The Mother Shadow – Brilliant Crime Novella

The Mother Shadow by Melodie Johnson Howe is a wonderful crime novella that introduces us to the female private detective Claire Conrad and Maggie Hill who becomes her assistant. What I like about this novella is that Melodie Johnson How has a writing style that reminds me of the doyen of crime writers Agatha Christie. There are no wasted words or padding, short sweet and straight to the point and the imagery given is so clear. Claire Conrad is a mixture of Miss Marple and Hercule Poroit with more money a couple of servants living in the cottage of a closed hotel.

Maggie Hill is working as a temporary secretary for Ellis Kennilworth at the home he shares with his mother, brother and sister. Maggie has been asked to report an hour earlier and duly turns up to find that Ellis is meeting with an ambulance chasing seedy lawyer. Maggie is required to type up a codicil to his will giving his coin collection worth over $4million to Claire Conrad for services yet to be rendered. Later that day Ellis kills himself then the mystery and twists kick in.

Maggie finds that the codicil is missing; her apartment has been turned over in burglary in search for the codicil and the suicide letter which also has gone missing. It is when Maggie goes to meet Claire Conrad to advise her of the missing codicil things start to get interesting. In the course of the investigation we uncover incest, blackmail, murder and financial double dealing and the hidden love child.

Throughout this thriller the shadow of Eleanor Kennilworth looms large over the story and how she is not only the head of the household but has what seems like unseen powers. It is only when her family is threatened that she reacts and when she does it is devastating. Eleanor Kennilworth is a ball breaking no nonsense matriarch whose will must be observed at all times.

The Mother Shadow is an excellent introduction to Melodie Johnson Howe’s work and her upright and correct private detective Claire Conrad and leads to more Conrad-Hill mysteries which I look forward to reading. This is sleuth writing at its finest and deserves a wider audience. ( )

I thought it was very good, and I'm disappointed that this obvious attempt at a female "buddy" series appears never to have taken off. It's openly a knockoff of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, which may have led to its demise. To its credit, the narrator is brassy and realistic, and the plot is complex and well thought out, but Claire Conrad, the Nero Wolfe character, is bizarre enough to not feel cuddly like Wolfe, and the few hints that we get of her character development don't really do much for us. The pair are accompanied by a James Bond-ish type, Ms. Conrad's butler, but it's never adequately explained why he buttles rather than earns millions of dollars as a hit man or something.

The plot revolves around an enjoyably eccentric and messed-up family of old money that is down on its luck, which presented some nice characters as well as some that really made me itch. I'll be looking for other books by this author. ( )