DOOM IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN

Mrs. Boyd’s first mystery Murder Breaks Trail had an Alaskan background, and introduced F. Millard Smyth, small-town groceryman with a passion for detective fiction, who was forced to turn detective himself.  In her second story, Doom in the Midnight Sun, F. Millard is once more in Alaska, on a trip to Harding Lake for a few days of quiet in which to consider the possible purchase of a grocery store in Fairbanks.

But he has no quiet days and no considering time, for from the first, it is apparent that there are peculiar goings on among the families whose cabins line the lake’s shore.  There are nocturnal meetings, there are mysterious signals, and one night, there is murder.  F. Millard, in the absence of the law, takes charge, and once more finds himself in the unwilling role of sleuth, with three small Boy Scouts named Bill as his only assistants.

Eunice Mays Boyd knows the country of which she writes, from its sunlit nights to its mosquito nets, a country where terror stalks by daylight, and there is Doom in the Midnight Sun.

. . .

“As pretty, suspenseful and smoothly written a mystery as I’ve read in a long time.” 

~ Chicago Sun

“Grocer-sleuth F. Millard Smyth unriddles well-tangled murder plot with spy trimmings.  Good entertainment.” 

~ New York Herald Tribune

“I frankly loathe stories laid in the Big Woods, or in the Great Frozen North.  And I begin to get bored at the first hint of Enemy Agents.  Therefore I picked up Murder Breaks Trail filled with misgivings.  I put it down at 4 a.m. with a bad case of eyestrain . . . a humdinger! 

~ Chicago Daily News

“An exceptional who-done-it, which won honorable mention in the third Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery novel contest, has been skillfully built into a book that is hard to put down until the last page.” 

~ Philadelphia Evening Bulletin