A Year in Review (part 1)

Sometimes a sudden change in one's life is all one needs to reevaluate what gives life purpose, meaning and most importantly joy.

I am now retired.  It was planned for this year, but came six months earlier than anticipated.  I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, so to speak. In the past two weeks I have had to fast forward all my planning that I was going to spread out over three months. Then yesterday a financial emergency had me spending close to three hours cancelling auto-payments and reorganizing that part of my life.  When it was all solved, I sat back and reflected. I realized that 2025 is a year of new beginnings in more ways than I ever anticipated. With new beginnings comes a re-evaluation of what I missed doing and what brought me not only satisfaction but actual joy. And here I am again.

When I left the blog I entered a new phase of creativity in the world of theater which I had also abandoned back in 2013 or so.  I've had modest successes (though very little monetary reward) but it was all exhilarating and joyous, aspects that were greatly missing from my life for decades. Now I'm finding a balance between theater and blogging as well as a return to bookselling. Slowly but surely you will find me selling online in at least two places in the coming weeks.  But for now let's catch you up on what I read over the past year and a half. Well, at least the most noteworthy books.

In 2024 I spent much of my time reading newly published books, discovering writers working now as opposed to being obscure, forgotten and usually very dead. Here are some highlights for those who mix their vintage reading with contemporary and new books:

• Benjamin Stevenson - Everyone on this Train is a Suspect (2023) and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (2024) I think this guy is one of the best traditional mystery writers out there. He worships fair play motifs, and also sort of sends up the rules and conventions of traditional detective novels. I love the meta-fiction part of each book. His novels are not only puzzling and engaging but very witty with a offbeat sense of humor.
• Tom Mead - Cabaret Macabre (2024) Loved this rule breaking impossible crime mystery. The best of his three novels so far, I think.
  

Margot Douaihy - Scorched Grace (2023) and Blessed Water (2024)  Features a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun. How's that for modern? Pretty much a fair play mystery writer. BUT! You must read them in the order listed. The second book spoils the first book three times. Ugh. Luckily, I read them in order.

Angie Kim - Happiness Falls (2023) A domestic tragedy mystery that deals with a teenager with autism and the violent accident that lead to his father's death. Profoundly moving.

B.R. Myers - A Dreadful Splendor (2022) The best of the historical mystery novels I read that dealt with spiritualists and ghosts. A fraudulent medium is rescued from prison and given the opportunity to prove her "talent" is genuine when a rich man offers her legal representation in court if she can show evidence that his dead wife has moved on to eternal peace in the afterlife.  Set in 19th century England.  This first novel won the Mary Higgins Clark award from the MWA who also do the Edgar awards.

Stuart Turton - The Last Murder at the End of the World  (2024) Inventive, complex genre blending mystery/sci-fi commenting on the prevalence and encroaching dangers of AI. Oddly, there was a TV show (A Murder at the End of the World) that seemed to have been inspired by this book if not outright plagiarized. The plot of the TV show was more an And Then There Were None ripoff, but ultimately the use of AI in each work resulted in essentially the same story as each finale was almost identical.

I read a slew of horror novels and ghost stories in 2023 and 2024 and would love to rave about those too, but I have to move on to the vintage nuggets of gold from 2024. Following the habits of a few of my fellow vintage mystery bloggers I'll pick the best vintage mystery I read each month last year.  And here are the first six...

JANUARY:  Lady in a Wedding Dress - Susannah Shane, aka Harriette Ashbrook (1943) What a coup this was! I've been looking for this book for over a decade.  Then when copy turned up on Ebay I snagged it for only $18. Three days later another copy was offered on Ebay and this one had a DJ and was only $15.  Steals, both of them! (Don't worry. I'm not a greedy bastard. I'll be selling the one without the DJ and it's in excellent condition.)  This was an exciting, complex mystery novel but does not (As I originally thought) feature her series private eye Christopher Saxe.  It's an involved puzzler featuring a dress designer who is murdered and the bride who is discovered in a blood stained dress moments after the murder occurs. Did she do it? In my reading notes I described the climax as a "Thunderstorm of hurricane proportions: car wrecks, accidents, power failure. Blood transfusion reveals shocking secret..."  Hits a lot of excitement buttons for me.

FEBRUARY:  The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo - Michael Butterworth (1983) Comic crime novel about a shoe salesman who in order to inherit his dead unce's estate must comply with a bizarre last wish according to the eccentric's will.  The nephew must take the uncle's dead body to Monte Carlo on an all expense paid vacation and gamble away a set amount of money. How on earth is he going to pull that off? If he fails, then the money goes to a charity that cares for rescue dogs. Along the way the woman who owns the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn becomes his partner in the vacation adventure.  Gangsters, disguises, silliness galore.  Amazingly, this book was turned into an award winning musical called Lucky Stiff by Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens, the duo best known for Ragtime and Once on This Island.  This was one of their earliest collaborations.

