FFB: Darkness of Slumber - Rosemary Kutak

THE STORY: Eve Minary has suffered a nervous breakdown and been in a catatonic state for seven years ever since the death of her father Judge Ladbrooke. Through the miracle of a new intravenous drug treatment she is about to awaken from her Darkness of Slumber (1944). Her doctors are hopeful that as she regains her power of speech and memory they will be able to discover what sent her into a catatonia. While Eve is recovering Dr. Ian McKeith and his protégé Dr. Marc Castleman conduct several interviews with family and friends. These conversations reveal details of the past and the two psychiatrists begin to suspect that a long forgotten murder -- of an assistant who worked for Eve's lawyer husband Phillip -- might be tangled up in Eve's strange psychological malady. But when the final treatment of the drug is administered Eve suddenly dies. Castleman orders an autopsy so that he can be sure the drug was not the cause and he discovers that Eve had been poisoned with nicotine. Castleman begins his own investigation certain that the two murders are interconnected and that Eve was silenced for what she knew.

THE CHARACTERS: The two psychiatrists serve as amateur sleuths in the early part of the novel. When Castleman, the younger of the two physicians, grows tired of the sloppy police work and suspects that the head police detective may have personal interests in a cover-up connected to a political graft scandal he decides to take matters into his own hands. McKeith warns Castleman that his questions may uncover more problems and lead to further trauma for everyone involved. Castleman takes the lecture at face value, is relatively unmoved by his mentor's dire warnings, and is determined to pursue the truth.

There is a relatively large cast of characters centering on the Minary and Ladbrooke families. Everyone in the cast gets their moment to shine as Castleman conducts his interviews and subtle probing of the events that led to the murder of Hal Crane, a legal assistant who worked for Phil Minary. But though we get to know Scott Ladbrooke, Eve's devoted brother; Barbara Minary, Phil's second wife; Jeff Halsey, Phil's law partner; and a couple of odd mental patients at Oaklawn Hospital the real standouts among the suspects are the two women -- Cissie Humber, Eve's best friend, and Madeleine Ladbrooke, Scott's wife. Kutak has a lot to say about these two women and women of the post-war years in general.

There are three sections for the book, each told from a different point of view. Barbara is the first narrator, Dr. McKeith is the second and Castleman who tells more than three quarters of the story is the last narrator. Kutak exploits her two male points of view in order to comment on the emergence of a new ideal of woman that she clearly finds horrifying. Madeleine is the embodiment of "the complete negation of femininity." Kutak sums her up with a savage description when McKeith is reminded of a platinum mannequin he once saw in a department store window, a faceless cold metal figurine: "The worst feature of the grotesque figurine was its intention. For it was not a caricature, but an interpretation of feminine sophistication. Only a woman as streamlined and metallic as the mannequin could properly wear the clothes it displayed."

In contrast there is Cissie who unlike Madeleine is not a beauty hiding herself in clothes and artful make-up but rather she is a brash and loud celebration of everything women like Madeleine are trying to restrain and squash. Cissie with her frank humor and self-deprecating style has the best lines in the book, she has the most humanity, the most common sense. She is one of the few characters who sees events and people for what they. When prompted to give up her one secret she does so easily and with great relief much to her surprise. So grateful is Cissie to Dr. Castleman for his gentle compassionate manner she practically begs to become his next client for psychoanalysis. Castleman sees it as a flippant remark, but is nonetheless equally thankful for Cissie's revelation of a damaging incident in her past that proves crucial to understanding why Eve had her nervous breakdown.

INNOVATIONS: One of the most unusual detective stories of the 1940s Darkness of Slumber is a prototype of the now popular forensic psychology crime drama. As both a detective story in its traditional sense and also one of memory and behavior Rosemary Kutak handles her original idea with sophistication and insight. The novel relies heavily on recall of the past and conver-sations make up most of the action, but it is not without moments of true suspense and dangerous incidents.

Kutak's penchant for literary metaphors make for some startling images. However, her conceit of using the analogy of an animal hunt for the murderer's search gets heavy-handed when she refers to the still unnamed killer as "the tiger" for an entire chapter.

There is a notable emphasis on describing women's clothing, especially the prominence of brown shades. Barbara shows up in a brown outfit and her arrival into a room is likened to the rush of autumn leaves sweeping down a sidewalk. Madeleine wears nothing but beige and taupe and tan. She is described as being "overbred" and "enervated." In one arresting paragraph Castleman sees Madeleine as only coming to life when the talk turns to death calling her a modern ghoul and a vampire.

