Last Seen Wearing — Hillary Waugh

Originally published in 1952, Last Seen Wearing is one of the first police procedurals that gave readers a realistic portrayal of both the police people and the methods they employ to clear cases. Which, in this instance, is the disappearance of college freshman Lowell Mitchell. 

Waugh, a pioneer of the police procedural subgenera, follows the case from start to finish — showing there are no shortcuts when solving a case. Unlike Holmes’s specialized knowledge or the leaps Poirot’s little grey cells make — Police Chief Frank Ford relies on his thirty-three years of experience as a cop and the leg work of his men to run down every lead, blind alley, and dead-end so they leave no stone unturned in their search for Lowell Mitchell, a girl who doesn’t seem to have an enemy in the world. 

Unique at the time, Waugh shows all the ephemeral leads Ford’s men run to ground, the tedious leg work done to verify every piece of information, and the politics that inevitably creep into the case thanks to the pressure exerted by the press, family, and district attorney who’ve all got a stake in getting the crime solved…by yesterday preferably.

All these small and large details helped create a slow burning plot, which turns into a raging inferno by the time you reach the last page. Seriously, I couldn’t put it down as Chief Frank Ford, right-hand man Burt Cameron, and his officers closed in on their suspect.

Another interesting tidbit about this particular mystery is that it’s loosely based on the actual real-life disappearance of Paula Jean Welden. Who, on December 1, 1946, decided to hike the Long Trail (as it’s called) a few miles away from her college in Vermont. Unable to persuade anyone to go with her, she set out alone. Several people met her on and during her journey, however, none saw her leaving. When she didn’t turn up by the next morning, as her roommate thought she was studying elsewhere on campus that night, the search was on. 

Paula, or more gruesomely her body, was never found.

In an odd twist of events, Paula wasn’t the first to go missing in this area. One year earlier, Middie Rivers, a local man familiar with the area and an experienced outdoorsman, disappeared without a trace whilst hunting with four other people. Exactly three years later, on December 1, 1949, a military veteran went missing whilst traveling by bus through the area. Ten months later, an eight-year-old boy Paul Jepson, vanished into thin air while waiting for his mother to finish feeding some pigs. It’s rumored that bloodhounds tracked him to nearly the exact spot where Paula Welden was last seen four years earlier. Sixteen days after Paul went missing, Frieda Langer disappeared while hiking with friends. Of the five people who vanished from the area over five years, Frieda’s body was the only one ever found.

And not one of the quintet of mysteries was ever solved. 

This string of people going missing from the same general location earned the area the moniker — The Bennington Triangle. 

To be clear, Last Seen Wearing only details Paula’s missing person case. Using elements of the search for her and her family life in the book, the conclusion (obviously) is Waugh’s alone. Nevertheless, it’s a mystery I’d highly recommend to anyone looking for a police procedural, which is a classic and surprisingly bloodless!