Helen Reilly

• Born: 1891
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: January 11, 1962
• Place of death: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Type of Plot: Police procedural

Principal Series: Inspector McKee, 1930-1962

Contribution

When Helen Reilly began writing detective stories in the 1930’s, most female writers followed the Had-I-But-Known style. In this type of plot, a young woman unwittingly becomes involved in a romance with a handsome but evil man. The author usually tells the story from the woman’s point of view. Reilly wanted none of this. Instead, she wrote police procedurals, giving a detailed and realistic picture of a homicide squad in operation. Her female characters are not “flighty young things” but rather mature, competent persons. Reilly has been recognized by Howard Haycroft, an authority on the detective story, as one of the most important mystery writers of the 1930’s.

Biography

Helen Reilly was born in New York City in 1891. Her father was John Michael Kieran, the president of Hunter College, and her brother, John Kieran, produced the famous Information Please series, a radio program that showcased his encyclopedic learning. Helen married Paul Reilly, an artist and cartoonist, in 1914, before she completed her degree from Hunter. The couple had four daughters, two of whom, Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, followed in their mother’s footsteps as mystery writers. (Her brother also wrote a mystery.)

At the urging of her lifelong friend, William McFee, an eminent author, Reilly began writing detective stories. Almost all of her stories feature Inspector McKee and follow the formula of a detailed presentation of a homicide investigation, told from the point of view of the police. It is easy to understand Reilly’s reason for writing this way—her stories were major successes. She wrote thirty-three mysteries in her thirty-year career, as well as three others under the pen name Kieran Abbey. The leading magazines of the time that published popular fiction, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, often featured her work. She served as president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1953.

She lived in Connecticut for a number of years; this state is the setting of Certain Sleep (1961). After her husband died in 1944, she returned to New York. Although she eventually moved from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to live with her daughter Ursula Curtiss and the latter’s family, she always considered herself a native New Yorker. She died on January 11, 1962, continuing to write almost to the end of her life.

Analysis

According to Ursula Curtiss, Helen Reilly was formed by her early life in New York City. It is in fact her knowledge of the city that lay behind two of the main features of her novels. First, she displayed a thorough understanding of the Manhattan Homicide Squad. It was her expertise in this area that enabled her to achieve success as an author of police procedurals. Her acquaintance with the city, however, was by no means confined to its seamy side. Her background was upper class, and her novels often display her insider’s grasp of the workings of New York high society. Although her style lacked the unusual qualities of her plots, it nevertheless was brisk and efficient.

Modern popular mystery writers such as Elmore Leonard and John D. MacDonald are often tough and hard-boiled. In contrast with Victorian figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle, whose “scientific” detection carefully avoided much contact with actual criminals, these writers stress the sordid; in the modern school, there is no battle of the giants in the style of Sherlock Holmes against Professor Moriarty.

Readers of Dashiell Hammett will not need to be told that detective fiction’s change from romance to realism began early. Although Hammett is the most famous of all writers of realistic detective fiction, he was not the only pioneer of this genre. Reilly, though she lacked the master touch of Hammett, exercised great influence on subsequent detective fiction through her extensive knowledge of police methods of investigation.

How carefully Reilly studied police procedure is obvious from an examination of her early novel File on Rufus Ray (1937). Here photographs of the actual evidence found by the police and used as exhibits are included in the book. Included are telegrams, a button inadvertently left at the murder scene, photographs of suspects, and a small packet of cigarette ashes. The reader is invited to follow along with the police as they proceed to the solution.

Reilly was not the only writer of the 1930’s who did things like this: Several “crime kits,” for example, were issued by the popular British writer Dennis Wheatley at roughly the same time. Reilly’s police stories, however, differed entirely from Wheatley’s. He was a “classic” writer, stressing pure deduction and bizarre details in the commission of the crime.

Reilly, on the other hand, was grimly realistic. Her Inspector McKee operates not through inspired hunches and supernatural powers of deduction but through hard work and persistent intelligence. Unlike detectives such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, whose “little grey cells” operate in sovereign indifference to those of anyone else, McKee does not do the job alone.

Quite the contrary, one of the realistic features of Reilly’s stories is her constant emphasis on teamwork. McKee, though clearly first among equals, does not solve his cases by himself. He discusses his solutions with Dr. Fernandez, the assistant medical examiner. On McKee’s staff are Lucy Sturm, a nurse and undercover agent, and Officer Pierson, an accurate observer. Probably the most significant of McKee’s assistants is Detective Todhunter, an unassuming person who is nevertheless a skilled detective.

Each of these persons is characterized briefly in a few bold strokes: Anyone who has read several of Reilly’s McKee series novels will get a good picture of the team in action. Although her portrayal of these characters aided her in the factual approach to crime solving she was trying to achieve, she sometimes took a good thing too far. All of her McKee novels feature the same cast of police characters—they sometimes appear mere formulas repeated by rote.

Police work as Reilly describes it differs in many more ways from the methods of the great intuitive detectives such as Poirot and Holmes. On more than one occasion, force as well as intelligence is required to solve the case. Reilly’s novels were written long before the Miranda decision and the modern emphasis on the rights of accused criminals. A key aspect of police work as Reilly tells the tale involves rousting the suspects and subjecting them to persistent, third-degree questioning. In Certain Sleep, for example, McKee does not let the fact that a suspect lies wounded in a hospital bed stop him from securing a confession. Although some of McKee’s methods would probably get him into trouble with the modern United States Supreme Court, he does not employ brutality and is presented as a very sympathetic character.

