Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Inspector Patrick Foyle is visiting Yorkville University when he finds a piece of paper containing a very strange message…’I take pleasure in informing you that you have been chosen as murderer for Group No 1. Please follow these instructions with as great exactness as possible.’ Assuming it to be a joke, or part of a game of some sort, he disregards it. But then one of the professors, Dr Franz Konradi is found dead in his laboratory, an apparent suicide. Foyle has good reason to think otherwise and enlists the help of Dr Basil Willing, psychiatric consultant to the New York District Attorney’s office.

McCloy created quite an original plot in which the field of psychology, and it’s practices, are key to uncovering the murderer. Subplots involving Nazi spies, refugees fleeing occupied Europe, and shady financial practices kept the action moving briskly. And, as she did in her first Basil Willing book, Dance With Death, McCloy peppers the story with multiple interesting medical and scientific facts which are integral to the solution.

If I have a quibble, it’s in the fact that there is no true police investigation. The focus is solely on Willing’s analyses of the personalities involved. What is their motivation and how do they reason things out. Not even a hint of evidence to be seen.

But still, all in all I found this to be an intriguing mystery, and a very entertaining read.

My thanks to Agora Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy of this book made available for my review.

It's the second book i read by Helen McCloy and loved it.
She was a talented writer and I'm happy her novels are being reprinted as they are excellent mysteries.
This is one is complex and gripping. The author delivers a great mystery and the plot kept me guessing.
The character development and the atmosphere are very good.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Well-written, with lots of twists, this is a solid mystery. McCloy wrote quite a few books, but this is my first, and may have to circle back so her other books.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

Death Of A Scientist.....
Part of Agora Books’ Uncrowned Queens of Crime series and rightly so. An engaging mystery featuring Dr Basil Whilling, psychologist and sleuth together with Chief Inspector Foyle, this time at Yorkville University where the death of a scientist gives cause for consternation. The mystery itself is complex and interesting, characters well drawn and dialogue credible. Excellent reading.

I must say that I love these covers! They are so atmospheric and contain these tiny clues to the content which actually make a lot more sense after the reading. This is a new author that I saw some pretty good reviews of towards the end of the year. I am always willing to try something new in these reprints of older lesser-known classic mysteries. I must say my foray with these was so good that I read both back-to-backs in a long almost single sitting today. I must say my foray with these was so good that I read both back-to-back in a long almost single sitting today.
In this second instalment, we are fully immersed into the convoluted setup in progress on a University campus before Dr Basil Winning comes into the scene. The policeman introduced in the previous book, Chief Inspector Foyle is on campus and intercepts a curious note. This leads him to investigate further, and he ends up having inside information about the shenanigans that the psych department was involved in. Things turn deadly (as Foyle expects) but with unexpected results. People change their statements as often as they change the degree to which they are willing to cooperate in the investigation. There are many discussions about how people might think given their status in life and their life experiences, this takes up a lot of the conversations (especially given the fact that it is our protagonist's speciality). I enjoyed the constant changes that were thrown entirely believably at the reader whenever new information was discovered. I did not see the ending coming given the political/personal machinations involved in the tale's entirety.
I liked all the people we are supposed to like and even sniggered at the diversion caused by the experiments one professor was willing to put his own children through (I was laughing at the man's pomposity and not the fear the poor child must have been labouring under).
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but my review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

I only recently discovered Helen McCloy as an author of the 1930s, and her psychiatrist detective, Basil Willing, and I must say I cannot read enough of her books. A very different detective mystery book, with very interesting characters and a very different style of story from those written in the era of the 1930.
This book draws in a lot of movement, red herring, murder and and a touch of romance. A great puzzle.

A very memorable opening heralds some fine writing and clear plotting in the second Dr Basil Willing mystery, first published in 1940, and here reissued by Agora in their excellent Uncrowned Queens of Crime series.

Set firmly in the world of academe with some nods to big business and banking, this tale of the murder of a refugee scientist is full of psychological insights, as well as some fun at the expense of psychologists who take themselves too seriously. The mood and atmosphere of early 1940's America is well-captured

The tensions and doubts are well-maintained, and, although the cast of suspects is small, it is a tricky task to pinpoint the murderer.

A very recommendable read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Agora Books for the digital review copy.

I loved Dance of Death, the first book in Helen McCloy’s Dr Basil Willing mystery series, so I was pleased to see that Agora Books have now reissued the second in the series, The Man in the Moonlight. I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as the first, but it was still a good read and it was nice to meet Dr Willing and Assistant Chief Inspector Foyle again.

