For several years, Kate at Cross Examining Crime has been rounding up the vintage mystery bloggers and having us perpetuate her brilliant brainstorm (one of many that she has had). In the wake of various publishing houses recognizing the virtues of Golden Age (and more recent) vintage crime novels through reprint editions of both well-known and more obscure titles, Kate thought those of us who love those vintage mysteries would like the chance to feature the year's reprints and make a pitch for our favorites to be voted Reprint of the Year. We loved the idea so much that we keep coming back for more.
My second contender for the 2025 ROY Awards Ceremony is The Yellow Room (1945) by Mary Roberts Rinehart. If you're not on the hunt for a vintage copy of your own, then Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics will be your source for the 2025 reprint edition. Rinehart is most often associated with the Had I But Known school as well as "the butler did it" trope. Although she wasn't the first to have a murderous butler, she did, indeed, feature a killer manservant in at least one of her books. This one? My lips are sealed.
If you go by the blurb on the edition of this book that I first read (back in 2012), then you would expect The Yellow Room to be a more Gothic, Had-I-But-Known story. But it's really more of a twisty-turny mystery (and she delivers on the twisty-turny solution!). Shoot, if you read the blurb on that first edition, you'd think that some evil terror hangs out in the Yellow Room of Carol Spencer's family home in the country and that she goes in mortal fear of her elder brother.
See?:
As a child, Carol Spencer had always thought of Crestview as a place of light and laughter. But Carol was a young woman now, a lovely young woman, and a badly frightened one. The old mansion on the hill was no longer a refuge from the world. It was a prison from which even the man she loved could not rescue her...a nightmare from which she could not awaken...where every heart beat brought her closer to the strange menace of--The Yellow Room
And:
Brother and Stranger: It had been years since Carol Spencer had seen her brother Greg. Time and war had separated them, but Carol still could vividly remember his flashing smile, his easy grace, in the days when he had been a kind of a god to his younger sister. Now they were together again at Crestview--and it was as if Carol were facing a stranger...a stranger whom she knew she should help but could only fear...a stranger with bitterness curling his mouth...hate in his eyes...and blood on his hands....
Can we say melodramatic and over-the-top? Just a little bit. But Rinehart does this sort of thing so well when she's on the top of her game--which she is here.
Seriously, there are some mysterious goings-on at Crestview but not quite on this scale. Carol and her help (a housekeeper/cook and two maids) arrive at the family home to open it in time to receive her elder brother Greg who is home on leave from service in WWII. He's come back from the Pacific theater to receive a Medal of Honor and their mother wants him to have a chance to relax in the cool country air before returning to "that awful tropical heat." When the women reach the train station, there is no taxi to meet them as expected. When they reach the house, there is no caretaker to greet them with breakfast and a warm fire as expected. The gardener/handyman has disappeared. And what exactly is that odd smell?
Before the morning is over, they discover that the handyman is in the hospital with appendicitis and the caretaker has fallen down the stairs the previous Friday and is in the hospital with a broken leg. Oh, and there's a dead body in the linen closet. That somebody tried to burn to prevent identification. By the end of the book, there is another murder and a shooting. The local chief of police goes from having the usual respect (of the period) for the upper crust, to an all-out effort to make one of the Spencer family out as the guilty party. He's all set to lock up Carol but then finds out that Greg, the war hero, was maybe in the area at the right time and has secrets that he might do anything to keep hidden. He thinks he'll settle for the war hero.
Carol doesn't know what to think. Did Greg do it? Did her sister Elinor, who has always been devoted to Greg, do it? Or is she just covering up for him? Or maybe it's somebody else altogether. She turns to her neighbor, Major Dane, for help. He just happens to be a recovering Army Intelligence officer of some sort...and soon he's uncovering all the evidence that the local police miss.
Rinehart has plenty of tricks up her sleeve and she uses the Major's investigation to provide all the surprises. Just when you think he's collected the final clue, along comes another to make you rethink the solution. Of course, with Rinehart, there is the standard romance and there are a few loose ends that don't quite get tied up in this one (not to mention a few vital clues that are kept just a little too ambiguous), but over all a fun outing and an example of Rinehart at her best. Another real contender for the Reprint of the Year. It's very enjoyable and fast moving--I read this one in just one day!
First line: As she sat in the train that June morning Carol Spencer did not look like a young woman facing anything unusual.
Last line: And sat down abruptly on the nearest chair.
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Deaths = 5 (three natural; one plane crash; one hit on head)
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