Poate, Ernest M - The Trouble at Pinelands (1922)

Poate's The Trouble at Pinelands (1922) has a psychologist detective hero, but it has a different feel from Poate's Bentiron stories. Here the psychologist is a younger man, Doctor Floyd Somers, a zany eccentric, who is full of personality and comic digressions. He is energetic, courageous, and something of an action hero as well. He also gets involved in romance. Somers is an alienist in a mental hospital in the North. Somers also has a degree in law, as well as medicine, and works sometimes in the field of medical jurisprudence, just like Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke. Aspects of the mystery plot are based on Freudian medical ideas, and the tale can be considered as a scientific detective story, Freudian subdivision. But all of this is embedded in a Carolina based tale, which also makes it very different in feel from Bentiron. Poate has loaded his story with traditional Southern atmosphere, including white columned mansions for the town's leading citizens, shrewd, homespun country sheriffs, small town politics and bootleggers in the hills who are afraid of revenuers. Think of a cross between Gone With the Wind and The Dukes of Hazzard, and you will get the idea. Poate has some good descriptive writing: see the scrub oak country visit at the start of Chapter 21. Mainly this book is a minor curiosity. Its leisurely paced storytelling is sometimes fun to read, but anyone should be able to figure out the mystery. The solution involves one of the mystery clichés Craig Rice later said she would love to spoof: see the introduction to Rice's The People Versus Withers and Malone. I've always wondered about the origin of this cliché: maybe this book is it!

Mike Grost