Hildegarde Withers heads down Mexico way where the death in the
afternoon involves neither a matador nor a bull. Inspector Oscar Piper
is off on a junket to Mexico in the summer of 1937 (surrounded by a
bunch of Democrats, huffed Miss Withers) when a customs inspector on a
train headed for Mexico City sniffs a very potent bottle of cheap
perfume and promptly drops dead. Quite naturally, Oscar telegraphs
Hildegarde in Manhattan about the perfume and quite naturally Miss
Withers packs her bags and heads south of the border, figuring Oscar is
out of his depth if he has to rely on deductive reasoning rather than a
rubber hose. Why any of the occupants of the train should want to kill a
harmless Mexican customs inspector is so puzzling that everyone assumes
that the real intended victim is a self-made rich american woman who
seemingly has rededicated her life to shopping. Her husband ought to be
the prime suspect but he seems devoted to her, although he was spotted
giving cash to a pretty young redhead when he thought no one was
looking. Then there were the two American fast buck artists who figured
they could get rich buying up all the gasoline-powered generators in
Mexico on the eve of a strike by utility workers. They looked especially
guilty when their shady, double-crossing associate - a somewhat
accomplished ladies' man - becomes the second person to die. A blue
banderilla, usually used to slow bulls down, is driven through his back
during a Sunday afternoon bullfight in Mexico City. Miss Withers borrows
a technique from Sherlock Holmes himself to show that a banderilla makes
for a lousy murder weapon, a conclusion also reached by a rather odd
young Mexican man whose English seems to come and go. First published in
1937, this lighthearted mystery displays all the charm that made Miss
Withers Anthony Boucher's favorite female sleuth as well as a favorite
of moviegoers during the early days of the talkies.
