SWAN SONG: The Intimate Journal of Warren Winslow - Jean Leslie

Today I introduce a new category for the blog -- the "Swan Song" post.  This will be devoted to a writer's final book in the crime fiction genre if not their final book altogether. Often I read a last book of a writer that's new to me without realizing that it was in fact their final book in their entire output.  Rarely do I do this consciously. I prefer to start at least in their mid-career if not at the very beginning when sampling a new writer. And so I thought I'd give a category to last books since it seems to be a n odd and coincidental reading habit of mine that is happening more and more frequently.  

The Intimate Journal of Warren Winslow (1952) is also one of the many books I've purchased this year that were tagged by Doubleday's Crime Club with the ! logo as a mystery that promises "Something Special.” I've previously written about this tagging/categorization of the Crime Club books from the late 1940s through the early 1960s in other posts. Most recently I specifically wrote about the "Something Special" category which has been a lure for me over the decades in choosing books published by the Crime Club imprint,  in my post on The Magic Grandfather by Doris Miles Disney.  

Warren Winslow is a bestselling novelist suffering from a heavy case of self-doubt as he impatiently waits to hear from his publisher on when his latest novel is to be released.  Both his agent and the publisher seem to be dragging their feet in making a decision. To pass the time and occupy his obsession Winslow creates a diary capturing his thoughts and emotions on everything that is haunting him including his failing relationship with his wife, his dwindling creative powers, his past life as the wunderkind of the bestseller list and the insidious seed of jealousy that grows monstrously out of control. By the time the first diary is filled with his invective towards John Bailey, a rising writer who respects Warren and pays too much attention to Warren's wife Robin, Warren Winslow reveals himself to be a man overcome with a dangerous mixture of jealousy and self-doubt. He starts a second diary with the news of the fate of Thence to a Lonely Dwelling, a novel that he thinks will be his crowning achievement.  The manuscript, however, has been rejected.

The diaries soon grow to four full volumes and jealousy gives way to murderous rage.  We not only read of Warren's dwelling on his past glory as a novelist, but learn of his tortured childhood, his strange relationship with his wife and her mother, how he met both women, the affair he thinks Robin and Bailey are having, and his plans to put an end to John Bailey as his rival in love and the bestseller list. The murder plan is carried out but there are surprises in store for both Warren Winslow and the reader when he begins to realize that the truth was clouded by fantastic imaginings. But by then it is too late for him.

As a portrait of a vain, petty man who fails to see his days in the limelight are long over The Intimate Journal... initially makes for some difficult reading. The first diary is dominated by the outpourings of a mean-spirited man angry he has grown old,  envious of better writers, jealous of younger men with good looks and wholly possessive of his much younger wife who seems to be straying from him. Only when the novel begins to focus on Winslow's nasty murder scheme does the book become taut with tension and less off-putting as the non-stop name calling and insulting of everyone he meets gives way to an obsession of revenge.

Intermingled with the story of Winslow's murder plot and jealousies is a subplot involving Winslow's secretary who has been entrusted with rewriting portions of Thence to a Lonely Dwelling in order to make the book more attractive to the publisher.  This at first seems to be merely story filler, a way to flesh out Winslow's struggle to confront his dwindling creative powers and compromising himself for the sake of money and a contract, but will prove to be one of the more intriguing twists to the novel as a whole.

One of the most interesting characters is Dr. August Fremling, a psychologist who is also one of Warren Winslow's biggest fans. Fremling keeps asking Winslow to visit him to look over his fine collection of glass, something that Winslow belittles in his diary confessing that the many invitations are unwelcome while publicly he dons his genteel mask of the urbane sophisticate and politely and repeatedly declines. Eventually he finds himself at a party at Fremling's home and he reluctantly enters the room with Fremling's glass collection. Winslow is astonished by the collection, ironically entranced by something he disparaged as a childish hobby. He goes into great detail describing the way the art objects are arranged and how the light passes through each object and fills the room with color. This unusual scene gives way to an odd intimacy between the two men and a mutual admiration builds up almost instantly.  Fremling then slyly offers up some observations about Winslow's life, insights that are frankly shocking to Winslow, all the while paying homage to his writer hero and flattering him with deft praise.

Jean Leslie cleverly has inserted Dr. Fremling into the story as a sort of detective of the soul. Leslie was not only a mystery writer but also an academic in the field of psychology. She uses Fremling as a sounding board for theories that she must have learned and taught in her studies. Winslow's family doctor has a brief speech about the importance of psychiatry to heal the minds and souls of modern men.  The scenes with Fremling also contain some of Leslie's most compassionate writing and allow us to see Winslow in a new light, dimming some of the glare of his reprehensible traits and allowing a soft glow of humanity to emanate from his bitter, envious body.

And she adapts her love of all things psychological in the context of this story about writers and writing, the struggles of creativity, and the burden of a guilty conscience. Winslow at one point offers up a not too original, but still insightful observation that novelists and actors have much in common. Later Dr. Fremling expounds on his theory of the writer's life as a source for his supposedly fictional work. His keen understanding of Winslow comes almost entirely from having pored over the novels, sometimes reading his favorites more than once. For Fremling Winslow's novels reveal exactly who is he and where he came from. Having already read some of the anecdotes from Winslow's past life in the pages of the first three diaries we know that Fremling has nailed the man with an eerie accuracy.

QUOTES:  All novelists are actors. What else is a novelist but a man playing many parts? He must be able to project himself into a dozen roles if he is to write with authority.

This morning I awakened in a state of great mental perturbation... It was as though I had come back suddenly from some black abyss and I could not help but wonder if I would have died in my sleep if I had not awakened when I did and defied the Dark Stranger.  Reason tells me this is fanciful, but the feeling persists. [...] It is childish to be afraid of the truth, but I am afraid.

Bailey is dead. He died to save our marriage. Then what is this new ghost that stands between [Robin and I]?  Is there any peace for me, anywhere?

"Are we to call Sabrina inventive genius or are we to assume that Bailey wrote from that great reservoir of experience which is man's private world? Does he "dream up" the conflicts, as you say, or does he express his own conflicts disguised in such a manner that we accept them as fiction? I say this is what the writer does, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously," Fremling said. "I would go further that that and say that the intensity of the inner struggle is positively correlated with the need to write."

Dennis Malcolm, Winslow's physician:  "Our culture has placed certain restraints upon a man so that he may not handle them for himself.  Confronted with a situation in which his behavior would be anti-social he must take his choice between driving the conflict underground or letting a psychiatrist help him to face it."

FFB: The Silence of the Night - Roger Ormerod

THE STORY: Weary of the world of police work David Mallin is now in security work, his most recent assignment is to guard the artwork – in particular, a Chinese vase from the T’ang dynasty – at an upcoming gala in the home of Hillary Keane, art collector and real estate mogul. But the night before the gala Keane’s home is burglarized, a man is murdered, and the vase is smashed to pieces. Mallin offers to help find out exactly what happened when his girlfriend’s uncle is implicated in the burglary and possibly the murder. Because Mallin was on site at the time of the burglary and was suspiciously knocked out by an unknown assailant the police immediately suspect the security guard of being involved in the crimes. Mallin works furiously to clear Elsa’s uncle and himself of all culpability.

THE CHARACTERS: Dave Mallin is modeled on the American private eye heroes of the 1940s. The entire book is imbued with the conventions of an action-filled pulp thriller. He speaks just like one of the generic wiseguy private eyes from books and movies of a bygone era. Very odd for a British book published in 1974. But he’s inherently likeable as a protagonist and I liked his irreverent treatment of his former police colleagues. He has all the inside dope on how police officers think and operate and this gives him an advantage over them as he resorts to a battle of both wits and methods in figuring out what happened at Killington Towers.

Elsa seems to be present only as a foil for Mallin’s coarse personality. In contrast to her boyfriend Elsa is refined, a wannabe sophisticate, who longs for a better behaved, more gentlemanly man in her life. She’s constantly bickering with Mallin and adding insult to injury flirts with all the well-to-do art collectors. One of these men, Martin Vale, spends a lot of time with Elsa. She accepts his attention mostly to irritate Mallin and because the guy has a Porsche. There is a running gag about her own car that has a faulty starter and a kind of stupid subplot about trying to get it repaired. Her Rover sometimes starts up fine, and at other times fails to start at all. This serves as a gimmick to keep the arguing flowing throughout the story. But what at first I thought was just dumb jokes and filler turns out to be an important plot point. Cars, their engines and whether they run well or not all turn out to be significant to the story and help Mallin defeat the villain in the end.

