FIRST BOOKS: The Hanging Sword! – Andrew Soutar

A publicity blurb on the inside of my copy of The Hanging Sword! (1933) states: “Andrew Soutar … has said that he writes mystery stories as a relaxation from the strain of writing long and serious novels. He regards this ‘mystery’ work as a tonic!” Keep in mind this is a first novel for what turned out to be a series character. Though I've previously only read one of Soutar's mystery novels I expected it to be along the same lines of plotting.  True, this one is also sort of obsessed with outre plot elements and quasi-supernatural incidents but the outre part takes over and dominates the plot with increasingly preposterous incidents. When Soutar said it was a tonic for his apparently exhausting mainstream work he was indulging in a rare form of understatement. That exclamation mark at the end of the title should have been a warning for the kind of book I was about to experience.

This book introduces us to Phineas Spinnet, a private investigator of immense ego and vanity modeled on so many similar characters that were popular in the early days of the Golden Age and before more eccentric amateurs and professionals overshadowed them. Spinnet seems most closely related to pulp magazine heroes and adventure seeking crime fighters. He has hired an assortment of ex-cons to help him in his investigation agency and even has a former prisoner as his manservant and butler just like Albert Campion. In this first outing his ego is kept in check for about the first two thirds of the book but explodes into the insufferably opinionated and patronizing man he is in the last portion of the book. As a detective novel it also suffers from a schizoid identity issue for it owes more to weird thrillers of Sax Rohmer and works populated with sinister master criminals of the later Victorian/early Edwardian period than it does to the nascent detective novel of the Golden Age.

The essential premise is an intriguing one: Mrs. Latymer has apparently committed suicide in a locked room with bolted windows. She has shot herself in the head, the gun is found nearby and the only other occupant of the room is her pet cat. Yet her husband Seward Latymer suspects she was murdered; suicide is not at all consistent with her strong-willed personality. When the inquest verdict is returned as suicide Latymer hires Spinnet to investigate further, prove his wife’s death was murder and bring the killer to justice. First step is an order of exhumation and an autopsy. But when they go to retrieve the body it has been removed from the Latymer family vault.

[ASIDE: Anyone up for a blog post on bodies vanishing from coffins and criminal shenanigans involving family crypts and burial vaults? The Family Burial Murders, The Sleeping Sphinx, The Horror on the Loch, Seven Clues in Search of a Crime, and -- no real surprise -- Facing East by Andrew Soutar come to mind immediately.  I had no idea how common this plot motif is in GAD crime fiction until reading this book and then finding about two dozen of them after diligent internet searching.]

All hope for an intriguing detective novel is lost with the entrance of the mysterious Louise Du Sang. Her name alone gives her away as a bloody dangerous femme fatale. She has fiery temper, is madly in love with Seward Latymer and is pathologically jealous of any woman who comes near him. She will stop at nothing to possess him utterly. As the story progresses Mme. Du Sang is revealed to be a one of those characters old-fashioned writers liked to describe as deadlier than the male. The book ludicrously transforms itself into a surreal thriller with an entirely unexpected dash of the mad scientist genre. We are expected to believe that not only is Du Sang a financial wizard with holdings in South America mines and British industries, but also an amateur chemist and zoologist who has a private menagerie. When not tending to her businesses, wheel dealing with barons of industry she conducts bizarre experiments involving neurological chemical agents that trigger the savagery of the animals she keeps. In true pulp magazine style a feral baboon takes center stage for a terrifying attack on our hero and heroine, Ina Dearborn. This sideline in a sinister zoologically perverted aromatherapy will help Spinnet to explain the weird behavior of Mrs. Latymer’s manx Michael just prior to that poor cat’s demise.

As more deaths take place the idea of suicide by suggestion is contemplated and becomes a theme throughout the book. Spinnet is thoroughly convinced that Du Sang is a madwoman and has somehow managed to manipulate all the men in her life to do her bidding. When they fail to live up to her high standards or have served their purpose she eliminates them. Somehow, Spinnet surmises, she has found a way to drive people to suicide and he needs to find proof. However, once Du Sang has been tagged as the villain the detective novel elements cease to exist and the book morphs into a full blown thriller. The only real surprise comes in discovering a hidden relationship between Dr. Woodward, Spinnet’s Watson of sorts, and Ina Dearborn, Latymer’s secretary and the object of Du Sang’s scorn.

The real fun for me had nothing to do with the outlandish plot and odd pulp magazine flavor that pervades the story. It was reading the endless stream of cutting remarks and sarcastic barbs that come out of Spinnet’s mouth. Phineas Spinnet is sort of the Don Rickles of GAD sleuths.

Once they have disposed of a tragedy to their own satisfaction the police hate to have it resurrected lest it should be testimony to their own incompetency.

Woodward: Spinnet, you are a greater genius than even you think.
Spinnet: Thanks, for nothing.

Woodward: You are the most extraordinary fellow I’ve ever met, Spinnet. Do you never sleep?
Spinnet: Sometimes, but I generally close only one eye.

Spinnet: Do you mean to tell me that you allowed woman to disobey your instructions? You deserve to be married.
Chauffeur: I am married, sir.
Spinnet: Good. Then the next time I have a difficult job in hand, I’ll send for your wife to help, and you can stay at home and mind the kids.

FFB: The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet - Burton Stevenson

THE STORY: An error in shipping sends a 17th century ornate cabinet supposedly created by André-Charles Boulle to the home of Philip Vantine, wealthy collector of antiques. He did purchase a Boule (sic) cabinet but it is not the extravagantly designed masterpiece that is delivered to his home. Within hours a strange Frenchman is pounding on Vantine's door wanting to talk to him about the cabinet. And just as quickly the mysterious visitor is found dead, a strange wound on the top of his right hand. This is only the first bizarre death that occurs and the beginning of a baffling mystery that will lure other strange visitors to Vantine's home, including a master criminal in search of a secret hidden within the cabinet's intricate compartments.

