FIRST BOOKS: Death Whispers - Joseph B. Carr

THE STORY:  Jennifer Crump, RN is hired to care for Roderick Myncheon who is recuperating from a car accident that has left him with a fractured skull and contusions. Within hours of starting her new job Myncheon is shot dead in his bedroom.  It's a somewhat impossible crime for there are two people near the victim's bed when the shot is fired yet neither could have fired the gun. And no gun is found in the room. It seems that someone from outside the house fired the gun then escaped by climbing down a tree near the bedroom window. But no one is seen when they look for the shooter. And no footprints are found below the tree. Almost instantly Oceola Archer, private detective, appears on the scene. He has been hired to look into some missing money and he fortuitously steps in to investigate the murder. Before Archer can unmask the sly killer one of the Myncheons will disappear, an attempted murder will take place, and one more death will occur.

THE CHARACTERS:  Death Whispers (1933) is the debut of Joseph B. Carr's "gargantuan gourmand" Oceloa Archer, a private detective clearly modeled on Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale.  The DJ blurb describes him as Falstaffian and that is no hyperbole. Archer is tall and obese, and is indulgent in several areas of his life other than eating and drinking. He is sly, witty, and ironically genteel in spite of his tendency to be flippant and irreverent. He has an assistant named Bagshot (affectionately nicknamed Baggy by his employer) who tries his best to beat Archer to the solution early in the novel. But Bagshot is no match for Archer who whips up a surprising early solution of his own. Turns out to be a practical joke  intended to embarrass his assistant and put him in his place.

The Myncheon household is composed of a gaggle of oddball relatives and servants all of whom seem eager for Roderick to die from his wounds. But one of them seems to have been impatient and sent him to a quick grave with the aid of a well aimed bullet to his head. Was it his daughter Patricia, nephew Ralph, niece Elise, family lawyer Cunningham, great aunt Ankerett, the butler Barton, estranged daughter Eunice or her weak-minded husband the Honorable Richard Whittlesey? Or perhaps someone altogether unknown who has managed to infiltrate the house and is hiding out in some hidden area of Lichen House. Archer and Miss Crump end up working together alongside the manipulative policeman Inspector Trask.

In addition to a murder prowling around Lichen house some burglars are roaming in the area. Carr livens the proceedings with Archer's utterly unorthodox techniques in detection and his tendency to belittle everyone. Like so many fictional detectives he has a wide and arcane knowledge. He shows off about cigar tobacco, ballistics, gun manufacturing, and poisonous medications. 

Miss Crump is interestingly made the primary character from whose point of view we experience everything. If Miss Crump is not in the scene we know nothing. So when Archer is away with Bagshot digging into everyone's past and their belongings we follow Miss Crump who has her own indulgence -- she is an eavesdropper. The first time it occurs by accident but she picks up such provocative conversational tidbits that she is compelled to try again purposefully when she hides in a curtained alcove to listen in on some of the suspects' private exchanges.

ATMOSPHERE:  Carr not only seems to have been inspired by John Dickson Carr's detectives he has imbued his mystery novel with a gloomy and creepy Gothic atmosphere highly reminiscent of his namesake's mystery novels. The Myncheon house is dubbed Lichen House, almost a near parody of a Gothic mansion. In the final third of the book the Old Dark House vibe definitely kicks in with the discovery of architectural anomalies, secret passages, and other Gothic trappings. And with character names like Ankerett and Eldered, and surnames of Byx, Fream and Myncheon it is clear that Carr wants this world to be unusual if not thoroughly weird. At one point the ancient great aunt Ankerett Myncheon threatens Archer with a perfume atomizer filled with prussic acid. Definitely a weirdly Gothic touch!

QUOTES:  "I do call myself a poet, and as long as I do, I am. Why I knew a man who mixed up one night when he was tiddly, and said that God was a perfectly working piece of machinery. The next morning he began calling himself a philosopher, and has ever since."

"To tell you the truth"--Archer wore an air of humility-- "I'm sort of a slap-bang worker. My usual method is to come round after the murder and play a few practical jokes. The person who shows no surprise--that's the murderer. Or at least he's been up to something."

As she herself would have admitted, Miss Crump's talents were few; but her qualities were sterling, and well to the fore among them was an indomitable courage. 

The scene was not one calculated to inspire courage. The little chamber seemed filled with writhing cobwebs and floating particles, set in motion by the first passage of air in a generation. The odor was that of a myriad scavenging rats. The walls seemed to bear down on them from every side, things of form without color, having all the unreality and grotesquerie of an old woodcut. 

