McKee-Wright, April (1924-) -- Stop Press Murder (1944)

Among the lesser-known privations of World War II was the way in which supplies of British and American paperbacks were cut off from the Antipodes, and plucky Australians and New Zealanders had to turn to home-grown productions like this little book, in which the packaging, alas, is far more interesting than the content. The author, also known as April Hersey, was the daughter of two other writers, David McKee Wright and Zora Cross, and eventually had some 13 books to her credit, including Murder Rose and Murder in the Market. One hopes they were improvements on this one, which must have been written when she was barely 20. At some point she married John Hersey, an artist on the Sydney Morning Herald; perhaps it was his stories of newspaper work that inspired this oeuvre. They had two children, Virginia and Shane, and settled at Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains of NSW. McKee-Wright was still alive in November 2011 when the death of her husband was reported in the Blue Mountains Gazette.

The publishers are Mastercraft Printing and Publishing, and the inner front cover advertises the sinister-sounding New Order Fellowship, while the rear cover offers you the chance to LEARN TO DANCE AT YOUR OWN HOME. Inside the rear cover are ads for postcard-sized PIN UP GIRLS FOR THE BOYS AT THE FRONT! (war shortages clearly didn't extend to upper-case letters) and a small pictorial ad for National Savings Bonds. The first two pages of text introduce this 'new thriller story' and its hapless author. We then leap -- if that is the right word -- into the plot.

The setting is a large daily newspaper office in Sydney just after lunchtime. The usual cliches are trotted out to describe the scene: a brief moment of quiet amidst the 'flying pencils' and 'anxious-eyed reporters' recounting 'stories of blood and laughter, of tears and war'. A copy-boy discovers the body of Adrian Starr, freelance cartoonist and all-around skunk, and we see the first symptoms of the author's fondness for Time magazine and her peculiar aversion to commas, or at least to commas in the right places: Adrian Starr, tall broad-shouldered, flung face forward in the unaccountable careless attitude of death. 'Yes.' thought Jones 'he's dead.' But what she lacks ... in commas ... she ... makes up for in ... ellipses, which occur at the rate of about four per page.

Having paid Jones the jackpot for the day's Bleeding Obvious sweepstake, the editor summons the police. They arrive in the form of Detective Inspector Parsons -- who happens to be an old flame of the chief suspect, Mary Anderson -- and his grinning idiot sidekick, Sergeant Gregg. Rather than gracefully withdraw, Parsons takes up the case and the quivering Mary, and thereby triggers several pages of the most cloying dialogue to be found anywhere. Mary is not an atypical specimen in this respect, either: several more of these tough newspaperwomen also keel over in the face of violent emotion. McKee-Wright's version of Chandler's Rule seems to be: 'When in doubt, have a woman faint.'

Mary is eventually shunted aside and Parsons goes on with the work of detecting. There are a few clues, although they come to nothing, and the full range of the victim's iniquities is revealed, from blackmail to extortion to cradle-snatching. The man was clearly wasted in a newspaper office, and should have been holding down an executive position in a merchant bank. A couple of astonishing coincidences later, we are ready for the grand finale, which involves a dangerous chase through the printing plant, an even more dangerous leap across the rooftops, and a frankly ridiculous rescue. The murderer is caught, Parsons is reunited with the spineless Mary, and life at the Evening Courier returns to normal with a veritable paroxysm of ellipsis.

Truly, war is a terrible thing.

Jon.