THE CHARACTERS: The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet (1912) is the fourth detective novel to feature Lester, the narrator lawyer and his friend ex-policeman turned newspaper reporter Jim Godfrey. The two apparently appear together in most of Stevenson's mystery novels and three earlier adventures are referenced repeatedly, but thankfully without spoiling any of the books. Though Lester -- whose first name I never saw on any page of this novel -- does some interesting theorizing and mild detective work it is Godfrey, the hard-nosed ambitious reporter with lots of police skills under his belt, who is the detective in all the books. For a newspaper reporter he oversteps himself an awful lot, takes the lead when police officers ought to be in charge, and follows a police sergeant named Simmonds around to nearly every crime scene offering his input and expertise. He also has it in for Commissioner Grady, a cop Godfrey apparently worked with years ago and in the reporter's opinion deserves no respect. In fact, there has been a concerted campaign to discredit Grady in the press. Godfrey inserts insinuating remarks in his articles in the hope that Grady will be ousted from his position of authority.

But this is no novel of politics and police bureaucracy. Rather, it is a highly melodramatic, incident filled adventure novel with some top notch detective work from Godfrey, Lester and Simmonds. Some French police also make a late entry into the book when the wild crimes and bizarre murders attract the attention of a master criminal who dubs himself "L'Invincible."

Stevenson has a fondness for every character in the book. Everyone gets their moment in the spotlight from the frantic maid who disguises herself to gain entry into Vantine's house to a greedy cousin of Vantine who intrudes on the house after the second death hoping to learn he will inherit a sizeable legacy from his cousin. Supporting characters are described with as much detail and given as much attention as our intrepid detective team. More than enough sinister events lead the reader to suspect everyone, including servants, of being up to no good. At one point I was convinced that this would turn out to be a book where "the butler did it." Stevenson, however, seems thoroughly influenced by the popular French mystery writers of his time like LeBlanc, Leroux and Allain & Souvestre -- authors of the Fantomas series which was still very new to Americans in 1912. Despite Stevenson's dedication to an initialed friend dubbed "a fellow Sherlockian" The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet is mostly an action adventure thriller.  The novel is so steeped in a variety of crimes and action set pieces, not just the insidious and puzzling murders, that is was slightly disappointing to learn that it all leads to yet another master criminal from France.

INNOVATIONS: The most interesting part of the book is the murder means. It should come as no surprise that the gorgeous antique piece of furniture that gives the book its title will feature prominently. Indeed, it is almost a character in its own right. Readers are sure to be reminded of Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" when the talk turns to fang-like wounds. I myself was thinking that venomous spiders might be involved. The truth is even more bizarre. Lester and Godfrey know the history of France and they allude to the infamous period during Louis XIV's reign known as L'Affaire de Poisons. When the Borgias come up in conversation the cabinet begins to take on a sinister persona. The two men turn to fanciful romance and imagine the worst. Lester comes very close quite early on in the story to working out the deadly method employed to kill the two men foolish enough to tamper with the cabinet.

Alphonse Bertillon
(from his own mug shot)

THINGS I LEARNED: The Bertillon measurement system of classifying criminal types is mentioned as a way to perhaps verify the identity of the unknown Frenchman who dies in Vantine's house. I was unaware that this classification system was so vast. Stevenson has Godfrey tell the NYC police that all criminals in Paris have their measurements taken and filed away. Prior to the widespread use of fingerprints the Bertillon system was the most popular way to keep track of repeat offenders in law enforcement. Alphonse Bertillon, French criminologist, not only developed this early form of criminal anthropometry he also invented the mug shot.

When some valuable items discovered late in the novel need to be stowed away in a safe deposit box prior to being taken with French police back to Europe Jim Godfrey suggests they take a trip to the Day and Night Bank on Fifth Avenue because "it never closes." As he misspelled the French artisan's surname which describes the cabinet of the book's title Stevenson also made a mix-up with the bank's name. The true business title was the Night & Day Bank which was located on 5th Avenue and 44th Street. At the time of the novel's publication this 24 hour bank, a brand new concept in American banking, was only six years old. Founded in 1906 the Night and Day Bank was unique for its safety deposit boxes that were stored in a naturally lit chamber with high skylights in order to attract the business of jewelers and gem merchants. They also operated a separate woman's banking service. In the first year of business the bank posted over $3 million in deposits and had 7,000 customers. For more history on the pioneering Night & Day Bank see Dollars through the Doors: Pre-1930 History of Bank Marketing in America (1996) by Richard German.

Bureau brise, a kind of writing table cum cabinet.
Designed & built by André-Charles Boulle, circa late 17th c.

 Lester talks about how the Boule cabinet once belonged to Madame Montespan and how that association makes him think of poison and poisoners. I fell down the rabbit hole again when I entered her name into the Google search box and learned her full name was Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan, royal mistress of Louis XIV who was linked to the notorious ring of poisoners and murderers involved in the "Affair of Poisons." Lester seems to believe that the Marquise was a wicked woman who practically killed all the victims herself. Contemporary historians, however, have found little evidence that she was involved at all. The real villainess was a fortune teller and practitioner of black magic called Catherine Monvoisin (aka "La Voisin") who butchered babies, committed black mass rituals, and poisoned hundreds of people as a murderer for hire. There are dozens of books about this period in French history but I resorted to the Wikipedia page. I hope I got the facts, not the legends.

