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Lieutenant Luis Mendoza #32
Murder Most Strange
Aided by his men in the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery and Homicide Division, seasoned veteran Luis Mendoza bravely meets the tough challenge of big-city crime and violence. Working with faint clues, he and his detectives systematically break their most shocking and difficult cases to date. They track down a rapist and murderer who has clean good looks and the perfect ploy; unravel the motive behind a bloody double homicide/suicide with a bizarre twist; trap the perpetrator of a series of flawless robberies; get to the root of a young woman's baffling disappearance; learn the truth about the implausibly 'natural' death of a senator; and solve still other disturbing mysteries.
228 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
21 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
Dell Shannon
157 books24 followersPseudonym of Elizabeth Linington.
Barbara "Elizabeth" Linington (March 11, 1921 – April 5, 1988) was an American novelist. She was awarded runner-up scrolls for best first mystery novel from the Mystery Writers of America for her 1960 novel, Case Pending, which introduced her most popular series character, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza. Her 1961 book, Nightmare, and her 1962 novel, Knave of Hearts, another entry in the Mendoza series, were both nominated for Edgars in the Best Novel category. Regarded as the "Queen of the Procedurals," she was one of the first women to write police procedurals — a male-dominated genre of police-story writing.
Besides crime, Linington also took interest in archaeology, the occult, gemstones, antique weapons and languages. Linington was also a conservative political activist who was an active member of the John Birch Society
Barbara "Elizabeth" Linington (March 11, 1921 – April 5, 1988) was an American novelist. She was awarded runner-up scrolls for best first mystery novel from the Mystery Writers of America for her 1960 novel, Case Pending, which introduced her most popular series character, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza. Her 1961 book, Nightmare, and her 1962 novel, Knave of Hearts, another entry in the Mendoza series, were both nominated for Edgars in the Best Novel category. Regarded as the "Queen of the Procedurals," she was one of the first women to write police procedurals — a male-dominated genre of police-story writing.
Besides crime, Linington also took interest in archaeology, the occult, gemstones, antique weapons and languages. Linington was also a conservative political activist who was an active member of the John Birch Society
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 1, 2020
Veteran Los Angles police detective Luis Mendoza with his crew tracks down rapists and murderers. A senator meets and untimely death while a series of robberies plague the city.
September 9, 2022
This was an unexpected delight to read! There are a number of characters who are fully developed & have large parts in the story. Murder Most Strange gives you what feels like an inside look into police cases in the 1970s.
August 21, 2023
This book tosses you straight into the first major case, with Mendoza visiting the hospital to question a young woman who had been brutally stabbed and raped in her apartment on a Sunday afternoon. She can't tell them much, other than that he was smooth and plausible until the moment he stepped across her threshold. (BTW, this woman, stabbed some twenty times, gets out of the hospital awfully quickly.) With his excellent memory, Mendoza recalls hearing of a similar M.O. out of Hollywood, and calls Sgt. Barth. Barth confirms that they had several such incidents, all on Sundays, all women living alone, all with a terrifying "Jekyll and Hyde" switch from polite gentleman to monster. One presumed victim ended up dead. Barth comments that he has had four murders in one week (Mendoza tactfully refrains from saying anything) and says that he remembers when Hollywood used to be the "creampuff" beat. They're left wondering why this rapist has suddenly changed his locale. Several more Sunday attacks occur (no one comments that they seem to be increasing; in Hollywood they were averaging one a month, while in Central they're starting to happen every Sunday.) Despite his violence, he doesn't leave much in the way of traces behind (modern lab techniques would probably find more). The assumption that he cases his victims only by checking their mailboxes is confirmed with the last case. Miss Golinsky is not the sort of woman to mess with; she's a sturdy young woman who knows a bit of judo, and fought back hard enough that he gave it up as a bad job and fled...leaving behind the prop he had used to get in the door. This quickly leads them to their killer, and a very simple explanation for his change in locale--he simply got transferred.
