Sailor, Take Warning! (1944) by Kelley Roos

Last time, I reviewed the splendid novella "Death is a Trouper" (1946) by "Kelley Roos," a shared penname of William and Audrey Roos, which finds their normally bantering, wisecracking mystery solving couple of Jeff and Haila Troy during a messy breakup – only for a murder to bring them back together. A humorously written, deftly-plotted and clued novella. Its only negative is its short length that left me wanting a novel-length Jeff and Haila Troy outing, but have already reread The Frightened Stiff (1942) and There Was a Crooked Man (1945) is (as of this writing) still out-of-print. So decided to reread that other favorite from the series.Sailor, Take Warning! (1944), fourth in the series, starts on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in September. Jeff and Haila promised their housekeeper to take her 7-year-old son, Chuckie, off her hands by taking him to Central Park to sail his model boat on the lake. Building and sailing model boats on a small lake or pond is not merely a pass time…