Burton Stevenson, circa 1930s
(courtesy of ALA Archives)

THE AUTHOR: Burton Egbert Stevenson (1873-1962) began his life in writing as a boy when he built his own printing press and using discarded type from the newspaper where he was a newsboy created his own privately published newspaper. He attended Princeton where he worked in the university printing office using his skills as a typesetter to help finance his way though school. While in college he worked for The New York Tribune and The United Press as a college correspondent. Eventually he veered away from journalism and found his calling in library work. In 1918 he founded the American Library in Paris "to act as a center of information about the United States." He became its director in 1925 and stayed there for five years. Between 1903 and 1939 Stevenson wrote thirteen detective and mystery novels, six featuring Jim Godfrey and Lester whch are listed below. In addition to his fiction he was the author of numerous compilations of quotes and poetry including  The Home Book of Verses (1912),  a massive 4000+ page tome still in print at the time of his death, The Home Book of Quotations (1934), The Home Book of Shakespeare Quotations (1937) and two other books of proverbs and Biblical quotes.

James Godfrey & Mr. Lester Detective Novels
The Holladay Case (1903)
The Marathon Mystery (1904)
That Affair at Elizabeth (1907)
The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet (1912)
The Gloved Hand (1912)
The House Next Door (1932)

FFB: Flying Clues - Charles J. Dutton

UK 1st edition (Bodley Head, 1927)
Provocative illustration of a character
who appears nowhere in the book

There are a handful of Charles J. Dutton's books that I have recommended repeatedly and I’ll do that again right now before I launch into this review. Dutton had a fascination with criminal psychopathology but is never mentioned in the development of the American mystery novel for being perhaps the first writer of detective fiction to delve into criminal profiling before that methodology actually had a name. The three books I always recommend for this facet alone are Streaked with Crimson (1929), The Crooked Cross (1922) and Out of the Darkness (1922). Unfortunately, Flying Clues (1927) has nothing to do with criminal pathology, serial killer behavior, mental illness as related to homicide, or any genuinely clever plotting.

In the New York Times Book Review of Feb 13, 1927 the anonymous reporter said this about Flying Clues: "With a sextet of mystery stories to his credit it is scarcely surprising that Charles J. Dutton's latest work should show the signs of a practiced hand. Indeed, the presence of those signs stands out in the book as almost a defect." The review goes on to call his book "too accustomed, too usual and much in its matter that is too routine."  Someone one once accused me of writing a review of a book I thoroughly enjoyed as "damning with [it] faint praise."  The accuser was wrong and I defended my stance. However, the NY Times reviewer gives us the epitome of that phrase. I will not be so kind nor ambiguous at all in my feelings here.

Flying Clues, though intermittently entertaining and eyebrow raising in its 1920s social commentary, has its share of storytelling flaws and the most egregious is its title. The very last lines in the book consist of the detective telling his Watson (the ultra dull Pelt who has no first name) that the best title for his write up of this case should be Flying Clues. But I tell you it’s not. Why? Because it is a giveaway to one of the “mysteries” that befuddle Professor Hartley and the police. Well, the title tells you everything, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out exactly what kind of flying clues are responsible, especially when Dutton spends two paragraphs describing a flock of what looks like falcons in the sky and another time when some ignoramus sees some birds in a cage on board a ship, birds that look like chickens. They turn out to be pigeons.

Chickens Pigeons roosting in a rooftop coop

Now I know you are asking yourself exactly the same thing I did: “When have pigeons ever looked like chickens?” Is this some odd evolutionary quirk of the 1920s? Doubtful. I’ll tell you when pigeons look like chickens. When a mystery writer is trying his hardest to plant a red herring in his mystery novel by creating some dumb yokel who has never seen a damn pigeon in his life but has seen more than his share of chickens. You’re welcome to blow a raspberry at Dutton as I did. The louder the better. He’s dead, he’ll never hear you, but it’ll feel really good.

So onto the rest of Flying Clues. We have an impossible crime! A murder that takes place in a physician’s private exam room located in his own home. A woman has been stabbed in a chair in his “waiting room” and then moved to the “operating table.” I’m not going to address the operating table in the private exam room. You can do all that research on your own. And good luck.

The murder was committed in a room where the door was open and yet no one managed to see anyone go in or out of the room. A window leads to the outside but after a heavy rain that very night there are no footprints anywhere near the window and no signs of mud or anyone having entered or exited via the window. How was the woman killed without being seen? Trust me. It’s extremely obvious. There is hardly anything that will puzzle even the most neophyte of mystery readers.

A much better detective novel is
Streaked with Crimson (1929)

Still Dutton insists on trying to make it all seem baffling. The police are convinced that the butler did it! He, after all, was the one who was supposedly watching the room and the only person to leave the dining hall adjacent to the exam/waiting/operating room. During the only span of time that the woman could have been killed a dinner party is going. There are twelve possible suspects besides the butler and the physician who hosted the party and yet all of them were in the dining room at the time of the murder. The bulk of the book is spent discovering who the woman is and her connections to the people at the dinner party. None of it really matters. The killer is as obvious as the title.

What is interesting are two other aspects of the book. One is a subplot dealing with a cult religion called the Home of Universal Truth run by scarlet silk robe clad, turban wearing prophet named Savitr. The other is the apparent motive for the killing which involves cocaine smuggling, illegal drug use and widespread drug dealing. Dutton who was a Unitarian minister gives us a theology lesson in comparative religions, focusing on Hindu spirituality, and exposes the false gods that Savitr claims to represent. As bonus lecture we get the fundamentals of Vedic mythology which helps to explain the self-proclaimed guru's odd name.

Prof. Bartley, Dutton's criminologist sleuth, is just as informed on drug dealing as he is on ancient Indian mythology. In a page long lecture he offers up current cocaine pricing:  $14/ounce purchase price for dealers; $300 to $400/ounce for the users. I have to tell you I gasped when I read this. The handy internet US inflation calculator tells me that $400 in 1927 is equal to $4,437 in 2019. In an eerily prescient passage all too resonant for our troubled times Dutton accuses pharmacists all over the USA of being collaborators, whether unintentional or not, in the cocaine problems that plague 1920s America. One can only draw parallel to the opioid crisis we're dealing with now, more than 80 years later.

