Palmer, Stuart - Murder on the Blackboard (1932)

Murder on the Blackboard (1932) has more horror and less comedy than the typical Palmer work. It moves to the opposite extreme of Murder on Wheels, its immediate predecessor. Here the puzzle plot elements are perfunctory, but the atmosphere and storytelling click. It seems like a personal work, somehow, after the attempt to imitate Golden Age formulas in Wheels: here Palmer is trying a pure expression of his storytelling gift. The architecture of the school holds a special interest to Palmer: the early chapters (I to V) describing Withers' school, together with later sleuthing in the school's basement (chapters XI and XII), are among the best things in the novel, with the school building laid out as a full scale scene of Golden Age mystery, just like the house in Murder On Wheels. It is often said, by Kathleen Gregory Klein and others, that old mysteries are valuable documents of social history; certainly this book gives a vivid impression of an apparently typical New York City public school. The architecture of the building reminds one a bit of the school in Henry King's film, Remember the Day (1941).

The horror atmosphere in this novel reminds one a bit of C. Daly King's later The Curious Mr Tarrant. There is the same emphasis on hidden spaces, the same interest in basements, the same appearance of men out of nowhere, and a similar look at mad, fiendish killers. Even the craft cabinets (with the Presidents) in Palmer's novel seem somehow reminiscent of the vault and its exhibits in King's "The Vanishing Harp". The titling schemes of Palmer and King also seem parallel, with Palmer's "Riddle of" and "Puzzle of" being echoed in King's "Episode of". There is also a common use of the Metropolitan Museum as a setting in both authors: in Palmer's "Riddle of the Dangling Pearl" (1933), and in the first tale in King's collection. The 1934 film version of Murder on the Blackboard is terrible, one of the dullest in the series, although it is quite faithful to the book.

Mike Grost

Inspector Piper is KO'd by the killer, so Miss Withers is left alone to run the Homicide Squad's investigation of the murder of teacher Anise Halloran. A detailed map gives us the layout of Jefferson School, complete with the helter-skelter-style fire escape at one end, so we can keep track of her efforts to find the killer hiding on the premises.  As Mike says, this is a fairly dark book, relieved partly by the grim  humour of the remaining police and their plans for extracting a confession from the janitor, and partly by the farcical intrusion of the eminent Viennese criminologist Professor Pfaffle. Miss Withers' dealings with the children show the mark of experience. There was a bit too much groping around in the basement for my taste, but the clues seemed fair and there was an interesting murder method, which suggests that perhaps we should start a new sub-genre -- Prohibition mysteries.  There is quite a lot that we are not informed about until near the end, but only the musical 'clue' stretched my credulity... really, now!

Jon.

See also: http://www.classicmysteries.net/2011/11/murder-on-the-blackboard.html and 

http://bloodymurder.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/murder-on-the-blackboard-1932-by-stuart-palmer/