Blochman, Lawrence G - Death Walks in Marble Halls (1942) aka Murder Walks in Marble Halls

Murder Walks in Marble Halls (1942) is unique in several ways in Blochman's career. It is Blochman's only novella for The American Magazine; despite its high quality he unfortunately never produced another for that magazine. It is set at the New York Public Library, and is one of the few Blochman stories in which the floor plan and architecture of the setting plays a crucial role: one can follow the movements of the characters all over the Library, and the architectural orientation gives pleasure in the way typical of Golden Age mysteries. It is Blochman's only story set among the intelligentsia. The people in the story are all "knowledge workers": people who produce knowledge the way characters in other Blochman tales produce food or minerals. The characters in the story do not merely stand around and expound on their intellectual specialty. Each has a job, and each is busy producing something as part of it. This beehive of work is integrated into the mystery plot. Both the Library and the knowledge work are part out the main productive output of New York City, its work as an industrial center of the mind. The story continues Blochman's interest in the life of New York City started in See You at the Morgue. Blochman also views the Library as a window on the world: he emphasizes the Oriental Room, the Slavonic Room, and other centers of International scholarship in the Library. He also shows how the Library is the center of what we today call multi-media, including music, radio and dance. This makes the Library virtually the "brain center" of Blochman's universe, the central locale connecting up all of Blochman's interests.

Kenneth Kilkenny and Dr. Joseph Rosenkohl return in this story, and Blochman clearly hoped to make them series sleuths at this point of his career. However, the young hero and amateur sleuth who is the novella's Point of View character does most of the actual detection in the tale. As far as I know, this story marks the second and last appearance of Kilkenny and Rosenkohl in a Blochman tale.

The structure of the story has several Blochman trademarks. Although there are no Indian characters in the story, Blochman makes Indian culture play a major role in the tale. The victim is an authority figure - here a trustee of the Library - and the tale opens with a threat on his life, a threat that may or may not be closely linked with the killing that follows. The characters are each involved in some scheme concerning the victim; the nature of those schemes only gradually becomes apparent throughout the tale.

The unfolding patterns of this tale make it a very satisfying reading experience. Blochman weaves them out of several different "colors": the personal relationships of the characters, their professions; their physical positions in the library architecture; and their relationship to the murder plot. There is a good deal of actual color imagery in the story, used to describe the clothes the characters wear, various books, and library materials. There are also many references to books and literary quotes in the story. Even apparently casual references often light up Blochman interests: a card catalogue beginning at the word Anaphylaxis recalls Blochman's interest in medical jurisprudence. The story as a whole has "flow": the events seem to flow together in logical, absorbing sequence, like a piece of classical music. Each detail plays a part in the over all structure and design; a word like Anaphylaxis serves as an anchor post as the body of the story flows around it, a detail holding down one part of Blochman's musical design.

Mike Grost