Cameron: Murder's Coming

Everybody in the mill town of Andor appeared to know that there was murder in the air. And if there had been any doubt about it, Pop Kramer’s Judgment-Day editorial in the local paper would have removed it. Pop liked to prophesy battle, murder, and sudden death anyhow, but with labor organizers in town threatening the despotic paternalism of Jared Wilton, it was a cinch that trouble was brewing. All the same, Abelard Voss wondered who had sent him a clipping of Pop’s editorial with a note which challenged him, as a criminologist, to come to Andor. The name signed to that note was A. V. Atkinson, and nobody in Andor knew any A. V. Atkinson. Mr. Cameron tells a swift and deadly story with driving speed and an unusual flair for characterization. Not only is Abelard Voss, that lanky beanpole of a young man, decidedly unlike the ordinary detective of fiction, but Pop Kramer, the ink-smudged and irrepressible printer is a magnificent foil to Voss. Jared Wilton, whose mill dominates the town as he dominates the lives of its citizens; Dorothea Wilton, his sister-in-law; Morgan, the unordained minister; Rossi, the strong-arm man, and a dozen other villagers of Andor play lively parts in the story of a town immersed in murder. . . . And Mr. Cameron knows how to tell a story.