Signet used to have an annoying habit of publishing 2-in-1 volumes of Ellery Queen - the annoyance being that while one would be a *real* Ellery Queen (featuring the eponymous character), the other usually wouldn't, as in this case. However, as my range has expanded somewhat, these "other" novels have started looking pretty good. Here I'll only review _Wife or Death_, since the system doesn't seem to have any entries for its appearances as a stand-alone book - this review's rating is for that book alone.

Jim Denton, as editor of his hometown's only newspaper, may have all the news that's fit to print, but he's well aware that the local gossips have all the rest, true or not, especially about his wife, Angel. Although her face is as childishly innocent as her name, she likes putting her gorgeous body on display during the country club costume party - not that it holds any secrets for most of the men there. What innocence she has is that of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks - believing that she's kept the whole town from knowing about her promiscuity, and even making herself believe in the great career in show business she left for Denton (only he knows that she was a stripper). The only surprise when the conversation turns to divorce on the way home from the party is that *Angel* wants out - her boredom with life in a small town would hardly lead her to another man in Denton's circle, and she's got nowhere to go if she doesn't go with someone. (The real mystery to the reader might well be why Denton didn't kick her out long ago, but it's believable from what we see of his character - he's the viewpoint character, though not in first person).

So when Denton wakes up the next morning to find her gone with a farewell note, he's only annoyed that they didn't finish thrashing out the details - and mildly surprised that her Lothario told her only to bring a small suitcase: most of her stuff was left behind. Rather than make the breakup public property, he covers her departure by saying she left on a visit - which backfires spectacularly when she's found shot dead some time later in the woods. Worse, Denton doesn't know who her most recent conquest was - the man she left him for, who killed her. And if life wasn't tough enough, the last-but-one was the District Attorney, who's so fixated on Denton as a killer that if Denton doesn't solve the murder himself, he's going to be in *real* trouble.

This is actually a pretty good novel, and almost spends more time on how Denton is coping with the murder, the town's conviction that he did it, and which of his friends are fair-weather than with the murder itself. (When the mortician asks him for the names of intimates of the deceased as pallbearers, he's human enough to indulge in a little revenge, for instance.)

_The Black Hearts Murder_ is the second Mike McCall mystery (the others are _The Campus Murders_ and _The Blue Movie Murders_), all of which were first published between 1969 and 1972. The Troubleshooter series was created to address contemporary issues, so they're period pieces just as surely as the earliest Queen books, just of a different time.

An important point about the McCall stories is that they were supervised and edited by the real 'Ellery Queen', Fred Dannay and Manfred Lee, rather than written solely by them. Each was written with a different co-author, in this case Richard Deming, who also worked with the Queen team on several Tim Corrigan mysteries. The style, like those of several Ellery Queen books in the latter 1960s featuring the Queen name as author but not star character, the style and format aren't and don't pretend to be those of the double-EQ stories.

Rather than an amateur with police collections like Ellery-the-character, or a homicide cop like Corrigan, McCall is the governor's personal troubleshooter. He's an active rather than cerebral hero - he passed the Illinois bar before he twigged to the fact that apprentice lawyering is a desk job; he's been both a marine and a PI; and unlike EQ, he gets involved in hot pursuit and in fist-fights. He falls a little flat for me, because he's thrown into so much prominence in the story that other characters are sometimes under-utilized, although that can be justified in context.

The core situation is that a militant black activist in Banbury, Harlan James, the head of an organization called the Black Hearts, is about to be tried on charges alleging that he's been both teaching and preaching terrorism: teaching bomb-making, and directing the use of bombs against businesses with discriminatory hiring practices. However, the local mayor - 84-year-old Potter, who's retiring - has privately let governor Holland know that he believes James is being framed, and that the local DA, "that weasel Volper", is *trying* to promote race trouble to swing the next mayoral election to Horton, the reactionary candidate. For the governor's preferred candidate is Jerome Duncan, state president of the NAACP, and although Duncan's expected to carry the African-American electorate, he needs a certain percentage of the middle-class white vote to win - and James' previous endorsement is doing more harm than good.

McCall's mission is to defuse the situation before it sparks mob violence. To Holland's credit, he's more concerned about averting a bloodbath than retaining the Banbury vote during his own upcoming election. McCall arrives in Banbury an hour before James' trial opens - or rather, would have opened, if James had appeared rather than jumping bail and sending inflammatory messages, some by messenger, to every local media outlet. ('Inflammatory' depends on point-of-view, though; James' one-track spiel basically boils down to that of Sean Connery's tough-cop character in the Untouchables: when you get hit, hit back harder.)

Good characterization, with some realistic points. Most of the Black Hearts organization has no time for the white McCall, no matter what his credentials. Although the racist police chief is in the crooked DA's pocket, the rest of the police department contains good cops, cops that might be good if they didn't fly off the handle, and so on; McCall points out that some of their tactics in handling James' sister and second-in-command would undermine any conviction the cops might be able to get, and he arranges to tip off both the press and James' lawyer before strong-arm tactics go too far. Two judges appear, only the one assigned to the James case being worth his robe; the other's notorious for racist sentencing policies. Horton's campaign manager runs a local radio station, and both he and his candidate have *some* sense about defusing mob violence when it's up close and personal rather than abstract.

The authors' love-interest efforts backfire, as far as I'm concerned. McCall being a ladies' man is all very well, but dropping his urgent assignment to spend his evenings socializing makes him look irresponsible rather than dashing, although that clearly wasn't the writers' intent. The impression is countered somewhat, since he takes his 2nd date, policewoman Beth McKenna, to a Horton union rally to better size up the DA's trouble-making element - only for Horton to be shot dead, apparently from the audience, at the beginning of his speech. (Don't be impressed by McKenna - in the face of the shooting when McCall prods her to call in, she refuses, saying she's really only a secretary. There are basically 5 other women characters herein: Laurel, the mayor's secretary, another notch on McCall's gun; James' sister, who has more sense under police interrogation than James' second-in-command, LeRoy Rawlings; Rawlings' wife, who has little to say; Rawlings' elderly, friendly mother; and reporter Maggie Kirkpatrick. Rawlings' mother and Maggie are the strongest of the bunch, and Maggie's mostly a prop, representing the only friendly newspaper in town.)

Layers upon layers of possible motives appear, if the reader asks, who benefits? For instance, in the aftermath of the murder, each extreme opposition leader has been effectively removed from the board, Horton through murder and James as a fugitive, elevating each second-in-command to de facto leadership. Horton's murder began a backlash among his union support, but if followed out to its extreme end in white mob violence, would have graphically demonstrated the hollowness of the Horton platform's law-and-order plank - to the opposition's ultimate benefit. On the other hand, James' periodic recordings sent to the local radio stations deny his involvement, but their open hostility - opening with an insult to the judge assigned to hear his case, no less - isn't doing his cause much good.

Lee edited the first two McCall mysteries and part of the third, Dannay taking over _The Blue Movie Murders_ after Lee's death in 1972. Possibly because the McCall series was more Lee's project than Dannay's, _The Blue Movie Murders_ was the last Mike McCall mystery.