So if social history is your thing by all means pick up a copy of Flying Clues (if you can find one!).  Otherwise, here is a yet another early American murder mystery that is deserving of its forgotten fate.

FFB: Reservation for Murder - June Wright

THE STORY: As if the plague of anonymous notes being sent to the young women at Kilcomoden hostel were not enough now a dead body turns up in the garden -- the body of a strange man no one has ever laid eyes on before. Mary Allen had the unfortunate meeting with the corpse. Now she and Mother Mary St. Paul of the Cross, the rectress who oversees the running of the hostel, are teamed up with Detective Inspector Stephen O'Mara and Sergeant Wheeler of the Melbourne police plus a mysterious American who goes only by the name Joe in order to find out who the man is and why he was killed outside the women's boarding house. Is it all tied to the nasty poison pen notes? Or could it be related to a burglary that occurred at the hostel several months ago.

CHARACTERS: Reservation for Murder (1958) is Australian writer June Wright's fourth mystery novel but the first to feature her second series detective Mother Paul (let's stick with the shortened form of her name that she much prefers). In this first outing the elderly nun comes across as a mix of Father Brown and Miss Marple. She has the enigmatic speech patterns so often found in the parable laden tales of Chesterton's priest detective, but she is also a manipulative snoop in the manner of Christie's spinster sleuth. Much of her "detecting" is done by inference and instinctive understanding of human nature. She tends to have an eerie skill at getting others to do her bidding with her kind soft voice, subtle ambiguous suggestions, and implied directives. Unfortunately, she is doing much of the real detective work offstage with the police and leaving Mary to grapple with the shady verbal instructions on her own. And in the end there is a lot of non-fair play narrative that the reader is not privy to until the finale. There are a handful of clues to help guide the reader to the correct solution of the killer's identity, the author of the poison pen letters, and the person responsible for some other dreadful deaths, but in the end the we get an arbitrary resolution of the plot with a silly melodramatic boat chase involving a Napoleon of Crime that just comes out of nowhere.

Still the book is truly engaging. Reservation for Murder is one of the many domestic suspense novels with a mostly female cast that were being written in the US, UK and Australia during the 1950s. The emphasis in this story is on the relationships between the many women in the hostel, their petty jealousies, their closely guarded secrets, the friendships and "frenemy" types who show up in the nearly claustrophobic atmosphere of the all female boarding house. The novels and themes of Patricia Carlon, another underrated Australian crime writer, came to mind as I was getting near the end of this one. Wright is definitely more comfortable writing of female maliciousness as is evidenced in the other books that were reprinted by Verse Chorus Press a few years ago and are easily available to the reading public. The cast of characters is truly what makes this a mystery novel worth seeking out.

We have quite a well drawn cast of women here. Mary has two close friends who were my favorites of the bunch: Fenella King and Clare. Fenella is an Eve Arden type, all wise cracks and common sense, while Clare is the "mannish" athlete who adopts an odd Bertie Wooster style of speech peppering her sentences with "eh whats" and "old girls". They're the most fully developed of what often seems a shallow bunch of women. There is a nasty gossip named Verna, truly a sinister young woman and prime candidate as the author of the poison pen notes; two superficial interchangeable blondes called Betty and Jean chittering on mindlessly and obsessed with make up and clothes; mousy Alison Cunningham nearly always feeling sorry for herself; and mysterious new boarder Christine Farrow, slightly older than most of the 20-something women and a moody artiste with a snappish tongue and a dark secret she's not about to reveal to anyone until it's almost too late. They're all very intriguing characters, but can appear a bit like archetypes or even caricatures at times.

The most caricatured of the cast is the Gorgon widow Mrs. Carron-Doyle, a thoroughly unpleasant over-the-hill bully who badgers her female companion Mabel Jones into submission and treats all the young women like servants when poor ol' Jonesy is not to be found. I was hoping she'd end up a victim of the stealthy murderer. No such luck. However, as a sort of consolation prize to the reader she does get her comeuppance at the climactic fancy dress ball towards the end of the book.

The policemen characters are well done too. Sgt. Wheeler is a typical comic cop and appears in only few scenes until the arrival of his superior. For some reason Wright chooses to treat O'Mara, like Mother Paul. He too has a nearly sinister manner of getting others to do his bidding and he enlists Mary's help as a sort of undercover agent who will observe all the women and report back to him any unusual behaviors or incidents at Kilcomoden. The first meeting they have at a Chinese restaurant is both amusing for Mary's introduction to Asian cuisine and fascinating for O'Mara's masterful method of steering Mary away from her distaste at being a spy to seeing how helpful she can be not only to the police but her fellow boarders.

INNOVATIONS: Wright employs the traditional mystery novelist's gimmick of the dying clue in this book. The man stabbed to death in the garden manages to whisper what sounds like "Jess" to Mary just before he dies. Much of the first half of the book consists of Mary's clever ways to get the women to reveal their middle names, talk about their female relatives, and other methods of trying to uncover who this Jess might be. The answer to that mystery is revealed in the final pages and turns out to be of the most original and devious dying message tricks I've come across in quite a while. Not quite on par with Ellery Queen and probably the kind of clever clue that only a woman writer could dream up.

In fact the book is quite a celebration of all things female. I usually tire of books where women's wardrobes are discussed in great detail. But clothes play a very big part in the book. A favorite dress serves as major clue to prove that an apparent suicide was actually murder. One of the women works at a dress designer's fancy salon and the climax of the book is a dance where all the women spend a lot of time getting dolled up. One of the women is such a overdressed disaster that Betty and Jean, the two glamour girls, insist on giving her a makeover almost against her will. They tie her to a chair, pretty up her face and nails, and leave her in a bathroom while her hair sets. But... Something quite horrible happens to that young woman that was the biggest shock in the book.

