They Buried A Man by Mildred Davis

Mildred Davis specializes in psychology and personality. This Inner Sanctum mystery reads more like a novel in the style of Peyton Place rather than a whodunit. The twenty-year-old death is merely town lore by this point.

Newspaperman Gunner Kerr was new to Little Forks the winter a deadly accident sent the car of Selwyn Bouman off a bridge. News spread quickly through the town, resurrecting rumors of a death over twenty years ago. Selwyn was beloved by everyone, a man who would give what you needed for free, whereas Ernest Lovejoy was an irascible, unhappy old man no one liked, whose death by poisoned wine was never solved. Certainly, Selwyn had nothing to do with it.

Gunny digs into the story by befriending town doctor Bert Caldecott, his wife Minnie, and their simple-minded son Looie; Ernest's nephew Charlie and his wife Claire (forever indebted to Selwyn for helping him out of a childhood prank); Avis Edwards (who remained a spinster after Selwyn married), who recalls Ernest's last Christmas when his wife was dying of tuberculosis; and Ernest's daughter May (whom Gunny quickly becomes fond of). Selwyn left a steadfast wife, Tabitha, and teenage son Dick, but secret letters found stashed away cause Tabitha's true feelings to emerge—spotlighting adulterous affairs, illegitimate births, hidden evidence, lifelong grudges, and misgivings about who your neighbors really are.

This is a very low-key mystery; a novel that entertains if you are not looking too deeply. Interestingly told through four different viewpoints, including Avis, who speaks like an open thesaurus (thick with words like penurious, perspicacity, perturbations).

I found Mildred Davis' first novel, The Room Upstairs equally staid; it was awarded the 1948 Edgar for Best First Mystery Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.

1953 / Hardcover / 219 pages