Pulp Review: As a Sealed Book - Five Mysteries from the Pulp Era by Beulah Poynter

 

As a Sealed Book: Five Mysteries from the Pulp Era by Beulah Poynter, edited and published by Lucynka Staron, 2024.  Cover illustrations from “Hap” Hadley.  Here’s a book I picked up as soon as I saw it was out, from editor Lucynka Styron, a fellow blogger on pulp who had come to me looking for some scans of Poynter stories from the girlie pulps while she was researching this volume.  I’ve corresponded with Lucynka on various subjects in the romance pulps, and I daresay she’s sharp as a tack when it comes to the magazines, editors, authors and artists in the genre.  Her blog, with the very casual title Lucynka Review Obscure Bullshit can be found at lucynka.wordpress.com and is full of fun yet informative reviews of various pulp stories and authors.   Looking just now, I see her latest review is of a  Robert Leslie Bellem story in a 1932 issue of Love Story Magazine which sounds quite fun.  Besides story reviews, Lucynka also shares author and artist biographies, period newspaper articles, and other fun takes on the pulp era.


The one story I’d previously read by Poynter, Let’s Swap Wives, from Pep Stories in November 1928, is an odd story to say the least.  It's a bit of “swampsloitation” (full of redneck/hillbilly tropes and some wild sexual politics), so I didn’t know what to expect picking up this book of mysteries which are all gathered from Frank Toussey’s Mystery Magazine between 1918 and 1924.  Pulp-wise, Poynter in this period also appeared in "the trio" of The Parisienne, Saucy Stories, and Black Mask as well pulps like Breezy Stories and Snappy Stories and would later appear in Dell’s Cupid’s Diary and Sweetheart Stories, the occasional girlie pulp, in many later appearances in Munsey’s All-Story, as well as scattered appearances in the detective pulps.

Beulah Poynter has a nice Wikipedia page here.  A quick biographical sketch is that she was born to a hotel-keeping family north of Kansas City.  She had some schooling and was an avid reader, and at the age of 16 she ran off to join the theater.  She wrote and starred in her own plays and married a series of husbands that were entwined with her life as an actress.  As she got older and less the leading lady, she focused more on her writing and wrote a good number of romances from the late 20s into the 30s as well as a couple of later works.  There’s a brief biography at the beginning of the book, largely focusing on Poynter’s childhood experiences and dreams of the stage.

 

Beulah Poynter

 

The editor of As a Sealed Book places the stories within the context of “the golden age of detection” which seems accurate, and none of them would be out of place in, say, an early issue of Black Mask.  There’s disguises and mistaken identities, different classes and nationalities coming into contact and conflict with each other each with their varied manners and mannerisms, clues doled out parsimoniously and purposefully by the author, and tidy and just conclusions to each story.  I’ll give a short teaser on each story as to skip giving away any key plot details.

 

“Who Was Guilty?,” one of the two longer pieces in the collection, from Mystery Magazine December 15 1918.  The story opens with a minister pronouncing John Clay and the beautiful young Doris Davidger man and wife at a lavish country estate wedding.  The bride’s mother seems anxious, and we immediately meet Mark Clevering, the family lawyer who has been in love with Doris since boyhood and is none too pleased that she’s married dark and swarthy John Clay.  John Clay is in great spirits after the ceremony and leaves the guests to prepare for his honeymoon.  Doris’ mother seemed uncomfortable during the wedding and out of sorts, and Clevering confronts Doris after the wedding wishing her happiness but making his feelings of being jilted known. Upset, she follows Clay upstairs.  A shot rings out and a scream.  The mother faints at the bottom of the stairs, and the guests are gathered about Clay’s door. He’s been shot dead, and Doris is standing over him with blood on her dress.  Clevering tells the guests they are not to leave, and soon the police inspector arrives to look over the crime scene and interrogate the witnesses.  An interesting dynamic emerges pretty quickly in that Clevering has loyalty to Doris and the mother and Mr. Davidger who is also his client and nervously listens to the inspectors questions that seek to determine any motives the family might have.   Doris’ mother fainting continues, and Mr. Davidger asks Clevering to stay the night and watch over the family.   Staying so close to the murder scene, Clevering is privy to the footsteps and midnight creeping by a number of the servants that night, and complicated histories and secrets are revealed about the family, the help, and the deceased.  A solid whodunnit, aided by the fact that the deceased was quite the villain with past ties to various maids about the estate.


