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Fred Fellows #9
End of a Party
- GenresNovels
211 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1965
11 people want to read
About the author
Hillary Waugh
157 books15 followersAka Elissa Grandower (5 books), H. Baldwin Taylor (3 books), Harry Walker (1 book).
Hillary Baldwin Waugh was a pioneering American mystery novelist. In 1989, Waugh was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
During his senior year at Yale, Waugh enlisted in the United States Navy Air Corps and, after graduation, received his aviator's wings. He served in Panama for two years, flying various types of aircraft. While in military service, Waugh turned his hand to creative writing, completing and publishing his first novel Madam Will Not Dine Tonight in 1947. He quickly published two more novels, but they were not very well received.
In 1949, as the result of reading a case book on true crime, Waugh decided to explore a realistic crime novel. With the cooperation of his fiancée, who was a student at Smith College, Waugh set his police procedural Last Seen Wearing... in a fictional women's college. Published in 1952, the book was a significant success and is now considered a pioneering effort exploring relentless police work and attention to detail.
After Last Seen Wearing..., Waugh went on to publish more than thirty-five additional detective novels, many aptly described as "hard boiled". Pseudonyms include "Elissa Grandower," "Harry Walker" and "H. Baldwin Taylor."
Waugh married Diana Taylor, and the couple had three children. Waugh died on December 8, 2008.
Hillary Baldwin Waugh was a pioneering American mystery novelist. In 1989, Waugh was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.
During his senior year at Yale, Waugh enlisted in the United States Navy Air Corps and, after graduation, received his aviator's wings. He served in Panama for two years, flying various types of aircraft. While in military service, Waugh turned his hand to creative writing, completing and publishing his first novel Madam Will Not Dine Tonight in 1947. He quickly published two more novels, but they were not very well received.
In 1949, as the result of reading a case book on true crime, Waugh decided to explore a realistic crime novel. With the cooperation of his fiancée, who was a student at Smith College, Waugh set his police procedural Last Seen Wearing... in a fictional women's college. Published in 1952, the book was a significant success and is now considered a pioneering effort exploring relentless police work and attention to detail.
After Last Seen Wearing..., Waugh went on to publish more than thirty-five additional detective novels, many aptly described as "hard boiled". Pseudonyms include "Elissa Grandower," "Harry Walker" and "H. Baldwin Taylor."
Waugh married Diana Taylor, and the couple had three children. Waugh died on December 8, 2008.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 11, 2017
I've never been a huge fan of detective fiction, but I've read more of it recently as a great survey on humanity: deduction has to deal with man's evil, and it is in the face of crime that man's true goodness or evil comes to the fore.
End of a Party, to me, is among the best detective novels I've read because it shows both the best and the worst of humanity. More importantly, however, is the fact that it doesn't deal with absolutes: people are occasionally good, and occasionally evil, and it is this ambiguity that makes the crime in the novel all the more difficult to solve. The willingness of friends to defend their own kind, and the complicity of the players made the crime all the more difficult to figure out until one simple piece of crucial evidence, coal dust, placed one person in the crime scenes. Waugh presents all the data that is needed to solve the case: the challenge for the reader is to sift through all of the shit that everyone else has. The resolution was great: we're all left with losers and liars - and that is what we all are, at least, sometimes.
And despite everything, Ramsay was right all along.
End of a Party, to me, is among the best detective novels I've read because it shows both the best and the worst of humanity. More importantly, however, is the fact that it doesn't deal with absolutes: people are occasionally good, and occasionally evil, and it is this ambiguity that makes the crime in the novel all the more difficult to solve. The willingness of friends to defend their own kind, and the complicity of the players made the crime all the more difficult to figure out until one simple piece of crucial evidence, coal dust, placed one person in the crime scenes. Waugh presents all the data that is needed to solve the case: the challenge for the reader is to sift through all of the shit that everyone else has. The resolution was great: we're all left with losers and liars - and that is what we all are, at least, sometimes.
And despite everything, Ramsay was right all along.
September 30, 2021
A murder is discovered, as usual. A bunch of fairly cardboard-cutout characters are presented, with their links to the victim, to each other, their movements and motives. The selfish adman; the mysterious playboy; the camp private dicks; the grouchy smalltown cop from the adjacent country precinct whose main concern is avoiding hassle. It's all fine but pretty routine stuff, pretty undistinctive, does the job but does it by numbers.
