Gin Phillips is making a very impressive bibliography for herself. With the exception of “Come in and Cover Me,” set in the American west on an archaeological dig, she has set her novels in Alabama. The first was in a North Alabama mining community, then the Birmingham Zoo, then Cloverdale in Montgomery.
“Family Law,” the Montgomery novel, had a distinct theme: the discrimination against women in the legal profession. “Ruby Falls” is, like “Fierce Kingdom,” a thriller. The action begins in December, 1928. Leo comes home, soaked and covered with mud, announcing to his wife, Ruby, that he has found, deep in the belly of Lookout Mountain, a fantastic natural wonder, a waterfall, which he will name after her.
It is immediately a successful tourist attraction but when the Depression hits, fewer people can afford a ticket. Some splashy advertising is needed and a scheme is laid. A famous psychic, Professor Hagathorn, will come and perform a mind-reading trick. Magicians like Houdini are escape artists, David Copperfield makes things disappear, Uri Geller bends spoons with his mind. Hagathorn “finds” things. He reads minds.
First, two men will go down and hide a hatpin somewhere deep in the mountain. Then those two plus a newspaper reporter, the professor and his wife, Editha, will search the underground tunnels and rooms while the professor, from reading the minds of the hiders, learns where the hatpin is hidden. What could go wrong?
A lot, as becomes clear once they go underground, scrambling up and down slopes, scaling ten-foot walls, tiptoeing on ledges only inches wide above deep crevasses, sometime crawling on their hands and knees, even their bellies, to get from one underground room to the next. Readers given to claustrophobia will find themselves in trouble.
Several suffer injuries, hit their heads, bash their knees. Then, while they rest in a dark room, one of the party is murdered. Dust jacket blurbs tell us this is a locked room mystery. It is more frightening than that. One of them is a killer, yes, and it would be upsetting to be in a locked room or trapped in a mansion or on an island with a killer.
But, deep in Lookout Mountain, the underground labyrinth may kill them all. The guide deserts. Time passes. They have to find their way out before their carbide lamps and flashlights fail, and they run out of candles, which would leave them in an absolute, perfect, terrifying dark. They have very little food and, surprisingly, the water underground is poisonous, full of bat feces.
Nevertheless, descriptions of the underground falls, caverns and cathedral rooms make it seem beautiful. So yes, I will see Ruby Falls before I die.