The next major case takes a while to pull together, because it involves several men stabbed to death seemingly at random. It's Palliser who notices that there is a vague resemblance between the Skid Row bum and the ordinary business gentleman, and he becomes certain of it when yet another man is attacked right on a bench in view of witnesses. It takes yet another killing, and the eager assistance of what could be called a police groupie, to settle it. A witness to the fourth killing, he had been interested in police work all his life, yet was too short for the physical. He subscribes to all the true-crime magazines, has trained himself to memorize details, and is overjoyed at the chance to actually help on a case. He's certain that he's actually seen a picture of the killer, and while the detectives brush this off as imagination, he painstakingly checks back through his collection of true crime until he hits on it. The solution is a rather tragic one.
A divorced woman is found dead in her bed by her child. Suicide or murder? If not for an alibi, they would probably suspect her husband; he wanted custody of their daughter, whereas the woman kept custody solely for the support money; she has no real interest in looking after her daughter. The one thing they learn from the investigation is that the woman was too silly and shallow to think of killing herself for any reason. Once all the facts are in, it's all too sadly easy to find the solution.
They have a case of murder without a body--a knitting back with a considerable amount of blood around it is found in Echo Park. (As always, Echo Park brings back memories of the dismemberment case from DEATH BY INCHES.) They spend a lot of time and effort trying to locate the victim, and actually find an unrecognizable body brought in by the Harbor Patrol, until the answer unexpectedly bursts in on them.
An elderly woman is found strangled and her house completely stripped of furniture. George Higgins is unexpectedly moved by the pathetic sight of the woman's bedroom slippers sitting in lonely isolation in the middle of the kitchen floor. This one is only solved because someone with a record was stupid enough to leave a few prints for the lab to find.
There's a number of robberies going on throughout the book. One involves a duo they have nicknamed "Mutt and Jeff" because they keep bungling their way along--they keep getting away, but all of the men in Robbery-Homicide are certain that they will be caught eventually, through their own stupidity. They had that right. Another is a single robber with a Southern accent and a viciously quick trigger finger. He also speaks "bad" Spanish. This is one where they actually put together the clues to get a reasonable assumption of who the man is. Bill Moss, a patrolman we have met previously, had good cause to be thankful for the identification when he comes unexpectedly (and alone) across this dangerous criminal. He keeps his head and makes a spectacular nab. Yet another is the truly bizarre case of robbery by Doberman. A number of people, most of whom had been out for a night at the local theater, are confronted by a man with a Doberman and sensibly opt to keep still and hand over the money. This uniquely clever gimmick is overturned by a little girl who grew up with a Doberman and is delighted to meet a new one. The closure of this case is rather surprising and satisfying.
Everyone is shocked when the up-and-coming Senator Upchurch, in town for a speech, is found dead. Nearly everyone comments that they were going to vote for him, yet no one is too very surprised to find that the circumstances belie his image of the upstanding family man.
A rather humdrum shooting in a shabby boardinghouse turns bizarre when Higgins, who merely wants to ask the man in the next room if he saw or heard anything, has his potential witness slam the door in his face and promptly shoot himself in the head. The guilty fleeing where no man pursueth...it takes Higgins a while to track this one down, because the man is not listed in Records.
The last and maybe strangest major case is an middle-aged gentleman found beaten to death in his backyard--although it turns out he actually suffered a heart attack during the beating. He lived in an odd little backwater. It's easy enough for the men to go door to door looking for witnesses, as there is only a very few houses, but, very oddly, no one was out where they could hear anything. Everyone was either busy with things, or gone elsewhere. No one knows much about the man, except that he kept to himself, to the extent of utterly ignoring his next-door neighbor, recovering from a horrific accident, when he fell down in the backyard and could not get back up. This really tells you all you want to know about this jerk, but there's more. They find that the man was part of a white-supremacist group. Nothing big, not a terrorist organization, just a bunch of twerps holding secret meetings to tell themselves how superior they were. I absolutely loved how Mendoza related them to Kipling's "Bandar-log". "We are the greatest people in the jungle, we know that it is true because all of us say that it is true!" And even this is not all. After a delay waiting to hear from the man's former employee, who quit and ran off on vacation after calling him "the wickedest man in the world!" we find that she wasn't so far wrong. The solution isn't what you would expect, but it is probably the most satisfying one I have read in the whole canon.
