Reeve, Arthur - The Ear In The Wall (1916)

D.A. Carton is continuing his campaign to clean up graft in the city while in the middle of his bid to be re-elected. He faces a highly organised system running all manner of crime from organised vice to drug dealing to bribery of high officials. If anyone is arrested, the system's crooked lawyer, Mr Kahn, will be called in. Not for nothing is it said if Kahn represents someone in court, it's certain the defendant is guilty -- and equally certain he'll go free.

Carton enlists Kennedy's aid in finding Betty Blackwell, a well bred young woman who has vanished. Meantime, corrupt politico Boss Dorgan discovers his private dining room at a restuarant is bugged and accuses Carton of being responsible. Carton however suspects Wall Street broker and speculator Hartley Langhorne and his crowd, the motive being they are not getting their share of Dorgan's graft. And what's more, the missing girl worked for Langhorne, thus linking the two cases.

Then there's the Black Book containing transcriptions of incriminating conversations heard via the bug. More than one person wants to get hold of the book -- Carton to use in his fight to clean up the city and to aid his prosecution of grafters, Boss Dorgan for his own protection and that of his crooked buddies and underlings, a lady who was present at some shenanigans hosted by Dorgan and wants to preserve her good name, and Langhorne to blackmail Dorgan into coughing up a bit of cash, just for a start.

Impersonations, incriminating photographs, drugs, a most peculiar beauty salon, and a letter from a dead man received while it is being written are among plot devices contributing to a solid investigation aided by female detective Clare Kendall and suffragist Margaret Ashton, while Kennedy's inventions and scientific knowledge play their usual roles in ensuring justice is served..

My verdict:

The Ear In The Wall moves along at a steady pace and the explanations of various inventions and such seemed less distracting than usual, although one or two could still have been shorter than they were. I particularly enjoyed the description of how to record phone calls (using a wax cylinder!) and a forerunner of current scientific method in the shape of blood crystal analysis.

However, the most interesting of Kennedy's weapons this time was portrait parle. It's a system of minutely describing a face by subdividing each feature into specific types and choosing the one that best fits the person sought. Thus by noting each feature in turn, it is possible to construct a detailed written description automatically excluding most people from the search because they do not have *all* the specified type of facial features.

The intertwined investigations move along swiftly, with one or two twists sprung on the unsuspecting peruser. Readers who have just discovered Reeve might be well advised to begin with this book.

Etext:

Mary R