THINGS I LEARNED: When Marc Castleman looks up the symptoms and reactions of nicotine poisoning he consults Pearson. I figured this must be the author of a book on toxicology. And I was right. Arthur Pearson Luff (1855-1938) was a physician and chemist and is considered the founder of forensic chemistry. His manual Textbook on Forensic Medicine and Toxicology was published in 1855 and went though numerous editions well into the 1930s. It is apparently a bible for anyone in medical jurisprudence and physicians who want to know anything about poisons. And based on the reference in this novel Pearson's book must have still been in use in 1944.

QUOTES: There passed through her mind, memory of a superstition of early mankind, about the mandrake. The plant that shrieked when uprooted, and brought death and a calamity to any mortal who dared disturb nature's secret plant. Those screams of Eve's...that must be how the mandrake root sounded when torn from the enveloping soil. A protest from nature itself!

Abruptly Madeleine's careful lacquer of poise cracked up, and suppressed emotion flooded to the surface. The horror in her eyes, the profound inner shudder, revealed the force of haunting memory. [...] But abruptly as it had lifted Madeleine's noncommittal mask came down over her face again. Disappointingly the lid of Pandora's box had banged shut and McKeith wondered in sharp dismay how he was going to pry it open again.

Cissie: "Do you see what I see over there? Slacks in this restaurant! I guess there is a war going on but I didn't think it made people so desperate. That woman's rump looks like a trailer bumping along behind a four door sedan."

Cissie: "Hal said I didn't look like I belonged to this century. That I had a medieval look -- a look of 'timeless endurance and ancient tenacity.' Something Rembrandt painted into his pictures of peasants and mystics. I think Hal meant it for a compliment, but as I recall peasants and mystics are not conspicuous for their feminine charm. And the old Dutchman always painted such stolid looking women. I can't say that I'm very thrilled at being taken for a Rembrandt."

McKeith: "It seems that your husband and I both have closed minds"
Madeleine: "Isn't that to be expected? After all, you're both men."

THE AUTHOR:  I can find very little about Rosemary Kutak other than she was born in 1905 and died in 1999 in Louisville, Kentucky. Her real first name is Margaret and her maiden name is...Norris! (No relation at all, I assure you.) She wrote only two mystery novels. Her second novel I Am the Cat (1948) also features Dr. Marc Castleman as detective and is modeled on the old country house mystery novel formula. I'll be reviewing that book later this year.

RECEPTION: Darkness of Slumber was one of the most widely popular mystery novels published in 1944. The original hardcover from Lippincott went into three printings over a course of six months and was still selling in the spring of 1945. The Pocket Book paperback published two years after the hardcover had two printings. The book was also named one of the "Ten Best" novels by The New York Times Book Review. Isaac Sanderson in his December 3, 1944 New York Times book review called Kutak's novel "extraordinary." The Edgar Awards had yet to be invented in 1944, but I'm sure if they had existed Darkness of Slumber would have been a leading contender for Best First Mystery.

Madmen Die Alone - Josiah E. Greene

There's another lunatic on the lam in the opening chapters of Madmen Die Alone (1938) and Dr. Richards doesn't want any bad publicity for his institution. Of course it's Joseph Parisi who's gone missing. Parisi is the most violent of the patients at Exeter Hospital in the frozen north of Minnesota. At the suggestion of one of his junior staff members he calls Captain Louis Prescott of the Exeter Police. Richards knows Prescott can be discreet and prevails upon him to take this up as a personal not a police matter. Perhaps he'll be able to locate Parisi within a few hours, return him safely to his room, and thus prevent scandal and embarrassment befalling the hospital. But when Prescott arrives and is given a meandering tour of the hospital they discover the corpse of Dr. Herbert Sylvester, Exeter's genius psychiatrist, and the only staff member who could reasonably handle the unpredictably violent Joseph Parisi with a minimum of outbursts. Now there's not only a lunatic at large but a possibly murderous lunatic.

