FFB: Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective

Hugh Cosgro Weir (1994-1934) was born in Illinois but moved to Ohio where he worked as a journalist at the young age of 16 in Springfield. He also began writing screenplays early on, but eventually set up his own combo advertising agency and magazine publishing house. He was a prolific writer of pulp short stories but is mainly known today for his anthology published in 1914, Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective.

Weir dedicated the book to Mary Holland, a Chicago-area detective who was a pioneering fingerprint expert and jointly published the criminology magazine "The Detective" with her husband Phillip. In fact, Weir was inspired by Holland to loosely base his young detective Madelyn Mack on Holland. In the stories, Mack is accompanied on her exploits by the reporter Nora Noraker, who also serves as the POV character, in a form of gender-swapped Holmes and Watson set in in New York City.

Madelyn Mack is every bit as quirky as Holmes in the five stories that make up the book. She collects musical records from around the world, even commissioning expensive private recordings; she wears a locket around her neck filled with cola berries to keep her awake for days at a stretch; she dresses only in either all white or all black; and her home overlooks the Hudson River and is decorated like a reproduction Swiss chalet. Although she believes women are better at crime solving than men, she employs several young men to do her paperwork.

Nora Noraker describes Madelyn's appearance upon first meeting her:  "I had vaguely imagined a masculine-appearing woman, curt of voice, sharp of feature, perhaps dressed in a severe tailor-made gown. I saw a young woman of maybe twenty-five, with red and white cheeks, crowned by a softly waved mass of dull gold hair, and a pair of vivacious grey-blue eyes that at once made one forget every other detail of her appearance."

As to her sleuthing philosophy, Madelyn herself says, "I work out my problems just as I would work out a problem in mathematics, only instead of figures I deal with human motives. A detective is always given certain known factors, and I keep building them up, or subtracting them, as the case may be, until I know that the answer must be correct."

The five tales included in the volume are "The Man with Nine Lives"; "The Missing Bridegroom"; "Cinderella's Slipper"; "The Bullet From Nowhere"; and "The Purple Thumb." The stories and plots aren't as imaginative as Arthur Conan Doyle's, and there is some racism that pops in (not overtly, but as in the case of woman who was suspect because she was a "mulatto"). Still, the stories were entertaining enough to spawn two silent films, The Riddle of the Green Umbrella and The Riddle of the Tin Soldier, both starring Alice Joyce as Madelyn Mack.

Comments

[Todd Mason]

I wonder if a more colorblind adaptation of these stories might not fly today, in the wake of the MISS FISHER series...I'd not heard of her, nor her model, though I do remember a married team behind THE DETECTIVE in a vague way...and am amused as an acquaintance of acquaintances of comic actress Mary Holland (perhaps currently most visible in Patrick Stewart's sitcom BLUNT TALK).

Happy new year!

[BV Lawson]

An interesting thought, Todd - and now that you've mentioned it, some Hollywood type will see this, and you'll probably see an adaptation soon. :-)

Happy New Year to you, too!