MARCH:  The Forest Mystery - Nigel Burnaby (1934)  Obscure and definitely forgotten writer (a journalist during the 30s and 40s) who wrote only five mystery novels.  This one is about woman who has escaped from an asylum whose nude body is found in a wooded area off a remote country road. The body is battered and almost unidentifiable. Her husband is implicated in the crime and must clear his name. Intriguing plot twists with an ending that reminded me of Anthony Berkeley's early rule-breaking mystery novels. Innovative and often witty. Was so unusual that I bought two more of his books. Still have yet to read those.

APRIL: No real winner this month. I read four new books (three of them superior and two already mentioned above in the modern section. Only read one vintage mystery: Too Much of Water by Bruce Hamilton (1958).  I didn't really like it. Not up to the level of his other earlier novels, two of which I reviewed here at Pretty Sinister Books. Very talky, little action and an unsatisfactory, slightly contrived, resolution with one of the deaths turning out to be an accident.  Only good thing about the book was the cool DJ and the plan of the cruise ship that was the novel's setting.

MAY:  Swing High Sweet Murder - S. H Courtier (1962)  One of my favorite mystery writers.  A shame his books are so damn hard to find.  Miraculously, I bought five of Courtier's books in the past two years and read almost all of them in 2024. All but one had a lot to recommend them. This is an impossible crime mystery about a tennis coach found hanged in a treehouse which serves as a fire tower for the area. Set in Australia, of course, with his series detective policeman "Digger" Haig. It cries out to filmed because the setting is so unusual and demands to be seen rather than imagined.  I had to re-read passages to figure out how the house was built in this massive tree.  Features a minor character who is developmentally delayed and has the talent of mimicking indigenous bird calls.  The tennis background is also fascinating making this doubly tempting for sports mystery fans as well as impossible crime devotees.

JUNE:  It Happened in Boston? - Russell H Greenan (1968)  Utterly bizarre, often contemplative and prophetic, thoroughly entertaining. For once it’s a book that is easy to find and affordable to buy in cheap paperback copies.  Highly recommend this unclassifiable "mystery". While not exactly a detective novel it does qualify as a crime novel but that aspect is the least of its merits. Absurd, satiric, trenchant and witty.  Greenan was sui generis among the writers of the mystery world. In an ideal world everyone would know him, his books would have received several awards, and he'd still be in print. One plus -  this book was reprinted by The Modern Library in 2003 with an intro by Jonathan Lethem. But I think that edition had a small print run. I dare not summarize nor mention any of the story of It Happened in Boston? for it must be personally experienced. The most surprising aspect of this book is it's about the art world and NONE of the blurbs on ANY of the editions mention this facet of the story. Those who enjoy art mysteries or novels about the art world take note! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A true must read for people who love imaginative fiction of any type. With a mystery or without -- it's a damn fine book. 

 I'll post the next six months' worth of highlights of 2024 vintage mystery reading later this week.

"If you build it, they will come." So goes the famous line in the movie Field of Dreams. And they did come to this blog for years and years.  Perhaps if I rebuild, then they will return.  If you are one of them now reading this, thank you for returning.  I hope to stay here for as long as I can this time. 

The Glass Heart - Marty Holland

Down on his luck Curt Blair is waiting out a rainstorm in a “ritzy hash joint” just outside of Hollywood, USA when he steals a fancy camel hair overcoat then flees intending to sell the coat. It’s how he makes his living these days – ripping off suckers' coats, rifling the pockets for treasures and cash, then selling the ransacked coat. But this time all hell breaks loose and he’s being chased. While hiding from his pursuers he ends up in the backyard of Virginia Block’s home. She mistakes him for the handyman she recently hired from an agency. Curt being the opportunist that he is wisely plays along and learns the job comes with a free room and kitchen privileges. So he accepts the job, gains a cheap salary of $20/week and a place to stay and eat.

Later the same day aspiring actress Lynn York shows up at the boarding house. She is paying $60/month for an upstairs room, but no kitchen privileges for her. Mrs. B is greedy and a miser we soon figure out. Within hours Curt and Lynn are hooking up and doing the dirty deed in the dirty basement where while putting the moves on Lynn Curt is bothered by the irritating sound of a dripping pipe. He vows to fix the leak though that task is not on the insanely long list of arduous work Mrs. Block expects of him.