Speaking of subplots -- in addition to all the talk about art and antiques, specifically ancient Chinese porcelain, there is a parallel story about 17th century playwright manuscripts making this both an art mystery and a bibliomystery. The murder victim is Cameron Frazer, an oddball researcher obsessed with proving that Christopher Marlowe was the true author of Shakespeare’s works. He has managed to infiltrate the Keane household without invitation and holed himself up in the library refusing to leave. All this because in addition to the fine art collection Killington Towers houses a library of rare books and manuscripts. Keane inherited the library from the previous owner. Among those rare manuscripts is a Shakespearean first folio that Frazer was poring over at the time of his death.

T'ang dynasty jar with lid

Even more intriguing is the fact that Frazer is deaf. This presents an intriguing impossible crime of sorts. The police presume that the burglar was startled in his theft of the vase, dropped it, broke the thing, and then murdered the researcher so that he could not identify the burglar. But Mallin maintains that the murder was an inside job and that the killer must have known that Frazer was deaf otherwise he would not have attempted the burglary in the first place. So if it was an inside job why was Frazer, a deaf man, killed? He would not have heard anything, not a door being jimmied or a window being raised, and certainly not the smashing sound of the vase when it broke. It’s all rather mysterious. Mallin wonders which was the intended crime – the murder or the burglary? Was there even any crime at all? Was the burglary faked? Was the murder an accident?

Elsa’s uncle was involved in a shady deal trying to acquire the first folio for one of Keane’s collector friends, Alton Bloome who is visiting from Minnesota. Bloome is also interested in the Marlowe/Shakespeare conspiracy theory and has made manuscripts a hobby of sorts. The police are convinced the murder is the primary crime and that the vase being smashed was an accident as the murderer fled. But Mallin is not so sure it’s as easy to explain away. Elsa insists Mallin get to the truth and prove himself worthy after having failed to do his job of protecting the vase and other artwork.

Then it turns out that there is a copy of the T’ang vase in the possession of Martin Vale, local automobile dealer and the same man Elsa has been hanging around. Mallin begins to wonder if the burglary has something to do with collector jealousy and the murder was not at all the primary crime.

INNOVATIONS: As usual Ormerod fills his story with loads of red herrings among the well placed valid clues. I fell for the most obvious red herring while dismissing all the automobile talk as filler. None of the car talk, however, is filler. You don’t need to know the difference between a Rover (Elsa’s car with the faulty mechanism), an Oxford (Mallin’s car) or a Porsche (Vale’s alluring car) but any reader ought to pay attention to scenes when Dave and Elsa are arguing about whether the starter works or not. I should have known better having just read a book where I skipped over all the talk about photography and missed one of the best clues in that other book.

The smashed vase is of greatest interest to Mallin. He collects all the pieces and has it reconstructed by an art forger/expert he knows. When the vase is reassembled there is a small piece missing. This sets Mallin’s imagination afire. Elsa’s uncle was in the area of the library where Frazer was killed on the night of the murder and burglary. But he claims he did not hear the vase being broken. Mallin uses this as proof of his theory that the vase was broken elsewhere and the pieces were scattered around the floor to make it appear that it was broken. The missing piece is most likely to be found in something that belongs to the burglar/murderer. He believes the vase was stolen. He mentions this to the police referring to the incident as “the crash that wasn’t heard” -- The Silence of the Night, as it were. Alwright, the detective in charge, quips, “Like the dog that didn’t bark?” and laughs at Mallin.

ATMOSPHERE: In keeping with the American private eye influences that permeate The Silence of the Night Ormerod creates a cinematic set piece for his climax. All of the car business leads to a breakdown in both mechanics and Elsa and Dave’s relationship. The two hot headed lovers break up seemingly for good and Elsa storms off to find Vale. Mallin ends up being pursued by one of the bad guys and we get a full blown car chase, shoot out culminating in a explosive wreck as the book’s climax.

Humor is interspersed making the book all the more engaging and readable. I particularly liked the absurd bit of business when Mallin wants all the male suspects to speak in a pretentious American accent in order to figure out who faked a phone call. The scene allows Ormerod to make fun of American gangster movies with one of the more amusing characters doing a near perfect impression of James Cagney snarling out 1940s movie dialogue. The tension is cut in an original way and the entire scene undermines the villainy of the professional criminal who was exploited by the murderer.

Overall, The Silence of the Night is an entertaining and unusual detective novel blending traditional Golden Age plot motifs, American hardboiled narrative style and Ormerod’s original use of contemporary and popular culture in spreading out innovative clues. My only complaints are 1. the villain in this book is rather obvious (if not his motive) 2. the only American character in the story, Alton Bloome, tends to speak in British idioms that no American would ever use. For instance, he says “set that down” rather than “put it down over there”. But this is just nitpicking on my part. I enjoyed meeting Dave Mallin, Elsa and the rest of the regular gang and look forward to reading other books in the Mallin series. There are sixteen books in this series, most of which are available in digital book format from Lume Books as well as fairly affordable used copies from online sellers and used bookstores.

BONUS!  Try to find a copy of the 1993 Black Dagger reprint (pictured at top and the one I own). There is a brief introduction with some biographical info on the author written by our friend Martin Edwards!  He was writing introductions back in the 1990s for the CWA sponsored "Black Dagger" reprint series. This book and five others were selected by CWA members Peter Lovesey, Marian Babson, and Peter Chambers.  If all of them are as unique as this book I'll be looking for more of them.

Dave Mallin Detective Novels
Time to Kill (1974)
The Silence of the Night (1974)
Full Fury (1975)
A Spoonful of Luger (1975)
Sealed With a Loving Kill (1976
The Colour of Fear (1976)
A Glimpse of Death (1976)
Too Late for the Funeral (1977)
This Murder Come to Mind (1977)
A Dip into Murder (1978)
The Weight of Evidence (1978)
The Bright Face of Danger (1979)
Amnesia Trap (1979)
Cart Before the Hearse (1980)
More Dead Than Alive (1980)
One Deathless Hour (1981)

FFB: Seven Clues in Search of a Crime - Bruce Graeme

THE STORY: Unwittingly while riding his bicycle home from his bookshop and lending library in Bray-in-the-Marsh Theodore Terhune foils an attack on Helen Armstrong. A group of men were after something in her handbag. Over the next couple of weeks Terhune ferrets out information from Helen and her employer Lady Kathleen Kylstone and uncovers seven clues that lead to one large crime that has its origins in the secret past of two families.

THE CHARACTERS: Seven Clues in Search of a Crime (1941) marks the first appearance of bookseller and accidental detective Theodore I. Terhune. An avid detective fiction reader Terhune has aspirations to become a writer of mystery novels. He has already penned a few stories that were published in Saturday Evening Post. His run-in with Helen and the assault that followed awakens in him an innate talent for detective work. Soon the two learn that the men were after a key that Lady Kylstone had entrusted to Helen. The key had slipped into the torn lining of her handbag and went undiscovered by the thieves. Lady Kylstone then reveals that the key opens the family burial vault and there is an annual ritual surrounding the vault. Every year on October 25 (the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt) the vault is decorated with flowers and opened to the public in honor of the Kylstone ancestors who fought in the battle. Terhune is certain that there is something in the vault that the thieves are after. That night someone breaks into the Kylstone home and steals the key from Helen's handbag. But why bother with going to such lengths to steal the key when in only one day it will be October 25 and the vault will be opened to the public? Theodore's curiosity is piqued and he cannot stop prying and investigating until he knows the answer.

News of his accidental heroism makes its way through the town and in a matter of days everyone is talking about "Detective" Terhune and his exploits. Alicia MacMunn is so entranced by the story of his thwarting of the thieves that she consults with Terhune to solve a mystery of her own. At an impromptu dinner party attended by Mrs. MacMunn, her daughter Julia, and friend Geoffrey Belcher Terhune hears the story of Mrs. MacMunn's bookloving father who was researching the genealogy and heraldic history of Bray-in-the-Marsh's noteworthy citizens. But a few months ago his impressive handmade history was vandalized. Someone stole the first 50 pages (consisting of family names ending in A through D) of the manuscript. Mrs. MacMunn would like Terhune to find out why and if he can to recover those pages.