Feb 1, 1932 issue

THINGS I LEARNED: Lichen House was at one time featured in Spur as "one of the most genuinely beautiful places in New England."  I figured this was some sort of magazine. I was right. The Spur (to give its accurate name) was founded in the United States in 1904 as an equestrian culture and hunting magazine before it eventually evolved into a luxury lifestyle photojournal. Certainly not to be confused with contemporary similarly named magazines like a fashion magazine based in Japan or the Australian university magazine, The Spur covered everything considered highbrow. One issue from February 1932 I found for sale online includes features on polo, yachting, hunting dogs, European travel, art museums and theater. In the late 1930s the magazine had the tagline "A Magazine of the Good Things in Life".  The journal merged into Arts & Decoration in August 1940 and continued into early 1941 before it ceased publication entirely.

When Ralph Fream is questioned by Inspector Trask as to his whereabouts when the shot was fired he replies, "I was playing piquet in the butler's pantry."  Some kind of card game, I thought. Indeed it is! Piquet is a trick-taking card game for two players that dates back to the 16th century and became highly popular during the mid-19th century. The game uses a 32 card deck comprised of all suits with 7, 8, 9, 10, J, K, Q, and Aces only. Each player is dealt 12 cards and the remaining eight are placed face down on the table. Goal is to gain highest score by making card combinations and winning tricks. Any player with no face cards in their initial hand can declare Carte Blanche and win 10 points instantly.  Full rules are outlined here.

EASY TO FIND?  A handful of copies of Death Whispers turn up for sale from online dealers, a mix of Viking Press editions (the 1st US) and Grosset & Dunlap reprints. Remarkably, nearly all of them are priced at $45 or less. Some are G&D reprints with a DJ that is a duplicate of the 1st US edition DJ.  Only one true 1st US edition is offered and not surprisingly is priced at $300. Happy hunting!

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: Mandrake - Oliver Sherry

THE STORY:  Research student of the arcane arts, and sometime occult detective, Tom Annesley has traveled from America at the request of some friends in London to search for their missing friend Hilda Brown. His search takes him to the town of Haddeston where he encounters a powerful sorcerer who has penetrated the darkest secrets of alchemy and Black Magic and discovered how to create and prolong life with the aid of a mandrake root. A series of hair-raising adventures ensues as Tom and his new found friends, Ethel Derrington and Rev. Hamilton Sturt, set out to put an end to Baron Habdymos and his rampant evil.

THE CHARACTERS: Mandrake (1929) is modeled on both early 19th century fairy tales and Victorian era "penny dreadful" shockers. Baron Habdymos, a thoroughly venal and evil sorcerer bent on dominating all mortal men, outdoes anything Dr. Nikola or Fu Manchu accomplished in any of their occult thrillers. In creating this master of the Black Arts Oliver Sherry has added one of the most horribly memorable villains in early 20th century supernatural fiction. Not only can he create life using ingredients that are more disgusting and flesh-creeping than those employed by the Weird Sisters at work with their double-bubbling troublesome cauldron he has the ability to shapeshift into any human of his choosing (as long as he has murdered them) and transmogrify into animals. Just like Fantomas with his many disguises one never knows when the evil Baron will be appearing in any given scene in some other form -- either human or animal -- which only adds to the spinechilling surprises.

Our trio of heroes Tom, Ethel and Mr. Sturt -- are the heroic, pure of heart and intelligent.  A fourth hero is added to this trio when Mr. Sturt's servant Dunsmore selflessly risks his life to pursue the Baron in one of his many disguises. Dunsmore views himself a stoic and less spiritual than the others thinking this will be beneficial in dealing with such an other-worldly adversary. However he, like the other three, underestimates the range of the Baron's arcane skills. 

Unlike other fictional occult detectives like Carnacki, Miles Pennoyer, Jules De Grandin and John Silence, Tom does not consider himself a master of the supernatural lore. He confesses he is still a student and sees his dearth of knowledge, ironically, to be his greatest asset. He glibly remarks to Sturt: "A student is rather too inclined to value knowledge apart from its use.  It is a kind of foolishness one is compelled to admire and imitate if one can."

Mr.  Sturt is the perfect foil for Tom. He has more common sense and coupled with his deep religious faith he is a voice of both reason and goodness. The two men also share a belief in amulets and talismans.  Tom wrote a book on the subject and Sturt read the work with great interest. He talks about a cross of gold and rubies that was stolen from him by the sinister Dr. Demos, one of the Baron's many alter egos, and we learn from Tom that artifact was most likely one of the hundreds of "rosy crosses" created by the Rosicrucians to protect them from evil.

