The Fear in Yesterday’s Rings by George C. Chesbro

Mysterious Press Books, 215 pages, c1991

Carolyn Lane, one of MBTB’s owners, enjoyed the Mongo series by George C. Chesbro. “The Fear in Yesterday’s Rings” was my first foray into the series, and I probably should have picked another title. Although the premise of the series — a former circus dwarf becomes a private investigator — has a lot of points going for it in originality, this book, which had me rooting for the villainous lobox on occasion, lacked discipline.

Mongo the Magnificent, otherwise known as Robert Frederickson, may have left the circus, but his heart still belongs to the big top and its residents, including African elephant Mabel. People, including his brother, still call him “Mongo.” As shown towards the end of the book, Mongo still has some of the athletic skills he developed as an acrobat and animal trainer in the circus years earlier.

Phil Statler, the former owner of Mongo’s circus, is now a bum, found in dire straits on the streets of New York. Mongo owes him a great deal, so he decides to form a consortium of buyers among former circus folks to buy back Phil’s circus. That leads to Mongo’s reunion with Harper Rhys-Whitney, also formerly of the circus. Quite a lot of the book deals with their energetic reunion activities, a lot of which seems gratuitous considering some of the stressful situations they find themselves in as they track down the circus and its new owners.

Hmm, Mongo thinks, as he examines information about vicious animal attacks across the Great Plains, mysteriously mirroring the pathway of the circus. The first thing that springs to mind: werewolves. Why? Because.

It’s a tangled path of discovery, escape, more discovery, more escape. Call the cops, I kept shouting. But nobody listened to me. 

The best scene was of Mongo attempting to tame the lobox (the creature causing the damage — sorry for the spoiler). That was genuinely entertaining.