Of course the thefts of the vault key and manuscript pages will eventually tie together in one of the most outrageously complex stories. Terhune's adventure will involve a trip to New York City and Albany, a professional criminal for hire, attempted murder on board a passenger ship, a mystery woman nicknamed "Blondie", an automobile accident that kills four people, and learning the true identity of a salesman who worked for a tire manufacturing company.

Apart from Terhune, Helen and Lady Kylstone -- our trio of heroes -- the story is populated with a large cast of stimulating characters. As with the best of these type of adventure-quest styled detective stories everyone Terhune meets in his travels has a noteworthy scene. A man with a scar who seems to be following Terhune will turn out to be not a villain but an ally while the tart-tongued cocktail guzzling vixen Julia MacMunn who at first Terhune dislikes intensely will prove to be one of the most resourceful and compassionate people he meets.Other notable characters include Det-Insp. John Henry Sampson who enlists Terhune as his unofficial assistant when he sees Terhune has an innate talent for police work and encourages him to delve further; Lt. Kraszewski who has two brief but excellent scenes in the NYC section; and Mr. Ramsay, Margaret Ramsey's father, who has quite a tale to tell that will provide Terhune with lots to mull over on his way back to England.

INNOVATIONS: The entire novel is one of Bruce Graeme's trademark experiments in narrative. Rather than following the standard formula of a traditional detective novel presenting the reader with a crime and having the detective sift through evidence and question suspects Terhune encounters a series of mysterious events that indicate a crime about to happen. Each new adventure leads him to one more clue to the true crime at the heart of all the various mysteries. Among the seven clues of the title are a gold fountain pen with a strange insignia, a cablegram from New York, a piece of paper with the name Blondie and an address, a statue of Mercury, and the intriguing life of Margaret Ramsey, Mr. MacMunn's secretary who moved to New York.

The book is an excellent example of a genre blending crime novel that mixes adventure thriller, quest story, detective novel and satire of English village life into one highly entertaining read. Graeme has a wicked sense of humor and the caustic wit that makes up most of the dialogue is a highlight. The dinner party, for example, during which Terhune learns of the manuscript and the missing pages is one of the funniest scenes in the book what with all the jibing and banter between bitchy Julia, her easily ruffled mother and sarcastic Geoffrey Belcher. Imperious and no-nonsense Lady Kylstone (who is also an American) has some great lines, too. Graeme's mature women characters reminded me of the matriarchs and doyennes of Rufus King whose older women suffer no fools gladly and speak their minds with blunt honesty.

QUOTES: Lady Kylstone: "Diana Pearson would prove a better source for information of that nature. She is a born osteologist where the metaphorical skeletons of the cupboard type are concerned."

Arnold Blye to superficial Julia MacMunn: "I thought you hated books. What are you looking for? A book on cocktails?"

THINGS I LEARNED: This is one of the rare bibliomysteries in which books are talked of with reverence and displays the author's knowledge and love of books of all genres, but in particular detective and mystery fiction. Among the names dropped throughout the story are Dennis Wheatley, Leslie Charteris, Frank Packard, Peter Cheyney, Lawrence Meynell, Edgar Wallace, and Philip Gibbs who was mainstream but who I know wrote two novels with supernatural themes. Every now and then a name cropped up that I didn't recognize like Ursula Bloom, who after I trolled the internet for info I learned is the most prolific woman writer of the 20th century with approximately 560 works to her name and a handful of pseudonyms she used. One book discussed intriguingly was the bestseller of 1940 I Bought a Mountain. This is a memoir written by 21 year-old Canadian born Thomas Firbank describing how he bought a house and land in Wales and became a sheep farmer. It sold thousands of copies all over the world and supposedly made Wales a dream destination for anyone looking for the "good and simple life" that Firbank extolled so beautifully in his book.

THE AUTHOR: Graham Montague Jeffries (1900-1982), better known as Bruce Graeme, also wrote under the pseudonyms David Graeme (claiming he was Bruce's cousin), Peter Bourne, Jeffrey Montague, Fielding Hope and Roderic Hastings. He was astonishingly prolific in crime and adventure fiction writing exactly 100 hundred books and created, in addition to Terhune, five other series characters:  Supt. William Stevens, Inspector Allain of the Sûreté, Det. Sgt. Robert Mathers, Inspector Auguste Jantry, and -- the character he is probably best known for -- Richard Verrell, alias "Blackshirt," a professional thief who becomes a successful crime novelist. Prior to turning to full time novel writing Jeffries was part of the Westminster Rifles during WW1 and worked as both a reporter and a movie producer. His son Roderick Jeffries was also a mystery writer who as "Roderic Graeme" continued the Blackshirt novels before writing crime and suspense fiction under his own name.

EASY TO FIND? Well, what do you know? As of this writing there are absolutely zero copies of Seven Clues... available for sale from the usual online bookselling sites I regularly check on. But don't let that stop you. Worldcat.org tells me that there are two copies held in prominent US university libraries and four copies in UK and Irish libraries. Get a copy via interlibrary loan, why doncha? This is one of the most entertaining crime novels I've read this year. Had I the money I'd reprint this one in a pinch.

Theodore I. Terhune Detective Novels
Seven Clues in Search of a Crime (1941)
House with Crooked Walls (1942)
A Case for Solomon (1943)
Work for the Hangman (1944)
Ten Trails to Tyburn (1944)
A Case of Books (1946)
And a Bottle of Rum (1949)
Dead Pigs at Hungry Farm (1951)

Please note that this list is the only accurate listing of Theodore Terhune books on the web. Elsewhere you will find lists with missing titles that do feature Terhune or incorrect books listed that feature a detective character other than Terhune.

FFB: My Bones and My Flute - Edgar Mittelholzer

THE STORY: An artist accompanies his employer on an excursion into the jungles of British Guiana. Guided by an 18th century manuscript they hope to locate the author's skeletal remains and a buried flute and restore both to their proper grave in order to break a curse plaguing the Nevinson family. The arduous journey is hampered by an invasion of other-worldly manifestations, eerie flute music, and demonic possession.

THE CHARACTERS: My Bones and My Flute (1955) is set in 1933 in a remote portion of Guiana still haunted by the bloody slave rebellion of centuries past. Milton Woodsley, a painter hired to provide landscapes for a lumber company's head office which is currently being renovated, is our narrator. Ralph Nevinson, is the lumber magnate who suggests that Milton travel with him through the jungle to see the lumber mill but he has an ulterior motive. One night Nevinson relates the story of a manuscript he came to own. It was written by a plantation owner whose family was slaughtered in a slave rebellion long ago. The manuscript's author, a Dutch man, swore vengeance on all who read his story and cursed anyone who touches the pages he wrote. The curse will continue until his remains and his flute are found and buried together. Nevinson warns Milton not to handle the manuscript lest he too hear the music of the flute nightly and endure horrible visions. In defiance Milton places his hands on the manuscript. Days later he too is under the curse and is haunted by the flute music and the demons that Jan de Voortman somehow managed to summon in his dark dealings with the occult world.

The rest of the cast is made up of Nevinson's daughter Jessie, a rebellious young woman who taunts Milton and his conservative manner and Nevinson's wife Nell, a shallow pseudo-sophisticate. Each of the women also succumb to the curse -- one willingly and the other inadvertently in her attempt to destroy the ancient papers. The women begin as supporting players in the drama and slowly move to the foreground eventually becoming the focus of the tale when the grey shapes summoned by the flute invade the jungle and attempt to possess the women bodily in order to stop the men from their task.

Rounding out the story is Rayburn, a faithful servant the group picks up along the way. He serves as a reminder of the superstitious Indians of the island and the shameful slave culture of days gone by. Despite his clinging to native superstitions in a ironic touch Rayburn will ultimately turn out to be the most heroic of the group.

ATMOSPHERE: Mittelholzer must have been well versed in supernatural fiction. He alludes directly to Poe as well as the stories of M.R. James. The entire plot of My Bones and My Flute seems to have been inspired by James' love of antiquarian objects, ancient manuscripts, cursed objects and terrifying vengeful creatures. The curse manifests itself in all manner of apparitions and involves all the senses. Beginning with the ominous flute music, our group of four haunted travellers will be later subjected to a menacing grey thing covered in fur, a fog-like mass that invades their shelter, all of which are signaled by a musky stench entirely separate from the smells of jungle vegetation.

