Murder for Two

Jack "Flashgun" Casey Mystery #2

by George Harmon Coxe

Trying to help a wronged inventor, a friend of Casey’s ends up murderedThe last thing Flash Casey needs is an apprentice. Turned down by the army because of a bum knee, he agrees to teach a twice-weekly photography class for the American Women’s Voluntary Services. One of his students, whose father just happens to have a lot of money invested in Casey’s paper, asks to tag along on an assignment. Flash can’t say no.An engineer named John Perry has come to beg for help from one of Casey’s friends at the paper, crusading news columnist Rosalind Taylor. A few years back, Perry invented an industrial lubricant that should have made him a fortune, but his partner stole his idea and kept the profits for himself. Taylor has agreed to mediate for them, and asks Casey along to document the meeting. When Flash arrives, the apartment is ransacked and Taylor is dead. Casey will find her killers, as long as his little apprentice doesn’t get in the way.

Genres: Mystery

476 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

George Harmon Coxe was an American writer of crime fiction.His series characters are Jack "Flashgun" Casey, Kent Murdock, Leon Morley, Sam Crombie, Max Hale and Jack Fenner. Casey and Murdock are both detectives and photographers. He started writing officially from around 1922, his work being for nickel and dime pulp fiction of the time. To earn money, he originally wrote in many genres, including romance and adventure stories, but was especially fond of crime fiction, his character "Jack (Flashgun) Casey" becoming a popular radio show through to the 1940s. He wrote a total of 63 novels, the last being published in 1975. He was associated with MGM as a writer.

Married to Elizabeth Fowler in 1929, Coxe had 2 children.

He was named a Grand Master in 1964 by The Mystery Writers of America.

Reviews

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack "Flash" (or "Flashgun") Casey is none too pleased (see first line below). Uncle Sam has turned him down for military service because of a bum knee. In a fit of good nature (what he subsequently thinks of as soft-headedness), he volunteered to teach a twice-weekly photography class for the American Women's voluntary Services. And now his boss MacGrath has told him that he must allow one of the women whose father has a major stake in the newspaper to tag along with him so she can observe a photographer in action.

Crusading news columnist Rosalind Taylor is always on the hunt for ways to make crime bosses and those who swindle the average Joe pay for their dirty deeds. When an engineering inventor named John Perry is released from jail (for what he claims was a trumped-up charge), she's ready to help. Several years ago, Perry devised a new lubricant which should have made him wealthy and a more suitable suitor for Karen Harding--whose father is none too thrilled at the couple's attachment. But he claimed that his backer, Matt Lawson--a former bootlegger who began investing in more legitimate enterprises just before the war--tricked him when the contract was signed. Perry wound up going to jail for assault.

Taylor has discovered information that will support Perry's claims and she sets up a meeting with one of her sources. She invites Flash Casey, the newspaper's crack cameraman who just happens to be a pretty decent detective as well, to join the meeting and, of course, his assistant for the day tags along as well. But the news columnist doesn't show up for the appointment and when Casey and his shadow go to her apartment, they find the place ransacked and Taylor dead in her car a few blocks from the building. Casey soon finds himself knee-deep in another murder investigation...and so is his shadow. Because she just happens to be Karen Harding and she's still in love with John Perry.

Coxe as he does with his Kent Murdock series (also a cameraman/detective), provides a tough guy crime novel with a soft touch. Soft-boiled, the story gives us a seemingly untouchable swindler equipped with hired guns and enforcers--and, of course, Casey can hold his own with the bad guys (even if he is a softie underneath). But the mystery is not a simple one. It's not just a matter of the swindler doing in those who might expose him. There's an extra angle on the case and only Casey is able to spot it. This is the first of the Flash Casey mysteries that I've tried and while he is cast in the same mold as Murdock, he's not a carbon copy. The interesting angle that Casey spots, and which I did not, gives just the right touch.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

When a crusading journalist is killed, shot in the back of the head, Flash Casey investigates. There's a surplus of suspects, including a racketeer. Pretty good puzzle.

I tend to like Coxe's Casey novels better than the Murdoch ones. This one is fairly good, despite its dated WWII setting.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid, if unexceptional, mystery with Flash Casey instead of Kent Murdock, set during WWII.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: trying to help a wronged inventor, a friend of Flash Casey's is murdered. The last thing he needs is an apprentice. But he gets one.