Terrence Faherty, In a Teapot

Terrence Faherty, In a Teapot
The Mystery Company/Crum Creek Press, 2005
© Terrence Faherty 2005
ISBN1-932326-04-2

Scott Elliott (and his employer Paddy Maguire of Hollywood Security; and his fiancé Ella Englehart) return (in 1948) in an investigation with a time limit—Elliott and Englehart are getting married, and the case heeds to be cleared up now.  When last we saw Elliott, he was driving LaSalle Series 52 Special Coupé.  Now, a year later, he has ditched the LaSalle.

For a 1940 Nash Ambassador convertible.  (I don’t know why I’m including the pictures, but I found it sort of interesting.

The core of the investigation is this:  Joel Jefferies is pitching a movie based on The Tempest, with a number of famous British actors in key roles.  It’s sort of important to get started, as many of the big names are preparing to return to England, now that the British film industry has begun to recover from the War.  A young Brit, Forrest Combs, has been cast as Ferdinand (the male romantic lead), and the apparent problem is that he is seeing a burlesque queen—Betty Ann Baker.  Jefferies is hiring Hollywood Security to buy her off.

Of course, nothing goes as planned.  Baker refuses to be bought off; Combs becomes quite irate at the effort to get him to drop Baker.  And Ian Kendall, Baker’s employer, who’s running the Avalon Club, where Baker works, is murdered.  There’s not a lot of time, obviously, to sort all this out in time for the wedding, but Elliott and Maguire take their best shot at it, discovering some interesting and important facts about many of the main characters (as, for example, the ownership of the Avalon Club is hidden behind Kendall’s role as the putative owner.

The Tempest, of course, is also integral to the events, and we learn (or are reminded of a lot of the subtleties of the play (including the conventional wisdom of the time that it was Shakespeare’s last play.  (I am personally very fond of the play, so reading some discussion of the play, and having it quite central to the story, was an added bonus.)

Things are actually more complex that this brief summary suggests, and Faherty deftly weaves it all together to a convincing, if (unfortunately) somewhat tragic ending.  This is a short book—only 118 pages, maybe 30,000 words, so a longish novella or a shortish novel—but it was, for me, a joy to read.  I think you will enjoy it.