Book Review: But Not Forgotten | The Schemers by Ruth Fenisong
It’s time for another Ace Double paperback, this time a pair of mysteries by Ruth Fenisong (1904-1978). She’s best known for her Lieutenant Gridley Nelson series, but he’s barely in the first, and the other is independent.
But Not Forgotten
Leo Socarus is a punk, in 1960 Greenwich Village, long before the music movement turned that word into a badge of honor. Yes, he had a disadvantaged background, but other boys with single mothers and grinding poverty made better choices. When Leo was twelve, the gang he ran with got into an altercation that killed a ten-year-old named Tommy. The rest of the gang got the death penalty, but due to his youth and an impassioned lawyer, Leo got off with five years in juvenile detention.
But Leo learned all the wrong lessons in juvie. Now that he’s out, he’s discovered that he has no taste for honest work, but he’s good at talking other teenagers into bad decisions. He’s got an offer to be a distributor of smut and pot to high schoolers, but needs seed money to get started. The people he’s wanting to work for don’t give credit.
Ellin Walters is a fairly recent college graduate, and an even more recent orphan. Her father ran a bookstore, which she has inherited and plans to run, as she used to help do when he was alive. A kindly man, Mr. Walters allowed the neighborhood boys to use a back room as a clubhouse, helping them keep out of trouble. Her best male friend, who’d like to be more, young banker Kit Emery thinks maybe a young single woman shouldn’t be inviting trouble that way.
Leo sees Ellin as a soft-hearted sap and has already figured out how to get into the stop’s storeroom through the back as a place to stash his contraband. Now he just needs to charm her into giving him a couple hundred dollars to put him on his feet.
Ellin’s neighbor across the hall is a nasty shock for Leo. Eva Walters is, as it happens, Tommy’s mother. Still a handsome woman, she’s spent the years since his death as a walking corpse, frozen in her grief. The coincidental appearance of Leo restarts her forward motion. After she invites the punk in, and Leo realizes he’s trapped in her apartment, he prevaricates and claims there’s an extra gang member who was never prosecuted, the one who actually killed Tommy. Leo claims to be digging up evidence, he just needs a couple of hundred dollars to grease some palms.
Mrs. Walters isn’t entirely convinced, but decides to play along a bit to consider the best method of revenge. She says she doesn’t have the money right now, but if Leo can prove what he’s saying is true…
After his escape, Leo tries his original plan of soft-soaping Ellin, only to blow his chances by going into her pocketbook when her back is turned, and then deciding she might be into him and enjoy a little hanky-panky. Ellin is not into Leo, and does not react well to hanky-panky. Kit drops by and frog marches Leo out of the building.
Leo drops out of sight, and Ellin concentrates on her shop and the more sensible boys’ troubles. That is, until Leo’s shirt shows up in the storeroom, bloody, but with no sign of the actual boy.
And Mrs. Walters is acting very oddly. Is she hiding a murder, or planning one? Is Leo still alive, and where is he? And what is Kit up to?
This is less of a mystery than a crime thriller. The reader has considerably more information than Ellin, so the solution to the disappearance is easily figured out. It’s more interesting in the characters and their motivations.
Mrs. Walters is especially notable here. She’s sex-negative, having only put up with having husbands to first conceive Tommy and then help raise him. She was over-doting, and it’s heavily implied that Tommy was up to no good when Leo’s gang ran into him. Her desire for revenge twists her into an evil matriarch.
While the problem of juvenile delinquency is one of the themes, it’s shown that some of the at-risk boys are basically decent fellows who just need a little guidance or compassion.
Content note: murder, attempted sexual assault, mentions of pornography and illegal drugs. Leo is implied to have had underage sex.
The Schemers
The story opens with two people in a boat trying to figure out how to get rid of a corpse. Then we go back in time to see how things end up this way.
Diane “Dee” Fowler was born about fifteen years after her older brother and sister Jerry and Irene. Shortly after her birth, her mother managed to get a divorce from her less than stellar husband and fled with Dee. She married another man and Dee was very happy with her loving mother and stepfather. But a decade ago, her birth father died, and as a final act of spite, named Jerry and Irene Dee’s legal guardians in his will.
Jerry is clever in a low way, and managed to trick a court into giving him and Irene full custody of their little sister. They’ve been destroying the letters sent in both directions and otherwise isolating Dee while draining her trust fund for Jerry’s get rich quick schemes.
Dee is nineteen now, still two years away from being able to legally leave her siblings’ guardianship. But another will changes the status quo. Their paternal grandmother has left them a decent amount of money and a villa in a seaside village near Genoa, Italy. Jerry went ahead to investigate. It turns out the Fascists had taken over the estate during World War Two and turned it into a resort for poor but fanatical underlings, with five minimum level cottages to stay in, while the favored ones got to use the villa.
Jerry had a brainstorm. While waiting for the lawyer to untangle matters enough for him to get all the money, he advertised the cottages in technically true but misleading language so he could rent them out for quick cash. By the time Dee and Irene arrive, the tenants are quite disgruntled. Irene praises her brother’s ingenuity, but Dee finds it appalling.
While traveling to Italy, Dee finally managed to get one of her stepfather’s letters, letting her know that her mother is ill. She is thrilled to learn she hasn’t been forgotten, and wants to get away to see her real family, but how to escape when she’s completely dependent on her guardians? Plus, tempers are running high, both with the tenants, and the locals that Jerry has managed to tick off. Who will snap first?
Jerry and Irene are despicable characters, self-centered, controlling, and given to insinuating the worst of others. By the time Dee finds out just how badly Jerry has deceived her this time, she is no longer able to feel surprise. We are, however, introduced to Mr. Crawley, a wealthy “promoter” who may be an even worse person. Everyone in the story except Jerry and Irene considers him an abomination, and Jerry is only interested in Crawley’s money for investment purposes.
To be honest, Dee’s a pinball protagonist who just reacts to situations and none of her actions wind up going anywhere. She’s more important as a catalyst whose presence influences other people’s actions. Dee’s got a paper-thin ingenue personality and is a bit of a damp washcloth who’d rather be asleep most of the time. The quirky tenants and vile landlords do much more to make the story interesting.
And again, this is less of a mystery than a crime thriller.
Content note: Murder, Dee’s birth father is emotionally abusive and Jerry & Irene take after him, Mr. Crawley is more actively abusive and highly racist. (Two of the tenants are in a mixed marriage.) Jerry and Irene abuse alcohol. Insinuations are made about extramarital sex, but they are almost certainly false. Ethnic prejudice against Italians.
There are some odd moments where women seem really taken with other women’s beauty. Ruth Fenisong herself had a female “lifetime companion”, so this might be a tell.
Neither of these novels is currently in print, but I understand that the first four Gridley books are now available from a small press, and are more properly set up as mysteries. This volume may be findable at the better used bookstores, and is pretty interesting.