On the personal front, Conway has been transferred back to night watch, and is greatly annoyed at how it's cutting into his dating time. There is no sign that they are going to get a replacement for Shogart any time soon. Nick and Marta finally get married. Something odd occurred to me as I was reading this one: this is the only instance in the whole canon where we actually see one of the boys get married. Everyone else, even Landers and Phil with their long courtship, are married between books. The wedding was a quiet, "low" Mass, with just a few people, including what co-workers could slip in during the working day. Another oddity is that, of all the married couples, only Roberta Palliser came to attend (I believe it was Palliser's day off). And come to think of it, there was no word about a shower. Surely Angel Hackett would have arranged one.
Speaking of the Pallisers, Roberta is contemplating taking their dog Trina to an upcoming dog show, to participate in the obedience section. (She sees no point in "regular" dog shows.)
And then, there's Alison and her hacienda. They have finally moved in, and things are starting to resemble "The Money Pit" because every time she turns around, something new and expensive needs to be done. The ponies eat through lots and lots of hay. The twins are about ready to break out of the riding paddock, which will mean another horse for Ken to ride and lead them about. Their handsome wrought-iron gates are a pain in the butt to open and shut each time; they need an electric eye and an automatic opener. (I'm old enough to remember the radio ads about the Genie Automatic Garage Door Picker-Upper.) Alison has been putting in some nice, expensive landscaping around the house--only the dry season has kicked in, and the Five Graces are hungry for fresh veggies. So, a wall around the house will be necessary. Having had the electric eye installed, they find that "a few adjustments" will be necessary, after both Alison and Mrs. McTaggart get their cars smashed in, one fore, one aft. (I was really surprised that Alison didn't demand that the electric eye people pay the cost of the car repairs!) And the twins start playing with the manual button on the gates, and don't bother to see that the gates are securely closed before they wander off to do something else, and the sheep find the open gate....
One thing leading to another....
The next major case takes a while to pull together, because it involves several men stabbed to death seemingly at random. It's Palliser who notices that there is a vague resemblance between the Skid Row bum and the ordinary business gentleman, and he becomes certain of it when yet another man is attacked right on a bench in view of witnesses. It takes yet another killing, and the eager assistance of what could be called a police groupie, to settle it. A witness to the fourth killing, he had been interested in police work all his life, yet was too short for the physical. He subscribes to all the true-crime magazines, has trained himself to memorize details, and is overjoyed at the chance to actually help on a case. He's certain that he's actually seen a picture of the killer, and while the detectives brush this off as imagination, he painstakingly checks back through his collection of true crime until he hits on it. The solution is a rather tragic one.
A divorced woman is found dead in her bed by her child. Suicide or murder? If not for an alibi, they would probably suspect her husband; he wanted custody of their daughter, whereas the woman kept custody solely for the support money; she has no real interest in looking after her daughter. The one thing they learn from the investigation is that the woman was too silly and shallow to think of killing herself for any reason. Once all the facts are in, it's all too sadly easy to find the solution.
They have a case of murder without a body--a knitting back with a considerable amount of blood around it is found in Echo Park. (As always, Echo Park brings back memories of the dismemberment case from DEATH BY INCHES.) They spend a lot of time and effort trying to locate the victim, and actually find an unrecognizable body brought in by the Harbor Patrol, until the answer unexpectedly bursts in on them.
An elderly woman is found strangled and her house completely stripped of furniture. George Higgins is unexpectedly moved by the pathetic sight of the woman's bedroom slippers sitting in lonely isolation in the middle of the kitchen floor. This one is only solved because someone with a record was stupid enough to leave a few prints for the lab to find.
There's a number of robberies going on throughout the book. One involves a duo they have nicknamed "Mutt and Jeff" because they keep bungling their way along--they keep getting away, but all of the men in Robbery-Homicide are certain that they will be caught eventually, through their own stupidity. They had that right. Another is a single robber with a Southern accent and a viciously quick trigger finger. He also speaks "bad" Spanish. This is one where they actually put together the clues to get a reasonable assumption of who the man is. Bill Moss, a patrolman we have met previously, had good cause to be thankful for the identification when he comes unexpectedly (and alone) across this dangerous criminal. He keeps his head and makes a spectacular nab. Yet another is the truly bizarre case of robbery by Doberman. A number of people, most of whom had been out for a night at the local theater, are confronted by a man with a Doberman and sensibly opt to keep still and hand over the money. This uniquely clever gimmick is overturned by a little girl who grew up with a Doberman and is delighted to meet a new one. The closure of this case is rather surprising and satisfying.
