Elliot Paul (1891–1958)

Amateur sleuth, Homer Evans, & his Montana cowgirl/sidekick/girlfriend, Miriam Leonard, are enjoying their time in France. Before long, however, they find themselves in the middle of a gang war. The intrepid duo is surrounded on all sides by vicious criminals as they attempt to solve the mystery of a stolen violin, kidnappings, & multiple murders.

This book is one in a series, & I think I would have benefited from having read the previous installments first. Most of the characters are carryovers from preceding books, & there are almost continuous references to things that happened in earlier stories. Without the benefit of being familiar with any of the prior works, I was often lost as to who the characters really were & what was being talked about.

Either way, this book is not very good. The action often cuts quickly from one scene to another without the benefit of clean segues; that made for a very disjointed & choppy reading experience. Absolutely none of the characters are in the least bit likeable or sympathetic; I kept wishing they would all be killed & just go away—the criminals, the victims, the detectives, & the innocent bystanders. And the mysterious method of poisoning that takes up a good part of the storyline is nothing short of asinine.

The story is full of extreme violence. Aside from the obligatory murders (this is a kind of murder mystery, after all), there are brutal fight scenes, torture, rape, &—worst of all—violence against animals & animal cruelty. I love the puzzle of a good murder mystery; I’m not so keen on gruesome, gratuitous brutality--& there is a lot of that within the pages of Mayhem in B Flat.

There is also a lot of unnecessary vulgarity. The book is full of prostitutes, drunkards, naked dancers, sleazy extramarital affairs, & so on & so forth. There was so much of it, in fact, the entire book just ended up feeling sordid. I found the storyline of the middle-aged heiress who is obsessed with the talented violinist extremely disturbing & distasteful. She stalks him throughout the book, is convinced her wealth entitles her to possess him, & then rapes him while he is passed out drunk in the hold of a ship. He then becomes certain this is the most magical moment of his life & his mysterious assailant is the love of his life. That has to be one of the ickiest things I have ever read in my life.

I won’t be recommending this book to anyone, & I definitively won’t be reading any of the other titles in the series.

I tacked on an additional half star for the author’s use of the word ‘yclept’.… (meer)