Amulets and magical artifacts play a large part in the story.  Tom gives an iron ring to Ethel that he tells her is a powerful amulet that will protect her from the Baron.  Later it becomes an engagement ring when inevitably Tom falls in love with the young woman. Their almost instantaneous romance is one of the glaringly obvious fairy tale motifs Sherry includes.  There is even an almost unintentional comical moment when Ethel under an evil hypnotic spell is saved from the Baron's telepathic clutches when Tom out of love gives her a meaningful tender kiss. Ah, the course of true love saves the day!

INNOVATIONS:  The strongest aspects and the most thrilling parts of Mandrake are the Gothic excesses, the sheer number of supernatural incidents and the manner in which Sherry constructs his tale to end all of these action sequences with cliff hanger endings at the close of each chapter.  Even within each chapter there are cliffhangers and sudden shifts to other locales.  At times it seems as if Mandrake was modeled on a Saturday morning silent movie serial. The book certainly has enough moments that would work extremely well on screen. There is even one sequence when the townspeople of Haddeston rise up in revolt against the evil Baron and storm his usually shunned fortress of a house armed with torches, pitchforks, crowbars and other tools of the angry rural mob. It's right out of a Universal Pictures 1930s monster movie -- except it was written a couple of years before any of them were ever made.

In addition to fairy tale elements like magic rings, a magic mirror that foretells the future, transformations, and the power of true love's kiss, the book is teeming with "penny dreadful" grotesquerie and macabre set pieces.  Each chapter is packed with supernatural manifestation that surprise and shock both the characters and the reader.  The Baron works his evil magic in bizarre and unusual manners not often encountered in supernatural fiction.  Learning about the use of the mandrake root to create a homunculus then transforming it into a full size humanoid creature was eye-opening.  This may be used in contemporary horror but I've not come across a similar folk horror touch in any of the books I've read in this genre. The variety of identities that the Mandrake inhabits at the command of the Baron is sort of mind-boggling.

The constant shifting of scenes also creates a great deal of suspense for the reader knows so much more than many of the characters do. We can only hold our breath hoping against hope that none of our heroes fall into the many traps we know are being laid for them. Tom, the perennial student, has a foolhardy manner. His desire to know as much as he can leads him to more than his fair share of mortal danger and near deathtraps.

As the story progresses it becomes wilder and more fantastic as if Sherry was trying to outdo himself with every passing page. Whether the book was first published as a serial has never been determined, but it seems likely for it certainly reads as if it was designed to be read that way.  Even as I thought nothing could be more outlandish that the previous scene Sherry continues to impress with his lurid and macabre imagination. The most grotesque and shocking scene occurs late in the book when Tom is nearly run over twice by a madman in a sports car and he seeks refuge in the home of a miserly old man.  The house turns out to be no haven, but rather a literal house of horrors. I not only gasped, I actually cried out "Oh my God!" at one point while tearing through the paragraphs of this scene.

THE AUTHOR:  Oliver Sherry was the pseudonym of Irish poet and writer George Edmund Lobo (1894-1971).  In the limited edition reissue of Mandrake (Medusa Press, 2010) Richard Dalby, noted supernatural fiction scholar, has written a brief biography of the man. Dalby notes that while Mandrake was Lobo's first novel of the supernatural he supposedly wrote a second thriller called Brood of Death which was listed in Lobo's Who's Who in Literature (1930) entry.  However, no publication of that title is recorded in any reference books or newspapers.

EASY TO FIND? Mandrake has been an elusive collector's book for several decades now. There is exactly one copy of the 1929 Jarrold's edition of Mandrake for sale from noted sci fi/fantasy/supernatural fiction bookseller L. W. Curry.  And it's got a hefty price tag. I recommend you purchase a copy of the reprint from Medusa Press.  There are no used copies of this reissue for sale primarily because the book is 1. so scarce anyone will want to keep their copy and 2. it's beautifully designed and typeset. The photographs in this post are all of the Medusa Press edition.  There were only 350 copies printed and I have no idea how many are left now that 16 years have passed since it was published. But I got mine only two and half weeks ago. There may still be some copies for sale. And good news! The original price has been reduced by 25%, only $30 now.  Order directly from the publisher.  Here's a shortcut link for you.