The Follower by Patrick Quentin

Mark Liddon did not really know his bride of three weeks, the young socialite Eleanor Ross, when he left her to work in the South American oil fields. After a whirlwind romance, she left her ex-fiancé Corey Lathrop for Mark, against the wishes of her wealthy family who dismissed him as a fortune hunter. Two months later, wanting to surprise her for Christmas, he arrives at their Park Avenue penthouse to find it empty, except for the body of Corey, shot dead on the floor. Fearing for Ellie, what else is a husband to do but hide the body and go search for her?

A bad gambler, Ellie frequented The Lorton Club, and Mark visits the owner and notorious racketeer Victor. Yes, she just lost $25,000, but Victor is unshaken as she always pays her debts. Victor kills people who don't pay up. Her parents have had enough of her antics and lies, refusing to pay her way out of trouble anymore. Neither knows where she is, leading Mark to her hairdresser, dressmaker, and a Mexican resort she may have fled to. There he finds a blonde torch singer named Frankie using Ellie's tourist card, impersonating her in exchange for papers to enter the United States. Mark follows Frankie and her ominous partner George from hotel to hotel, city to city, with the help of an obsequious hotel clerk named Oscar who is on whichever side is paying. The chase is bewildering, until he finally finds out what happened to Ellie. "They had abducted his wife and tried to kill him. They were all in on it. He would hunt them down and smash them."

Patrick Quentin mysteries always satisfy. This fast-paced noir begins slowly. then tightens the grip on tension, not giving the reader too many clues. The Mexican locales and the laid-back attitude lull the reader into the trap, the truth of which you won't guess. It's dynamite.

Novels under the pseudonyms Patrick Quentin, Jonathan Stagge, and Q. Patrick were written by a group of four authors; mainly by Hugh Wheeler and Richard Webb, but including Martha Kelley and Mary Aswell. They followed the Golden Age whodunit conventions and Hitchcockian themes. The popular Dr. Hugh Westlake mysteries under the name Jonathan Stagge were also written by the team of Webb and Wheeler. The Patrick Quentin novel Black Widow (1952) was filmed in Technicolor with Ginger Rogers in 1954.

Easily available as an eBook.

1950 / Paperback / 220 pages