The claustrophobic setting of the jungle is enhanced by Mittelholzer's frequent use of animal and insect imagery. Buzzing flies and omnipresent chirruping tree frogs become terrifying sound effects and act as a wildlife accompaniment to the ghostly melody that follows the group to their final destination. It's a remarkable effect, almost like radio theater. Mittelholzer often achieves a creepy cinéma vérité of the imagination in his evocative descriptive technique.

QUOTES: "The right spell? Boy, you are talking like one of these medieval alchemists you read of in old books," chuckled Mrs. Nevinson.

[W]e could sense the quality of eternity threatening us as though it might actually have been a wavering, tangible swathe of silk that kept brushing our cheeks at intervals.

[W]e might as well consider ourselves already as lost creatures who had stumbled off irrevocably into slush and blackness -- into some cul-de-sac, perhaps, existent amid the unexplored dimensions of our cosmos.

...we had moved within range of forces that had nothing to do with the forces with which men are familiar, and we were about to dodge out of reach of normal laws and be gone forever into a new and slitheringly revolting sphere of intelligence.

A few supremely terrifying moments have loomed into being in the course of the lives of most of us -- moments which have produced such a stunning impact that when reflecting on them afterwards we are inclined to wonder whether they were not of deliberate and perverse invention. It was such a moment we experienced now.

THINGS I LEARNED: Two Caribbean mythical creatures are mentioned. The jumbie (also jumbee) is a catch-all word used in Caribbean folklore and superstition to describe all malevolent spirits and demons. The kanaima is an evil jungle spirit who can possess a human soul and drive it to murderous rampages.

I stumbled over many real creatures among the supernatural ones. For the most part they were animals I'd never heard of, but there was one error. Much is made about the terrifying cry of a baboon in the jungle. But that had to be wrong and so I went a-Googling as I usually do. As I thought there are no baboons in Guiana, the Caribbean islands, or anywhere in South America. Mittelholzer meant a howler monkey whose cry sometimes sounds like the better known African baboon. For that reason locals apparently use baboon as a slang term for that monkey species as confusing to wildlife enthusiasts as it might be.

As for the real native fauna: He mentions a strange bird called the hoatzin (also known as the "stink bird") which is indigenous to Peru and Amazonian South America but apparently migrates to the Caribbean islands at times. Candle flies are something like fireflies but look completely different according to Mittelholzer's detailed descriptions. One that gave me some trouble was salempenter. That spelling is archaic and I found it under salipenter when I finally added "lizard" to the search terms. Looks like it's a medium sized reptile resembling an iguana and it's apparently very fast. Salipenter seems to be local patois according to a herpetologist's lecture I watched on YouTube. The real name of this lizard species is tegu. It's also sometimes colloquially referred to as a "bush motorbike". There is also a salipenter snake indigenous to Guiana.

THE AUTHOR: Just because you may never have heard of Edgar Mittelholzer (which I will confess in my ignorance of world Literature) doesn't mean he's obscure. There are multiple websites and pages of information on his life and works. He is well-respected and a noteworthy figure among Caribbean writers though not generally known for supernatural fiction. The bulk of his novels and stories are devoted to explorations of sex, religion and race. His only other novel with supernatural content, Eltonsbrody (1960), has been reprinted by Valancourt Books and I hope to get to it later this year. Those interested in learning more about Mittelholzer's troubled life and his important works should read Caribbean Beat's essay and a brief bio at Peepal Tree Press.

EASY TO FIND? There are multiple paperback reprints of My Bones and My Flute all of them from UK publishers. The most recent one from Peepal Tree Press (2015), a publisher specializing in works by "Caribbean and Black British writers," is probably your best bet. You can definitely get a new copy of that particular edition. For all others you will have to resort to the used book market and some of them are a bit pricey. I found a copy of the Longman Caribbean Writers reissue (1986) because I was drawn to its attractively eerie cover illustration depicting the Nevinsons and Milton trapped in the shack in the jungle (second scan from the top). A first edition (Secker & Warburg, 1955) seems to be genuinely rare as I could find no copies available for sale.

FFB: Hell on Friday - William Bogart

THE STORY: Johnny Saxon, once a highly popular short story writer, has given it all up to become a private eye. His latest case will take him back to his roots in the pulp magazine world when he's asked by his former publisher to find Dulcy Dickens, a rising star in the field of wartime romance stories. Hell on Friday (1941) might easily have been called "Everyone Is Looking for Dulcy" because Saxon finds himself in a sort of bidding war as two more people ask him to locate the woman, each time the retainer fee increases considerably. Then the missing person case turns deadly and dangerous when a rival publisher is murdered and Saxon is implicated as the killer.

CHARACTERS: The story is almost exclusively confined to the world of pulp magazine publishing and nearly everyone is involved is a writer, publisher or distributor. Saxon's best friend and colleague Moe Martin is a literary agent with a dwindling list of employable clients. A variety of characters seem to have parallels in the real world of 1940s pulp publishing. Sam Sontag, the murdered magazine publisher in the novel, is loosely based on publisher Harry Donenfield of Spicy Detective fame. Joe Rogers in the book is inspired by Rogers Terrill, editor-in chief of Popular Publications. Or so muses Will Murray in his essay that prefaces the reissued omnibus.

Jasper Ward is one of the more unusual guys of the bunch. He sports garishly colored shirts and ties with his tweed suits just like some kind of hood from Guys and Dolls. That's because while nominally he calls himself a magazine distributor, Ward is nothing more than a hood himself. Unethical and tough with his competitors he conspires with Sontag to undermine Rogers' discovery of Dulcy Dickens by trying to get Bogart to find her for them. Ward and Sontag plan to create a new magazine, just like Rogers is planning, that will be the vehicle for Dickens' wartime romance tales. As the story progresses we learn that the pulp industry is truly a cut-throat business and this kind of copycat publishing happened all the time. Publishers dropped the prices of their magazines along with the pay for their writers in order to be the most popular and bestselling in each genre.

A mystery man named Baron von Elman shows up and is the third person to hire Saxon to locate the missing lady writer. His finder's fee is $5000 making it the least refusable offer of the bunch, but also raises Saxon's suspicions. The Baron has never met Dulcy, but he insists he absolutely must locate her. Saxon wants to find out who the Baron really is and why he is so desperate and eager to pay the highest price to find Dulcy. When the Baron turns out to be the owner of a used bookstore with an interest in French novels Saxon suspects there is more to Dulcy Dickens than anyone has imagined. The mystery of finding her is complicated by learning who she is, where she came from, and uncovering the miracle of her prolific writing talent (she claims she can write four stories in a week!).

INNOVATIONS: The book reads like a B movie script and is chock-full of the conventions of private eye movies. In addition to the missing person main plot and a couple of murders, we get a prison break, gangsters in the pulp biz, two "Follow that cab!" chases, and more than the requisite number of gratuitous "shapely dame" passages. In one sequence Saxon spies on a women getting dressed while in front of her apartment window while he's talking on the phone in his office opposite her building. We get our fill of the usual wiseacre private eye talk and several variations on a running gag that always ends with "That would make a great story title." ("It was getting dark now, and it was snowing again. Winter in Manhattan. That's a good title, Johnny thought.")

QUOTES: Girls walking through the streets with fur-topped galoshes framing their pretty legs, dresses swirling in the wind, or wrapped against slim legs; people hurrying home from offices, leaning into the icy blasts that faced the canyonlike side streets; lights coming on, flickering diamonds that chased away the drabness of night. Taxi horns bleating. Newspaper boys huddled at street corners, flapping their arms, screaming, "Huxtra! Huxtra!" An ambulance yammering down the Avenue. People, weary people, pushing and cramming into subway kiosks like moles burrowing into the damp earth; others fresh and bright, just starting the day. [...] A man without a hat standing in the gutter, waiting quietly while his leashed dog sniffs an automobile tire. A taxi rushing by, its tires quietly making wet, sloppy sounds in the black slush. Mud splashing up. The dog owner cursing, "You louse!" Winter in Manhattan. People on an island. Millions of people. The pulse beat of a nation.

