The Grave's in the Meadow - Manning Lee Stokes

Our narrator Dick Ludwell is a small-time reporter in Lake City (obviously based on Chicago but not Chicago, as that city is mentioned as well). Dick is an ambitious guy without an abundance of scruples, so he doesn’t see anything wrong with slipping a little info to the city’s mobsters now and then. But then one night he witnesses a hit on a boxer who refused to take a dive, and he knows his underworld connections won’t help him a bit. He’s marked for death, and he has to get out of town and hide out in a hurry.

The place he chooses for sanctuary is an abandoned farm that belonged to the late brother of Dick’s editor, who is also his best friend from childhood. Once he gets out in that rural environment, Dick encounters a variety of colorful characters, some of whom are not what they appear to be and all of whom have hidden agendas of their own.

Now, you’d think that would be enough for a book by itself, wouldn’t you? But Manning Lee Stokes, the author of THE GRAVE’S IN THE MEADOW, has other things in mind. It’s like he started writing this novel with the intention of springing a major plot twist every twenty or thirty pages. One of those twists about the middle of the book is so shocking that it had me turning back a page and going, “Wait . . . what?” And he keeps that up all the way to the end in this tale of murder, blackmail, bank robbery, and double-cross after double-cross. And the most amazing thing is that he makes all of it work. Everything hangs together, and the whole crazy yarn is spun in such smooth prose that I gulped it down in big chunks. THE GRAVE’S IN THE MEADOW is truly a page-turner, all the way to the satisfying ending.

I’ve seen books like this referred to as “one damn thing after another”, and that’s a pretty good description. In our house, when we’re watching some movie or TV show and there’s a wild, over-the-top, almost ludicrous plot twist, we always say, “Sure, why not?” Well, THE GRAVE’S IN THE MEADOW is a “Sure, why not?” book. But as I said, Stokes makes it work, and ultimately, that’s all that counts.

Stokes had a decent career in the Forties and Fifties writing mysteries, Westerns, and soft-core sleaze novels under his own name and as Kermit Welles, Kirk Westley, and Ford Worth. THE GRAVE’S IN THE MEADOW was published in hardcover in 1959 by Arcadia House and reprinted in paperback in 1961 by Dell. Arcadia House was primarily a library publisher, and because of that there’s no sex or bad language in this novel, but it manages to be pretty sordid anyway. A few years after it was published, Stokes went to work for book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel and became one of Engel’s regular writers, turning out books in a number of different house-name series, including Nick Carter, Killmaster; John Eagle, Expeditor; the Aquanauts; and Richard Blade. I read all of Stokes’ Nick Carter books back in high school and enjoyed them, although at the time I had no idea he was the actual author, of course. He passed away in 1976.

I’d read so many good reviews of THE GRAVE’S IN THE MEADOW that I really thought it would be difficult for the book to live up to its reputation. But this is one of those rare cases where it actually does. This is a great suspense novel, one of the best books I’ve read this year, and would be a fine candidate for a reprint edition.