The Fabulous Clipjoint

Brown’s solid debut, which won the 1948 Best First Novel Edgar Award, offers a gritty riff on the plot of Hamlet. In Chicago, 19-year-old Ed Hunter works as an apprentice Linotype printer with his father, Wallace, who remarried after Ed’s mother died. When Wallace is beaten to death by a robber who leaves his corpse in an alley, Ed is devastated. Skeptical the cops will invest meaningful resources in the case, Ed reaches out to his Uncle Ambrose, a carny he hasn’t seen for a decade. Ambrose agrees to help, and the duo begin looking for motives beyond larceny for the killing. Their premise that Wallace wasn’t the victim of a random encounter leads them to consider the possible guilt of Ed’s stepmother, who’s unusually placid about her loss. Ed encounters more violence as he starts transitioning to adulthood under Ambrose’s guidance. Brown (1906–1972) firmly grounds his plot and characters in reality. Readers will be inspired to seek out the author’s sequels to this worthy entry in the American Mystery Classics series. (Nov.)