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Overview: Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.”
With his marriage to his wife on the rebound—but still precarious—Peter Duluth knows the last thing he needs now is more trouble. With Iris away making a movie, maybe he can finally get back to writing his next Broadway hit.
Genre: Fiction > Mystery, Crime
A Puzzle for Fools (1936)
The private sanatorium was a posh place to go on the wagon, but when young Broadway producer, Peter Duluth, began hearing voices prophesying murder, he thought he was really going crazy. Then an attendant was grotesquely murdered and Peter found himself trying to pinpoint the maniac in a bizarre gallery that included: a cracked orchestra conductor, a cultured kleptomaniac, a brain damaged football player, and a mysterious brunette named Iris – who was rapidly stealing his heart, even as he came under suspicion of murder. It wasn’t going to be an easy place to fall in love – or find a madman.
Puzzle for Players (1938)
Duluth’s theatrical comeback is threatened by a mysterious curse that seems to haunt his new theater. Members of the cast start turning up dead before the curtain call. This book makes nice use of the charcter’s Broadway background.
Puzzle for Fiends (1946) aka Love Is a Deadly
There are compensations – the blonde and the brunette. The brunette says he’s his kid sister. The blonde, as dazzling and silky as a moonlit California night, says she’s his wife. And then there’s Minsey, the maternal type. The only problem is that all three keep insisting that’s he’s Gordon Renton Friend III, drunken heir to a massive fortune.
Puzzle for Pilgrims (1947) aka The Fate of the Immodest Blonde
Sally Haven, archetypal rich bitch, dies in mysterious circumstances. No one mourns – but everyone suffers…. In pursuit of his errant wife, Peter Duluth finds himself drawn unwillingly into a nightmarish world of conspiracy, jealous passions and blackmail. Could his own wife be the murderer? Or is she protecting her lover, the dead woman’s husband? Marietta, Marlin Haven’s unstable sister – would she kill for him too? As pressure and confusion mount, Duluth and the doomed trio travel from Mexico City to Veracruz. Then another death, And Peter finally uncovers the diabolic sweetness of Sally Haven’s revenge.
Black Widow (1953) aka Fatal Woman
A married Broadway producer is taken with an innocent young woman who wants to be a writer and make it on Broadway. He decides to take her under his wing, but it’s not long before the young lady is found dead in his apartment. At first thought to be a suicide, it is later discovered that she has been murdered, and suspicion immediately falls on the producer. He begins his own investigation in order to clear his name, and one of the first things he finds out is that the young woman wasn’t quite as naive and innocent as she appeared to be.
My Son, the Murderer (1954) aka The Wife of Ronald Sheldon
The narrator of the story is literary editor Jake Duluth, Peter’s brother. Ever since his wife committed suicide three years earlier, Jake’s relation with his son went to hell. That troublesome relationship gets another hit when his son falls in love with the young wife of Jake Duluth’s boss, book publisher Ronald Sheldon. When his son is accused of murdering Sheldon, Jake is convinced his son is innocent and goes to find out the truth – with the help of Peter and Iris Duluth.
The Puzzles of Peter Duluth (2016)
This book contains two previously uncollected novellas about Peter and Iris, and two short stories, all of which show Patrick Quentin’s sophisticated handling of puzzles.
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Peter Duluth (#3, 4, 7) https://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1294&p=6258530#p6258530.
