This was one of the best Basil Willing’s books I have read. It was fast paced, intriguing and well written. The characters were both three dimensional and interesting. The key scenes were vivid and the plot was twisty. It kept me guessing until the end. And I was surprised when the guilty party was revealed!

I would strongly recommend this book to those who like Helen McCloy and I would also recommend it to those who haven’t yet experienced the enjoyment of reading her work. This is a really good choice to start with. I can guarantee that you will enjoy it and it will ignite the love of reading this great but forgotten series.

Enjoy!!

Helen McCloy’s Dr Basil Willing Mystery series is my favorite discovery of 2022.

An old-fashioned murder mystery set in and around DC at the beginning of WWII with freakish psychological
undertones, murder, poison, lies and a disturbing cast of exquisitely drawn but very disturbed characters that move around a noirish atmosphere worthy of the best Hollywood murder mysteries produced in the 40s

Sparkling dialogues and lots of liquor filled chocolates should definitely make this dark and compelling psychological thriller an unforgettable reading experience that deserves to be enjoyed without any moderation whatsoever!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Agora Books for this terrific ARC

I loved this! I'd not discovered Helen McCoy's work, but I'm so glad I did. For a Golden Age detective story the basics are all there - the dysfunctional family, the large houses, the mysterious interloper. But this has an American sparkle, and it really makes this book zoom along. I read this in one sitting and am now gobbling up the rest of her books.

The story takes place during a weekend in Willow Spring (Maryland). It all begins when Frieda Frey receives an anonymous phone call from a voice she doesn’t recognise. She can’t even tell whether it is a man’s or a woman’s. Who’s calling, please? She replies impatiently. But the voice says it doesn’t matter who is calling. It just want to warn her. “Don’t go to Willow Spring. You are not wanted there.” “All sorts of unpleasant things happen to people who go where they are not wanted.”

Helen McCloy is one of my favourite writers and Who’s Calling? has not disappointed me at all. The story is highly entertaining and I particularly enjoyed McCloy’s political remarks together with the use she makes of the psychological elements. Elements that might seem somehow out-of-date nowadays but I believe they were trendy when the story was originally published. In any case, the characters are well drawn and turn out being interesting. The plot is perfectly crafted, and all its pieces end up fitting well together. At the end, all that has happened makes sense. However, I won’t go as far as to consider this novel among Helen McCloy’s bests, but it is entertaining enough as to recommend it without hesitation. I expect you enjoy it as much as I did.

I have to thank Crime Classics Advance Readers Club for providing a digital copy of this book for review through NetGalley, in exchange of an honest review.

Another great book by Helen McCloy, who is woefully unknown these days in the mystery genre. Her works are uniformly interesting and far ahead of their times. Highly recommended.

I do like these psychological Golden Age murder mysteries by Helen McCloy, even if I don’t find the psychological explanations for the crimes very convincing. The cast of characters in this book was particularly good, with the deliciously awful Cousin Chalkley being a highlight.

Five well deserved stars and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series to be republished.

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

I have been reading these hopelessly out of order but, with exception of the appearance of one character who becomes important to Willing, it really has not mattered. These are all excellent standalone mysteries and this one is especially creative.

While DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) eventually became a clichéd plot point in American soap operas, it was fairly unique at the time this was written and is done without the cartoonish aspect the soaps employ. I love how we get the point of view of every possible suspect at the end, none knowing if they are the culprit. The tension and fear felt as they all spend a night separately, trying not to fall asleep lest they turn into this villainous alter-ego, is palpable. Those portrayals alone make it worth the read. And I have to admit that though she gave enough clues, I still got it wrong. This is probably due to unconscious assumptions I was making outside of the information provided. To say more would be too big of a spoiler.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this book, really the whole series, to any fans of golden age mysteries.

Thank you to NetGalley and Agora Books for providing a copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review.

I really enjoy Helen McCloy’s Dr. Basil Willing series, so it was a real treat to find another one. Dr. Willing is a psychiatrist, who, at times, lends his expertise to law enforcement. In general, I’m not a fan of anything that even comes close to being a psychological mystery, but this series is an exception. McCloy’s writing is a joy. Her descriptions are vivid, her characters come alive, and her humor is subtle, but effective. She keeps the action going, and I can read one of her books in one sitting, even if it takes me until 2 AM.

The book starts with a mysterious phone call to Freida, a night club singer, who is engaged to Archie, a medical student, whose mother isn’t exactly overjoyed about the engagement. Nevertheless, Archie is sure his mom will love her, and takes her home to meet his family, friends and neighbors. The situation is fraught with tension, there are complications in the course of “true love”, it progresses to a body at a ball, more mysterious phone calls, other questionable incidents, and some surprising plot twists, until at last, with the able assistance of Dr. Willing,, the perpetrator of the various mysterious happenings is unmasked. I was totally surprised at the ending.

I enjoyed this book so much that I’ve already read it twice. Highly recommend if you enjoy good writing, fast moving plots and vintage mysteries.

This was a fairly quick and enjoyable read. The one thing I really liked was that the reader had no way of knowing which character was the miscreant before the hero of the story knows. I think this may be the first story I've read where that was true. The writer indicates that "no one - not even the man [Basil] telling it - knew whom the narration concerned most intimately or how it was going to end." So we have a murder and several suspects, but truly any one of them could have done it! You'll have to read for yourself to find out whodunnit, but I bet you'll have fun doing it!

This is the best story in the series of Helen McCloy titles involving the psychologist Dr Basil Willing that I've read and that maybe because Dr Willing is not involved until about the last 20% of the book!
In this case, we have a young man, Archie, taking his fiancée, Frieda, home to Willow Spring to meet his mother, Eve, for the first time. It’s fair to say that Eve and Freya don’t hit it off. Eve then tells them that they all have to go to a ball being held that evening by their neighbours. Included in that, Eve’s cousin, Chalkley, whom she and Archie have not seen for very many years, telephones up and he invites himself for the weekend too. They all go over for dinner with Mark Lindsay; the local senator; his wife, Julia; and their niece, Ellis. Ellis loves Archie – and everyone knows it apart from Archie.
A shocking murder, unfortunately, takes place and Dr Basil Willing get's involved in the investigation and eventual arrest of the guilty party.
All in all a very satisfying read and I enjoyed it very much. Recommended.
(Review book supplied by Agora Books via netgalley in exchange for a fair review)

I continue to like this author's works more because of their entertainment value than actual scientific facts/investigation. There are times I felt like I should check the possibility of a certain train of thought/psychological pronouncement, but I left it alone in order to enjoy the plotline itself.
The psychology behind this was a little far fetched but the number of characters introduced and the variety of relationships kept me interested enough to overlook any doubt about the ending itself.
We have a beautiful and possibly scheming woman getting ready to spend some time with her possible future mother-in-law. Her arrival is received in varying degrees of hostility by everyone in the vicinity of the place she is to stay. Things start to heat up until the most unexpected of people ends up dead. This has everyone scrambling to find a semblance of reason over the demise. This is when Dr Basil Willing comes onto the scene. What follows is standard, and since we are already at the halfway point by the time he arrives doesn't he scene, the revelations between all the people are that much more exciting.
I would recommend this to fans of reprints of classical mystery fiction!
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

This is a 1942 mystery, and the fourth Dr. Basil Willing mystery written by Helen McCloy, although Dr. Willing is solving totally different problems in each of the stories I've read so far. Thus, there is no need to read them in order. Although it might seem a little old fashioned, McCloy is very good at keeping one in suspense and Dr. Willing is a very interesting character. This story actually includes a poltergeist!

The NY City singer, Frieda Frey, is going to Willow Spring, near Washington, DC with her fiance Dr. Archie Cranford to meet and stay with Archie's mother, Eve. Frieda gets a phone call the night before telling her not to go, and then told that unpleasant things happen to someone who goes where they aren't wanted. However, they go. Before they arrive, Eve gets a call from her cousin, Chalkley Winchester who says he has business in Willow Spring and would like to visit. Chalkley is rather strange and eats voraciously, but he is a relative and is invited to come.

Eve is not really happy about the engagement, because she was hoping that Archie would marry their neighbor, Ellis Blount. However, she is nice to Frieda and makes her feel welcome. The neighbors are Senator Mark Lindsay, his wife Julia Middleton, and their niece Ellis Blount, who is in love with Archie. Julia has lots of money, and really likes the importance of her husband, who is only a senator to please his wife. The Lindsays have invited the Cranfords for dinner and a ball in honor of Ellis. Very soon, things start to go wrong. First Freida's room is ransacked while she is out.

Then, later that evening, when Eve is ready to go home, Chalkley is found dead in the senator's office. The police come, and then at Archie's invitation, Dr. Basil Willing, a well know psychiatrist-detective from New York shows up to help. He figures things out much better than the country police!

