by Merlda Mace (psd. of Madeleine McCoy), 1943.

Motto for Murder was one of a trio of murder mysteries written by Merlda Mace during the 1940's.  The detective she deploys in this story is Timothy J. O'Neil better known as Tip to his friends.  He is a 26 year old "special investigator" for Barnes and Gleason, a New York City investment firm.  How he got this job is one of the big mysteries of this book since he readily admits that he is not much of an investigator and his performance during the story bears this out.

This is, in essence, a country house mystery.  The house is an isolated mansion located in the mountains of northern New York State near Lake Placid.  The controlling and quite unpleasant matriarch of a wealthy family has gathered her extended family to tell them that she has screwed them out of their inheritances.  A snowstorm descends on the region and several murders occur during a long Christmas weekend.

This seems to me like a combination of a mediocre Mignon G. Eberhart mystery and a bad Ellery Queen mystery.  The author can put words and sentences and paragraphs together in a coherant manner but the book, on the whole, is a disappointment.  The physical and character clues are not first rate and the author employs a HIBK technique that serves no valid storytelling purpose.  Since the characters insisted on wandering around in the dark, leaving their bedrooms unlocked at night and napping in vulnerable spots, the killer did not have too much trouble carrying out the murders.  The "mottos" from the title of the story refer to fortune-cookie type candies wrapped in little papers containing sayings which play a small part in the solution.

Apparently, "Tip" O'Neil is not a series character.  Mace/McCoy's other two mysteries seem to utilize a female sleuth called Christine Anderson although I have not been able to verify this information.

Bob Schneider 09/09