Murder in the Air (1931) by Darwin L. Teilhet

Darwin L. Teilhet was an American journalist, advertising executive, screenwriter and novelist who started out as a mystery writer, authoring seven detective novels from 1931 to 1940, four of which forming a short-lived series – featuring the irrepressible, slightly unhinged Baron von Kaz. Hildegarde Teilhet co-wrote three of the brave Von Kaz novels, but her husband began his literary career with three standalone mysteries.The most notable, best remembered of Teilhet's trio of non-series mysteries is the prescient The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934), which takes place in Germany when the Nazis rose to power. It has the distinction of arguably being the first ever World War II detective novel beating Theodore Roscoe's I'll Grind Their Bones (1936) by two years. A big reason why it was reprinted in 1985 by Polygonics. Death Flies High (1931) and Murder in the Air (1931), a pair of aviation-themed mysteries, aren't as well remembered today, but that can be put down to neither having ever…