Death Likes It Hot is the last book in a short series of three mysteries about a publicist who also ends up investigating murders. The author was Edgar Box; later it was revealed that this was a pseudonym used by Gore Vidal. This book is set in the Hamptons and was published in 1954.
This is the first book I read for the 1954 Club, hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings.
Peter Cutler Sargeant II is young, around 30, and has his own public relations agency in New York City. He is an amateur sleuth whose involvement in crime solving is mostly accidental. But by this third book in the series he is fairly well known for his prowess in that area.
In this book he has been invited to spend a weekend in the Hamptons by a society woman who wants to discuss a possible job. There are a few other people staying there at the same time: her niece and the niece's husband, a well-known artist; a woman who writes books and has a column in a magazine; a brother and sister who are very close, acting almost like a married couple. The niece dies shortly after he arrives, while swimming in the ocean, in full view of all the guests. The death is suspicious but is it murder?
I also have an omnibus edition published in 2010 with introductions for each book by Gore Vidal. The introductions are very interesting. Gore Vidal was unable to get his books reviewed by the New York Times for several years in the early fifties, which severely curtailed his income. A publisher talked him into writing a few mysteries using a pseudonym, and the Peter Sergeant series was the result. And the books did keep him afloat financially for quite a while.
How did this book reflect its time?
There was definitely sexism in male attitudes toward women, which is normal for books written in the 1950s, but there were also intelligent and interesting female characters whose lives were not centered on finding a man and being taken care of.
Also, I noted that both of the books I read for the 1954 Club were about people with a comfortable life style. Obviously people who live in the Hamptons, even at that time, were rich, and most of their friends and guests were also well-to-do. The books I chose were mystery novels and I think there was a tendency at that time for the stories to center around the rich or those with comfortable means. Certainly a majority of the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout and the Agatha Christie novels bear that out. Not that I ever had any objection to that; I don't mind at all reading about lifestyles that are very different than mine.
Opinions:
The following paragraph is from a review in 1001 Midnights (1986, ed. Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller).
Clever deductions, fair play with the reader, and the Christie-Queen bag of tricks are not Vidal’s strong points. But his mastery of the language permeates even these mysteries that he himself shrugs off as potboilers cranked out for money, and his tone of cynical, good-humored tolerance toward an America populated exclusively by crooks, opportunists, and buffoons is as close to the true spirit of H. L. Mencken as mystery fiction is ever likely to see.
For myself, I would say that I enjoyed the plot and the picture of the Hamptons in 1954. Peter Sergeant is a pleasant and intelligent sleuth. In this book he was just as interested in making connections with his friend, Liz Bessemer, as he was in solving the crime. It was not the best mystery I ever read, but it was an entertaining story.
I know very little about Gore Vidal. After reading this book I am interested in trying some books by him aside from the mysteries, but I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions are welcome.
From what I have read about the books in the series, this last one is the best one. I still plan to read the first two books. The first one, Death in the Fifth Position, is set in a dance company and the ballet world, and that sounds especially interesting.
Also see this post by Curtis Evans at The Passing Tramp on Death Likes It Hot, with links to other posts about the earlier books in the series.
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Publisher: Vintage Books, 1979 (orig. pub. 1954)
Length: 184 pages
Format: Paperback
Series: Peter Cutler Sergeant II, #3
Setting: New York, The Hamptons
Genre: Mystery
Source: Purchased at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, 2013.
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