“Law-Maker and Law-Breaker,” the second novel in the collection, from Mystery Magazine February 15 1919.  This one opens in a tense scene as Adam Kent smokes a cigarette in the darkness alert to the fact that someone is stealthily working at the door trying to sneak in to his luxury hotel apartment while his family as out at the theater.  A boyish figure darts into the room, and the man quickly catches the small thief and turns on the light.  It’s a girl!  The slang-slinging thief, young Janie, quickly reveals that she’s not there to steal but actually to return a bag of gems, “sparklers,” that had been stolen from the Kents in a rash of robberies in the apartments. She tells Adam Kent the story of how the jewels came in to her possession and of how her mother had recently died and she’d been left in the care of a cruel step-father, and the rest of the family comes back home just as the police are called.  The inspector is suspicious of Jane, but the family has taken quite the liking to her including Kent’s son who is a junior partner in his law firm who takes a romantic interest.  Jane is chill with cold and nervousness and ends ups staying with the family as she recoups growing quite comfortable in the luxurious apartment that’s far from her own upbringing.  Mr. Kent quickly and without much explanation sours on Janie being there and tells her she needs to take the generous reward for the return of the jewels (which her step-father had been keeping for the actual thief) and leave the family forever.  With the reward for the jewels, Janie’s station in life should greatly change, but will her stepfather let her go?  And what of the blossoming romance between Janie and Kent’s son?  Janie’s past is more complicated than she knows, as is the Kent’s, and what unfolds is mixed up fates and fortunes and the effects of the sins of the fathers.  A meeting of high class and low class where nothing is quite what it seems.  My favorite story in the book.


“Trapping the Jewel Smugglers,” from Mystery Magazine June 15 1922.  An importer of musical instruments visits a detective agency with the suspicion that jewel thieves have been smuggling jewels into the country with his purchases of European instruments.  The agency sends their best man, a woman, Leslie Kelvin, to solve the mystery.  Suspicions falls on the importer’s purchaser, but there are plenty of other suspects about, too, and  operator Kelvin might just find a bit of romance along the way.  A curious peek at the business of importing musical instruments that seems to promise further tales of Leslie Kelvin, detective.  A fun story.


“The Argentine Ruby,” from Mystery Magazine December 15 1923.  A wealthy and cash-strapped Argentinian seeks a short-term loan from a rheumatic banker who is to hold a valuable ruby until the loan is paid back.  Time is of the essence, and the transaction needs occur at the banker’s estate.  Young Ramsey is brought in as bodyguard to insure the transaction proceeds smoothly.   The banker is to write the Argentinian a personal check to be cashed with special permission before the bank opens in the morning, and the ruby is to stay in the banker’s safe until it can be moved somewhere more secure.   What could go wrong?


“At Two A.M.,” from Mystery Magazine August 1 1924.  A detective firm is hired by a building superintendent who suspects a string of robberies in the building is an inside job and not the work of a local gang as the police suspect.  Strangely, the theft of an expensive set of emeralds from one of the wealthier inhabitants was glossed over and never reported to the police  The firm sends Wanda Alden, a top operative, to pose as a lodger and get to the bottom of the robberies.  We meet a number of residents and workers at the hotel, some who are not what they seem.  Late night mystery involving an empty apartment, a dumbwaiter, and finally the robbery of an entire month’s rent from the safe of the superintendent bring the caper to a head.
 

Overall, I’d give this collection a 7/10.  Poynter’s settings and plots are full of interest, and she’s good at parsing out the breadcrumbs.   Most interesting is the very diverse cast of characters from every part of the globe and every station of society.  Poynter is very democratic in that rich and poor alike are equally likely to be virtuous or deceitful, and this adds to the mystery in that villains might just be those held in highest esteem by society, and the most honest might be those with the most to gain from foul play.  Some of the slang or accents she uses can be a bit forced, but it does spice up the dialogue and add to the flavor of the characters.  She’s definitely a writer I’ll watch out for, and I’m curious to read her in 30s and 40s pulp romance mode or her 1952 paperback in what appears to be a different mode, White Trash.