“The Bronze Mermaid” by Paul Ernst. An early paperback
from Pennant Books by pulp author Paul Ernst. Ernst was the author of THE
AVENGER series under the Kenneth Robeson house name. With the pulp magazines
drying up, he moved into the paperback field with modern mysteries. In “The
Bronze Mermaid” our protagonist is Sam Cates, an ex Marine now working as an
insurance adjuster for Home Protection Insurance Company. Previously, he had
handled the case of the home robbery involving the Duysberg diamond and other
jewelry. In that case, the police had found the niece of Senator Keppert tied
up and gagged, and the safe robbed. Cates investigated, and figured it was an
inside job, and believed the niece to be involved, but without enough evidence,
the insurance paid off. Now, several months later, Cates is leaving a French
café in New York when he spots a young girl walking down the street. She looks
familiar, so he follows her out of curiosity. When she enters the Club 50, a
run-down nightclub, he steps in behind her, coming face to face with Ellen
Keppert, the suspicious niece in the jewel robbery. She accuses him of following
her, and then hires him as an escort, and they enter the club. After excusing
herself for a few minutes, someone calls the police about a murder, and the
girl is again a suspect. Cates finds the Duysberg diamond in his pocket, and
knows the girl slipped it in after he had been searched. So the new murder is
tied in with the old jewel robbery, and his suspicion of the niece is
heightened even more as the number one suspect.
A clue is a bronze mermaid gift from Sea City, a resort and vacation
town. I’m not sure how many novels Paul Ernst wrote after the moving from pulps
to paperback/hardbacks, but this was a very good modern mystery. Although
mystery lovers should be able to figure who the killer is right away, and it
lacked the fast, wild action of Paul Ernst’s earlier pulp stories. Still, it
was a good read.