THINGS I LEARNED: The entire book is a fascinating study of the pulp magazine business and the life of a pulp writer. There is a lot of emphasis placed on the poor pay writers had to accept and the justifications that publishers gave for their "penny a word" or even "half a penny a word" pay scales. Only when a writer proved that his name on the cover would sell a magazine did the pay ever increase, but never by much. Saxon, we are told, was "prince of the pulps", one of the most popular and highest paid pulp writers at the top of his game. Then he just quit because there was no excitement in it for him anymore and "his stuff went stale." The background details also cover production, including the importance of the cover illustrations and the life of the much put upon artists; the intense rivalries between magazine publishers; and the surprising number of corporate informers who spy on the competitors for a price. Bogart drew on his personal experience in the pulp world and much of what is described in Hell on Friday actually took place when he was writing for the magazines.

William Bogart (circa 1946), from the
rear DJ panel of The Queen City Murder Case

THE AUTHOR: William Bogart was a prolific pulp writer who penned crime, detective and weird menace stories. Under the house pseudonym "Kenneth Robeson" he wrote several stories for the Doc Savage series. In addition to the Johnny Saxon trilogy of private eye novels he wrote two other crime novels: Sands Street (1942) and a novelization of the movie Singapore (1947) with Fred MacMurray as a skipper looking for a cache of hidden pearls and his missing girlfriend (Ava Gardner). Singapore was directed by horror and crime movie specialist John Brahm who had great success as a TV director throughout the 50s and 60s.

EASY TO FIND? Hell on Friday in its original hardcover is a scarce book and even more scarce in the US digest paperback edition I own retitled Murder Man (1945). There are three different paperback reprints under the title Murder Man, a digest from Tech Books (US), Harlequin #57 (Canada) and Phantom Books #640 (Australia). None of Bogart's private eye novels were published in the UK. All three reprints are relatively scarce in the used book market, the last two being genuinely rare.

Thankfully, all three books featuring Johnny Saxon have been conveniently reissued in a three-in-one omnibus. The hefty volume is called Hell on Friday: The Johnny Saxon Trilogy (Altus Press) and can be purchased either new or used from the regular bookselling outlets in this vast digital shopping mall we call the internet. The Altus Press reissue includes an informative foreword by Will Murray, an expert on Lester Dent and the Doc Savage series, who provides a detailed biography of Bogart and interesting background on the real people who inspired many of the characters in the first book. Oh! almost forgot. That omnibus volume is also available for purchase for a Kindle thingamabob from that well known e-tail giant.

Johnny Saxon Private Eye Novels
Hell on Friday (1941) also as Murder Man (Tech Mystery, 1945); (Harlequin 57, 1950); (Phantom 640, 1955)
Murder Is Forgetful (1944) also as Johnny Saxon (Harlequin 114, 1951)
The Queen City Murder Case (1946)
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Hell on Friday: The Johnny Saxon Trilogy (2010) All three of the above in one omnibus

FFB: Vicious Circle - Manning Long

THE STORY: Gordon Parrott receives an urgent message from his Aunt Hester in upstate New York. She demands he come for a family gathering at Christmas, not just as her nephew but in "his official capacity." Parrot is an assistant district attorney in Manhattan an he has a feeling that something shady may be going on in the Allison household. At dinner two nights after they arrive an unexpected guest shows up -- Ruth Matlick. She claims to be married to Clifford Allison, Hester's son who is engaged to someone else. All hell breaks loose and later that night the woman is found dead in her room. Liz and Gordon turn detectives to find out who killed Ruth and why Aunt Hester wanted Gordon there in the first place.

THE CHARACTERS: Liz Parrott appears in her second mystery adventure but the first time as wife to Gordon who she met in Here's Blood in Your Eye. Liz is not a favorite of Aunt Hester's. Gordon asks her to be on her best behavior and downplay her life as an artist's model that so offends Gordon's haughty aunt. Instead Liz decides to play act and turn herself into the exact opposite of a glamorous artist's model. She does her hair up into a librarian's bun, shuns all use of make up, alters her fashionable form fitting dresses to appear frumpy and pretends to be a dishrag of an intellectual. She even drops Latin phrases into her speech to further annoy her husband. Gordon in retaliation flirts with Amy Thorne, Clifford's intended fiancee. When Ruth is poisoned and Liz was known to be the last person to see her alive the family points the finger at Liz as the primary suspect.  Never mind that several family members have much better reasons to have knocked off the unexpected guest.

In addition to the problem of having a poisoner under their roof Liz is intrigued by the mystery of Clifford's book on Russian culture and politics, The Quality of Mercy, every copy of which has unaccountably disappeared from the house. There are whispered accusations of Clifford having plagiarized the manuscript. Three of his writer friends claim to have written the book themselves though Clifford managed to publish it under his own name. Added to this literary mystery is the puzzle of Clifford's possible near bigamous marriage to Amy. Liz is determined to get to the bottom of all the mysteries whether Gordon likes it or not.

The other supporting players include Aunt Mina, Hester's mannish sister always wearing "horse togs" and always seeming like a weak minded minion to the stronger willed matriarch; George Prentice, the handsome devil of the book, another writer friend of Clifford's who spent time in Russia with him and has his eye on Liz; Amy Thorne, Clifford's wife-to-be and the foil to Liz, spends much of the book toying with all the men and taunting Liz with outrageous theories of why she killed Ruth.

INNOVATIONS: Vicious Circle (1942) is divided into three sections. Part one, subtitled "Set 'Em Up", is basically an expository lead-in to the murder done as a screwball comedy. Much of the story in this section relies on Liz and her antics in disguise, her teasing Gordon, and the catty remarks exchanged between Amy and Liz. Part two, " Knock 'Em Down", introduces the murder mystery and Liz drops her disguise in order to turn detective. "Drag 'Em Out" is the final part in which another death occurs and the mystery centers around the true authorship of Quality of Mercy.  Liz spends a lot of time tracking down a MacGuffin she calls "the bulge" because she saw George hide something in his ski parka one day and secretly run off to hide it somewhere. The "bulge" will prove to have significance in the bibliomystery portion of the novel.

The more the book progresses the more I got a sense of the kind of household one finds in the work of Ross Macdonald. There are many family secrets Liz will uncover and a sense that someone was determined to keep all of them buried even if murder had to be the last resort.

THINGS I LEARNED: There are several scenes at a local saloon where Liz likes to play the jukebox. Though I like to compliment myself on a vast knowledge of WW2 era music (I was entranced by my parent's rare record collection) most of the songs I had never heard of including "I Give You My Word" and "Can I Forget You?" There's some singing in the book, too. While taking a bubble bath Liz lets loose with some lyrics from an innuendo filled tune called "She's Sellin' What She Used to Give Away", a 1938 tune written by Buster Jones and recorded by his brother Buddy. Gordon sings and his voice is compared to "a fine Kenny Baker tenor." Kenny Baker was a singer on Jack Benny's radio show in the 1930s and appeared in several movie musicals from 1938 to 1946 including Goldwyn Follies and The Harvey Girls.

Liz mentions "The Bride of the Mistletoe" several times in the last section of the book and it's also one of the chapter titles. Druid legends tell of a virgin sacrificed to Druid priests under mistletoe. From what I gather this is not human sacrifice, but the rape of a virgin performed for the satisfaction of a tree god. There is a 1908 novel that bears the same title written by Kentucky writer James Lane Allen that makes use of the legend as a metaphor for a wife's obedience to her husband. Nice.

A pul-motor was an early device used in performing CPR. The police need to use one on Liz in the climactic scene that takes place in the Allison household attic.

EASY TO FIND? Pretty scarce this one. Currently there are seven copies available for sale in a variety of editions, paperback and hardcover, both US and UK. In my search for photos I uncovered a 1940s edition in a French translation. Apparently all of her books were translated into French. Remarkably, Manning Long's only detailed biographical information on the internet can be found in an article on the French version of Wikipedia. She obviously has her Gallic admirers.