This is a great 1940's classic crime!

Loved it! What a great story. Engaging characters and a great psychological angle. I am loving the Dr. Basil Willing series and this is one of the best of the series so far. I like how Helen McCloy lists the Cast of Characters at the beginning so that you know who is whom. She also provides a list of Objects of Interest. You get all the clues but can you put them together to solve the mystery? This story is a bit of a puzzle...including a...well, I don't want to spoil it for you. Get the book and get ready for a great cozy mystery with plenty of characters, clues and red herrings. From a nightclub singer to a U.S. Senator, the story will keep you intrigued right to the end. Enjoy!

This is the fourth novel in American mystery writer Helen McCloy’s Dr Basil Willing series. It was first published in 1942 and begins with a young doctor, Archie Cranford, becoming engaged to Frieda Frey, a glamorous nightclub singer. Although he knows his mother won’t be happy to hear the news, Archie arranges to bring Frieda home to Willow Spring, near Washington, to meet his family and friends. Just before Frieda sets off from New York, she receives an anonymous phone call warning her not to go to Willow Spring. Deciding to ignore this threat, she goes ahead with the visit only to find herself the victim of more sinister calls, as well as other strange phenomena. Could this be the work of a poltergeist or is there a more rational reason for what is going on?

At a dinner party held by the Cranfords’ friends, Senator Mark Lindsay and his wife Julia, a murder takes place which may or may not be connected with Frieda’s ghostly experiences. It’s time to call in psychiatric consultant Dr Basil Willing in the hope that he can solve the crime and identify the murderer.

This is another entertaining Basil Willing mystery – although Willing himself doesn’t make an appearance until halfway through the book. The first half is devoted to setting the scene and introducing the characters, the most memorable being the Cranfords’ cousin, Chalkeley Winchester, an annoying, self-absorbed man described by the others as a ‘spoiled child grown up’ and a ‘male old maid’. I also found the relationship between the Lindsays interesting, as we soon discover that Senator Lindsay is bored and disillusioned with his work and that it’s actually his wife Julia who is the driving force behind his political career.

McCloy begins each of her books with a list of ‘Persons of Interest’, briefly describing the characters who will appear in the novel, and then a second list of ‘Objects of Interest’ – in other words, some of the clues or significant happenings you need to look out for. Being given this information in advance doesn’t help at all with solving the mystery, though, and doesn’t really have much purpose other than to add a bit of fun to the book!

I correctly guessed the culprit, but I couldn’t work out exactly why they had done it. The solution relies on Basil Willing’s psychiatric knowledge and I don’t think it’s something that would occur to most readers, so I was left feeling that McCloy hadn’t been very fair to us this time. Still, I did enjoy this book and will look forward to reading more from the series.

Who's Calling is a vintage mystery set in New York State just before World War II. Dr. Basil Willing first appears about half way through the book and applies his knowledge as a behavior psychologist to solve the mystery. The story begins with Frieda Frey, a night club singer in New York City who has just accepted a marriage proposal from Archie Cranford and is packing for a weekend visit to get to know his family. She gets one of what turns out to be a series of calls from an anonymous person warning her not to go because she's not wanted. The story progresses from there with strange and harmful events happening to her and to Archie's family after she does go. Archie recruits Dr. Basil Willing to advise the family as to what is leading to the scary and ghostly events that keep happening. From then on Dr. Willing provides insights into the psychological underpinnings into what is happening and why. This book begins very slowly and doesn't provide much understanding at first of Frieda and Archie and his family. Then the narration speeded up quite a lot allowing insight into the character traits good and bad of the couple and the family and friends. At the end it races to the finish with Dr. Willing explaining the phychological complexities that led to the mysterious and deadly events that happened over the weekend. This odd narration led to my 3 star review as the book was a bit boring at first and then became quite interesting in the middle and then was somewhat tiring as too much information was provided way too fast at the end.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a complementary copy of Who's Calling for my Impartial review.

