“They approach the burlesque in their fun, but they never fail to amuse.”
+ Outlook 126:378 O 27 ’20 50w
COHEN, OCTAVUS ROY. Gray dusk. *$1.75 (2c) Dodd
20–2646
A detective story with scenes laid in South Carolina. Stanford Forrest and his bride had gone there for their honeymoon. Four days later David Carroll receives a telegram stating that Mary Forrest has been murdered, and that Stanford is held for the crime. With his assistant, Jim Sullivan, Carroll hastens to the scene of the tragedy. From the first he is prejudiced in favor of his friend, but Sullivan maintains his professional calm and stands ready to suspect everybody. There seems however to be no one to suspect but Stanford himself, against whom the circumstantial evidence is strong. But gradually others become implicated, Bennet Hemingway, who had written a slanderous letter, Conrad Heston, the man who had so mysteriously occupied Furness Lodge before the arrival of the Forrests, Esther Devarney who loves Heston, and Mart Farnam, the “swamp angel” with a weakness for “licker.” One of these is guilty and Carroll succeeds in finding the evidence that singles out this one.
“There are some good descriptions of the South Carolina ‘back country’ and a lack of objectionable thrills and horrors. The keen reader will be able to guess the solution.”
+ Booklist 16:311 Je ’20
“‘Gray dusk’ has two qualities that lift it out of the ruck into which books of its class usually fall. The first of these is a denouement that will catch five out of every six sophisticated readers off guard, and the second is the literary skill the author displays in the successful creation of an atmosphere that enhances his plot.”