Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield

A Writer's Crimes Of Passion

By OTTO PENZLER | February 7, 2007

"Dead Horse" by Walter Satterthwait (McMillan, 182 pages, $30), is a lousy title for a terrific mystery novel, enhanced by an enticing dust jacket that reproduces an early issue of "Black Mask," the greatest pulp magazine of them all.

The story begins on May 26, 1935, with the death of a famous socialite, Emily Davies Vanderbilt Thayer Whitfield. Although separated, she was still married to Raoul Whitfield, one of the most famous mystery writers in America at the time: a prolific contributor to pulp magazines, author of several crime novels and numerous books and stories about the newly blossoming and exciting world of flying.

The death was instantly ruled a suicide, though Sheriff Tom Delgado thinks it odd that a right-handed woman would choose to shoot herself on her left side, just below the rib cage. Go ahead, try it. It's not impossible, but it sure seems like a lot of unnecessary trouble when the heart or the head requires less of a contortionist act.

"Dead Horse," the name of the Whitfields' ranch, makes the homespun sheriff scratch his head.

The dashing Whitfield is a tall, handsome pilot, extremely wellpaid for his stories and, by all accounts, possesses exceptional charm, his circle of friends and acquaintances extending to socialites, writers, and aviators.

When he meets Emily Thayer in Paris, he has been married to Prudence Whitfield for 10 years. He is quickly smitten by the beauty and she falls just as hard and fast for the sophisticated author. Their wild, outrageously romantic courtship is so beautifully evoked it will make you want to take your wife to Paris, too, though you probably couldn't fly your own plane, as Raoul does.

Married almost immediately, they move to New Mexico, where Emily's wealth gives them the freedom to throw extravagant parties, travel, and indulge their decadent lifestyle. As his drinking, already of mythic stature, increases, Whitfield's ability to produce coherent prose remains merely a promise and the idyllic marriage is scarred at first by tiny fissures, then a cataclysmic earthquake.

It's name is Lois Bell, a pretty, 19-year-old barmaid. Raoul and his lawyer walk into her joint one night, moving toward her "with the stiff, precise walk that men used when they were hiding the big fat secret that they were bombed."

Drunk, male, and stupid, Raoul takes an opportunity he should have let go and gets caught when an anonymous phone call brings Emily to Lois's house, where she finds Raoul less than fully clothed. The heartbroken Emily throws her husband out. His entreaties go unheeded, and he moves to California, returning to the inherited ranch upon news of Emily's death. And little Lois, right there to comfort him, soon becomes the third Mrs. Whitfield. A year-long, around-the-world trip, and continued dissipation, inevitably follow.

During all the fun, Sheriff Tom, offended by the cover-up, remains on the case and relentlessly pursues Raoul. After being gently provoked by the lawman, Raoul irritably tells him, "I'm a writer. I've been inventing people like you for over 20 years. Cops, cons, private detectives. Shrewd country sheriffs. There's nothing you can say — nothing — that I haven't already put into someone's mouth."

Delgado's unceasing detective work pays off with a stunning conclusion to the saga.

Mr. Satterthwait has used real historical characters before in his mysteries, notably Oscar Wilde in "Wilde West," slightly less plausibly than Whitfield in the current book, and convincingly in "Miss Lizzie" with astute observations and deductions on the notorious Lizzie Borden murder case.

Most of the characters in "Dead Horse" are real, and the chronology of their lives is more or less accurate. It's a novel, however, not a biography, so the reasonable solution to the mystery confronting Sheriff Delgado — a fictional — character) may not be historically accurate.

Mr. Satterthwait has brought the neglected Whitfield to full life, painting a bright portrait of a man whose carnal appetites cut short his career, much as they did his old pal Dashiell Hammett.

Booze and women. Women and booze. The yellow bricks that built a road away from the typewriter for those talented old scribblers. One wonders if, at the end, they thought it was a fair trade.