by Pa Rock
Reader
Several weeks ago I received, as a gift, a copy of an old mystery novel that had been published in the 1980's. That book, Nantucket Soap Opera, was by S.F.X. Dean, a pseudonym used by a college professor by the name of Francis (Frank) Smith. I reviewed that book in this space on April 3, 2020.
I was impressed with that book to the point that I did some basic research on the author and sought to find his other works. I learned that Frank Smith had fought on Iwo Jima, graduated cum laude from Harvard, and was a founding member of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he served as the first dean of faculties. Smith had written one general work of fiction in the late 1950's under the name "Franc Smith," and then spent the next twenty years undoubtedly focused on teaching, running the humanities faculty at Hampshire College, and helping his wife raise their eight children. But in the 1980's he resumed writing and authored six mystery novels under his pen name of S.F.X. Dean.
After that significant burst of writing energy, the author did not publish any other works of fiction, or at least no more Neil Kelly mysteries under the name of S.F.X. Dean.
Smith's six mystery novels all involve the same amateur sleuth, a college literature professor named Neil Kelly who seems to bear a strong resemblance to the author. Kelly is Catholic, and presumably Smith (who passed away in 2017) was Catholic as well. That led me to surmise, on little more than a hunch, that the pseudonym "S.F.X. Dean" likely was a comic shorthand for "Smith, Francis Xavier, Dean" - but I could be wrong, and I often am.
The six Neil Kelly novels tell a continuing tale in the life of the central character and it would probably be of benefit to the reader to tackle them in order - but I did not have that luxury. The first one that I was able to access, Nantucket Soap Opera, was actually the final book in the series. The second that I have acquired is Death and the Mad Heroine, the fifth of the six-volume series. I am, it would seem, reading the series in reverse order - but I am an adult and I can handle life in whatever order it presents itself.
Death and the Mad Heroine is, like Nantucket Soap Opera, not a traditional mystery. The thrust of both novels is to spend much more time exploring who the characters are and how they interact before any actual murders are committed or revealed. It is not until the final pages of Mad Heroine that it even becomes certain that there has been a murder. But, nevertheless, suspects and subplots abound and interweave throughout the novel to form a compelling read. It is a clever writing style that firmly pulls the reader into the unfolding tale.
The action of Death and the Mad Heroine all takes place on and around a small liberal arts college campus in New England in the 1980's. Professor Neil Kelly has returned from a sabbatical in England for one week so that he can host an engagement party for his former student and now a teaching colleague, Dick Colrane. Dick is about to marry Jill, the daughter of his department chair who will soon be the new president of the college - and Dick will move up to fill the departmental chair position.
While Neil has been on sabbatical - writing a book on Ben Jonson and falling in love with Dolly, his editor - his home on the campus and his office have been occupied by his visiting replacement professor, Dewi Morgan-Evans, from Wales, a man who is desperately seeking a full-time teaching position in the United States. Dewi, an expert on Dylan Thomas, has recently married a local lady, Margaret Mary Murphy, a plain-spoken firebrand whom he refers to as "Murphy."
Murphy grew up with her sister and her mother - and her occasional "drop-in" father, a local religious oddball named Dan Murphy. Murphy's father disappeared under strange circumstances twenty years earlier, and she hatches the notion of writing a book about his disappearance with the ultimate goal of finding out what happened to him. And, since it is a mystery, she forces herself upon Neil Kelly during his brief visit in an effort to learn how to be a detective.
Dick Colrane, the professor who is about to marry the daughter of the next college president, was a star football player at the college twenty years before. In fact, he was expected to be a first round draft pick for the NFL. Dick was out riding his bicycle on a trail in the woods twenty years earlier, after graduating but before the NFL draft, when he was shot in the kneecap, an event that ended his football career. State police were brought in to investigate and they found evidence that the shooting might have been an accident perpetrated by Dan Murphy who had been out hunting squirrels that morning. The hapless hunter disappeared that day, never to be seen again, and the police assumed that he had observed the consequences of his careless shot - and had run off.
Most people believed that version of events, except, of course, Margaret Mary Murphy. And now here was Professor Neil Kelly asking to use her home to host an engagement party for Dick Colrane, a party that would bring together many of the people who might have had a reason to shoot Colrane and cause her father to disappear.
And from there it gets really good!
S.F.X. Dean (Francis Smith) had a broad familiarity for campus life and the social and political connections of a college faculty, and he also had a great ear for dialogue. The chapter in this book which takes place at the engagement party of Dick and Jill is a masterwork of storytelling that is achieved solely through many snippets of conversation between various groups of guests. Though randomly disconnected, they wind up forming. crazy quilt of information that moves the story along toward its ultimate surprise conclusion.
This is another great read from S.F.X. Dean. If you like your mysteries on the literary side, I highly recommend this one.
