Author: WALCOTT, Earle Ashley.
Title: The Open Door. A romance of mystery, time, 1905.
Description: NY, Dodd Mead 1910. Octavo, very good in publisher's illustrated grey-green cloth blocked in yellow and black (a touch rubbed); four plates. ¶ First edition. A complicated murder mystery set in pre-quake San Francisco. It hadn't occurred to me before, the problems of San Francisco writers just after the quake with so much famous local colour and so many landmarks gone. We have a near hysterical Italian painter who has learnt to speak English with a bad French accent last seen with the city's most eligible young murdered cad who is estranged from his snide, downright malevolent, millionaire father and staying in the house of his just-returned-after-years-to-San-Francisco now imperilled cousin whose beauty ensnares and inflames the self described lawyer idler who often has to throw away his half-smoked cigar. We have a few too many accents in this for me. It's not so much that Walcott is bad with accents; it's more like he has cast all his character roles with poor actors whose accents stray all over the map. The Greek tavern keeper sounds passably Italian; the beautiful French maid has strayed into Mexico; even the Irish cops wander off into the Balkans or somewhere. It's a sad day when a brogue can't be nailed down tight, sure t'is.

Keywords: literature fiction thrillers mystery c20th America detective