Death Walks In Marble Halls by Lawrence G. Blochman

Phil Manning is publicist for a large city library—filled with over 6 million titles, reading rooms, circulation desks, and learned staff who specialize in Egyptology or philosophical studies. Everyone is on edge knowing that late-night radio personality Feodor Klawitz is out on bail after charges against the boss, H. H. Dorwin, public library trustee. That morning, someone attempts a shot at Dorwin in the marble halls, dropping the gun as they run away. A man is caught by Shakespeare-quoting security man Tim Cornish, someone who used to work for Dorwin in a private library. Manning's girl, Betty Tate, arrives in her swagger coat of sheared beaver, shaken up after receiving a threatening letter against her friend Dorwin. Before Phil and Betty can figure it out, Dorwin is seen by the spiral staircase to the second-floor gallery, stabbed in the face, toppling over the rail into the reading room below.

Feodor Klawitz is indeed in the library when Dorwin dies, as is Dorwin's mysterious new blonde secretary, who may have witnessed the killer. Dorwin dies with a scrap of paper in his hand, torn from a (now missing) red portfolio which may yield a clue. Tim Cornish and Detective Kilkenny (from Blochman's See You at the Morgue) arrive to view the corpus delicti, and lock the library doors until it is sorted.

There is more murder and attempts to hide in the underground maze of book stacks as we follow the characters all over the library. This was a time when the library was the center of knowledge, music, art, and dance—and the actual mystery involves the score for a new ballet. Fast-paced, with humor and wisecracks mixed into the danger, there is even time for romance with Betty in the Oriental room.

This was filmed in 1942 as Quiet Please, Murder starring George Sanders and Gail Patrick—although they made it about a master forger, an unhappy customer connected to a high-ranking Nazi, and a plot to steal the library's valuable books during a wartime blackout.

(As if the original book was not sufficiently packed with story and action.)

Hard to find perhaps, but a fun mystery I recommend.

1942 / Paperback / 65 pages

My other review for Lawrence G. Blochman:

Midnight Sailing

Recipe For Homicide