For me it picked up in the last fifth or so, with a deftish change of personnel and pace, a refreshing if belated middle-eight, as it were, after which the resolution comes briskly and classically: missing pieces and convoluted Poirot-style deductive tying together of threads in a way that makes sense once presented (I suppose) but that has no inherent tie to the characters the reader has been living with for the past 200 pages; with murder mysteries I never guess whodunnit, or how or why, and I certainly didn't here.
I can't say I cared all that much either - I was a little relieved it wasn't the tentatively reforming egocentric Gilmore, I suppose, and unpleasant unreformed Marva might have been too obvious a scapegoat, but as they were all pretty thin characters, if anything such a choice might have been more savourful than the mechanical and offstage-focused guilty party actually unveiled.
Also, I was disappointed to find that Waugh's command of English and of narrative is a little clumsy in places, which detracts from the sensitive reader (that's me)'s pleasure.
All the same, as I said, it does the job, and slips down easily enough. I wouldn't recommend avoiding it.
For me it picked up in the last fifth or so, with a deftish change of personnel and pace, a refreshing if belated middle-eight, as it were, after which the resolution comes briskly and classically: missing pieces and convoluted Poirot-style deductive tying together of threads in a way that makes sense once presented (I suppose) but that has no inherent tie to the characters the reader has been living with for the past 200 pages; with murder mysteries I never guess whodunnit, or how or why, and I certainly didn't here.
I can't say I cared all that much either - I was a little relieved it wasn't the tentatively reforming egocentric Gilmore, I suppose, and unpleasant unreformed Marva might have been too obvious a scapegoat, but as they were all pretty thin characters, if anything such a choice might have been more savourful than the mechanical and offstage-focused guilty party actually unveiled.
Also, I was disappointed to find that Waugh's command of English and of narrative is a little clumsy in places, which detracts from the sensitive reader (that's me)'s pleasure.
All the same, as I said, it does the job, and slips down easily enough. I wouldn't recommend avoiding it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 17, 2023
Police Chief Delbert Ramsey maintains law and order in tiny Townsend, CT with a small department and his ever-present ulcers. Now some damned busy-body has found a murdered woman. AND she's wearing an expensive fur coat. AND her car is a new Cadillac. Ramsey might be able to deal with the murder of a hobo, but this looks like trouble. Thank God, the body is just over the township lines, placing the investigation in the competent hands of Police Chief Fred Fellows of Stockton.
Waugh fans know Fred Fellows and the intelligence and dogged persistence he and his staff bring to the investigation of a murder. This is a complicated story of upper-middle-class couples in America in 1964, when the old social rules are being discarded. There are bored housewives in search of fulfillment and even more bored husbands looking for uncomplicated sex. There are people with money and those who have only the appearance of it.
At the heart of the confusion is a mysterious "investment agent" who may or may not have disappeared. The only ones who know for sure are the members of a sporting club for wealthy men. They play for high stakes and like risky deals and they aren't talking to the police.
This is one of the tenderest of Waugh's books because of Penny, the little daughter of the murdered Lila Gillmore. Penny's story is the tragic one of a child born to parents who have better things to do. Chief Fellows is a loving father (as was his creator) and he feels the sadness of this neglected child deeply.
Waugh was courageous in acknowledging that a child living in an expensive home, enrolled in private schools, and attended to by servants, can still be a child in need of love and attention. That's why Waugh's books are more than "just mysteries." He cared about the people in them and he makes the reader care, too.
This is one of Waugh's best and that's saying a great deal.
Waugh fans know Fred Fellows and the intelligence and dogged persistence he and his staff bring to the investigation of a murder. This is a complicated story of upper-middle-class couples in America in 1964, when the old social rules are being discarded. There are bored housewives in search of fulfillment and even more bored husbands looking for uncomplicated sex. There are people with money and those who have only the appearance of it.
At the heart of the confusion is a mysterious "investment agent" who may or may not have disappeared. The only ones who know for sure are the members of a sporting club for wealthy men. They play for high stakes and like risky deals and they aren't talking to the police.
This is one of the tenderest of Waugh's books because of Penny, the little daughter of the murdered Lila Gillmore. Penny's story is the tragic one of a child born to parents who have better things to do. Chief Fellows is a loving father (as was his creator) and he feels the sadness of this neglected child deeply.
Waugh was courageous in acknowledging that a child living in an expensive home, enrolled in private schools, and attended to by servants, can still be a child in need of love and attention. That's why Waugh's books are more than "just mysteries." He cared about the people in them and he makes the reader care, too.
This is one of Waugh's best and that's saying a great deal.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews