My Sister, Goodnight by Gordon McDonell

"Love and Death... at first sight."

Air Force Major James Foraker came across the still-warm body of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, dead in the Coldwater Canyon hills of Los Angeles. Despite knowing he shouldn't move the body, he brought her to the local police station. Inspector Ives and Sergeant Wilson highly doubt he didn't know the girl, but the investigation bears him out. He is on leave from war in the Pacific, staying with his fighter pilot buddy, Captain Tom Marble, and his wife Elsa. Tom has returned to his job directing films and his new baby boy. Foraker fell in love a little bit that day, with the girl named Leticia, a bit player in Tom's films. The only clue is a pukka shell necklace she wore, the type made by soldiers in the Pacific to pass time - hers with a unique knot, which Foraker recognized as the kind only made by him. There is a small list of people he gave them to, and on the list is Elsa. There is a second shock when they meet Leticia's twin sister Janet, just as beautiful, and her husband Begg Holbrook, who carries a large chip on his shoulder. Leticia had been troubled for days, engaged to a mysterious man she felt forced to marry, and carrying a secret. Foraker finds he is attracted to the sister Janet, if only she wasn't married, as they chase the killer into the High Sierra mountains.

This intriguing premise becomes a psychological mystery as it is told mostly through narration of Foraker's stream of conscious and subconscious. It works well to draw you into the story, but sometimes his ruminations are off-putting ("Of course, Leticia had gotten herself killed, there was no doubt of that. And people didn't normally get themselves killed unless they were the victim type, that is, the sort of person who was apt to get killed by his own foolishness through some fault or other, which would render him more liable to be placed in such a position. I hadn't thought of her like that before…") as if it was her fault in any way, and sometimes it feels overwritten ("You could think of him as a killer who would kill in a sudden move of adjustment whereby the killing would be the only method of adjustment or relief from maladjustment presented at the moment of greatest tension."). Overall, a tight mystery I recommend.

Gordon McDonell was a screenwriter known for Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt and They Won't Believe Me. Actor Franchot Tone optioned this novel, but it was never filmed.

1947 / Paperback / 160 pages