FFB: The Man Who Didn't Exist - Geoffrey Homes

THE STORY: Robin Bishop, California newsman, stumbles across a sport coat left on the beach late one night. Pinned to the jacket is a note that seems to indicate the owner of the coat committed suicide. It's signed by Zenophen Zwick, a famous bestselling mystery writer whose true identity has been kept hidden from the public. Intrigued by this mystery and emboldened by a newspaper clipping, also found in the jacket, that teases about five possible men who might really be the mystery writer Bishop sets out to find the truth about Zwick, who he is, and what might have happened to him. Is it all a publicity stunt? Did he kill himself by walking into the ocean? Or did something far more sinister happen to the mystery writer?

THE CHARACTERS: From the very first page The Man Who Didn't Exist (1937) is engaging and not just because of the double whammy mystery related to Zwick's body disappearing and his true identity, but due to the well drawn cast of oddball creative types. The newspaper clipping found in Zwick's jacket mentions five possible men who could be the mystery writer and they include a poet with hardly any sales, a painter of "headless and feetless nudes", a playwright, and a novelist presumed to have died after falling off a cliff. Bishop meets and interviews each of the still living men several of whom reside in the same apartment building (see the rear cover of the Dell Mapback below). Over the course of his Q&A he uncovers even more mysteries and more deaths occur that might never have occurred had he not decided to seek headline grabbing news. His guilt is apparent and pervades the novel at key moments lending an unexpected gravitas to the proceedings not often encountered in the genre. Most amateur sleuths of this era are more keen on arriving at the solution, naming the murderer and being praised for being clever rather than agonizing over the people who died, pondering the what ifs, and owning up to responsibility for violence that might never have been. Homes also has a flair for crisp, crackling dialogue which he later honed to a sharp edge while working as a story and screenwriter in the movie and TV industry from the mid 1940s through the 1960s.

INNOVATIONS: Unique to Homes' series about Bishop, one of the many reporter sleuths in America's Golden Age of mystery fiction, is the reporters are much more adept at detective work than the police. Bishop, his cohort Guy Barton, and even a rival reporter from the Express do 90% of the detective work in this book. Another 10% comes from Bishop's wife Mary who does some literary sleuthing and comes up with proof of which of the five men wrote the mystery novels as Zwick. The police do next to nothing except bluster and scream at the reporters for meddling in their affairs. What is most intriguing is the deal making that goes on. Bishop, as well as Brennan from the Express, get permission to grill suspects, visit crime scenes, and collect evidence for the police only in order to scoop each other with headline stories while making sure that the police get all the credit in print. It's amusing to watch the pompous and nearly incompetent Chief Hallam Taylor contradict himself each time new evidence is presented and new stories are published in the rival papers. Often he hasn't seen the paper in time to comment and must take his cues from the ever present journalists.

Despite the multiple Q&A sequences the story is never static. It's involved and heavy on action. Many of the action scenes seem like cinematic set pieces like a high speed getaway with Mary at the wheel of the car after Bishop has been forced to beat up a cop in order to escape from a storage closet in the basement of the murder scene. Neither overly complex nor convoluted this is a well told, gripping mystery novel with several clever tricks and plot gimmicks. One of those tricks seems almost like an impossible crime in that one of the murder victims was shot and yet none of the suspects in the building could have been able to pull the trigger when the gunshots were heard as they were in the presence of witnesses who saw no gun.

THE AUTHOR: Unlike his creation Zenophen Zwick there is no mystery as to the identity of mystery writer Geoffrey Homes. He was Daniel Mainwaring who like Robin Bishop began his career as a newspaper reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle then slowly transformed himself into short story writer, novelist and script writer for radio, movies and eventually TV. Mainwaring is probably best known for writing the crime novel Build My Gallows High (1946) which became the ultimate noir film, Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum and his then wife Jane Greer. With the success of that one film Mainwaring turned solely to Hollywood for his income. His scriptwriting career outlasted his life as a crime novelist with numerous contributions as screen adapter of his own novels, well over twenty original screenplays, and a handful of episodes for popular 60s TV shows like Cimarron Strip, The Wild, Wild West and Mannix.

QUOTES: Normally I quote from the book, but I thought this was a lot more interesting as it comes straight from the author:

"First I had a detective named Robin Bishop, and I got sick of him. Bishop got married and then got awfully soft, and I got fed up with him. I changed to Humphrey Campbell, who was a tougher one. With Build My Gallows High I wanted to get away from straight mystery novels. Those detective stories are a bore to write. You've got to figure out 'whodunit'. I'd get to the end and have to say whodunit and be so mixed up I couldn't decide myself." (from an interview by Pat McGilligan)

EASY TO FIND? Looks fairly good in the online used book market, but prices are all over the place. Oddly, the Dell Mapback is extremely scarce while multiple copies of the original Morrow hardcover are offered for sale. Of course, once the hardcover has an original DJ then the price is going to be higher. If you're in the mood to own a nearly pristine copy and have a spare $750 you can own a lovely copy of the first edition with a DJ. Otherwise, based on condition, prices range from $15 to $200+ for a hardcover and $18 to $30 for the paperback. I found no UK editions of this title for sale online., but there is one Spanish translated edition from a dealer in Bilbao for a mere seven bucks. But their shipping fee from Spain is a little under $30. (?!) Best deal I found was a Dell Mapback on eBay for $24.99. Pricey for a Mapback, I think, but it looks to be in much better shape than my beat up, water stained Mapback.

Of the few Robin Bishop Books I've read I enjoyed this one the most. Coming soon a look at the Homes' milk drinking private eye Humphrey Campbell and his shady, very corrupt boss Oscar Morgan.

FFB: As Old As Cain - M. E. Chaber

THE STORY: Recently married insurance investigator Milo March has his newlywed bliss interrupted in As Old As Cain (1954). His boss asks him to travel to Athens, Ohio where a movie company has been loaned a collection of 18th century antiques and old books to be used as furnishings and props in a bio pic of an obscure Ohio pioneer. Milo is asked to make sure the security guards in charge of watching over the one million dollars' worth of insured antiques are legit and that theft is deterred. The day after he meets with the guards, the movie producer and scriptwriter, several antiques and books go missing and the guard is murdered. An in-depth police investigation, more murders and plenty of trouble follow. But the biggest mystery may be this: Will Milo ever get out of Ohio to be with his wife so he can start his honeymoon?

THE CHARACTERS: Just prior to the main plot of the guard's murder and theft of the antiques Milo rescues ten year-old Ernesto Pujol from New York immigration authorities. Seems Ernesto, who was Milo's junior Watson in an earlier case that took place in Spain, stowed away on an ocean liner and was promptly arrested when he landed on US soil. Milo consults with lawyers and manages to adopt Ernesto to prevent him from being deported and returning home in shame. It's an odd tangential plot element that doesn't seem to fit at all. Ernesto came to the US to fulfill Milo's prediction that one day they would work together again on another exciting case. The boy speaks no English and so his dialogue begins with Spanish and then trails off into a stilted English to indicate that he's speaking Spanish with Milo. He serves absolutely no purpose to the story except as a comic character since most of his scenes show him learning Hollywood movie slang and gangster-speak from Curtis Hoyt, the scriptwriter. Very odd too is that Ernesto is perhaps the most misogynistic 10 year-old in crime fiction. He has nothing good to say about women or the entire female sex for that matter. He's presented as a miniature parody of Spanish machismo. It's not really funny when coupled with the boys' obsession with eating ice cream, playing with firecrackers, and acting like a stereotype of a boy from a 1950s American TV show. I wonder if Ernesto disappears later in the series just as Greta, Milo's wife does. She serves no purpose in this story either.

But those are my only gripes with this book. The supporting cast of primary suspects are a varied lot and come off more colorful than those characters I'm used to from Ken Crossen's early pulp career. In his guise as "M.E. Chaber" Crossen has matured as a writer. The characters have distinctive voices and personalities. We have Hoyt, the wise acre Hollywood scriptwriter; a shapely, sex-obsessed, but vapid movie actress; an eccentric history professor obsessed with Athens Ohio's intriguing past; two feuding waspish spinsters more interested in their family reputations than anything else; and an assortment of policemen some clever, some bumbling.

