Listen, Please Listen - Naomi A. Hintze

Single mom Jo St. John is hiding from her past. Her real name is Darlene Heckart. Back in Missouri something happened when she was a teenager. Something bizarre and newsworthy. Books were written about her.  And her past pursued her to Chicago where she and her daughter were harassed. Nasty phone calls cam e almost nightly. Someone nailed a dead cat to their door. But now in Camelot, Connecticut with a new name and a second chance it seems she and Becca can start again. Will Jo's past catch up with her?

Listen, Please Listen (1973) begins as a domestic suspense novel with a heavy emphasis on the domestic side with detailed descriptions of daily routines, chit chat at the breakfast table, gossip about the daughter's friends, etc. etc. This is a typical novel of the 1970s overloaded with mundane minutiae and sprinkled with "hot topics" mentioned in passing to keep the book relevant, as they like to say these days. Among these side commentaries are passages about women's lib, male chauvinism, Native American abuses and retaliatory politics. The only really interesting aspect of the dull and plodding first half of the book is learning all about Jo's life as teenage Darlene and the dread secret she carries.

I have to mention this secret even though it came as something of a surprise despite the DJ blurb ineptly giving it all away in the first sentence. It has to be mentioned in order to discuss the book at all. And anyway that secret is revealed early on in a flashback. So here goes...

Darlene had telekinetic powers as a teen.

She was such a raging child that she consistently destroyed her home, both inside and out, with flying dishes and glasses, pelting stones, cracking windows and mirrors. Her religious zealot of a grandmother and her leering creepy uncle who were keeping her at home, basically imprisoned, because they would not have her attending a school that showed explicit sex education films, complained about the odd child and gossiped in town. Subsequently, the newspapers got a hold of the story and Darlene became headline news in her small Missouri town.

If this book actually had been about Darlene as a teen rather than Jo remembering her past via a flashback I think it would have been a lot more interesting. Certainly this entire flashback sequence which explains her powers, what happened to her house and her relatives, her meeting a 19 year-old newspaper reporter, her fleeing the house and subsequent shacking up with the reporter and eventual pregnancy are well written and often suspensefully told. But this amounts to a mere ten or so pages in a single chapter. 

I should have figured out that what Hintze was really after was a story of sins of the mother revisited on her child. Because --that's right -- the telekinetic disasters recur in her new Connecticut home.  At first Jo thinks this is her doing, but her landlady thinks that it's all Becca. She persuades Jo that her daughter has somehow inherited the mother's curse.

Simultaneously, Becca is going through a phase of teenage jealousy. Her friend Candy from her girl scout troop seems to be in competition with everyone. More disturbingly Candy flirts with Mr. Kenyon, the landlord of the boarding house where the St Johns live. Becca loves Mr K and sees him as a kindly grandfather figure. She can't stand Candy becoming overly familiar with the man. She sees Candy sitting in his lap and kissing him whenever he compliments or praises her. Is it possible that Becca is channeling her anger into telekinetic explosions with flying plates and glasses smashing against the walls?

The novel has one strength in that is is actually a cleverly disguised detective novel.  Jo cannot accept that Becca has inherited her curse.  She begins poking around and finds evidence that all of the phenomena were faked. Just as this plot point is beginning to resolve and Jo is planning to confront the culprit a shocking and violent death occurs.  I was totally unprepared for this in the final third of the book.  But I guess if I had been paying attention to subtle clues I would've been able to predict exactly who died so violently. And the entire book shifts focus, mood and intent. The two plot lines conveniently overlap and all is explained if a tad too contrived.

In the end the book is a mix of real and faked psychic phenomena and a unpalatable subplot (which I did manage to predict) that leads to the shocking death. The story resolves itself in a Grand Guignol fashion so common in books of this type published in the 1970s.  For all its piled on melodrama and shocks Listen, Please Listen fails to really carry off most of its intended thrills in our modern cynical times where such scandals and shameful secrets are commonplace.

Naomi A. Hintze (1909-1997) is best known for her debut suspense thriller which she does not seem ever to have topped. That book, You'll Like My Mother (1969), was nominated for an Edgar for Best Mystery.  It was also adapted into a claustrophobic and chilling movie starring Patty Duke, Richard Thomas and Rosemary Murphy. Another of her suspense novels Aloha Means Good-bye (1973) was also adapted into a TV movie in 1970s and starred Sally Struthers as a young woman pursued by a killer hired by an evil doctor who wants her heart for an organ transplant. Hintze's other four novels are a mix of occult, supernatural and suspense novels. After reading this book it was not surprising to learn that she was also a member of the American Society of Psychical Research and wrote a couple of non-fiction books on ESP and psychic phenomena. 

Of note, fans of Stephen King may be thinking this novel sounds like a rip-off of Carrie. A telekinetic teen living in a oppressive home with a religious zealot parental figure is too coincidental, right? However, Listen, Please Listen was published a full year before King's cult classic. Hintze ought to be congratulated for beating the soon-to-be multi-million bestselling author at his own game. 

