Achieve Gentle Murderer Crafted By Dorothy Salisbury Davis Listed As Paper Copy

found this one a bit of a chore to get through, The initial premise and opening chapter were decent, but there was not enough of a mystery aspect to the story to keep me entertained, I especially did not enjoy the chapters from the murderer's point of view, At best they were a drag, and at worst they were slightly disturbing,

I also found the amount of footnotes in this Library of Congress edition to be distracting, and mostly unnecessary, Until I read her obituary in the NY Times a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Now, after reading "A Gentle Murderer," I look forward to reading many more of her books, It's so nice to discover a "new" writer, even though she'll write no more, Synopsis: Father Duffy sits in a confessional listening to a distraught young man who speaks of a dead woman and a hammer, This hardcover is the first Gregg Press edition of a paperback published by Bantam Books in,

The book contains a new introduction by Ms, Davis.

Anthony Boucher called this book "one of the best detective stories of modern times, "

Dorothy Margaret Salisbury Davis April,August,, This was her second book, A Gentle Murderer begins with formulaic words of a confession, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned, ” and did he. Father Duffy has heard it several times that night, but as his shift of listening to confessions nears the end, he hears the most extraordinary confession, a confession to murder.
The confessing man is tortured by what he has done, but Father Duffy cannot get him to go to the police,

Ecclesiastical detectives have been around a long time, but Father Duffy is no allknowing Father Brown, Father Duffy is more allquestioning, His questions lead him to a possible suspect and he tries to find him by going to his home town and to the preseminary boarding school he attended.
He finds the psychological origins of the crime, leading with compassion and a growing certainty that the man will kill again, that he is driving my psychological monsters,

Meanwhile, the police are investigating and it begins to seem as though the police and Father Duffy are in a race to find the killer, Though can it be a race when they are not aware of the race they are in



This is a good mystery, Its fair. We learn what they investigators learn when they learn it, Father Duffy was a bit of a cipher though, I often wondered what he thought he was doing and going to do when and if he found the murderer, He could not force him to go to the police, He cant tell anyone, though in a way, I wondered if he were treading past the line, Still, I wanted them to find him before he killed one or both of the women in the boarding house where he resided, There was real tension and jeopardy that was satisfying,

I received an egalley of A Gentle Murderer from the publisher through NetGalley

A Gentle Murderer at Poisoned Pen Press Sourcebooks
Dorothy Salisbury Davis

sitelink wordpre EXCERPT: It was after nine o'clock and neither side of the confessional was occupied, The priest sat in semidarkness, his body stiff and aching, with his hand on his breviary, He was waiting for perhaps one tardy penitent, as a child watches for one last drop from a turnedoff faucet, He smiled at himself for the stubbornness that kept him waiting there, sweatsoaked, for just one more, That was greed of a sort, Through the open window above him, the August heat rolled in like a fat old man, and settled with him in the cubicle, It brought the smell of dust, bus exhaust, frankfurters and tobacco smoke, He would have liked a cigarette, . . ten minutes more. He held his watch to the dim, curtained light: nine twentythree, In a brief hush in the flow of traffic down Ninth Avenue someone called: 'Goodnight, Father, '

ABOUT 'A GENTLE MURDERER': On a hot Saturday night in Manhattan, Father Duffy sits in a confessional, growing alarmed as he listens to the voice of a distraught young man who speaks of bloody hair and a dead woman and a compulsion to do things with a hammer that he does not understand.
Before the priest can persuade the man to confess to the police, the killer flees, still clutching the hammer,

The next day, Father Duffy learns that a highclass call girl on the East Side has been savagely murdered, and no suspect has been found, As he searches for the disturbed young man who he fears will kill again, cerebral New York Police detective Sergeant Ben Goldsmith takes the lead in the investigation of the callgirl murder, racing against the clock to catch a very clever killer who, when enraged, cannot control his need to swing a hammer.


MY THOUGHTS: A Gentle Murderer was published in thes, It took me a wee bit to settle into, but then I found myself quite enjoying it, Its not quite a murdermystery as we meet the murderer, one Timothy Brandon, making his confession early in the book, but its the police and the Priest to whom he confessed trying to ascertain just who he is, and then trying to find him, that provides the entertainment.


