The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan

by Stuart Palmer, Otto Penzler

Overview

After a screenwriter is murdered on a film set, a street-smart school teacher searches for the killer.

Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher—with above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don’t mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany’s invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story. The producer has plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer’s patricidal spree—plans which are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead. While the local authorities quickly deem his death accidental, Withers suspects otherwise and calls up a detective back home for advice. The two soon team up to catch a wily killer.

At once a pleasantly complex locked room mystery and a hilarious look at the foibles of Hollywood, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan finds Palmer, a screenwriter himself, at his most perceptive. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, this riotously funny novel shows why Hildegarde Withers was among the most beloved detectives of the Golden Age American mystery novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613161043
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Series:	An American Mystery Classic
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	551,415
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. Born in Baraboo, Wisconsin, Palmer worked a number of odd jobs—including apple picking, journalism, and copywriting—before publishing his first novel, the crime drama Ace of Jades, in 1931. It was with his second novel, however, that he established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Hollywood, where several of his books, including The Penguin Pool Murder, were filmed by RKO Pictures Inc.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Editorial Reviews

08/20/2018
Originally published in 1941, Palmer’s eighth whodunit featuring New York City schoolteacher and amateur sleuth Hildegarde Withers, an entry in Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics series, works best as a Hollywood satire. Hildegarde is on vacation in California when she’s approached by agent Harry Wagman, who browbeats her into accepting a job as technical consultant on Mammoth Studios’ movie based on the Lizzie Borden case. The gig introduces her to a slew of eccentrics, including producer Thorwald L. Nincom, who considers removing the murders of Lizzie’s parents from the story, and left-wing writer Willy Abend, who proposes that the notorious axe murders were motivated by Lizzie’s ire at her father’s mistreatment of the crews of the Borden family whaling ships. Of course, Hildegarde soon has another homicide to solve—that of Saul Stafford, a writer who expressed his fear of being killed shortly before someone broke his neck. The apparent impossibility of an aspect of the crime hasn’t aged well, and the ultimate reveal proves less interesting than the characters and atmosphere. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan is a book that will keep you laughing and guessing from the first page to the last."

The New York Times