Murder Mansion - Herman Landon

THE STORY: Donald Chadmore, newly released from prison for an assault charge has come to his uncle Theodore's home in order to protect him from a possible attack. He takes his uncle to the library at the ancient gloomy Chadmore home known to locals as "Mystery Mansion" and locks both of them inside.  The heavy door is bolted twice and locked from the inside. All windows are barred. There is no way anyone can get inside. And yet spectral music plays from the piano in the corner of the library and a shadowy figure emerges from the darkness. Uncle Theodore cries out to Donald. Donald fires his revolver at the shadowy figure. He goes to the divan where his uncle was sitting but it's empty.  Uncle Theodore is found behind the furniture piece on the floor. He's been shot. Not only shot but stabbed with an antique dirk that Donald had handled only a few hours ago and which was left in the hands of someone now locked upstairs in the attic. Who was the shadowy figure and how did it get in to kill Theodore Chadmore?

HIGHLIGHTS: Murder Mansion (1928) is another Herman Landon pulp extravaganza.  Think of any pulp magazine story trope and its bound to be in this novel.  Several beatings and fistfights, abduction, two locked rooms, a haunted house, a family curse, hidden jewels, strange legacies, disguise and masquerade, ventriloquism, a dying message, and a handful of gangsters all make their appearances in this story. The entire book is surprisingly well written (at times rather literary), cleverly plotted, and often laugh out loud funny.  Landon can't help but pile on the Gothic excesses and melodrama which tend to turn up the moody atmosphere to 11, 12 or even 13 too often. Still it's a helluva story, well told and teeming with fun characters, innovation, exciting incidents, and enough puzzling elements to keep any hardcore GAD fan glued to the pages.

THE CHARACTERS:  This book has a huge cast of characters but even some of the most minor characters have memorable moments. There are too many to list, including six mystery guests who turn up for a secret meeting with Theodore on the night of his murder. Below are the best of the cast.

Donald Chadmore - Our ostensible protagonist and an amateur sleuth of sorts. As the book continues he is more of a victim of circumstance, chosen by the villains of the piece to take the fall for his uncle's death as well as being blamed for several other bizarre activities. His  dancing partner, both literal and figurative is...

Gloria Westcott - The Bright Young Thing of the book. A real Jazz Age girl complete with 1920s lingo she shows off to her "big boy."  One wonders why she  turns up so often too coincidentally in the most unusual locations. All will be explained later in the book. She's an utter delight providing much of the lightheartedness to offset the heavy-handed strum and drang whenever Donald and Gloria exploring dark passages or dealing with yet another thunderstorm. I loved the Jazz era slang she slings around as easily as she does the foxtrot.

Samuel Peterkin - Valet who works at a luxury hotel, on loan to Donald for his stay and travels to Mystery Mansion to help him as not only valet, but personal assistant.  Peterkin can't help but offer up his talents as a detective and comes up with an ingenious idea to solve the locked room murder. He turns out to be the real sleuth of the book despite the presence of police, a D.A. and a private detective working for the prosecutor's office.

Milliken - Investigator for D.A. Mott. Won't have anything to do with ghosts or locked rooms. The whole crime gets his goat.  "It ain't natural!" he continually pronounces. He can't stand anyone who "blows froth" at him.  Some kind of 1920s slang, I gathered, for telling lies or making up stories (a running gag in the last third of the book). He has a few excellent scenes showing off his detective skills. Notably, he proves that the odd placement of Donald's fingerprints found on the dirk show that Donald could not have stabbed his uncle. Almost everything and everyone he encounters in this case is classified as "unnatural." Nevertheless, he's determined to find the real reasons for the murder and dismiss all the claptrap.

Mr. Amicus - A very dead character whose presence is always felt at Mystery Mansion.  Real name Jacob Hamilton Chadmore, he is Donald's great grandfather.  The story behind his self chosen moniker is too involved to explain here. But it is a bronze bust of the dead man and his promise to return from the grave on the anniversary of his death that keeps Theodore and his wife on their toes and often up late at night unable to sleep. They’re especially troubled every October 7, the night he died back in 1800 and something. The novel of course opens on October 7 and Theodore is killed on the anniversary night. Could it be a ghost that did him in?

Groody - A butler with a suitably weird name this servant to the Chadmore household is privy to several secrets that he won't reveal until the final chapter. He's a bit shifty but always answers Donald's questions honestly.  Trouble is Donald never asks the right questions.

"Doc Locks" - For a while I thought this exceptionally astute expert would turn out to be the detective. But he has only one scene and then he's gone. Neither a physician nor a PhD scholar "Doc Locks" is a nickname given to him by the police and the prosecutor's office. We never know his real name, still Doc is clearly the Gideon Fell of this novel. No locked rook can stump him. Through careful examination of any murder scene deemed a locked room and using his knowledge of criminal tricks and clever illusions he finds any secret passages and all possible means of exit and always proves a locked room is never hermetically sealed. Until this one, that is. Before he tells everyone that it seems impossible for anyone to have entered the locked room tells a few interesting true crime anecdotes like the one about the 19th c. French murderer who managed to infiltrate a locked room with a blazing fire in the hearth by coming down the wide mouthed chimney wearing an asbestos suit and a helmet with built-in oxygen tank!