THINGS I LEARNED: The book takes place in Melbourne and the setting itself was an eye opener. I'd never heard of a hostel managed by an order of nuns that is in essence a profit making boarding house. While it's never mentioned if the money the women pay to the hostel is then used for charity I'm guessing it is. Not only were there several real hostels run by nuns in Australia there are others throughout Europe and the North America. Some I learned only accept Catholics as guests. Now how do you prove that?

EASY TO FIND? Take a wild guess. That's right. Ridiculously scarce. Amazingly I own two copies and I found both of them online within days of one another, including one with the gorgeous DJ shown at the top of this post. Sheer luck, gang. I can see why this book was not one of the June Wright mysteries that was reprinted. It most likely has limited appeal to a primary female audience, though I readily admit I was truly captivated by the characters and was not entirely put off by its feminine outlook and emphasis on clothes, make-up and bitchy catfighting. If you live in Australia chances are you can find a copy in a local library, especially in the Melbourne area where Wright lived. But it looks to me to be very difficult to find this book anywhere else in the world. If you do come across a copy, I'd say it's worth it for the characters, the two shocking deaths that occur after the stabbing of the mystery man and as a good example of a nun detective in the early history of the genre before nun detectives became tiresome clichés.

1957 BOOK: Conquest after Midnight - Berkeley Gray

For years I kept coming across the Norman Conquest books being offered up for sale on various bookselling websites. “Hmm,” I often mumbled to myself. “I wonder if those are any good.” But I never gave in to temptation. Maybe in the back of my mind knowing that “Berkeley Gray” was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific thriller and crime fiction writer Edwy Searles Brooks kept me away for decades. The bulk of Brooks’ career was spent writing juvenile adventure stories for the British boys’ magazines and then spending a lot of time writing for Amalgamated Press and helping to further the exploits of Sexton Blake. I’ve never been interested in that kind of thriller so I avoided all of his books under his various guises.

Then one day earlier this year I stumbled across a mini library of Norman Conquest books at a Half Price Books location near me. All of them were $8 or less and so I bought them all. When I learned that Norman Conquest is a sort of clone of Simon Templar and that one of the books I now owned was published in 1957 fitting into this month’s Crime of the Century reading challenge, I decided to finally sample one of the adventures of the man known as the “Gay Desperado”. My fears all proved well founded. Even though this book was written in the 1950s it was like travelling back to the early twentieth century and read very much like a boy’s adventure story.

Like much of this pulp fiction the story is fast paced and often quite fun. And yet it is plagued with hoary plot devices, shallow observations about human nature, naïve or stupid characters who fail to see the obvious, and cringe worthy dialogue. Witness, for example, what Fiona says after a gasoline tanker crashes through her living room wall and explodes in a fiery inferno. Does she break down in tears, scream, rant, or rave now that her home and all her belongings have literally gone up in smoke? No, she wimpily exclaims, “Oh dear! What a muddle!”

There is nothing remotely modern about Conquest after Midnight (1957) which is a very old-fashioned potboiler. There is a rich master criminal (a prominent member of Parliament who owns an independent political newspaper) who devises a preposterous plot in order to remove a former business partner he cheated and who is now planning to expose him. Does he threaten him with violence or shoot him dead? Does he hire a thug to beat the guy up or otherwise scare him into silence? No, the M.P. pretends to be interested in starting a private zoo, buys a lion, and hires a couple of men to let the lion loose on his enemy who he knows takes an evening stroll. Let the lion be blamed for having escaped and mauling the man in a surprise but bizarre encounter at night. And everyone chalks it up to an accident. You have to give Rupert Hargrove credit for over-the-top imagination. Other bad guys might just try to run down the guy with a car. I think Hargrove watched too many old movies.

Though filled with cinematic escapades and melodramatic incidents the story is very thin. It easily could be told in less than 100 pages but Brooks’ long career in writing serials for magazines reveals the curse of this kind of penny-a-word writing: constant and needless reiteration. If the story was read from week to week the recounting of previous events would be somewhat necessary. To have Conquest tell characters things we’ve already been told three pages prior is more than annoying. A simple sentence like “He told Fiona what he told the police.” would serve perfectly fine. Not for Brooks. He must tell us two, three, sometimes as many as four times things that need only be explained once.

I’ll admit that it was fun to see how many quirks Norman Conquest has in common with Simon Templar and similar “gentleman adventurers” found in thriller fiction. He is independently wealthy having amassed a fortune from somewhat crooked dealings, helping himself to portions of the wealth of the rich villains he does battle with. Like Templar he leaves behind a calling card. Conquest’s has the significant date 1066 printed in red. Cute.

Towards the end of the book there are absurd surprises:

• A coil of rope Conquest “invariably” wore “as an additional article of attire.” Added as an afterthought: “Easily carried between his undershirt and shirt and quite comfortable.” Batman’s utility belt would be a lot more comfortable.
• Wry commentary meant to be witty but falling short of the mark: “This was no occasion for applying the Queensberry rules” when Conquest starts throwing punches in a fistfight.
• The insults and epithets are pretty tame, too: “You’re a fast worker, slug.” “Careless of you, poison, to come alone...” “Don’t be such a rabbit...” (This last one spoken by a murderer to his cohort)
• An Italian villain actually exclaims “Maledizione!” when foiled as if he were Snidely Whiplash in a literally translated Dudley Do-Right cartoon.
• Conquest boards his private airplane (a Mills Conister Fury) with his wife and pilots his way to Italy to rescue the requisite damsel in distress who of course is being used as a bargaining chip. Hand over the incriminating documents or the girl gets it--- all the way over in Italy, no less.

This is the type of book where the rich and powerful villain can’t be bothered to save his own skin. He hides behind his façade of respectability and hires goons and lummoxes, and in one case a femme fatale who owes him a favor, to do all his ludicrous dirty work. There would be no story if these crooks behaved like real violent criminals who want to protect themselves and just shot everyone dead. Instead we get all this globetrotting silliness, murder by a “monstrous device” that resembles lion claws, kidnapping on board a cable car in the Italian mountains, and stowing the abducted damsel in a refugio hidden in the forest.

I expect more from a writer with a long career in concocting this kind of formulaic crime novel. Most crime writers who have successfully had long careers spanning multiple decades found it necessary to evolve and adapt to reflect how the plots, characters and formulae of crime fiction change with the times. Brooks seemed to find it very easy to cling to his origins and remain firmly rooted in the past. After reviewing the various bibliographies at the Edwy Searles Brooks tribute website I learned that Brooks recycled many of his stories. This tends to be the curse of the writer who feels compelled to produce numerous books at a logic defying rate. John Creasey did the same thing in order to deliver his hundreds of books in his various writing personas. Though many of the Norman Conquest books are noted as being rewrites of plots Brooks used in boys' papers or other pulp magazines Conquest after Midnight apparently was an original story for this series. Could have fooled me.

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This is my second contribution for the Crime of the Century vintage mystery blog meme sponsored by Past Offences. During May we read books published in 1957. My other, much more enjoyable read, was Three for the Chair by Rex Stout.

FFB: Modesty Blaise - Peter O'Donnell

I don't think this really should be considered a forgotten book, but I'm going to write about it all the same. Surely the character cannot be totally forgotten. Peter O'Donnell created Modesty Blaise as a comic strip back in 1963 and the blurb on the back of my reprint edition tells me the strip ran for 38 year and was syndicated in over 40 countries. The first novel didn't appear until 1965 making this year her half century anniversary. And she still looks fabulous! Always will.

I've never read any of the books until a few days ago nor had I even seen the comic strip until I went trolling the internet looking for images to help illustrate this post. But for anyone well versed in spy fiction, adventure novels and, of course, comic strip history, Modesty Blaise will never be forgotten. Truly the first successful and extremely popular female super spy (though that is a very loose term as you will soon learn) Modesty served as the template for all other super heroines of her type. There have been plenty of Modesty Blaise knock-offs in genre fiction, but none come close to capturing the best of her qualities.

She seems to me to be the female equivalent of Simon Templar since she actually began her life as a thief, engaging in capers with her lieutenant Willie Garvin and together amassing a huge fortune that allowed them to live in luxury. Only when the British Secret Service learn of her enclave known as "the Network" does she become a spy of sorts. Sir Gerald Tennant becomes her liaison with the British government and she and Garvin are called upon to help foil a slew of sadistic and ruthless international criminals in a series of eleven novels and two collections of short stories, as well as the comic strip adventures.

At the start of this introductory novel Garvin is in prison in an undisclosed South American country. Modesty infiltrates the compound, single handedly dispatches the guards and sets him free along with the rest of the prisoners. They join forces in Tennant's plan to prevent the theft of a multi-million British pound shipment of diamonds intended as payment for a Middle Eastern sheikh, one of the UK's most respected allies.

Garvin is the gadget expert of the books and he has invented several lethal weapons like an exploding tie tack and a lipstick that releases lethal nerve gas. The scene in which he puts the infernal device hidden in his diamond tie tack is one of the most gruesome in the book. I literally gasped and groaned at what happens to the poor vain sap who is given the tie as a gift. The action scenes are more graphic than I expected. Modesty and Willie are both very adept at martial arts and hand to hand combat. Neither will use a gun unless absolutely necessary. The book is nothing more than set piece after set piece as they do battle with the numerous thugs and villains. Revenge is the motivating factor in many of these violent sequences with the villains intent on killing either Modesty or Willie or both. Our heroine and hero suffer more than their fair share of cuts, stabbings and near broken bones, but the villains get what's coming to them...and then some!

Modesty Blaise was turned into t what I think was a very dull parody of spy movie. Italian actress Monica Vitti wearing a ridiculous number of wigs played the lead impassively alongside Terence Stamp as Willie Garvin. Some excellent casting in his part at least. The book shows Modesty to be tough, smart, sexy and oddly compassionate in her battle against nefarious master criminals and their army of thugs. But you'd never know that from the movie where she comes off as nothing more than 60s pop culture fashion plate who kicks a lot. For a parody movie Vitti was thoroughly unhumorous in the role. No comedy chops whatsoever. Best stick to the books in order to get to know the real Modesty. I plan to go through the whole series in the coming months. And I'll do it in much more detail next time.

IN BRIEF: The Case of the Busy Bees

Clifford Witting tries his hand at a master criminal style thriller in The Case of the Busy Bees (1952). This mystery is not a Holmesian adventure with apiaries and beekeeping as its background. The Busy Bees are members of a criminal syndicate stretching from "Land's End to John O'Goats" whose nefarious activities include "kidnapping, extortion, forgery, blackmail, smuggling, coining, fraud, dope-peddling, black market offences on a large scale." And of course murder.

What begins as an eccentric mystery with the theft of a Native American tomahawk from the odd dime museum run by Theophilus Mildwater leads to murder and gangland violence on a grand and brutal scale such as I've not encountered before in any detective novel by Witting. The introduction of a gang of criminals calling themselves the Busy Bees who resort to code names like Apple Nine Zero and Gooseberry One Six, who signal one another with coded phrases and a trademark "Zzzzz" sound effect, and whose leader dubs himself Rex Apis are all plot elements you'd expect to find in a book written twenty to thirty years earlier. But Witting cannot resist this homage to Nigel Morland and Edgar Wallace. And he spares no one as the criminal activity escalates from theft to kidnapping to murder. The body count is high and the surprises come when Witting shows no mercy for any of his often very likable characters. Your favorite is most likely going to end up dead in this book. Even Inspector Charlton, Witting's detective series hero, succumbs to a diabetic coma and is hospitalized for the last third of the book.

