A Good Year for Murder

A practical joker is victimizing the politicians of Fort York, a small city in Canada. On one holiday each month during 1940, a member of the city government receives a rude shock, starting on St. Valentine's Day when a chicken shot by an arrow is delivered to alderman Gertrude Valentini. By June, the pranks have escalated to murder with the strangling, on Father's Day, of Father Consentino, former priest and member of the Board of Control. Police Chief Horace Zulp assigns round-the-clock guards to the hapless politicians, but in July and August, on St. Swithin's Day and the Civic Holiday, respectively, two more meet their ends. After September's killing, Zulp thinks he has caught the murderer. But the suspect is in shock and cannot talk. Zulp is completely satisfied but traffic inspector Albert V. Tretheway is worried there's still more mayhem to come. And there is. Tretheway finds the real killer, appropriately enough, on New Year's Eve. While the mystery is perfectly adequate and Eddenden conveys a nice sense of a country on the eve of war, the satire is pretty heavy-handed and no public servants could be as stupid as the police chief and the mayor, and hold their jobs. (May)