INNOVATIONS: This is a legitimate detective novel and not anything like the espionage adventure thrillers that make up the bulk of the Milo March series. From what I have read on other mystery websites and from the allusions to the two previous books in the series March is often sent to foreign countries often undercover to deal with insurance fraud. Here Milo assists the police with a murder investigation that also involves theft. The story is handled like a traditional detective novel with the usual discovery of physical evidence, the odd red herrings, and Q&A of the suspects. Of primary interest among the missing antiques is a diary that was given to Curtis Hoyt. He pulled out of the diary some of the more fascinating incidents of the pioneer woman's life for inclusion in the movie. He also hints that he discovered something that will make for another movie in itself, one that he plans to call As Old As Cain. The history professor was eager to get his hands on the diary, and cannot understand why a Hollywood writer was the only person allowed to read the thing since it is of greater importance to the town. The story turns out to be something of a bibliomystery when the contents of the diary prove to be the underlying motive for all the criminal activity.

QUOTES: "What are you going to do -- slip over to the morgue and cut little slices off of Enoch to sell as souvenirs in the Brown Derby?"

"I'm not quite sure what you are. Certainly not a woman. You've got all the motions down pat, but the role is a little much for you. When the lines aren't written on the prompt card, you can't ad lib." (This delivered to the Hollywood sexpot right after he has sex with her! That's right--one day after he was married. Nice guy.)

"He drank," Mrs. Singer said. Her tone made it clear that this explained everything.

"Something must be done. Land's sake, a body just isn't safe in her own bed."
Lady, I thought, you'd be safe in anyone's bed.

Ken Crossen and friend, circa 1950s

THE AUTHOR: "M. E. Chaber" is one of the many alter egos of the prolific mystery writer and magician Kendell Foster Crossen whose pulpy impossible crime novels I've reviewed here and here. He also wrote as "Christopher Monig" and "Richard Foster". Interestingly, M.E. Chaber comes directly from mechaber, the Hebrew word for writer or author. You can read more about Crossen and Milo March on his Wikipedia page and at the Thrilling Detective website.

THINGS I LEARNED: As Old As Cain is utterly rooted in its time and is filled with 1950s style namedropping. I was constantly looking up names so I could understand the allusions in Milo's dialogue.

1. Edmund Bergler was a minor follower of Freudian psychoanalysis and made a name for himself in his theory of "psychic masochism", a self-punishment theory of aberrant human behavior "as the basic neurosis from which all other neurotic behaviors derive." He also wrote a book called Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life? (1956) which was apparently considered "groundbreaking" at the time though much of it today reads as nothing more than legitimized bigotry and bad science.

2. Abe Lastfogel (spelled Lastvogel in the book) was the president of William Morris, the nations' premier talent agency. He ran the USO Camp Shows for WW2 military personnel throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

3. The McCarren Law of 1952 was one of the earliest immigration reform laws. It was primarily concerned with restricted immigration into the U.S. Truman vetoed the bill criticizing it as an example of isolationism but the veto was overridden by the House and Senate. From Wikipedia:  "The 1952 Act retained a quota system for nationalities and regions. Eventually, the Act established a preference system which determined which ethnic groups were desirable immigrants and placed great importance on labor qualifications." The rules defined in the Act regarding deportation of immigrants was exploited to keep out anyone associated with Communism.

4. I learned all about Philip Sidney's influential epic romance of the 16th century The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia which is mentioned in passing as one of the handful of old books among the stolen antiques. I'll spare you what I found fascinating about the work. It's egghead stuff only old Brit Lit codgers like me and nerdy Renaissance Lit fans would find interesting.

EASY TO FIND? All 21 Milo March books were reprinted by Paperback Library during the early 1970s. It's those books that you will most likely come across if you're a frequent stalker of used bookstore, thrift store or flea market oldies. The first nine Milo March books (excluding the title reviewed here) were originally reprinted in paperback by either Popular Library or Pocket Books between 1953 and 1960, often with alternate titles. As Old As Cain was reprinted as a first paperback in digest format by Lawrence Spivak's "Bestseller Mystery" imprint and retitled Take One for Murder (1955). This is often mistakenly listed as separate title in the Milo March book bibliographies elsewhere on the internet. The hardcover editions of the M.E. Chaber books are scarce, especially the earliest books in the series published in the 1950s. There are no modern reprints either in print or digital format that I am aware of.

I enjoyed this book despite the odd presence of the pre-adolescent woman-hating Ernesto and the almost pointless marriage and talk of Greta who is relegated to the background cropping up only now and then in Milo's passing thoughts. The plot is strong and the culprit's identity is fairly well hidden though becomes a bit obvious after the third murder. But the motive is unique and very much part of the 1950s mindset. I'll be checking out more of the series later in the year and seeing if the detective aspects hold up or if the espionage/adventure side takes over.

Three Thirds of a Ghost - Timothy Fuller

Let's talk about meta-detective fiction.

How many times have we encountered a line like this: “But Inspector that kind of thing only happens in books or detective movies. This is real life.” I’ve lost count, frankly. And how many times have I groaned at those lines! There ought to be a law for anyone who writes a novel never to draw comparisons between real life and fiction.

But there is a certain type of self-referential mystery novel that I do get a kick out of. Often the red flag is the inclusion of a mystery writer in the cast of characters. It's almost guaranteed that the story will be chock-full of crime fiction allusions, in-jokes and talk about the genre itself. This kind of meta-fiction when handled correctly can be both entertaining and enlightening. The commentary tends not to be done as a purposeless aside as in the bothersome "But this is real life" line. The discussions are integral to the plot and reveal an overarching intent behind the novel.

In the hands of a sly and witty writer like Timothy Fuller whose Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941) does indeed include a mystery writer the plot becomes a platform for commentary and criticism on the genre itself and the purpose of sensational fiction in popular culture. The title alone ought to signal to the reader that the story is intended to be taken not too seriously.

George Newbury, literary novelist has turned to detective fiction in order to capitalize on the popularity of the genre and increase his bank account. He sees his new career as slumming but the public loves his books featuring an Asian detective known as “The Parrot.” Just before he is about to make a speech at a literary gathering in one of Boston’s most popular bookstores someone shoots him. No one in the audience saw the gun being fired including the two men standing beside Newbury at the speaker’s dais.

Newbury had just been about to publish a roman a clef about a very rich and influential family. All of them are present at the literary event. So is Jupiter Jones, Fuller’s amateur sleuth who previously had solved the murders in Harvard Has a Homicide. Jones finds a gun neatly placed under the seat of one of the audience members. The discovery of the gun is witnessed by Newbury’s Chinese male secretary named Lin who many think is the model for Newbury’s detective. Lin is a gun toting Charlie Chan wannabe who is certain that Jupiter Jones is responsible for his employer’s murder. The two of them act as rivals in the role of amateur detective while the police home in on the puzzling evidence of who might have been the shooter.

The book is filled with ironic wit and subtle allusions to everything from Charlie Chan to the preposterous plotting of popular detective fiction. (How's that for snappy alliteration?) Here's a lengthy sampling from the longest section in the book where the characters discuss the evolution of the mystery novel and its relationship to real crime:

"We've just been discussing the public reaction to a murder of this kind. There's bound to be more excitement than sorrow. Quite usual, perhaps, but is it the result of the popularity of mystery fiction? Which came first? Was the public educated to its interest by the mystery story or was the mystery story the result of a public demand for more mysteries?"

"The fictional thriller glamorized murder," said Burton. "It was a mistake. Murder is more a question of glands than glamour."

Jupiter quips later to Burton who is an anthropologist: "I understand, Doctor, the police are looking for you to measure the skulls of the suspects." And the discussion continues:

"There won't be a new type of crime and therefore the mystery story is on the way out. There've been three stages of its development. Novelty, a believable realism, and lastly the fad of the puzzle. The novelty couldn't last, realism went out the their mass production, and a mere puzzle can't stand up for long in book form."

"I don't agree about the loss of realism," said Betty firmly. "I believe every one I read."

"So do I," said Burton, "until I've finished it."

Burton continues for a while castigating publishers and writers and readers alike. Then mentions that baffling crimes are a rarity in real life. No more than ten a year he estimates. Jupiter asks him if he thinks Newbury's murder is one of those baffling cases. Burton agrees that it is. "It looks to me as if someone had gone out of his way to commit murder, though."

There are lots of references to the stereotyped beliefs of the Asian in a mystery story too. As created by Fuller the literary secretary Lin is not at all a stereotype. He speaks in perfect unaccented English, he is an intellectual, yet never once resorts to Confucian snippets of wisdom. But that doesn't mean that other characters in the novel aren't exempt from occasional lapses in judgment often letting their prejudices show.

