Bite the Hand / Death of the Party

BITE THE HAND

Alix comes to Gridley Nelson as a neighbor more than a policeman—their children are friends. She is being blackmailed over an indiscretion that occurred early in her marriage. Captain Nelson is in charge of Homicide so he shuttles her problem over to a colleague, who quickly determines that it is her husband Richard who is doing the blackmailing. This doesn’t jibe with Nelson’s take on the husband, but the evidence does point to him. Then Richard is struck by a taxi in a hit-and-run accident. That’s when Nelson meets Lilith, Alix’s friend, who comes to her rescue when Richard is whisked off to the hospital. However, Nelson suspects that this hit-and-run was planned, and that the real victim here might not be Alix… but Richard himself.

DEATH OF THE PARTY

It’s a snowy night, and while walking the streets after a terrific argument with his girlfriend, Matt is knocked down by a car. The driver insists on taking him with her. She drops him off at a doctor’s office where there is a party going on. Avoiding the merriment, Matt finds himself in a back room where there is a body laid out. But this body did not die of natural causes. There is a scalpel plunged into his chest. And when Matt tries to alert the partygoers, they accuse him of being the murderer! After all, they were all friends of the deceased. What motive could they have? To the cops it looks open and shut. Only Gridley Nelson doubts Matt’s guilt. But who could have killed the late, lamented partygoer—and why?

Ruth Fenisong was born Ruth Feinsong on April 29, 1904 in New York City, the child of Jewish immigrants. During the Thirties she was employed by the Federal Theater Project, writing and staging plays, often with a Leftist slant. Fenisong began her mystery career during World War II with Murder Needs a Name, featuring Lieutenant Gridley Nelson, the Princeton-educated son of an upscale family who decides he wants to be a cop. Nelson was the hero of thirteen mysteries by Fenisong, written between 1942 and 1962. New York Times critic Anthony Boucher frequently praised her novels, singling Nelson out as a “quietly perceptive detective.” Fenisong lived for years in Greenwich Village with her life partner Kathleen Gallagher, an English teacher from Ireland, often traveling to Europe together and other locales together. Fenisong died in September 1978 in New York.