Dorothy Salisbury Davis excels with her characterisation, Father Duffy is a wonderful priest, a man with compassion but also a sense of justice, Having had an unknown man confess to murder, he is unable to just leave it there, He feels a need, a compulsion, to find that man and guide him to do the right thing,

Meanwhile, detectives are also seeking this man, with even less information to go on than Father Duffy, When their paths cross and their information is pooled progress starts to be made,

Concurrent to the police and priest's investigations, we are privy to the life of Tim Brandon, poet and handyman, We learn his backstory and, somewhat worryingly, live through his current circumstances, He is a man with strong moral principles, ones that he finds himself unable to live up to,

A Gentle Murderer is, in places, a strange read, and I occasionally felt baffled and bewildered, needing to read some parts more than once,

I liked, but did not love, A Gentle Murderer,

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AGentleMurderer NetGalley

I: DorothySalisburyDavis poisonedpenpress

T: DorothySalisburyDavis PPPress

THE AUTHOR: Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic.
The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs, Norris Mysteries and the Julie Hayes Mysteries three historical novels and numerous short stories she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.


DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of A Gentle Murderer by Dorothy Salisbury Davis for review, All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions,

I'm always a bit wary when I read a highly praised golden age mystery and this one is quite famouse, It wasn't my first novel by this author and it's always a hitormiss with her stories,
This one was original, gripping, and well plotted and I enjoyed it,
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine My mother's shelves held the works of so many of the greatest women mystery writers of the Golden Age, authors she read as they were first published.
She treasured them and so do I, I became an avid mystery reader because of her collection, It was a pleasure to revisit A Gentle Murderer, For me it has

aged well, Her talented writing gave us the concept of knowing the identity of the killer from the start we have Columbo, She was a Grand Master of MWA and a founding member of Sisters in Crime,
With A Gentle Murderer the reader follows three points of view, There is the priest who hears the killer's confession but is bound by the seal of the confessional, He sets out to locate the killer and convince him to turn himself in to the police, There is the police detective who searches for the killer by following the victims contacts, The third is the killer himself, As the priest and the detective cross paths tension builds as the killer sets out to kill again,
The plotting and the writing are masterful, If you are used to a faster pace treat yourself to this psychological mystery with its slower pace, Your reading time will be well spent,
My thanks to the publisher Poisoned Pen Press and to NetGalley for giving me an advance copy in exchange for my honest review, A priest hears a young mans confession of murder and is deeply troubled, When he finds out that the young man did murder a woman, Father Duffy wrestles with his duty, but knows he cannot break the confidence of the confession, He decides to locate the young man to urge him to confess to police, and begins tracing the man through the little details he gleaned from the confession,

When the womans body is discovered later, police detective Goldsmith begins his investigation,

Interestingly, the author reveals at the Gentle Murderer's outset the identity of the murderer, then sets her priest and detective off on parallel investigations, Of course, each must rely on their respective tools police badge and clerical collar to question people in the hope of finding the killer,

Meanwhile, we see the young mans interactions with his landlady and her teenaged daughter at a boarding house, The girl is smitten, and does not seem to catch on that the man is giving off weird vibes,

This was an interesting story, I liked the way the biggest part of a mystery is who did it, and Dorothy Salisbury Davis dispensed with that right away, Instead, the part that kept me reading was watching the detective and the priest look for the killer, but use different means and talk to different people, as the priests collar got people to open up to him in a way they did not to Goldsmith.


Salisbury Davis gradually reveals more about the killer's backstory, and building up a psychology for her killer that explained his current murder, The story concludes with Father Duffy and Goldsmith converging on the killer's home,

While I could appreciate how different this story was from many other whodunnits, I found the prose occasionally confusing in places, and the pacing was a little hit and miss.
But I can see why it is seen as a classic for its novel approach, for the time period, to an investigation,

Thank you to Netgalley and to Poisoned Pen Press for this ARC in exchange for my review, .