Reader
Several weeks ago I received, as a gift, a copy of an old mystery novel that had been published in the 1980's. That book, Nantucket Soap Opera, was by S.F.X. Dean, a pseudonym used by a college professor by the name of Francis (Frank) Smith. I reviewed that book in this space on April 3, 2020.
I was impressed with that book to the point that I did some basic research on the author and sought to find his other works. I learned that Frank Smith had fought on Iwo Jima, graduated cum laude from Harvard, and was a founding member of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts where he served as the first dean of faculties. Smith had written one general work of fiction in the late 1950's under the name "Franc Smith," and then spent the next twenty years undoubtedly focused on teaching, running the humanities faculty at Hampshire College, and helping his wife raise their eight children. But in the 1980's he resumed writing and authored six mystery novels under his pen name of S.F.X. Dean.
After that significant burst of writing energy, the author did not publish any other works of fiction, or at least no more Neil Kelly mysteries under the name of S.F.X. Dean.
Smith's six mystery novels all involve the same amateur sleuth, a college literature professor named Neil Kelly who seems to bear a strong resemblance to the author. Kelly is Catholic, and presumably Smith (who passed away in 2017) was Catholic as well. That led me to surmise, on little more than a hunch, that the pseudonym "S.F.X. Dean" likely was a comic shorthand for "Smith, Francis Xavier, Dean" - but I could be wrong, and I often am.
The six Neil Kelly novels tell a continuing tale in the life of the central character and it would probably be of benefit to the reader to tackle them in order - but I did not have that luxury. The first one that I was able to access, Nantucket Soap Opera, was actually the final book in the series. The second that I have acquired is Death and the Mad Heroine, the fifth of the six-volume series. I am, it would seem, reading the series in reverse order - but I am an adult and I can handle life in whatever order it presents itself.
Death and the Mad Heroine is, like Nantucket Soap Opera, not a traditional mystery. The thrust of both novels is to spend much more time exploring who the characters are and how they interact before any actual murders are committed or revealed. It is not until the final pages of Mad Heroine that it even becomes certain that there has been a murder. But, nevertheless, suspects and subplots abound and interweave throughout the novel to form a compelling read. It is a clever writing style that firmly pulls the reader into the unfolding tale.
The action of Death and the Mad Heroine all takes place on and around a small liberal arts college campus in New England in the 1980's. Professor Neil Kelly has returned from a sabbatical in England for one week so that he can host an engagement party for his former student and now a teaching colleague, Dick Colrane. Dick is about to marry Jill, the daughter of his department chair who will soon be the new president of the college - and Dick will move up to fill the departmental chair position.
While Neil has been on sabbatical - writing a book on Ben Jonson and falling in love with Dolly, his editor - his home on the campus and his office have been occupied by his visiting replacement professor, Dewi Morgan-Evans, from Wales, a man who is desperately seeking a full-time teaching position in the United States. Dewi, an expert on Dylan Thomas, has recently married a local lady, Margaret Mary Murphy, a plain-spoken firebrand whom he refers to as "Murphy."
Murphy grew up with her sister and her mother - and her occasional "drop-in" father, a local religious oddball named Dan Murphy. Murphy's father disappeared under strange circumstances twenty years earlier, and she hatches the notion of writing a book about his disappearance with the ultimate goal of finding out what happened to him. And, since it is a mystery, she forces herself upon Neil Kelly during his brief visit in an effort to learn how to be a detective.
Dick Colrane, the professor who is about to marry the daughter of the next college president, was a star football player at the college twenty years before. In fact, he was expected to be a first round draft pick for the NFL. Dick was out riding his bicycle on a trail in the woods twenty years earlier, after graduating but before the NFL draft, when he was shot in the kneecap, an event that ended his football career. State police were brought in to investigate and they found evidence that the shooting might have been an accident perpetrated by Dan Murphy who had been out hunting squirrels that morning. The hapless hunter disappeared that day, never to be seen again, and the police assumed that he had observed the consequences of his careless shot - and had run off.
Most people believed that version of events, except, of course, Margaret Mary Murphy. And now here was Professor Neil Kelly asking to use her home to host an engagement party for Dick Colrane, a party that would bring together many of the people who might have had a reason to shoot Colrane and cause her father to disappear.
And from there it gets really good!
S.F.X. Dean (Francis Smith) had a broad familiarity for campus life and the social and political connections of a college faculty, and he also had a great ear for dialogue. The chapter in this book which takes place at the engagement party of Dick and Jill is a masterwork of storytelling that is achieved solely through many snippets of conversation between various groups of guests. Though randomly disconnected, they wind up forming. crazy quilt of information that moves the story along toward its ultimate surprise conclusion.
This is another great read from S.F.X. Dean. If you like your mysteries on the literary side, I highly recommend this one.
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