Reilly’s knowledge of police procedure was acquired in the same way she presented crimes as being solved: through detailed study. She was on excellent terms with the Manhattan Homicide Squad about which she wrote, and she was one of the few people not employed in police work who had access to its files. A number of her stories were in fact based on real cases. Regardless of whether a novel followed the details of an actual case, it always adhered to true-to-life police methods. File on Rufus Ray was unusual in the extent to which Reilly was prepared to go to give her readers a taste of an actual case. Her later novels did not offer a grasp of the evidence in so literal a way, because the expense involved proved too much for her publishers. This setback did not stop her from continuing her production of police procedurals; she wrote twenty-five more after File on Rufus Ray.

Lament for the Bride

The fact that Reilly emphasized the grinding, day-to-day character of a police investigation, avoiding its glamour, did not at all imply that her work avoided the upper classes. Quite the contrary, most of her novels involved crimes committed by the rich or socially prominent. As one might anticipate from her attitude to police work, her perception of these people was grimly realistic. Often, as with the business executive Howard Fescue in Lament for the Bride (1951), members of this class are presented as ruthlessly grasping for money and power. Reilly here relied once more on personal knowledge. She came from an upper-class family herself and was the daughter of the president of Hunter College. She does not, like Edith Wharton, describe the intricacies of New York society with full attention to every nuance. She nevertheless writes from real knowledge, and her treatment of the rich accordingly avoids the error of many popular novelists, who present them as virtual dwellers on a different planet.

Realism rather than fantasy has so far been claimed to be the leitmotif of Reilly’s way of writing mysteries. This thesis receives reinforcement from another basic building block of her stories—her portrayal of women. Her heroines are not gossamer creatures who fall in love with the first handsome man to bestow a smile on them. Like Reilly herself, these women are fully competent. In Lament for the Bride, Judith Fescue is genuinely in love with Horace Fescue. She is far from unmindful, however, of his great wealth, and the reader quickly gathers that financial security was a reason for her marriage.

Reilly was well aware that in contrast to storybook romances, women as well as men frequently are capable of attraction to more than one person. As Judith Fescue attempts to deal with the kidnapping of her husband, she finds herself becoming increasingly interested in Charles Darlington, a family friend. When, at the novel’s close, she is compelled to face some unpleasant truths about her husband, she does not collapse into hysterics or fall into a faint, as a Christie heroine would do. She calmly faces facts and departs with Charles.

Certain Sleep

Reilly’s attitude toward her female characters remained constant to the end. In Certain Sleep, one of her last two novels, Jo Dobenny, a young career woman, finds herself involved in a complicated plot. An heiress has died through carbon-monoxide poisoning; a chief suspect turns out to be her former fiancé. Once more, the heroine does not become hysterical and leave the solution of her troubles to her friends of the opposite sex. She ably assists in her vindication and that of her one-time fiancé as well. At the book’s close, it is strongly implied that the two of them will resume their relationship.

The weaknesses of Reilly’s approach are also in evidence in this novel. “Realistic” plots, with their stress on detail, carry with them the danger of overemphasis on items of minor importance. In Certain Sleep, the plot turns on a complicated will, the provisions of which are presented in tedious fullness. No doubt realistic, but also more than slightly wearying.

Further, Reilly sometimes went to extreme lengths in her repetition of a winning recipe. One of the clues that enables McKee to discover the culprit in Certain Sleep is a cigarette left at the scene of the heiress’s demise. As one recalls File on Rufus Ray, one cannot help wondering whether Reilly had a “thing” about ashes. Again, one of Jo Dobenny’s romantic interests is named Charles; this time, however, unlike the Charles of Lament for the Bride, the heroine does not select him. Reilly’s proved record of success led her to repeat detailed clues and names from book to book—surely a mistake.

More important than her minor failings, however, is the fact that Reilly’s fiction, however much it followed a formula, gained justifiable attention. Her style, while not remarkable, was a good instrument for her purposes. She spent little time on description of anything other than evidence relevant to the case. She devoted scant attention to detailed characterization, except for her female leads. Even here, her view of character comes through the action presented rather than through descriptive passages or interior monologue. Much of the normal Reilly mystery takes place in dialogue: Her characters tend to speak in short exclamations.

All in all, Helen Reilly, though not a major writer, contributed significantly to the evolution of the detective story. Her early use of the police procedural has established for her a secure reputation.

Principal Series Character:

• Christopher McKee , a Scot who heads the Manhattan Homicide Squad, relies on his intuitive powers, keen observation, and ability to reason logically to solve his cases. He is a tough but fair person who if necessary will use bullying tactics to get information from a suspect. He admires attractive women but does not ignore them in his search for the guilty.

Bibliography

DuBose, Martha Hailey, with Margaret Caldwell Thomas. Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists. New York: St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2000. Briefly mentions Reilly but elaborates on other Americans writing in the Golden Age of mysteries and thereby places her in the genre.

Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story. 1941. Rev. ed. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1984. Discusses the aesthetic appeal of tales of murder and intrigue; provides background for understanding Reilly.

Huang, Jim, ed. They Died In Vain: Overlooked, Underappreciated, and Forgotten Mystery Novels. Carmel, Ind.: Crum Creek Press, 2002. Reilly is among the authors discussed in this book about mystery novels that never found the audience they deserved.

Reynolds, William. “Seven ’Crimefiles’ of the 1930’s: The Purest Puzzles of the Golden Age.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 1 (Fall/Winter, 1980): 42-53. Includes Inspector McKee in a list of Golden Age genre-defining puzzles and the detectives who solved them.