Everyone is shocked when the up-and-coming Senator Upchurch, in town for a speech, is found dead. Nearly everyone comments that they were going to vote for him, yet no one is too very surprised to find that the circumstances belie his image of the upstanding family man.
A rather humdrum shooting in a shabby boardinghouse turns bizarre when Higgins, who merely wants to ask the man in the next room if he saw or heard anything, has his potential witness slam the door in his face and promptly shoot himself in the head. The guilty fleeing where no man pursueth...it takes Higgins a while to track this one down, because the man is not listed in Records.
The last and maybe strangest major case is an middle-aged gentleman found beaten to death in his backyard--although it turns out he actually suffered a heart attack during the beating. He lived in an odd little backwater. It's easy enough for the men to go door to door looking for witnesses, as there is only a very few houses, but, very oddly, no one was out where they could hear anything. Everyone was either busy with things, or gone elsewhere. No one knows much about the man, except that he kept to himself, to the extent of utterly ignoring his next-door neighbor, recovering from a horrific accident, when he fell down in the backyard and could not get back up. This really tells you all you want to know about this jerk, but there's more. They find that the man was part of a white-supremacist group. Nothing big, not a terrorist organization, just a bunch of twerps holding secret meetings to tell themselves how superior they were. I absolutely loved how Mendoza related them to Kipling's "Bandar-log". "We are the greatest people in the jungle, we know that it is true because all of us say that it is true!" And even this is not all. After a delay waiting to hear from the man's former employee, who quit and ran off on vacation after calling him "the wickedest man in the world!" we find that she wasn't so far wrong. The solution isn't what you would expect, but it is probably the most satisfying one I have read in the whole canon.
On the personal front, Conway has been transferred back to night watch, and is greatly annoyed at how it's cutting into his dating time. There is no sign that they are going to get a replacement for Shogart any time soon. Nick and Marta finally get married. Something odd occurred to me as I was reading this one: this is the only instance in the whole canon where we actually see one of the boys get married. Everyone else, even Landers and Phil with their long courtship, are married between books. The wedding was a quiet, "low" Mass, with just a few people, including what co-workers could slip in during the working day. Another oddity is that, of all the married couples, only Roberta Palliser came to attend (I believe it was Palliser's day off). And come to think of it, there was no word about a shower. Surely Angel Hackett would have arranged one.
Speaking of the Pallisers, Roberta is contemplating taking their dog Trina to an upcoming dog show, to participate in the obedience section. (She sees no point in "regular" dog shows.)
And then, there's Alison and her hacienda. They have finally moved in, and things are starting to resemble "The Money Pit" because every time she turns around, something new and expensive needs to be done. The ponies eat through lots and lots of hay. The twins are about ready to break out of the riding paddock, which will mean another horse for Ken to ride and lead them about. Their handsome wrought-iron gates are a pain in the butt to open and shut each time; they need an electric eye and an automatic opener. (I'm old enough to remember the radio ads about the Genie Automatic Garage Door Picker-Upper.) Alison has been putting in some nice, expensive landscaping around the house--only the dry season has kicked in, and the Five Graces are hungry for fresh veggies. So, a wall around the house will be necessary. Having had the electric eye installed, they find that "a few adjustments" will be necessary, after both Alison and Mrs. McTaggart get their cars smashed in, one fore, one aft. (I was really surprised that Alison didn't demand that the electric eye people pay the cost of the car repairs!) And the twins start playing with the manual button on the gates, and don't bother to see that the gates are securely closed before they wander off to do something else, and the sheep find the open gate....
One thing leading to another....
June 14, 2008
Another of the LAPD Luis Mendoza mysteries, this deals with a series of burglaries, a rapist, and assorted murders. Good characterization and positive characters make this series worth reading.
November 17, 2022
another Luis Mendoza police procedural. used to read them as fast as they were published. found one I hadn't read before. enjoyable if dated. Re-read November2022.
March 21, 2025
It's a fast-paced murder mystery that has you wondering about each case. You can tell some language is there from the 80s (when it was published) but I enjoyed the storyline!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews