FFB: The Sutton Place Murders - Robert George Dean

THE STORY: Murder and mayhem in the financial world of 1930s Manhattan. Insurance investigator Paul Andrew Thompson (he goes by Pat, the first initials of his name) is hired to prove a suspicious death is suicide so his firm can avoid paying out the $250,000 policy. But when another suicide occurs Thompson is certain that a killer is disguising his work, what the newspapers will soon dub The Sutton Place Murders (1936).

THE CHARACTERS: While the story seems dominated by men (police, lawyers, the district attorney and several business associates of Harry Mitchell, the drowned man the insurance company believes killed himself) the real interesting characters are the women. Susan Barton, is Thompson's girlfriend who as a reporter has access to the "morgue" and archives of her employer. She is enlisted to help dig up dirt in the past lives of several female suspects. Susan has several theories about how the crimes were committed. The scenes with she and Pat are probably the best in the book.

Whenever Pat is interacting with a woman character like sly and evasive Alice Woods or vamping Laura Hess the book becomes much more interesting. Even the eccentric widow Louise Mitchell and a seemingly insignificant maid like Madeline Hine are better delineated with intriguing quirks than the many cookie cutter male characters we have encountered over and over in crime and detective fiction of this era. As the story progresses it becomes clear that the women are the ones the police should be paying attention to. Plots and schemes are uncovered and a deadly game of blackmail seems to be at the root of all the mysterious deaths.

INNOVATIONS: Dean likes to emulate the hardboiled style by laying it on heavy with banter and wisecracking dialogue. "Pat" Thompson could have been a great long-running series character. It's a shame that he appears only in three books. The scenes with Pat and Susan are the liveliest parts of the book and sound similar to the repartee you hear in movies like The Thin Man series and other urban and urbane crime films featuring husband/wife or male/female detective pairs.

The detection in the book is surprisingly well done. One of the better examples involves the typewritten suicide note purportedly left by Laura Hess Pat does some inventive thinking which leads him to believe the suicide was staged and the note clearly not typed by the victim. He also wants to know if Harry Mitchell's death was a suicide then where was his note? Clues related to clothing play a big part in the plot too. Susan offers up some ideas that most of the men would never think of and is convinced that one of the suspects, Louise Mitchell, is a man-hater if not a lesbian as some of the men later surmise.

The talk of lesbianism in the book is done rather frankly and colloquially for a 1930s book. When Susan remarks that Louise Mitchell has no man in her life Pat quips, "You mean she's a Les?" Later eyewitnesses report seeing someone dressed in men's evening clothes having visited Louise in secret. Everyone thinks it's a man, but Susan is certain it was woman in disguise. Many of the men start making bad jokes about lesbians thereafter (see "Things I Learned" section below).

QUOTES: (After waking up with a hangover Pat says to himself:) So this is what comes of trying to drink a woman under the table. Just a sacrifice on the altar of insurance!

The Frenchman was tall and thin like an adagio dancer; his complexion pale, almost sallow; and his face was the type that would be termed handsome by some women for whom life had begun at forty.

Pat: That means you do really adore me, under that scant veneer.
Susan: As one strip of veneer to another, let me repeat for your dull powers of comprehension; I hate you. Vindictively, I might add.

Pat: I'm giving you the chance to a flaunt your deductive powers.
Susan: Mmmm, I see. This is the page where they put the notice: 'Dear Reader, you have been given all the dope; now, it's up to you.' Well you can go to hell Mr. Sporting Opportunity Thompson!

THINGS I LEARNED: Cholly Knick is mentioned in passing. In the context I figured he was a writer. My assiduous Googling revealed the name to a shortened form of Cholly Knickerbocker, the house name for a gossip column created by reporter John W. Keller who started his career with the New York Recorder in the late 19th century. When he left that paper in 1902 to join Hearst’s New York American, later the New York Journal-American, he took the pseudonym and his column with him. One of the more notable Cholly Knickerbockers was Igor Cassini who in the 1940s co-wrote with longtime columnist Liz Smith. For the full history of Cholly Knickerbocker click here.

On page 130 District Attorney Hoffman alludes to a line of poetry from Kipling in an attempt to make a quip about lesbians. He says that “the colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady” (from Kipling’s “The Ladies” ) are lesbians under their skin making the statement when the murder case involves a woman who dresses as a man in order to meet another woman in secret. The actual line is “sisters under their skins” and was never intended by Kipling to imply sexual attraction between two women. Identifying the Kipling quote led me to a fascinating article by grammar maven and lexicon expert William Safire who wrote an essay about the prevalence of misquoting popular writing. Rosie O’Grady, gilding the lily (see Shakespeare’s King John where it is actually “to paint a lily”) and “into the breach” (rather than the actual “unto”) from Henry V were all cited as the three of the most often incorrectly quoted phrases.

The last Tony Hunter novel
UK edition (Boardman, 1954) 

THE AUTHOR:  Robert George Dean (1904-1989) worked as a journalist and drove an ambulance during the war years. In addition to a short three book series featuring "Pat" Thompson and Susan Barton he created Tony Hunter, a private eye who works for the Schmidt Agency. Hunter appeared in ten books between 1938 and 1953. Using the pseudonym "George Griswold" he wrote four espionage/adventure novels with the mysterious Mr. Goode.  I thought maybe one of his books might have been turned into a movie or that he wrote at least one movie script because he's so good at that snappy dialogue you hear in 30s and 40s crime movies. Sadly, his name does not turn up in the Imdb.com listings so the chances of Pat and Susan or Tony turning up on screen are fairly slim.

Pat Thompson & Susan Barton Trilogy of Mysteries 
The Sutton Place Murders (1936)
What Gentleman Strangles a Lady? (1936)
Three Lights Went Out (1937)

IN BRIEF: The Eighth Mrs. Bluebeard – Hillary Waugh

The Eighth Mrs. Bluebeard (1958) is a crime novel that mixes a suspense novel with a caper novel. Basically it tells of a sting operation set up to trap a murderer defrauding a company out of thousands of dollars in life insurance policies. J .B. Stanford, president of his own insurance agency, begins to suspect multiple instances of insurance fraud when he sees a series of claims being paid out on the wives of different men all of whom are named Andrew. The big red flag, besides the highly unlikely coincidence of the first name, is that five of the six wives of these various Andrews died from accidental deaths in the great outdoors, and the repetition of the types of accidents (drowning in a canoe accident, falls from cliff sides) further sets off alarm bells.

Stanford arranges a mindboggling scheme involving Jack Graham, a top salesman; Charles Miles, a private detective; and Gene Taylor, the woman hired to catch Andrew Fisher’s eye as his next wife and future victim. A prized stamp collection is also part of the bait when the team discover that Fisher is a rabid philatelist eager to acquire rare stamps. They arrange that Miss Taylor play the part of a recently widowed woman who inherited her husband’s extremely valuable stamp collection to entice Fisher into meeting her. From there the story becomes a game of cat and mouse between the insurance agency team versus the wily wife killer.

How likely this would happen in the real world is debatable. To me all sorts of ethical issues arise, not the least of which is corporate vigilantism, 1950s style. But as a dramatic treatment of crime Waugh pulls off a couple of neat tricks in what might otherwise have been a routine B movie plot. I also liked that Gene Taylor was not an actress for hire as one might expect, but a desperate woman who needed money fast and was sort of a thrill-seeking tough broad who didn’t mind the element of danger involved. The showdown at a lakeside resort offers up a couple of unexpected twists when it appears the Andrew Fisher is not the only villain Jack Graham has to contend with.

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Reading Challenge update:  Golden Age card, space O2 - “Number or quantity in book title”

COOL FLICKS: A Life at Stake (1954)

Crime and noir film devotees know the insurance policy plot is as old as Double Indemnity. Probably even older. A Life at Stake is yet another spin on the hapless mark duped into taking out a life insurance policy and realizing almost too late he's put a bullseye on his back. Just who is being duped in this story is something that is not all that clear at first. Screenwriter Russ Bender provides more than an ample amount of twists to what could have been a tired story.

Angela Lansbury turns in a neat performance as an unlikely temptress. She shows a glimmer of her monstrously manipulative mother soon to be unleashed in The Manchurian Candidate, a performance that earned her a third Academy Award nomination. As Doris Hillman she can flip the switch from sexy dame with dulcet voice and shapely gams to terrible termagant ready to slap a man's face and scream a torrent of abuse.

He-man hunk Keith Andes is Edward, the mark with a love of money and booze. In a gratuitous shirtless scene the viewer knows our hero is a manly man from the get-go. As the movie unfolds we may be watching him slowly wrapped around Doris' fingers but the director wants us to know that though he's weak of mind he's no Casper Milquetoast in the physique department. We also get to watch him fall in love with his framed $1000 bill, a chunk of cash that will come back to haunt him repeatedly.

As Doris' kid sister Madge, Claudia Barrett proves to be the biggest surprise of the movie. At first we think she's just hanging on to the muscular, lantern-jawed hero for a little thrill, stir up some sisterly jealousy. By the midpoint, however, she'll prove to be every bit as wily as Doris and her scheming husband. She adds a double dose of the twists to the plot with schemes of her own. The $1000 is released from its prison of a picture frame transforming itself from prop to a sort of a supporting character.

I liked this movie a lot. The plot seems heavily borrowed from Cain's novel but there's a delicious quirkiness to this movie's self-conscious low budget attitude. Offsetting Andes' mostly wooden monotone acting is the polished and sparkling performance from Lansbury and occasional inspired bits from Barrett combined with several expertly shot noirish scenes that lift A Life at Stake out of the realm of forgettable B flicks to make it something of a cult classic.

Jane Darwell: "He's a weird one. Him and his thousand dollar bill.

Framed like a picture and a-settin' on the table."

Douglass Dumbrille as Gus reminds his wife who's in charge

Other highlights include Jane Darwell in a cameo as a suspicious landlady and Douglass Dumbrille as Doris' urbanely menacing husband Gus. The melodramatic score is by Les Baxter and the clever script by B movie actor turned screenwriter Russ Bender. Another B movie stalwart, Paul Guilfoyle (dozens of character parts in films like The Grapes of Wrath, Mighty Joe Young, The Mark of the Whistler, Mad Miss Manton and White Heat) does a fine job in his directing debut. Guilfoyle teams up with neophyte cameraman Ted Allen (also his debut as Cinematographer) in creating some moody shots heavily influenced by classic noir movies of the 1940s and getting the most out of his capable cast. Maybe Guilfoyle could have cracked the whip a bit more on Andes. His strongman body deserved and could've taken the blows.

There are a couple of absurdities in the story (like a cabin in the woods with French windows that open onto a cliff side deck that was never finished) and the acting sometimes slips over into grandiose scenery chewing and posing for the camera, but it's such an odd film I was willing to overlook the few faults. In fact, by the midpoint when I realized the plot was headed straight into the land of weirdness I almost wanted more of the absurd and surreal. This is a little known movie that deserves full fledged cult status.  It can be seen in its entirety on several streaming websites for free. As it's one of several movies that has slipped into the public domain you should feel no guilt about watching it on YouTube or downloading it as I did. I've watched it about four times in the past few months and as derivative and hokey as it may be I still find things to enjoy about A Life at Stake.

"I feel just luscious. Uh...how much insurance do you have?"

Gus Hillman's coffee will send you to sleep rather than keep you awake.

Madge (Claudia Barrett) and Edward discuss putting to good use his treasured $1000.

Doris asks Edward to admire the view from the porch-less French windows.

That's quite a drop. Hmm...

The battle for Edward between two scheming sisters.