Forgotten Books: The Corpse in the Corner Saloon - Hampton Stone (Aaron Marc Stein)

When I was younger I read a lot of traditional mysteries, and a series I always enjoyed was the one featuring Inspector Schmidt, written by Aaron Marc Stein under the pseudonym George Bagby. The gimmick of the series was that George Bagby was also a character, a writer who accompanied Schmitty (as he was called) on his cases and wrote them up into books where he served as the narrator.

Well, Stein wrote another long-running mystery series under the name Hampton Stone, this one featuring former cop and currently New York City assistant district attorney Jeremiah X. Gibson as the detective. In these books, Gibby (as he’s called) is accompanied on his cases by another ADA, referred to in this book only as Mac, who narrates the story and then writes it up as a novel. I guess Stein figured if it worked in one series, it would work in another. (He wrote yet another series about two-fisted, globe-trotting engineer/adventure Matt Erridge, but as I recall from the few of those I read, there’s no narrator/sidekick in them.)

I don't believe I had read any of the Gibby and Mac books until now. I picked up a few of them recently and read the first one in the series, THE CORPSE IN THE CORNER SALOON, published originally in 1948 by Simon & Shuster. It was reprinted in 1950 as a Dell Mapback and then in 1971 by Paperback Library as part of a numbered series of Hampton Stone books, with cover art that makes Gibby look like Steve McQueen, much like Milo March looked just like James Coburn in the reprints of those books by M.E. Chaber (Kendell Foster Crossen) being published at approximately the same time. The Paperback Library edition is the one I read, and that’s my copy in the scan at the top of this post. By the way, the numbers on the Paperback Library reprints make no sense at all. Like I said, this is the first book in the series, not the tenth.

So is THE CORPSE IN THE CORNER SALOON any good? Well, I enjoyed it, even though I can’t say I was tremendously impressed by it. The mystery involves a woman of rather dubious reputation found choked to death in her apartment with the word “Bitch” written in lipstick on her bare back. Her lover, who would have been the main suspect in her murder, is discovered a short time later sitting in the corner saloon of the title. Problem is, he’s dead from cyanide poisoning, and since numerous witnesses saw him entering and leaving the dead woman’s apartment building around the time of her murder, the whole thing comes very close to being written off by the authorities as a murder/suicide.

But Gibby doesn’t buy that and starts investigating, accompanied by the faithful Mac, of course, and soon discovers that the identifications of the suspect hinge on the distinctive coat he was wearing, and since there are half a dozen or more other people who might have had a reason for wanting the woman dead, Gibby has to get to the bottom of things.

As you might suspect from that set-up, this is a very talky book. There’s no action to speak of. Gibby and Mac go here and talk to one person, then go there and talk to another person, around and around until Gibby has all the clues he needs to have a gathering of the suspects and reveal the killer. The thing that saves this book from being deadly dull is that Stein was a pretty slick writer and there are some good lines of dialogue and welcome bits of dry humor. Gibby and Mac are very likable main characters, too, Gibby especially being willing to cut some legal corners to get to the truth despite his profession, much like Perry Mason, and the working out of the killer’s identity is fairly interesting. It’s also pretty racy in places for 1948, too.

I enjoyed THE CORPSE IN THE CORNER SALOON enough to recommend it if you’re a fan of vintage traditional mysteries. I don’t read a steady diet of them, but I probably will read some more of the Hampton Stone novels.