Skip to main content

Top mysteries challenge review: Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh

Year of publication: 1952
Genre: Mystery, police procedural
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Police
Setting & time: Massachusetts, USA; March-April 1950

Story:
18 year-old Marilyn Lowell Mitchell disappears without trace from her college dormitory and goes missing for 2 weeks before she is found dead. It is only because of some clever comparative forensic work by the town's police chief that her death is ruled a murder and not a suicide. It is then up to the police to dig for clues as to the who and why of her death.

Review:
This is a pure police procedural and a very realistic one. The entire investigation is based on solid and diligent searching for clues and evidence and the elimination of suspects. It has the requisite false leads and dead ends, but no real red herrings, because those false leads are quickly revealed as such, instead of dominating the plot for several chapters like they might in a less realistic story.
But this is far from being a mere dry recounting of an investigation, because Waugh knew how to create interesting characters. It is especially Chief Ford and Detective Cameron that come alive, but every character comes across as realistic without too much description. It is in the combination of these factors with humour, pathos and a matter-of-fact storytelling that makes this a great story.

Rating: An excellent and near-perfect police procedural. 4+ stars.

Books left in challenge: 114

For those who have read the book or those who haven't and don't mind spoilers, Wikipedia has a good summary of the plot.
Labels:

Comments

RuthDFW said…
How intersting it must be to read a police story from the 50s. Do you find yourself missing the tech abilties we have today. Also of course it is such a different world and today we think we know so much about how crimes are solved.
February 19, 2009 3:42 pm
Bibliophile said…
Ruth, the forensic techniques used in the story are not fundamentally different from modern methods. The biggest difference is that there was no DNA analysis available at the time of writing, which would have assisted in solving part of the mystery, but hair and fibre analysis is used in the story, and the body of the murder victim is identified using dental records.
If you like reading forensic detective stories I recommend the Dr. Thorndyke short stories by R. Austin Freeman. You'll be amazed at what what forensic methods were available at the time (the earliest story dates back to 1907).
February 19, 2009 3:51 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and
Post a Comment
Read more