Murder Loves Company

By John Mersereau

Book Overview

Book annotation not available for this title.Title: Murder Loves CompanyAuthor: Mersereau, John/ Schantz, Tom (INT)/ Schantz, Enid (INT)Publisher: Rue MorguePublication Date: 2004/07/01Number of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0915230690
• ISBN13: 9780915230693
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Rue Morgue Press
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An engrossing and satisfying whodunit.

Written around the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition, this John Mersereau murder first published this mystery in 1940. There was another mystery written for the world's fair on the east coast, MURDER AT THE NEW YORK WORLD'S FAIR by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, aka Freeman Dana. Mersereau was originally a pulp magazine writer with two adventure novels to his credit. The Golden Gate Exposition was held at Treasure Island, built by the Army Corps of Engineers. The most prominent feature of the Expo was the Tower of the Sun, which looked like an automobile ornament. Mersereau himself was born in Michigan, but grew graduated from Oakland High School after his family relocated to California. Mersereau enrolled at UC- Berkeley on three separate occasions. He had a varied life, selling two novels for movies, losing his money in the crash of 1929, and inheriting money from his parents. He had a successful writing career until the pulps fell out of favor, whereupon he worked as dispatch for the California Highway patrol. Mersereau also built one of his homes by himself. James Yeats Biddle is a professor of horticulture who has never fallen in love. His sports car is named Xantippe and serves as the means for him to meet Kay Ritchie, a young reporter who hitches a ride to a women's group meeting at which Biddle happens to be the featured speaker. They witness a bizarre accident on the Bay Bridge which looks suspicious to Biddle. But he is involved in the Golden Gate Expo as a consultant in charge of ancient olive trees that have been transplanted onto the grounds. Two of the trees die of the same poisonous gas that killed one of the accident victims, and Biddle and his new love Kay engage in their own sleuthing detail, which involves some varied and interesting characters: "But because the byline was Kay Ritchie, and because her particular brand of split infinitives had a peculiar charm for him, James became positively concerned over poor Princess Tania's loss of her St. John. The martyr had reposed clandestinely in her suitcase, the princess reported, until last night." Mersereau's sweet little tale of murder and mayhem nicely incorporates the fair; the ocean; some Russian royals; a greedy multimillionaire; and James Biddle's first love (of the split infinitives) to produce an engrossing and satisfying whodunit. Shelley Glodowski Senior Reviewer

Olive trees, romance, and murder

This is a fun romantic mystery from 1940. It's set at the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair and features a love-struck young botanist as a detective. James Yeats Biddle is his name and he cares about two things: botany and romancing "girl reporter" Kay Ritchie. He's been hired by the world's fair to plant and care for olive trees on Treasure Island (the fair grounds), but he and Kay witness a car accident and discover that both occupants were dead before the crash. That's only the beginning. This is one of only two mysteries by Mersereau (I hope the other, The Corpse Comes Ashore, gets reprinted soon) and though his plotting isn't great, he had a way with words and the two lead characters are appealing. The air of innocent romance rather overpowers the mystery, but it was entertaining nontheless. Especially touching were Biddle's eloquent reflections on finding love when he thought he was fated for a life of loneliness.