Lin and Jones reluctantly join forces at the novel's midpoint and Lin proposes that together they trap the murderer with a blackmail stunt. Jones is leery of such a cliché: "That gag has been used before. You're apt to find it at least once in every ten mystery stories." But Lin counters that blackmail is used "because it is based on a sound knowledge of human reaction. A guilty man receiving such a note must act upon it." And then Betty steps in:

"You know, coming from him it might work."

[Lin:] "That is hardly a compliment, Miss Mahan but what you mean has occurred to me"

"I didn't mean..." She blushed slightly and waved her hand. "I guess I go to too many movies."

Much earlier in the book Jones stoops to thinking of Lin as a sort of stock character from fiction and not as Lin really is portrayed:

Jupiter stood up quietly and put up his hands. He had recognized Lin's voice and even if he hadn't known the man had a gun he would have followed no other course. Years of mystery story reading had conditioned him to the proper behavior toward Orientals in dark alleys.

When Jupiter is caught in a compromising situation after he tries to attack Lin with a flashlight the police accuse him of being an interfering amateur. "Who do you think you are, Dashiell Hammett?" Then they remind him of his involvement in the murder at Harvard where he was viewed as a meddling, "eccentric graduate student."  "Are you doing the same thing now?" the cop demands.

Jones quips, "Eccentricity can hardly be construed as an overwhelming impediment in the path of successful detection."

A few pages on Jones confesses that he's been a fool and his impulsive behavior is mismatched with how a rational person ought to react:

It certainly was not reasonable to ask a girl to marry you the same night you'd been caught with no shoes on trying to hit a Chinaman over the head with a flashlight. A short time ago [Lin] had been definitely a Sinister Oriental. Now with his hat turned down and his hands in his pockets he looked only small, wet, and unhappy.

Events had produced a mass hypnosis; sanity, in himself and in others, had been replaced by pure fictional behavior. Murder, as an institution, was not to blame.

All this talk of real and fictional murder then allows Fuller to slip in some satirical social commentary. Often it comes with an unexpected blow:

The discussion turned to a general consideration of the literary scene and Jupiter found it pleasant and relaxing. Obviously Burton and Day had exhausted their talk about Newbury's murder during the course of the evening and until something new developed Jupiter was ready to forget it himself. The ease with which he could put it out of his mind was not surprising to him. If the human ability to forget could cause a second World War it was no trick to abandon a couple of murders.

1944 BOOK: Death Looks Down - Amelia Reynolds Long

For some reason I keep stumbling across academic mysteries ever since that Tuesday Night Blogger salute back in June. Death Looks Down (1944) is another mystery set on a college campus and one of the more gruesome mystery novels I've read this year. With a high body count and some very nasty ways for some unfortunate characters to shuffle off this mortal coil it makes for some flesh creeping reading. A familiarity with the work of Edgar Allan Poe will prepare the reader for the onslaught of a variety of weird murders and hiding of dead bodies found in its pages.

I wasn't expecting this to be as good as it turned out. After all, Amelia Reynolds Long has a reputation for being one of the many authors consigned to that dubious hall of fame known as "Alternative Mystery Writers." I've written about one of her loonier books (The Leprechaun Murders) and have read five others. All of them show a talent for bizarre plotting told in an unfortunate writing style dominated by improper word choices, poor grammar, surreal metaphors and lapses in logic. Much to my surprise Death Looks Down is not only almost completely free of those writing faults the plot, although very weird, all works out rather well. That this book was published by Ziff-Davis, a publisher with a smart editorial staff, might have something to do with the final product. Her previous publishing house, Phoenix Press, was not known for editing at all let alone publishing writers who had a command of English or the use of logic in creating plots. Death Looks Down also succeeds because Long focuses on her two areas of expertise: literature and academia.

Katherine "Peter" Piper, Long's mystery writer/sleuth, has decided to pursue a master's degree and has enrolled in University of Philadelphia's English literature graduate program. Along with six others she is currently taking a seminar on the works of Poe. Discovery of a manuscript of Poe's morbid elegy "Ulalume" in his own handwriting and its subsequent theft and later disappearance sets off a wild tale of greed, collecting mania, and murder.

The characters are completely involved in the multiple crimes and trying to prevent anyone else from dying at the hands of a mad murderer who finds inspiration for his killing spree in the pages of Poe's grotesque tales. Though published in 1944 we get no inkling of the time period other than it is definitely not modern. Reynolds has an ultra-conservative worldview and finds it necessary to express this through her characters. The only aspect of the book that resembles anything remotely 40ish is that everyone is obsessed with social niceties and etiquette. From coarse Sgt. Boone, an average guy cop whose speech is riddled with slang, to the prim and proper Miss Kutz who dresses and talks like a little girl, every character is always making some aside about proper behavior. It's as if each character is channeling Miss Manners.

Sgt. Boone to a suspect: "Do you generally walk into people's rooms when they ain't home, Mr. Phillips?"

Ginnie Pat in the college dining hall to her two table mates: "May I be excused?" [Seriously? Graduate students?  In a dining hall? Help me.]

He paused to reach for his pipe; then, remembering that he was in the library where smoking was forbidden, he regretfully put it back again.

The last sentence shows you how Long has tendency to overstate the obvious. But she just needed to remind us that everyone was sitting in the library where, for Long, etiquette is paramount. I'll spare you all the stuff in the beginning of the novel when the first victim is discovered in the stacks and how incongruous a murder investigation can be in a library "where there are rules." Maybe it was meant to be amusing, but it comes off as schoolmarmish.

Arthur Rackham's illustration for "Metzengerstein"
from the rare George Harrap & Co 1935 limited edition

The book is pure puzzle with 99% of the story devoted to solving the crimes. There is no attempt to develop character relationships or give us deep insights into their lives, make any type of social commentary (other than the etiquette nonsense), or remind the reader that the story takes place during wartime. That's fine with me because the story is engrossing enough with multiple puzzles to keep you turning the pages. At two key moments Long actually manages to create a chilling atmosphere worthy of her inspirational source. The section inspired by the obscure Poe tale "Metzengerstein" includes one of her best written horror sequences. It both repels and fascinates in its depiction of college kids gone wild with hedonism in their pursuit of grotesque amusements. The illustration on the first edition dust jacket will give you a hint as to what is involved. There is also an unconscious nod to Christianna Brand's style of detective novel in that several of the characters takes turns in proposing solutions to the mystery. By the end of the book four separate and plausible solutions have been worked out, in part or in total. Some feat for Amelia Reynolds Long who usually has difficulty in turning out one coherent solution to her murder mysteries!

One thing I wish she hadn't done was to divide the book in sections with each named after a Poe tale. This spoils what could have been several gory surprises when the victims were discovered. Instead, as the reader approaches each new section he already knows what to expect, especially since three of the five sections are inspired by very well known Poe stories.

THINGS I LEARNED: There was a lot about the publication history of Poe's writing, his work as a editor at two magazines, and a passing reference to Griswold. And that last bit I had to look up.

Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1815-1857)

Rufus Griswold started out as one of Poe's supporters when he published his poetry in the groundbreaking anthology Poets & Poetry of America (1842). But their tacit business friendship turned ugly when Poe reviewed the final book. In his thoroughly critical essay of the anthology Poe targeted the unbalanced editorial focus. Griswold obviously favored some poets over others. One poet, for example, had over forty poems included while in Poe's opinion other poets received little to no attention. The absence of some of the best writers of the day was also pointed out. Griswold never forgot that critical essay and he became Poe's rival for the rest of his life. When Poe died Griswold wrote an unflattering obituary hardly eulogizing the man instead leaning heavily on character assassination. To this day what Griswold wrote, much of it lies according to Poe's friends and relatives, is the portrait most people have of Poe when they think of him: morose, alcoholic, drug addicted, temperamental, anti-social, and friendless.

The real detective of Death Looks Down, the character who presents the final and true solution, is Edward Trelawney, an investigator for the Philadelphia DA's office who is of Irish descent. He speaks Gaelic and tends to launch into his native tongue when he's angry. There is one instance when an Irish word appears in the story. I'd never heard or read it: spalpeen - Irish slang for a rascal.

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This is my first review for a book published in 1944 for Rich Westwood's Crime of the Century meme for July. I'll have two more to entice you before this month is over.