Madmen Die Alone is one of the better detective novels set in a mental institution.  Never once are we given a variety of cartoon nut cases. Each patient is presented with compassion; their diagnoses don't label them. Often Prescott thinks the patients are perfectly normal and wonders why someone as friendly and lucid as Mrs. Windowmore is in the place at all. Greene seems to be using the novel as a primer in humane understanding and a less clinical approach to the treatment and care of the mentally ill. Dr. Sylvester, frequently described as a genius by his co-workers, is someone who in this day and age might be said to have an exceptionally high emotional intelligence. Sylvester is talked about as someone with great empathy, who often knows what someone wants better than the person himself knows. He treats everyone with amazing equanimity whether they were a patient, co-worker or friend. As Johnny Dennis explains to Prescott Sylvester never thought lesser of someone if they exhibited what might be seen as negative traits such as being lazy, unambitious, moody or sullen. But Sylvester was also unconventional in his treatment methods and tended to use the patients as guinea pigs in a variety of unusual psychological experiments. A rumor begins to circulate that he intentionally let Parisi free and that it backfired on him leading to his grisly death.

Prescott learns that Parisi was criminally insane and that he came from a family of con artists and thieves. His interrogation of the family reveals that they all seem a little bit off and Dr. Richards even suggests that there is a genetic tendency towards mental illness in the Parisi family. Further investigation shows that they have ties to some mob activity and Parisi's father was seeking revenge on a rival businessman and a fellow Italian immigrant. When the rival also turns up dead the same night Prescott begins to think that an elaborate vendetta was put into action with the escaped madman intended as a scapegoat.

However, the two storylines don't mesh all that well. When the plot is focused on the Exeter hospital, it's staff and patients, the book is both engaging and informative and often enlightening in Greene's ideas about how to better understand mentally ill people. When the plot travels outside of the hospital into the city and we are dealing with the Parisi family, a couple of teenage thugs and a posse of stereotyped Italian American gangsters the book devolves into the netherworld of pulp magazine cliches. Much of the plot becomes too predictable and a final twist in the revelation of Sylvester's murderer comes not as the intended surprise but as an anticlimax.

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Reading Challenge update:  Golden Age card, space D6- "Author has name with initial same as me"
Josiah and John both start with J.

FFB: Nine Doctors and a Madman - Elizabeth Curtiss

UK 1st edition (Herbert Jenkins, 1938)

Elizabeth Curtiss' debut mystery novel Nine Doctors and a Madman (1940) first came to my attention in a brief review at Mystery*File. Interestingly, the evocative title and its subject matter -- the murder of a sadistic, egocentric psychiatrist at a mental institution -- sparked a lengthy discussion in the comments of detective novels set in asylums and mystery plots that deal with madness. A shame that somehow Curtiss' book was lost in the shuffle because it is not only one of the more fascinating debuts by a mystery writer, but it is a classic case of a book that breaks several rules and still succeeds as a fair play detective novel.

Dr. Frank Blythe is one of those characters in detective fiction who well deserve their violent end. Despised and mistrusted by every one of his colleagues at the asylum where he works he believed he had the power to manipulate and "hypnotically control" anyone he encountered. He even bragged that he could put a weapon in the hands of a violent inmate and prevent him from committing a murder. When he is found stabbed to death in a patient’s room it at first looks as if his arrogance has got the better of him and his experiment fatally backfired. But the placement of the body leaves room for doubt that the patient had anything to do with the crime. Furthermore, the unusual murder weapon was an item known to only three people and was always hidden in Blythe's apartment in the staff housing separate from the patient quarters. That weapon, an antique British Meat skewer, was presented as a gift to his wife Myrna, a woman who lived in fear of her husband. Who wouldn’t be frightened of a man who gives a meat skewer as a gift? A skewer that is engraved with the Latin phrase Hoc me occide, si audeus (translated in the book as "Kill me with this if you dare") -- the very same phrase the Borgias engraved on murder weapons they gave to their enemies.

As the title suggests there are nine other doctors in the cast of characters who are immediate suspects. Yet all of them have near iron-clad alibis for the time of the killing. There is not one madman but several in the cast, but as the story progresses the reader learns that perhaps the titular "madman" is one of the doctors. The case is investigated by Dr. Nathaniel Bunce aided by his resident intern Dr. Theophilus ("Call me Phil") Bishop who also serves as narrator. Bishop is no dullard like Captain Hastings nor is he the awestruck and sometimes confused John Watson. He is sharp as a tack. It helps that he is the son of a district attorney. But under Bunce's tutelage as both a student of psychology and criminology Bishop has lots to learn.

US 1st edition (Simon & Schuster, 1937)

Complicating the story of Dr. Blythe's murder is the fact that Bunce is assisting the police in a case of strychnine poisonings. Is there a serial killer on the loose killing men of "small, unprepossessing appearance and effeminate physical type"? Do those poisoning murders have anything to do with the twelve guinea pigs in Dr. Gina Fiske's lab that have all mysteriously died of some poison? Could the killer be among the staff at the asylum?