Helen McCloy (a pseudonym of Helen Clarkson) was an American crime author whose career spanned five decades and included several standalone books as well as the Basil Willing series. The Man in the Moonlight, first published in 1940, is set during World War II and the war has a part to play in the plot.

Inspector Foyle is visiting Yorkville University, where he is planning to send his son, when he finds a discarded piece of paper with the message: ‘I take pleasure in informing you that you have been chosen as murderer for Group No 1. Please follow these instructions with as great exactness as possible.’ At first Foyle doesn’t take this too seriously – he assumes it’s part of a game of some sort and doesn’t believe that real killers refer to each other as ‘murderers’ anyway – but he is forced to change his mind when Professor Konradi, an Austrian biochemist who escaped from a concentration camp, is found dead in his laboratory.

Konradi’s death appears to be suicide but Foyle isn’t convinced and enlists the help of Dr Basil Willing, psychiatric consultant to the New York District Attorney’s office. As Foyle and Willing begin to investigate, they uncover some intriguing and unexpected aspects of the case, ranging from a psychological experiment being carried out by another of the university professors to the potential involvement of a group of Nazi spies. As in Dance of Death, it’s Willing’s understanding of how the human mind works that leads to the eventual solution.

This is quite a complex mystery novel and incorporates lots of interesting psychological and scientific ideas. The sort of methods Basil Willing uses to obtain the information he needs include lie detector tests and word association tests and I found it fascinating to see him explain his analysis of these tests to the other characters. The focus on the personalities of the suspects, their possible motives and their reasons for behaving the way they do, is much more appealing to me than reading long discussions of alibis and timelines which often dominate other mystery novels and this is one of the reasons why I’m enjoying Helen McCloy’s novels so much. Most of her books are still currently out of print but I’m hoping more of them will be made available by Agora Books soon.

I’m delighted that Agora Books are publishing The Man in the Moonlight by Helen McCloy. It was first published in 1940 and features her series detective, Dr Basil Willing, a psychiatrist attached to the New York district attorney’s office.

Assistant Chief Inspector Patrick Foyle is looking around Yorkville University, thinking he might suggest that his eldest son studies there. Foyle is in the building when Dr Franz Konradi dies. It looks like suicide but Konradi assured Foyle earlier in the day that he would NOT commit suicide. Was he murdered by a very clever person? As Willing says, “Just as if a rather academic mind had studied the subject and determined to manufacture a classic case of suicide including every known clue.”

I didn’t enjoy McCloy’s Dance of Death, in which Basil Willing makes his debut. I thought his statements about psychology in that book were too far-fetched. The dialogue was also unrealistic – sentences were too literary and unnatural for real people talking to each other. I’m really pleased that this second book in the series doesn’t suffer from those faults. It’s a real page-turner and no, I didn’t guess who the murderer was – although I should have done so as the clues are in the text. However, even clever people make mistakes and Basil deduces who it must be.

Basil’s statement in the last chapter is highly topical today: “Do you think of a scholar as someone living remote from political and industrial forces? That may have been scholarship in the Middle Ages or even in the nineteenth century, but not today. Every university and every research foundation depends on endowment from industry or the state.”

#TheManintheMoonlight #NetGalley

Helen McCloy's second mystery to feature Dr Basil Willing and Inspector Doyle is set in New York in May 1940 before America had entered the conflict of World War II.
Dr Konradi, captured by the Nazis after the Anschluss of Austria on March 12th 1938 has escaped the Dachau Concentration Camp to continue his scientific experiments in New York but death awaits him.
Helen McCloy, now rediscovered by Agora Books, wrote this 1940 novel with a dab hand of confidence. Everything about it is clever, from the chapter headings to the deep psychological insights. The atmosphere and innuendo make it particularly engaging to read. I urge every admirer of classic crime novels to read this one.

I enjoyed this American murder mystery set in a New York university during World War 2 from Agora Books’ Uncrowned Queens of Crime series.

The plot was exciting, with an impossible locked-room crime, lie detectors and possible Nazi spies. The psychological angle was well explored and the denouement was satisfying. There were a few things I thought were odd, for example attitudes towards epilepsy, but these were perhaps indicative of the time.

