The cover for the reissue of Oklahoma mystery novelist Todd Downing's best known novel, The Cat Screams.
A firm called
Coachwhip Publications is bringing back into print six of the best-known novels by Oklahoma mystery writer George Todd Downing.
And yes, I found myself saying, “Who?”
It turns out that Downing – born in Atoka in 1902, whose Choctaw grandmother had come to Oklahoma during the 1830 forced migration – was one of the first native-born Oklahoman to achieve success as a writer of mysteries.
He wrote under the name Todd Downing, and between 1934 and 1941 published nine novels, most of which featured U.S. Customs agent Hugh Rennert as the protagonist.
Downing studied anthropology, Spanish and French, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma. He taught at the university and during the 1920s and ’30s wrote book reviews for the Daily Oklahoman and OU’s Books Abroad magazine (now World Literature Today).
His fascination with Mexico led him to leading tours to the country. Those experiences served as the background of his first novel, “Murder on Tour.”
It was Downing’s second novel, “The Cat Screams,” that made his career. It was chosen as a featured title of Doubleday’s Crime Club line, and was praised as “one of the best mystery and horror novels to come along in many a day” and “so well done it really raises gooseflesh.”
However, after 1941, Downing wrote no more novels. He devoted some of his time to creating a book on the Choctaw language, publishing in 1971 the book Chahta Anampa, An Introduction to Choctaw Grammar, during the time he was a professor at what is now Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. Downing died in 1974.
Curtis Evans, who writes a blog on classic crime fiction called
The Passing Tramp, has written a book about Downing and his contributions to the mystery field, “Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing,” which will also be forthcoming from Coachwhip Publications. Evans also wrote the introductions to the reissues of Downing’s novels.
The six novels – “The Cat Screams,” “Vultures in the Sky,” “Murder on the Tropic,” “The Case of the Unconquered Sisters,” “The Last Trumpet and “Night over Mexico” -- will be available via Amazon some time in December.
