At Last, Mr Tolliver by William Wiegand won the Mary Roberts Rinehart Prize in 1950 (ahead of books by Fay Grissom Stanley, Thaddeus O'Finn, and Maude Parker, none of whom, I must admit, I've ever heard of). It's a book that achieved widespread acclaim in its day, and remarkably the author - a student at Michigan University - was only 21 years old. Impressive!
William Wiegand went on to have an illustrious career in academe, teaching creative writing in California. However, despite making such a successful start as a novelist, he only published one more crime novel, which appeared ten years after his debut, plus a few other books. I've read some of his correspondence - with fellow academic and mystery expert Donald Yates, to whom my copy is inscribed by Wiegand - and it's not entirely clear to me why he didn't pursue a career in fiction with more vigour. Perhaps he didn't find it financially rewarding, despite the advantage of a prize-winning start at a young age. His correspondence with Yates, although sporadic, spanned thirty years and he lived until 2016.
So what of the book itself? It's a kind of locked room mystery, but as the dust jacket blurb of the first edition says, 'The intricate solution...is only one of the suspense elements'. The eponymous Tolliver is a tenant in a boarding house and is confronted by the mysterious death of a fellow tenant. It becomes clear that Tolliver's own background gives him criminal connections and he investigates the puzzle for his own purposes.
I think it's fair to say that this is a Marmite sort of book. Readers seem either to love it a lot (Nick Fuller, a good judge, is among them) or find it rather on the pretentious side. To my surprise and regret, I'm afraid I found myself in the latter camp, partly because I never quite warmed either to Tolliver or the situation with which he is confronted. Maybe I was in the wrong mood to enjoy it. It is certainly 'different', and I can understand why it earned critical praise. So maybe I'll revisit it another time.
Thaddeus O'Finn's 1950 novel HAPPY HOLIDAY! was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author, along with three heavy-hitters: STRANGERS ON A TRAIN by Patricia Highsmith, THE HOUSE WITHOUT A DOOR by Thomas Sterling, and NIGHTMARE IN MANHATTAN by Thomas Walsh. Walsh won, and O'Finn seemed to have faded into mystery obscurity. O'Finn was the pen name of Omaha native Joseph McGloin (b. 1917). McGloin was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in 1949 and published a number of Christian and religious writings. His bibliography lists 21 books through 1980, as well as numerous stories, articles, book reviews, pamphlets, and plays. Judging solely from the title, his second published book -- I'LL DIE LAUGHING (1955) -- may also have been a mystery. Full disclosure: I read HAPPY HOLIDAY! about forty years ago and (alas) I was not impressed.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jerry, very interesting. Quite something to be nominated alongside Strangers on a Train!
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