he is an expert in everything. Chemistry is his specialty, though, and when the police finally succeed in soliciting his help (we're supposed to believe he was so wrapped up his research as to be barely aware of the poisonings), the Professor throws himself into the case with his usual focus and manic energy. Brierly and his assistant - and adopted son - Jack Matthews begin the grim task of re-examining the victims (some gruesome exhumation and autopsy scenes here), convinced that if they can determine how the cyanide is being administered, it will also answer the questions who? and why?. It has not unreasonably been assumed that the person responsible for the killings must be a madman---but what if he isn't...?

    "Nothing---absolutely nothing," declared McCall soberly. "Just imagine it. Twenty-four deaths by the same poison, and that poison well known, and we have not even a suspicion on which we could base any action...
    "Theories! We have formed thousands of them. But we would no longer seem to have the solution than a new death would occur in a new way that would upset all our previous calculations.
    "Cox died in the presence of two hundred people, at least half of whom were looking at him. Hewlitt died in the presence of his family, every member of which was watching him. Miss Edgerton died in her mother's presence. One man died while swimming in the surf, in the presence of hundreds of people. One man died while lecturing in a hall that held its capacity crowd of nearly eighteen hundred people..."… (más)