Another book chosen at random, another interesting story. This time, though, the story isn’t by the author, but about him. Joe Rayter was in reality Mary Fuller McChesney, who wrote three novels under pseudonyms, but is remembered as a sculptor. She was a National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and became famous enough during her career to receive a New York Times obituary when she died in 2022.
McChesney’s first job was as a welder in the San Francisco shipyards, so the story goes, but before or by 1949, when she married artist Robert McChesney, she had turned her attention to sculpting. She had to pay her bills, so simultaneously she was teaching art in Point Richmond. When the state of California ordered all public employees to sign oaths disavowing politically inconvenient beliefs (a terrible period of American history that seems about to repeat), she refused and was fired. She and her husband moved to Guadalajara, where she kept sculpting.
Asking for Trouble came in 1954, so it seems she turned to literature to earn a bit of money outside of art, writing as Rayter, as well as Melissa Franklin. We should note that, as always, details vary when it comes to life stories. In particular, there’s contradiction over her Mexico period. Some sources say she spent less than a year in Guadalajara, while others say she spent two years in Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende. In any case, she and her husband returned to the Bay Area, and she was based there the rest of her life.
Asking for Trouble is set in and around San Francisco and tells of private eye John Powers, who discovers his friend’s shotgunned body and sets out to determine who killed him. The plot follows normal detective yarn forms: he might get blamed for the killing, there are available femmes fatales, etc. The story is enlivened somewhat by a couple of leftfield characters and a trip to Reno, but we never quite developed an affinity for Mr. Powers, and the mystery doesn’t progress in the most engrossing fashion.
Still though, the book is readable and we’re happy to have picked it up. We chose it based on price and cover art alone. Its unknown backstory turned out to be a bonus, and who knows, might even increase the book’s value if its provenance becomes more widely known. It doesn’t hurt that the cover art is by James Meese, who depicted a scene from the story in which a character gets her dressed ripped off. We may try one of Rayter/McChesney’s other crime novels. If we do we’ll report back.