Book #5 in the Dr Basil Willing series from Helen McCloy written back in the Golden Age and published originally in 1942. Trainee medical student Archie Cranford becomes engaged to nightclub singer Frieda Frey and brings her home to Willow Spring to meet the family and neighbours. Some seemingly unexplained events occur starting with a phonecall to warn Frieda off going to Willow Spring and then a few more events when she fails to heed the warning.
At the dinner party of Senator Mark Lindsay a death occurs which prompts Archie to call in Dr Willing. Everyone has a secret and no one is completely truthful so a lot of red herrings are thrown into the mix. It is up to noted psychologist and criminologist Dr Basil Willing, a psychiatric consultant to the FBI, to read between the lines of everyones statements and find the poltergeist responsible for it all.
I love books that give me a list of characters and descriptions at the start of a book. There is even an Objects of Interest list of which I am undecided about it's need. I enjoyed the majority of the book, the wonderful descriptions from McCloy's pen and the way we feel both sorry for Frieda and at times annoyed with her. I just found some of the theorising on mental states and split personalities a little hard but then the main "detective" is a psychologist so an important part of the book and a main point of difference between Dr Willing and other golden age detectives. Overall it was a well written story and I recommend it wholeheartedly to mystery readers.
Thanks to NetGalley and Crime Classics for giving me a copy of the book to review.

So this is a really interesting read - even if I'm not sure if what I'm going to refer to as the psychological side of the story holds up 80 years on! But if you can bear with that, this is a clever murder mystery with a really horrible victim and an interesting cast of suspects - some of whom you like a lot more than others. I enjoyed it.

Once more I have been lucky to receive a book from the Crime Classics Review Club to review. This time it is Who’s Calling by Helen McCloy. It is published by Agora Books in the series Uncrowned Queens of Crime.

It is a Dr Basil Willing Mystery - number 4 in the series.

Frieda Frey is a singer in a night club and recently engaged to Archie Cranford. Archie’s mother Eve lives in Willow Spring, and Frieda and Archie are going for a visit to introduce Frieda to Archie’s mother. Shortly before leaving Frieda gets an anonymous call warning / threatening her not to go. Arriving at Willow Spring supernatural things begin to take place and later on a murder. Dr Basil Willing is summoned to investigate.

The murder takes place at a dance held by Eve’s friends. They are Mark Lindsey (senator), his wife Julia- their young son Ted - and Ellis (a niece) . A cousin Chalkey and his bodyguard Ernesto turn up just before they are leaving for the ball. It is among this little group of people the murderer is to be found. I couldn’t figure it out but it was great fun reading it.
I like the introduction in the beginning with persons of interest in this mystery, and the list of objects also of interest in this mystery. It makes it so much easier to read.
It was an enjoyable read.

‘The telephone rang.’

Archie Cranford, a young doctor, has recently become engaged to Frieda Frey, a night club singer. After he arranges to take Frieda to meet his mother Eve at Willow Spring, near Washington, Frieda receives a telephone call warning her not to go to Willow Spring:

‘All sorts of unpleasant things happen to people who go where they are not wanted.’

Frieda doesn’t think that she recognises the voice, although the person says they will see her if she is foolish enough to travel to Willow Spring. Only a handful of people know of her visit: Frieda is both puzzled and concerned.

Frieda and Archie travel to Willow Spring, where they stay with Archie’s mother and meet with Senator Mark Lindsay, his wife Julia and their son Ted, and Ellis Blount, the nineteen-year-old niece of the Lindsays. Chalkley Winchester V, one of Eve Cranford’s cousins is a late inclusion in the visiting party.

‘Have you ever heard of poltergeist phenomena?’

The phone calls continue, as do some other strange events and Frieda’s room is ransacked. Who is behind these events, and why? And then, a murder occurs. Dr Basil Willing, a psychiatrist who does some work for the FBI, becomes involved. He explains that it is possible that the phone calls, the strange happenings, and the murder could all be the responsibility of someone with a double personality, a poltergeist, who has no idea that he or she is guilty. Imagine: each of the main characters is now wondering whether he or she might be the poltergeist.

Of course, once Dr Basil Willing works it all out, some of the earlier events make more sense. But I confess, I did not work it out before Dr Willing did.

This is the third Dr Basil Willing mystery I have read and enjoyed. While the ‘poltergeist’ theory may make less sense in 2022 than it did in 1947 when the book was first published, it adds to the suspense.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Agora Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This books have really grown on me, or to be more precise, Dr Basil Willing has grown on me. I don't think I have read these in publication order but I have read the first and struggled to finish. The more 'Willing' mysteries I read the more I really enjoy the plot. I am not sure this would have got past the rules of 'The Detection Club' and a very novel solution. Glad to say the characters I disliked most got their comeuppance. Thanks to Netgalley and 'Crime Classics'.