I did learn a few things here. Notably the existence of Potter's Museum (now defunct), one of the most bizarre collections of amateur taxidermy in the world. Started by Walter Potter in the summer house near his family owned pub in 1861 his collection eventually grew to over 10,000 pieces. The museum lived out it's nomadic existence in three different locations from the late 19th century through the late 20th century. From 1984 to 2002 much of the collection was exhibited at Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. Finally the museum was shut down in 2003 when the entire collection was sold at auction, sadly realizing in total sales less than what was anticipated. Witting mentions that Potter's Museum served as the inspiration for the Monk Jewel Museum run by Mr. Mildwater in this novel. For those ignorant of Potter's Museum I suggest you take a look at the macabre collection at this tribute website. I guarantee you've never seen groups of stuffed kittens, hamsters, squirrels and bunnies doing the things Potter had them do.

This wasn't one of my favorite Witting books; very atypical compared to his books written in the 1930s and 1940s. The setting is still Lulverton and the surrounding villages. The puzzle aspects are still there. And he planted some devilishly clever clues that show up the errors the villain makes due to his egocentrism and vanity. Most of the solution, however, combining a puzzling murder, the confusing thefts of museum articles, and the identity of Rex Apis is delivered in a lecture with lots of evidence mentioned for the first time in the final chapter. Even with the few fair play clues Witting hasn't delivered a traditional detective novel here. It is pretty much an all-out underworld thriller with a 1920s style homage to a fantasy world of criminals that never really existed.

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Reading Challenge update: Golden Age bingo card space E5 "Book set in England"

FFB: The Mask of Fu Manchu - Sax Rohmer

Sax Rohmer never ceases to amaze me. For a writer who arguably created fiction's most infamous master criminal and indulged in some of the most macabre aspects of sensation and pulp fiction (some have never surpassed him in my opinion) he also managed to use the thriller as his sounding board for his political views. Am I reading too much into this in light of the recent headline making news of the events in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan? I don't think so. The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) seems exceptionally pertinent now in light of recent world affairs. It gets my vote for one of the earliest thrillers dealing with religious fundamentalism as a platform for terrorist activity.

A British archeological expedition in Iran comes to a halt with the discovery of the murdered body of Dr. Van Berg. The only entrance to his hotel bedroom was the open window thirty feet above ground and yet no ladder could have been used to gain entry without any seen or heard it being done. Adding to the mystery of how the assailant entered the room so swiftly and silently is the aroma of mimosa that pervades the room. A strange nearly intoxicating scent that lingers in the air adding an exotic mystery to the murder scene so typical of Rohmer's books.

Local authorities get word that the expedition is honing in on the site of ancient artifacts belonging to the revered Muslim El Mokanna, known also as "The Veiled Prophet" though someone is quick to point out that this is a misnomer for El Mokanna actually wore a mask. It is the mask, sword and tablets purportedly carrying the text of the New Koran that are thought to be the reason for Van Berg's death.  His murder is viewed as a fatal warning to the crew to stop their digging and searching. Sir Lionel Barton, "the greatest living Orientalist in the Western world", will have none of it. He continues with his work and succeeds in finding those treasures. And then the trouble really begins.

Mask of Fu Manchu is narrated by Shan Greville, Barton's right hand man on the expedition. He is looking forward to ending this project so he and his fiancé can return to London and get married. Anyone who knows anything about books like this immediately knows this love affair will be targeted by the nefarious Fu Manchu and his minions. No sooner does Rima appear but she is threatened and eventually kidnapped. By her own husband to be! Greville himself is abducted when he is tricked into following a figure wearing what appears to be El Mokanna's mask. Turns out it's Fu Manchu's deadly and beautiful daughter Fah Lo Suee. Greville meets up with Fu Manchu, is restrained by some dangerous African servants, and drugged with one of Rohmer's ubiquitous mind controlling opiates. A drug distilled from the seeds of the mimosa pudica has been used to anesthetize Greville which he quickly associates with the botanical aroma back at the murder scene. We also learn that Fu Manchu has been preparing an elixir of life derived from a rare Burmese orchid. An essential oil created from the flower is the secret ingredient in the formula that has prolonged his life and bestowed an ageless appearance.

You can only marvel at the sheer excess of this story. Fu Manchu is once again aided by a veritable army of Asians, Africans and Muslims all with athletic agility and superhuman strength. In addition to an array of exotic poisons and mind controlling drugs there is a super strong cord created from spider silk that is used as a weapon, a restraint and as means of travelling between the balconies and rooftops of high-storied buildings. Did Stan Lee read these books, too? You can't help but think of Peter Parker's inventions when you get to this part.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, of course, make an appearance and are on hand to save the day as they do battle with their perennial nemesis. The story travels from Iran to Cairo to the interior of the Great Pyramid of Giza where another impossible event occurs. From Egypt our intrepid band travel via ocean liner back to London where the climax reveals Fu Manchu's real plans for world domination using his duped zealous followers of El Mokanna.


I haven't read a more breathtaking, high speed chase, action thriller like this in a long time. It's no wonder the wizards of Hollywood were continually drawn to these books as a source for the good ol' fashioned cliffhanger serials of the past. Oddly, the movie version of The Mask of Fu Manchu is even more over-the-top than the book. Gone is all of the religion and quasi-politics. The emphasis is not on zealotry, the dangers of blind faith, and how easily it is manipulated for ill purposes. Instead, the mask and tomb belong to Ghengis Khan and we get an abundance of pulp thriller trappings as indomitable Boris Karloff and ethereally gorgeous Myrna Loy, portraying the evil father and daughter, play havoc with our heroes' lives and threaten world peace. Rohmer's love of botanical poisons and drugs are not surprisingly replaced with an arsenal of venomous creatures. Too strange is the torture sequence in which we watch handsome and rugged Charles Starrett as Greville (renamed Terence Granville in the movie) stripped naked and strapped to a table while Karloff looking like an insane surgeon in his mask, gown, and gloves subjects his victim to injections taken from giant spiders and snakes. And Greville isn't the only victim. The entire band of archeologists is captured and restrained in a variety of old movie torture devices from spiked moving walls to a pit of alligators.

