A Perfectly Proper Murder: A Carl Wilcox Mystery

Still painting signs in Depression-era South Dakota, Carl Wilcox, introduced in The Man Who Was Taller Than God , finds himself in Podunkville where eggs are 11? a dozen and rooms are let at 50? a day. He rents one of the latter from the Widow Bower, but he isn't there one night before local ``brute and bully'' Basil Ecke turns up murdered next to Wilcox's Model T and the painter becomes the prime suspect. Ecke owned the local pharmacy and was a silent partner in a hotel in nearby Aquaville where he cavorted with a series of married women. Wilcox, a ``boozing cowboy con'' who sometimes substitutes as a cop, investigates ``the wife beatings, the woman chasing, the tales of incest and possible murder'' that suggest motives for the killing. Sharp dialogue and brisk characterization of familiar inhabitants of a small town where women are hard and men are weak add some substance to the thin plot. The murder weapon, a common domestic item, turns out to be more interesting than the unsurprising revelation of who wielded it. (Sept.)