While dealing with the plumbing problem Curt discovers a gruesome surprise and jumps to conclusions.  A bit of detective work supports his rash theory and he sees dollar signs. He schemes to blackmail his landlady and employer. Soon he finds his paltry salary increased to a cool $1000/week.

And if you haven’t already figured out that the tables will be turned then you don’t know your crime fiction.

Reading The Glass Heart is like travelling back in time to a 1950s movie palace watching a B movie programmer. It’s crammed full of action, double dealing, manipulation, greed, lust and crime. Everyone is out for himself or herself. James M Cain, who penned multiple densely packed novels about two timing lovers and how greed controls their lives admired the book so much he 1. wrote a praiseworthy blurb for the Julian Messner first edition dust cover and 2. wrote a screenplay adaptation that unfortunately was never produced.  Even he recognized the cinematic potential of this hard to resist story.

While it’s not hard to predict that Curt and lovely Lynn will hook up within hours of meeting I doubt many readers will be able to predict the unusual plot twists. Soon a handful of supporting characters descend upon Mrs. Block looking for handouts including Elise, Lynn's future roommate and a member of an evangelical church devoted to enlisting new members and coaxing money out of them to help build their new church.

The story is overloaded with plot and incident. It’s almost like reading two books in one at the same time. There’s almost no time in the action-filled pages to question the often outlandish turn of events. But I did! And frequently. Some of my nagging questions included: Why on earth is Mrs. B such a pushover? Why didn’t she just throw Curt out of her house rather than be bled dry? And why is Lynn so simple minded and easily manipulated? I guess there is no room for common sense in potboiler fiction. The book exists solely to explore crime and base motives (mostly dealing with lust and avarice) but offers no insight into any of the reasons the characters need so desperately what they long for. I wasn’t asking for heightened literary reasons just a few mundane ones.

Late in the book it all turns a bit ridiculous. Elise receives a telegram that her husband was killed in action overseas. She refuses to accept this and in her religious mania keeps praying that hubbie be returned to her. Like a true believers she’s asking for a miracle. One guess as to how that turns out. Because of course every absurd coincidence one can possibly imagine will be crammed into these 192 pages.

Why have one kook when you can have two? Mrs. B is later revealed to be a bit of a loon herself. Lynn spends much of her time eavesdropping throughout the book and hears her landlady talking to herself and singing in a little girl’s high pitched voice. She has conversations with her dead husband, very intimate and revealing conversations. It all leads to a confrontation between the two woman involving a revolver and a golf club that doesn’t end well at all.

Do you think anything will end well in a book of this sort? Think again!

It starts off as noir but some odd detours and intrusive subplots among the minor characters transform the book to a quasi romance. This schizoid state results in a near parody of noir by the time you get to the two climactic moments. Remarkably – almost unbelievably – for something so laden with doom, insanity and murder, both intentional and accidental, it all ends with a cop out finale that includes a wedding and happily ever after honeymoon in New Mexico! I gather that Holland opted for a hearts and flowers finale because she wants the real villain of the piece to be revealed as a vile monster who “deserved” to die. And she seemed to want to make her leads into decent people who were victims themselves. Really strange considering they were crooked and corrupt from the get-go. When the penultimate chapter exposes the villain’s wide ranging schemes of cheating, thievery and mean-spiritedness one wonders if Holland knew a similarly horrible person and this was a revenge piece.

Marty Holland (1919 - 1971)

And yet though I sound like I’m disparaging this book I found it all utterly addictive. The Glass Heart is, I confess, a guilty pleasure. I couldn’t stop reading and had to know where each ludicrous scene would lead and of course how it all would end. It truly is one of the best examples of a genuine B movie on paper. And no wonder – the author Marty Holland was a secretary at Republic Pictures, one of the leading producers of B movie programmers, for many years. She was writing pulp fiction in her spare time, wrote the book that became the classic noir thriller Fallen Angel, and a story treatment for another crime movie classic The File on Thelma Jordan. Typing all those scripts at Republic Pictures taught her well, I guess.

Stark House has reprinted all of Marty Holland’s crime novels over the past year and a half. The Glass Heart is the newest reprint added to that small pile of books. For decades this novel was unavailable to mere mortals like you and me because the few copies for sale were listed by booksellers at unaffordable collector’s prices. It’s wonderful to have Marty Holland’s books all available to the general public in Stark House’s usual handsomely produced editions. For lovers of noir, kooky melodrama and twisty plotting these books are a must have. Highly recommended – even with all the caveats listed above. The Glass Heart is genuine thrill ride that will leave you both gasping in awe and laughing in shock.