Vintage Silver Age Mystery
Scavenger Hunt Category: Blunt Instrument
Date Finished: November 30, 2017
Kent Murdock, newspaper photographer, gets involved with a restaurant altercation with a notorious womanizing portrait painter. Murdock happens to be with his estranged wife. With the fight making the gossip columns, and after a thug attempts to beat him up, Murdock heads over to the painter’s apartment to continue the argument. Entering the apartment, however, he is slugged and soon wakes up to find the dead body of the painter, the murder weapon likely covered with his prints, and the police on their way. He has to stay one step ahead of them as he tries to find the real killer out of a number of characters who had both motive and opportunity.
This is an enjoyable enough Kent Murdock mystery, with the usual likable Murdock and a logical solution. Unfortunately, the surprise ending was no surprise as it was telegraphed from the moment the character was first introduced. Although published in 1968, it felt more like a 1940s or 1950s setting, as there was almost nothing other than a miniskirt and a Mustang dating it to the 1960s. Murdock seems to be more appropriately based in the late 1940s-1950s anyway. There was also little photography or newspaper work until the very end, as Murdock concentrates more on clearing his name than on his job. If only the ending had been better…
