Fletcher Flora's Leave Her To Hell

Leave Her To Hell is a private eye thriller by Fletcher Flora, published in 1958 by Avon. It’s an expanded version of a short story, Loose Ends, published that year in Manhunt magazine.

Fletcher Flora (1914-1968) is an often overlooked American pulp writer of the 50s and 60s. He wrote crime fiction, sleaze fiction and historical fiction. His output of short stories for various magazines was prodigious.

Percy Hand is a private detective with a reputation for being, by private detective standards, ethical. Faith Salem wants to hire him. Faith is the mistress of a rich man, Graham Markley, and she’s about to become his wife. Before she marries him she’d like to know what happened to his third wife, Constance. Faith and Constance had once shared an apartment but that’s not the reason for her interest. She knows the story of what happened to Constance and she’s not entirely satisfied with it.

Constance had been having an affair with a man named Regis Lawler. One evening Constance and Regis disappeared and neither has been heard from since. Of course it is assumed that they ran away together. Faith feels that the story leaves a few loose ends dangling and Percy Hand has to agree with her.

Regis Lawler’s brother Silas has a shady past and now he’s at best marginally respectable. He runs a gambling club and the games are reputed to be honest. He offers Percy five grand to drop the case, Percy refuses and gets beaten up. But he won’t drop the case.

Graham Markley also offers him money to drop the case, although this time the offer is not followed by a beating.

Percy gets some slightly interesting information from Silas’s mistress Robin. He gets a lot more from her than that. They spend a pleasant night together in bed.

He has picked up something that is not quite a lead but at least it’s the hint of a lead. There was a hit-run case shortly before Constance and Regis disappeared and someone was interested in that case and Percy wonders why. Most of all Percy wonders why a very disreputable private eye named Colly Alder is tailing him. Percy is even more puzzled when Colly asks him for a favour. It all seems quite innocent but it is very curious.

Percy decides to pay a visit to the nearby town of Amity. He has no idea whether he’ll find anything there but the name of that town just keeps popping up. He certainly finds something there.

Percy Hand is a likeable hero. He’s not a tough guy. He’s not lacking in guts but fistfights and gunfights are not his style at all. He’s more at home sitting and thinking things through than he is in a brawl.

This is only very very marginally noir fiction. It is moderately hardboiled. Essentially it’s just a murder mystery. You will probably find yourself being fairly convinced that a murder has taken place and you might have your suspicions as to the killer’s identity but while there has certainly been a crime it’s not quite the crime you expected it to be. And the interest here lies not in the crime itself or the identity of the criminal but in the reasons the crime was committed.

I would not call this a fair-play mystery but there are a few psychological clues.

My view is that when the solution to a murder mystery is revealed the most important thing is that that solution should be psychologically plausible. The reader should feel that the various players in the drama behaved in ways that were consistent with what we have been told about their personalities. That’s certainly the case with Leave Her To Hell. Despite one slightly far-fetched element the solution is entirely satisfying.

Flora’s prose is pleasing and witty and he has a good ear for dialogue.

Leave Her To Hell is a fine slightly hardboiled private eye murder mystery. Highly recommended.

Leave Her To Hell has been reprinted by Stark House in a Fletcher Flora triple-header paperback edition.

I’ve reviewed another Fetcher Flora novel, the lighthearted witty Killing Cousins.