Case Pending

May 1, 2020
Shannon, a pseudonym for prolific mystery writer Elizabeth Linnington, is widely credited with being the first female author of police procedurals, and this volume, originally published in 1960, launched her long-running Luis Mendoza series (38 installments). It is memorable for several reasons, not the least of which is the appearance of one of the first Latino detectives in the genre. Here he must solve two particularly brutal murders in L.A., committed years apart in different neighborhoods. Only Mendoza is convinced that the crimes were committed by the same person. In the manner of Ed McBain, whose 87th Precinct series the Mendoza novels resemble, Shannon provides both a wealth of investigatory detail (before the introduction of much forensic technology) and succinct but rich portrayals of Mendoza and his fellow cops. As Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden points out in her foreword, the text includes some stereotypes and language now deemed offensive, but, at the same time, Shannon's attempt to portray racial prejudice and the effects of poverty in L.A. was noteworthy for its time. A worthy reissue.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

June 8, 2020
First published in 1960, this series launch from Elizabeth Linington (1921–1988) writing as Dell Shannon was an Edgar finalist, but it hasn’t aged well. Los Angeles homicide lieutenant Luis Mendoza, one of the first fictional Latino detectives, fears that an unknown murderer has struck again. Six months after someone killed chambermaid Carol Brooks, damaging her left eye, 18-year-old window dresser Elena Ramirez is found dead with a similar wound. Mendoza and his team investigate, starting with Ramirez’s family and friends. That the killer’s identity is signaled early on limits suspense in a plot driven by following routine police procedures. Leslie Klinger’s informative introduction concedes that the author employs racial stereotypes, and Mendoza has groan-worthy attitudes toward women (he wonders whether a witness he’s attracted to might possess “that great rarity in a woman, a sense of humor”). This Library of Congress Crime Classics selection is more a curiosity than anything.

June 15, 2020
A follow-up to a case he shelved as unsolved six months ago sets the LAPD's Lt. Luis Mendoza on the trail of a double murderer in this reprint from 1960. This first procedural from the prolific and multibylined Elizabeth Linington (1921-1988), the pioneering writer who first brought a woman's eye to the genre in volumes published under her own name and the pseudonyms Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, and Egan O'Neill as well as Shannon, kicks off with waitress/seamstress Agnes Browne's discovery of a corpse in a vacant lot at the corner of Commerce and Humboldt. The victim, Elena Ramirez, has been strangled and battered so savagely that she's lost an eye--a detail that forcefully recalls the similar bludgeoning of hotel chambermaid Carol Brooks six months ago in East Los Angeles. Cursing himself for his failure to solve the earlier case in time to save her life, Mendoza is determined to close this one. But the challenges are serious. Agnes Browne is hiding a secret she's afraid to share; so is 13-year-old Martin Lindstrom, whose father is only the latest Angelino to desert his family; and Dick Morgan, another good cop, is being squeezed so hard by a blackmailer that he's seriously contemplating a murder of his own. The author dexterously solicits your sympathy for them all as she follows the natty Mendoza, who's beginning his long-lasting romance with Alison Weir, from one dead-end neighborhood to the next. Editor Leslie Klinger supplies a judicious introduction and a series of footnotes that explain period details, gloss Mendoza's sometimes fractured Spanish, and incongruously compare Mendoza to Klinger's deepest love, Sherlock Holmes. For all its limitations, fans and completists will find Shannon's debut novel unmissable--or well worth reading again.

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