The story is rife with clues and red herrings. A button torn from a nurse's uniform, a set of missing spoons, a nurse who manages to appear in two different places within a span of one minute, a noisy and powerful X-ray machine that when in use causes all the lights in the institution to dim, and a sparrow's nest in a clock tower are among the more imaginative bits that make for quite a puzzling case. Add in a group of patients who have taken to swallowing objects like pieces of pottery and kitchen utensils and Dr. Blythe's cruel antipathy for alley cats that led him to order the groundsman to shoot them on sight and you have more than enough ingredients for a bubbling cauldron of suspicion and intrigue.

Perhaps most striking of all is Curtiss' handling of the denouement. The final pages are reminiscent of some of the cases of Hercule Poirot and Mrs. Beatrice Bradley where a fictional detective decides to become both sleuth and judge. Dr. Bunce presents alternate theories about what actually happened in the patient’s room. He hints that the death of Dr. Blythe was a just one and finagles the evidence and manipulates the police inspector in charge of the case to think that one of the solutions he presents is the correct one, when in fact it is not. In the final chapter Dr. Bishop and another psychologist discover for themselves the true identity of the killer and are astonished at the unethical practices of Dr. Bunce.

Nathaniel Bunce appeared in only one other book (Dead Dogs Bite, 1939) and Elizabeth Curtiss seemed to abandon the genre completely afterwards. What a shame. Based on her debut alone she showed great promise. She might have been one of the few ingenious woman mystery writers of this era, one who could've shaken up the tired formulas of the genre and given her seasoned colleagues a real run for their money

NEW STUFF : The Insane Train - Sheldon Russell

Here's a great recipe for a crime novel cocktail: Start with one part inmates of an insane asylum, add one part WW2 vets living as hobos under a bridge. Stir in one railroad yard security man. Shake vigorously. Serve on board a train immediately. You're bound to get a dead body or two in that mix-up. This is The Insane Train -- Sheldon Russell's wild ride of a crime novel that takes the reader from Barstow, California where an insane asylum has been destroyed in a mysterious fire to Oklahoma where the asylum founder wants to relocate his charges in a converted nineteeth century army fort. This is the second novel featuring an excitingly original character – Hook Runyon, a one-armed railroad security man, or "yard dog" in the parlance of train men.

It sure took a long time for the train to get going. As for the journey itself, based on the jacket blurb I thought was going to be reading And Then There Were None on rails. Instead the story turned out to be more of a crime thriller with a colorful train background that kept pushing its way into the foreground. In fact, the train journey itself takes up only a third of the book. No sooner does the killer strike but is eliminated in a gruesomely described scene. It's less "Who done it?" and more and more "What the heck is going on here?"

The story has many tangential elements. For a second book there seemed to be a bit too much emphasis placed on Hook's life as it related to his job rather than the story of the inmates, the vets and the killer wreaking havoc on and off the train. I was disappointed that the mystery took a back seat to Hook's little romance with a nurse, Hook's impending hearing with railway officials, Hook's problems with a brutish thug of a cop, and the many mechanical and navigational problems encountered on the beat up train that takes the inmates to Oklahoma.

One aspect of Hook's life that I did like came as a complete surprise. He is an avid book collector. There are quite a few amateur detectives in the genre who have this hobby, but it's often mentioned just in passing. I usually go out of my way to buy any mystery that has book collecting as part of the plot, so this was a nice bonus.

Hook's hobby comes to the foreground in two informative scenes that tells me Russell must be something of a bibliophile himself, if not a bibliomaniac. When Andrea, the nurse, asks Hook if it's an interest of his he replies that it is rather "[a]n obsession. and I'm not the best company when I'm in the midst of a hunt." But he asks Andrea to tag along with him not once, but twice. She seems to bring him good luck, too, as he finds a few book treasures in their days out together.

As a study in the failing corporate railway industry of the post WW2 era this crime novel works very well. For a detective novel enthusiast like me it left me with mixed feelings because the author keep leaving the main story hanging while he went off with Hook someplace else. Still, I'll be looking for the first book (The Yard Dog) to see how that compares. But there's no doubt that Russell loves trains. He is like one of your old college instructors who knew how to take a topic that might seem incredibly dry and make it come to life in a fascinating way.