"(1905-68) was, in his heyday, a very successful writer of mystery fiction. In this novel, first published in 1941, his popular series character, schoolteacher and amateur sleuth Hildegarde Withers, is hired as a technical advisor on a movie about the Lizzie Borden murders, which took place almost 50 years earlier. Withers barely has time to get settled in her office before a screenwriter turns up dead. The cops say it was an accident; Withers says it was murder. The Withers novels are not quite comedies, but they're full of wit, always mixed with an engaging mystery. In this case, Palmer's experiences as a screenwriter lend an agreeable air of realism to the proceedings. Rediscovering lost writers can be a hit-or-miss thing: sometimes you come across an author who fell off the map for perfectly obvious reasons, and other times, as with Palmer, you can't figure out why he's so little remembered nowadays. His inclusion in the first round of welcome publications in Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics series should help change that. Welcome back, Mr. Palmer."-- "Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher -- with above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don't mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany's invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story. The producer has plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer's patricidal spree -- plans which are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead. While the local authorities quickly deem his death accidental, Withers suspects otherwise and calls up a detective back home for advice. The two soon team up to catch a wily killer. At once a pleasantly complex locked room mystery and a hilarious look at the foibles of Hollywood, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan finds Palmer, a screenwriter himself, at his most perceptive. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, this riotously funny novel shows why Hildegarde Withers was among the most beloved detectives of the Golden Age American mystery novel." --
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