“Let’s face it,” said Varallo. “People in real life aren’t half as smart as the people in books. It just doesn’t work that way.”


In this case, however, the alibi has been borrowed from a book! A year after releasing Case Pending under her Dell Shannon moniker, the book which launched the decade-spanning and groundbreaking Luis Mendoza police procedural, Elizabeth Linington, writing as Lesley Egan this time out, introduced Vic Varallo in A Case for Appeal. This book was actually the start of her Jesse Falkenstein series. Though connected in a crossover way, the series were also distinct and separate. The actual first entry in the Vic Varallo series is The Borrowed Alibi, and it’s terrific! Those who loved mystery and crime bought and read everything Linington wrote, regardless of the name she chose to write under, and this book is a splendid example of why she was so popular.

Thirty-three-year-old Vic Varallo, a tall and muscular cop with Northern Italian blood running through his veins has resigned from his post as Police Captain in the small town of Contera. One of the reasons is because he has seen an innocent woman be tried and convicted. The other is because Vic has just married brown-haired and lovely, twenty-nine-year-old Laura. Even as a patrolman, Vic knows the money he’ll make in a bigger city will help out the struggling but very much in love newlyweds.

Vic lands in Glendale, California, beneath the San Fernando Mountains. In order to help the couple along until Vic can get promoted and stop wearing a uniform — a bit humiliating considering his twelve years of experience — Vic and Laura fix up a room above the garage to rent out. As Vic and Laura settle in domestically, they become acquainted with their new tenant and decide he’s a good egg. But then there’s a murder, and it looks like Ross Duncan, their new tenant, had every reason to kill his ex-wife…

No one ever blended the cozy mystery, puzzle solving type of crime with the police procedural in the way Linington did with such ease — at least to the reader. The domestic side is wonderfully done in this one. The reader not only likes Vic and Laura, but Linington imbues a warmth and realistic feel to their marriage, circa the early 1960s. The house they’ve bought had a huge and beloved rose garden where the previous owner grew exotic and prize roses. Somehow, thanks to a sense of obligation at first, and then a love for them, Vic becomes just as keen on keeping up the roses as the deceased former owner of the house. Laura can barely believe it, but jokes that if a man like Vic is going to have a hobby, it’s a safer one than other women. It’s all very domestic and fun, and what’s more, Linington makes it feel natural.

Equally natural is the couple’s struggle to make ends meet, and Vic’s early suspicions about his genial but oddly hermit-like new tenant, Ross Duncan. Vic learns that the insurance salesman had been taken to the cleaners by an ex-wife from Hades, and has no life because he can’t afford one. But then Ross meets a wonderful girl named Susan, and Linington shines. She makes the reader empathize with the desperate Ross Duncan, who knows that no matter how hard he tries, no matter how much he loves the sweet and levelheaded Susan, the poverty brought upon him by his ex has destroyed any future they might have together.

“He lay still in the dark. He thought, I could kill her.”

And suddenly she’s dead, murdered. No matter how Vic and his friend, Sgt. O’Connor look at it, everything points to Ross. A pen left at the scene, and then a wrench that bludgeoned her to death found in Ross’s old car. But Vic knows that thinking about killing, and carrying out a murder, are two different things entirely. It is at this juncture that Linington shows that not all cops are the same. The detective in charge, Lt. King, only sees an open and shut case. He’s a good cop, with years of experience, but he has no imagination, no intuitiveness. But Vic does, and so does Sgt. Charles O’Connor. What cinches it as a frame-job for Vic, is that it so closely resembles the Wallace case, an old British crime written about by Dorothy L. Sayers in a 1935 book, The Anatomy of a Crime. Knowing someone has done a number on his tenant and proving it, however, is problematic, especially since Vic is only a patrolman. Lt. King has all the evidence he needs to charge and convict Ross.

It becomes a wonderful puzzle to solve, with the girl Ross loves, and Vic’s wife, Laura, also becoming involved. Because Linington has made so much of this realistic, the reader doesn’t even question how these cozier mystery elements are highly improbable. Other crimes, including a triple homicide, pull O’Conner away from the case, and with quite a number of suspects, but no evidence, it’s a race to see if Vic, Laura and Susan can figure out who killed the awful woman before Ross is tried and convicted. There is charm and fun, and a little danger as the clock ticks. Vic is a cop who knows that the innocent can sometimes be convicted, but he keeps after it until he figures out who borrowed the clues, and the alibi, from that old book from 1935.

Whereas so many writers felt restricted by a series — or perhaps, and more likely, found the challenge too daunting — Linington not only embraced it, she flourished within her various series; the quantity and quality of her output is truly staggering. She had Luis Mendoza, a wildly popular series which ran for decades, Vic Varallo, the Ivor Maddox and Sue Carstairs mysteries, and the Jesse Falkenstein series. All were solid, enjoyable mysteries extremely popular with crime and mystery lovers for many, many years. If you enjoy a really good cozy, the domestic blended with police and crime, I can’t recommend The Borrowed Alibi highly enough. ( )