I had not read any of Helen McCloy's books previously, but I will definitely look out for them in future.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

The Man in the Moonlight feels like a Golden Age mystery through and through: incredibly twisty plot, oblique clues, and a crew of motley characters who (of course) each have their own potential motive for killing a certain chemistry professor, or at least for obstructing the investigation as much as possible. As one can imagine, this was a very fast-paced read - as soon as one clue or suspect gets sorted out something else swoops in to take its place, resulting in a plot that never seems to let up and a book that's eminently readable. And as always I am a little gremlin for period stuff, so all the historical detail simply delighted me.

This is my first encounter with Dr. Basil Willing, amateur sleuth, and bar one very odd moment (he kisses a suspect, wonders if she made him do it, and then never raises the topic again - but I have read odder moments in other books of this period, so make of that what you will) he was a decent investigator. I was expecting the psychological aspect of his investigative process to feel dated but was pleasantly surprised, and I thought it ended up bringing a nice little character-focused angle to a genre which typically feels extremely plot-driven. Ultimately, this is a well-done book of its genre; if you like Golden Age mysteries I see no reason why you wouldn't like this.

I am delighted that these books are being republished and made available for a modern audience again, and will certainly try to pick up the others in this series as they come out. Many thanks to Agora Books for their efforts here, and for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Man in the Moonlight is the second in Golden Age author Helen McCloy’s Basil Willing series. Prior to receiving an ARC of the first book in this series, I had not heard of McCloy, but I enjoyed that book, and so I was glad to receive an ARC of this book as well. My thanks to the publisher!

I actually enjoyed Man in the Moonlight a bit more than its predecessor, perhaps because I was a little more familiar with Basil Willing and the rest of the continuing cast of characters. And, I really enjoyed the insights this 80-year old book, first published in 1940, gave into the state of detection at that time. For example, I was fascinated by the interplay in Chapter 15 around whether it was better to administer a lie-detection test with someone taking the subject’s blood pressure manually, or continuously on a mechanical graphing machine. I would think that taking it manually would be enough to throw off the results just by itself, but apparently not. What fun! And I’ve gotten a little more comfortable with Willing’s emphasis on the “psychological” clues he uses, although I still imagine (along with more than one of his fellow investigators) that he’d have a lot of trouble ever actually using any of them as evidence in court.

The book also provided interesting contemporary references to the state of the world just at the beginning of World War II. In Chapter 17, it was a head-turner to hear the Chinese visiting professor, Albert Feng Lo, describe China’s future independence as depending largely on the behaviour of other nations, such as America, England and France. I doubt you would find a Chinese visiting professor today to espouse that position! And finally, as the child of a college professor myself, I really enjoyed the thinly disguised send-ups of university/academic behaviors that are scattered throughout the book, such as the professor early on who uses his own infant as a test subject (to the great consternation of the child’s mother, his wife), and is so enthusiastic about the results he’s getting that he sees nothing wrong with it.

Oh yeah, and in addition to all of this great background, there is an intriguing mystery, with hints of foreign spies, and sadly, ties to people trapped and interned by the Nazis in their prison camps. As far as the plot itself, I was kept mostly guessing until the end, although I had noticed one little oddity that should have given the mystery away. But that’s always the way it is with hindsight!

Please note that I try to fight star-flation a little bit, and give out very few 5-star reviews. Instead, for me, 4 stars is a solid recommendation to read a book, and is in no way negative. I hope Agora Books continues to publish more titles in this series (there’s hope since there’s an excerpt from the next title at the end of this one), and my thanks again to Agora and Net Galley for the ARC.

Helen McCloy was an absolutely fabulous Golden Age author...every book I've read of hers so far has been brilliant! The Man In the Moonlight's very first sentence whet my appetite, very riveting and promising, and kept me glued until the last. The pace is fast and the book positively drips with fascinating plots and details. McCloy obviously did her research into science and metallurgy when writing. Love the list of characters and enticing treat right after that but the greatest hurrah to me is the mystery and how it occurs and is solved.

Inspector Foyle stumbles upon a clue before a murder is committed on Yorkville University campus in the times of WWII and is at the right place, at the right time. Sort of. A scientist, Dr. Kinradi, is discovered dead and the events which unfold next are thrilling and twisty. Various characters are plausible suspects but the hows and whys are swathed in mystery and questions. Layers of subplots really electrify the atmosphere, including darkness and heightened senses which come with it, mists, experiments and closed room situations. Various scientific studies and research are intertwined and we see bits and pieces of the characters' pasts enter into the story.

Helen McCloy fans, Golden Age Mystery fans and general Mystery fans should sink their teeth into this wonderful book. I enjoyed it very much.

Republishing these books is important. My sincere thank you to Agora Books and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this delectably atmospheric book in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated.