The TellTale Tart

The TellTale Tart by Peter Duncan 

Publisher: Gold Medal 1961

More slamming-door hijinks than mystery, The TellTale Tart is an odd duck. It begins when photographer Pete Farrell, along with writer Laura Ames, arrive on the private island of famous novelist John Hope Hamilton. Pete and Laura are initially there to write a feature article on Hamilton, but soon begin investigating the recent death of his secretary. A death the locals suspect was murder.

Despite the investigatory angle, this isn’t a detective novel, or even much of a mystery. The characters occasionally look for a missing journal that contains the answers they need, but the rest of the time is spent with Pete trying, and mostly failing, to get laid.The first-person POV is the saving grace of this slight tale. Self-deprecating and making humorous hay out of his sexual frustration, Pete is a fun narrator and it’s his voice that makes TheTellTale Tart a comic romp instead of a limp mystery.

 The story is preoccupied with sex without ever being overly explicit, all description is of the a-nod-is-as-good-as-a-wink variety.

Peter Duncan was a pseudonym for B.M. Atkinson, who apparently only wrote two books under the Duncan name. Other than a parenting book (What Dr. Spock Didn’t Tell Us) it appears Atkinson mostly wrote short fiction under his own name, some of which can be found online.