Riddle Of The Dead Man's Bequest (March 1949)

I received Bequest in the mail on the same day that The Survivor Murders arrived, making me a very happy batophile. 

In Bequest, Anthony Quinn is called to the home of a very financially successful recluse who passes away prior to being able to speak with Tony. Quinn shrugs that off as an odd, unfortunate event but finds out that another attorney had also been called to the recluse's home. This other attorney appears to have been killed in a murder-suicide later that same day. Is there a connection and are the deaths of the recluse and the attorney as clear-cut as they seem? After an attempt on his own life, Quinn intends to find out.

The recluse's family are basically all bastards and he has a checkered history of his own, so there is no lack of suspicious folks in this tale. This is another story in which the members of team Bat are not used much. McGrath has a presence throughout but is assisting Quinn moreso than trying to interfere and capture the Black Bat.

There is one odd aspect from a story-telling standpoint. McGrath mentions the police commissioner. I believe he even phones him. Jerome Warner was the commish for several of the early issues in the series but they don't refer to him by name. I knew Norman Daniels had ceased to use Warner as a regular character but if the story calls for the police commissioner, why not make it Warner? Unless Warner's status is explained in an earlier story (retirement, for example), it's too bad Warner was completely overlooked.

There is very little action in the story and a little too much goofiness in the way the crimes were carried out and how Quinn and co. figured them out. It made for a relaxing cottage read but I wouldn't count it among the better Bat stories.

Norman Daniels Obituary

There's not much to add here. I had looked for Black Bat creator Norman Daniels' obituary some time ago when building his biography page above but failed to locate it. With greater access to old newspapers recently acquired, I tried again and found it in no time.

It was included in the July 21st, 1995, Los Angeles Times and of course has been added to the bio page now.

The man wrote until he was 83 years of age. I can't help but be impressed by that. 

The Survivor Murders (Summer 1946)

 I recently managed to acquire two more original Black Book Detective novels including the Summer  1946 issue which features the Black Bat story The Survivor Murders. 

The book's premise is interesting from the get-go. A plane crashes in a field killing most of the people on board. Then someone starts killing off the survivor. 

Most of those survivors all seem rather ordinary and harmless. There's a stewardess, a school teacher, a florist and a recently-married young couple...Why would anyone want these people dead? 

One passenger was a mob lawyer who rambled on deliriously as he lay dying. Is someone trying to ensure that none of the secrets he might have blurted out go any further than that field?

Overall it's a decent little mystery. I do believe that most readers will pick up on which characters are the most likely murder suspects but perhaps struggle to connect all the dots until the very end.

That end, incidentally, feels a little rushed, as if author Norman Daniels realized that he was near his maximum word count and had to wrap things up.

If you feel that the notion that pulp heroes need to be surrounded by a team of assistants is tedious and tired, then this is the book for you. Carol Baldwin fans will be disappointed in this one as her role is very limited and Silk is written out fairly early. Butch becomes a bigger part of the story in the second half.

Otherwise, the bulk of the heavy lifting is done by our favourite bat-themed hero teamed up with police officer McGrath, though McGrath is somewhat dull in this one. You could substitute any generic cop character in his place and hardly notice. There's no real attempt by McGrath to discover the Black Bat's identity, for example. They're working towards the same goal throughout.

This is still a very good entry in the Black Bat collection and came a hair shy of being included on the "Recommended Reading" page. It would have made it if the supporting cast had been more heavily used or, in McGrath's case, perhaps not so watered down.