Johnson, W Bolingbroke - The Widening Stain (1942)

Rue Morgue Press Trade pb 10/07: ISBN: 978-1-60187-008-7

Professor Coffman, a member of the psychology department at an august Ivy League university, has got it all figured out when it comes to why his colleagues couldn't possibly be guilty of a violent crime. The way he sees it, "People on the faculty as a rule know enough about psychology, including their own, to diagnose their own troubles. We work off our crimes in conversation, or in imagination, or in reading. That's what love stories are for. And murder stories. Here's a motto for the faculties: read a good book and keep the commandments."

That may be good advice, but in practice someone on the staff may have done the reading part but the individual has been more than just a little lax in keeping the commandments. The body of a French professor found in the school's library attests to the fact that someone has not only violated the "Thou shall not kill" commandment, but also apparently ignored a few others as well.

Enter Professor Francis Parry, whose sleuthing abilities rival his unfortunate penchant for creating limericks at inappropriate times. To counter the bumbling efforts of the local police detective assigned to the homicide, Parry and some of his colleagues take it upon themselves to discover who was responsible for pushing Mademoiselle Lucie Coindreau over the edge, thus violating the inner sanctum of the Wilmerding Library.

A reprint of a mystery first published in 1942, this comic whodunit was written under the pseudonym W. Bolingbroke Johnson, the pen name adopted by Morris Bishop. A Professor of Romance Literature at Cornell, Bishop also served for awhile as the university's provost. A writer of light verse that often appeared in The New Yorker, Life and The Saturday Evening Post, Morris had perhaps too much "fun" at the expense of his own school, thinly disguised as "the university" in this work. Fearing perhaps social repercussions at the time, using another name seemed a wise course of action.

Reputedly, The Widening Stain was so well received it went through a number of printings when it was first issued. Thanks to Tom and Enid Schantz of Rue Morgue Press, today's readers can judge for themselves if Bishop's "japery and inside knowledge of academic life" are as amusing today as they were sixty-five years ago.

Bob Walch from I Love a Mystery