Case Pending

by Dell Shannon, Leslie Klinger (Editor)

Overview

Another murder, another unanswered question. And Detective Mendoza hates to leave things undone.

Hers was the kind of casual homicide that occurred every week in a city like Los Angeles in the sixties. Beaten, robbed, and left in an abandoned lot, Elena Ramirez's death was like many others... in fact, nearly identical to a murder that happened six months earlier—a case that Detective Luis Mendoza was never able to solve.

The detective isn't a fan of puzzles but knows one when he sees it. He puts two and two together—these vicious murders must have been committed by the same deranged individual—and leads the charge into a case that is astounding in its complexity. Along with the begrudging help of Detective-Sergeant Hackett, Mendoza must separate the many twisted threads of this crime—from murder to black-market adoption and extortion.

Considered the "queen of the police procedural," Dell Shannon offers a glimpse into the world of police-work before the aid of forensics or technology. An Edgar Award finalist in 1961, Case Pending introduces the Mexican American Detective Mendoza, a dynamic character who will stop at nothing to find answers, working in a Los Angeles that had not forgotten the 1943 "zoot suit" riots targeting young Chicanos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781464213014
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Series:	Library of Congress Crime Classics Series
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	365,245
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

BARBARA "ELIZABETH" LININGTON (1921-1988) was an American novelist and mystery writer. She was one of the first women to write in the style of a police procedural. Linington wrote fiction under the pen names Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill, and Dell Shannon as well as her own name. Her first mystery novel, Case Pending, was published in 1960, under the pseudonym Dell Shannon.

Editorial Reviews

06/08/2020

First published in 1960, this series launch from Elizabeth Linington (1921–1988) writing as Dell Shannon was an Edgar finalist, but it hasn’t aged well. Los Angeles homicide lieutenant Luis Mendoza, one of the first fictional Latino detectives, fears that an unknown murderer has struck again. Six months after someone killed chambermaid Carol Brooks, damaging her left eye, 18-year-old window dresser Elena Ramirez is found dead with a similar wound. Mendoza and his team investigate, starting with Ramirez’s family and friends. That the killer’s identity is signaled early on limits suspense in a plot driven by following routine police procedures. Leslie Klinger’s informative introduction concedes that the author employs racial stereotypes, and Mendoza has groan-worthy attitudes toward women (he wonders whether a witness he’s attracted to might possess “that great rarity in a woman, a sense of humor”). This Library of Congress Crime Classics selection is more a curiosity than anything. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-06-03
A follow-up to a case he shelved as unsolved six months ago sets the LAPD’s Lt. Luis Mendoza on the trail of a double murderer in this reprint from 1960.

This first procedural from the prolific and multibylined Elizabeth Linington (1921-1988), the pioneering writer who first brought a woman’s eye to the genre in volumes published under her own name and the pseudonyms Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, and Egan O’Neill as well as Shannon, kicks off with waitress/seamstress Agnes Browne’s discovery of a corpse in a vacant lot at the corner of Commerce and Humboldt. The victim, Elena Ramirez, has been strangled and battered so savagely that she’s lost an eye—a detail that forcefully recalls the similar bludgeoning of hotel chambermaid Carol Brooks six months ago in East Los Angeles. Cursing himself for his failure to solve the earlier case in time to save her life, Mendoza is determined to close this one. But the challenges are serious. Agnes Browne is hiding a secret she’s afraid to share; so is 13-year-old Martin Lindstrom, whose father is only the latest Angelino to desert his family; and Dick Morgan, another good cop, is being squeezed so hard by a blackmailer that he’s seriously contemplating a murder of his own. The author dexterously solicits your sympathy for them all as she follows the natty Mendoza, who’s beginning his long-lasting romance with Alison Weir, from one dead-end neighborhood to the next. Editor Leslie Klinger supplies a judicious introduction and a series of footnotes that explain period details, gloss Mendoza’s sometimes fractured Spanish, and incongruously compare Mendoza to Klinger’s deepest love, Sherlock Holmes.

For all its limitations, fans and completists will find Shannon’s debut novel unmissable—or well worth reading again.

Kirkus Reviews

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