John Pagan - One of six guests who were to visit Theodore Chadmore on the night of his death. He arrives t dressed in white tie and tails, the only person in such formal attire. He has an unusually deep and theatrical voice that Donald recognizes as belonging to someone he heard plotting his uncle's death. That person calls himself Staglawn.  Much of the book involves characters trying to uncover the true identity of Staglawn. Pagan denies being the murder plot mastermind. He also has a hilarious running gag of sorts that takes the form of an aversion to certain vocabulary and vernacular.  When anyone uses these words he responds with outrage and satirical wit: "Candid? Abominable word! Just as if anyone could be candid in this world of sham and pretense and stupid amenities!" See the quotes section for a couple more of these amusing outbursts.

QUOTES: Gloria: "Secrets should only be told in the moonlight."

Donald: "What do you think, Milliken? Do I look like a murderer?"
Milliken: "You do.  All the murderers I've seen looked innocent."

Pagan: "Hunch? I detest that word. It's a lazy man's designation of an idea he is too indolent to think out clearly."

Pagan: "Kindness? That's another word I detest. What we call kindness is only inverted selfishness." 

"This will be a lesson to me," Don added. "I'll never again trust strange women."
"Poor Don!" Gloria gave a mock sigh. "Everything is a lesson to you, isn't it, Don? But you always forget."

Peterkin: "[Valeting is] the best education in the world. Keep a man waiting two minutes for his trousers before he's had his morning coffee, and you learn as much about human nature as it would take you two years to learn in any other way. To know human nature, you've got to study it in the raw, with the frills off. Sometimes I've found it awfully raw, sir." 

THINGS I LEARNED:  Mr. Amicus is a great devotee of Haydn and remarkably has learned several haunting themes from his opera The Devil on Two Sticks.  Prior to any Mr Amicus manifestation in the library the weird dissonant music from this opera plays on the piano.  I was intrigued by "dissonant" music from Haydn most of whose music I think of as bright and melodious.  Lo and behold!  It is true that he wrote the music for an opera titled Der Krumme Teufel (his first full opera written at the age of 19) based on the 17th century French satirical novel by Alain-René Lesage translated as The Devil on Two Sticks. But how Mr. Amicus can play the music is the ultimate unsolved mystery of Murder Mansion.  According to all accounts I found online Haydn's opera is a lost work and though there are archival copies of the libretto no sheet music nor any recordings are known to exist. The only anecdote I could find connected to the actual composition was told in an 19th century collection of composer biographies. Here it is related that Hadyn and Josef von Kurz, his librettist collaborator, had a discussion on how to capture in music the sound of a thunderstorm.  Haydn could not come up with a suitable musical motif.  In frustration he slammed his hands on the keyboard and his companion exclaimed, "That's it!" Probably someone's vivid imagination at work. Landon certainly makes the music seem creepy in his lush descriptions. Don't know why he didn't use something more immediately recognizable like "Danse Macabre". I guess music that doesn't exist is easier to work with for a novelist; he can make it sound any way he wants it to sound. 

THE AUTHOR:  Herman Landon (1882-1960) was born in Stockholm and came to the United States with his family in 1895. At one time he worked as a journalist for the Washington Herald where he was feature writer and a managing editor. His primary fame, however, is as a pulp magazine short story writer and crime fiction novelist.  Throughout his fiction writing career lasting from 1907 to 1942 he wrote close to 200 short stories and 20 novels. He created several popular series characters for the pulp magazines among them The Gray Phantom (who may have been the inspiration for Batman), The Picaroon, Godfrey Usher, and Kingdon Cole. Some of his Picaroon stories were collected into book format and published in the UK only. Most of his stories were published in Street & Smith magazines with the majority of them (more than two thirds of his total output) appearing in Detective Story Magazine and Detective Fiction Weekly. His stories also appeared in 10 Story Book, The Blue Book, The Smart Set, The Corner Magazine. and The Popular Complete Stories. Some of his stories were adapted into silent movies.

EASY TO FIND?  Nearly impossible these days I'm sorry to report.  I found one copy available for an cheap price due to its poor condition. Looks beat to hell, but if you don't mind reading copies (I certainly don't when the book is extremely hard to find) then it's waiting for you. Two copies (maybe only one listed at two different sites) translated into French also turned up for sale. My copy in VG condition, pictured at top of this post, was sold within 12 hours of the post appearing. Sorry to anyone who was looking for it earlier. 

UPDATE:  Remarkably, three days after this review was posted I checked for copies of Murder Mansion and discovered all were sold. Even the French translated copies! Also sold were two copies of The Forbidden Door (before I even mentioned it in the comment below). Oddly, another copy of Murder Mansion has turned up. That one final copy is the Liveright 1st edition and is priced exorbitantly. It will cost you well over $300 including shipping and taxes if you live in the US. Even more if you live outside of the US. But the copy has four torn pages. In pieces! Still, I am sure that someone will buy that book soon. That and a roll of Scotch tape.