As of March 2014 Titan Books has now reprinted eleven of the thirteen Fu Manchu books. Luckily, The Mask of Fu Manchu is one they chose to include. It's available in paperback from most retailers in the UK and US. For those who prefer the older editions, you can find multiple copies of the many US and UK vintage paperbacks available through the used book market, usually for sale at $7 or less per copy. This book review serves as my contribution to the "1932 Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge" sponsored by Rich Westwood. Visit his blog Past Offences to read more posts on books others found of interest from this exceptional vintage year.

IN BRIEF: The Sins of the Father - John Blackburn

“What sort of mind could wish to free and harbour a group of compulsive murderers and then release them again? Men and women as dangerous as bombs, bullets or… Or hydrophobia.”

-- Marcus Levin in

The Sins of Our Father

 

A rash of crimes committed by criminally insane murders who have coincidentally all escaped from the institutions where they were incarcerated has General Kirk and a committee of prison reform experts more than alarmed. Is it possible that some mad genius is engineering these escapes with a nefarious purpose in mind? You betcha. And since this is a John Blackburn book can be sure that not only is there an evil mastermind at work but that some insidious virus will be uncovered and that some sort of supernatural power will be worked into the story.

The less than subtle "Prologue" to The Sins of the Fathers (1979) neatly ties in the title to an incident in the life of a notorious Nazi war criminal known as Papa Otto Fendler, "a geneticist far ahead of his time." Seems ol’ Papa was fond of a select group of children at the concentration camp where he conducted a variety of unseemly experiments. Just what he did to those children will not be fully revealed until the final chapters. And is it possible that Papa Otto has survived the destruction of the camp and is controlling a now adult group of his favorite human guinea pigs?

With ace bacteriologist Sir Marcus Levin on hand partnered with his wife Tania, a former KGB spy, the sinister plans of Papa Otto are proven to involve a form of germ warfare with humans used as a missile substitute. In a pulpy twist many of the infected madmen and madwomen exhibit symptoms indicative of rabies. Blackburn concocts several scenes where this unfortunate rabid-like victims attack innocent bystanders like so many wannabe vampires by taking healthy chomps out of their arms, hands and faces.

It’s not one of Blackburn’s more original stories. He seems to have culled together plot elements from several of his previous books. Interestingly, this book has a few didactic asides in the committee members heated debates. Blackburn raises all sorts of issues related to prison reform. Overcrowding, segregation of prisoners, and reinstatement of the death penalty are among the hot topics discussed at length. This was one of his last books and it may indicate a trend towards social criticism, a path so many genre writers seem to take in their later career as they tire of the so often formulaic structure of crime and thriller fiction. Nazis, viral experimentation on humans, grisly murders and mind control have all been featured in Blackburn's other novels.

Still it’s a neatly plotted book, swiftly paced and jam packed with pulpy adventure sure to satisfy fans of this kind of over-the-top thriller. The climax taking place in the catacombs of an ancient church with our heroes in peril of drowning by the impending flood from the underground River Larne more than makes up for any of the book’s recycled shortcomings.

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  Reading Challenge update: Silver Age Bingo Card – E1: “Book with a Detective Team”

The Charing Cross Mystery - J. S. Fletcher

Next to Edgar Wallace I believe J.S. Fletcher was the most prolific writer of detective novels and adventure thrillers in the earliest portion of the Golden Age of crime fiction. His strength was always in dreaming up multi-layered plots, populating them with large casts of characters who usually spoke in fair replications of British and foreign dialects, and keeping the reader's attention engaged with an explosion of action sequences. But like most genre writers who churned out story after story he suffered from a dire case of repetition.

With the exception of only a few of his thrillers which venture into the realm of science fiction and fantasy if you read one Fletcher novel you can usually predict what the rest of them will be like. A murder or two, a theft of a valuable piece of jewelry, a villain of the Napoleon of Crime variety, blackmail, a handsome and witty amateur sleuth (usually a lawyer or reporter), and a wily policeman who teams up with the amateur. Throw it all into blender, push a high button speed, and serve in a tall frosty glass with a some biscuits or scones.

The Charing Cross Mystery (1923) is less of a detective novel (though it tries very hard to be one) than it is one of Fletcher's rapidly paced pursuit thrillers. It begins in a subway train car headed for Charing Cross station. Superintendent Hannaford (Ret.) confides with James Granett that he has located a woman who escaped arrest for fraud eight years ago. Hannaford has cut out her picture from a newspaper article as proof and shows it to Granett. Shortly after this somewhat confidential talk -- overheard by our hero, a young barrister named Hetherwick -– Hannaford drops dead, the victim of some agonizingly fatal poison. Granett goes in search of a doctor but never returns. Hetherwick is left to explain to the police and a passing doctor what happened.

Intrigued by what he overheard Hetherwick is curious to uncover the identity of the woman in the photo and would like to find Hannaford's murderer. He joins forces with Inspector Matherfield and together they uncover a complex web of multiple crimes related to the fraudulent sale of a diamond necklace.

Soon it doesn’t matter who killed Hannaford and the other victims or really why they were killed. Fletcher is not satisfied with a murder or two in this story. He tosses into his potent crime fiction cocktail every crime one can think of: blackmail, extortion, theft, check fraud, and kidnapping. The kidnapping eventually becomes the focus of the story as Hetherwick, his law office aide, and a variety of policeman led by Matherfield try to locate the kidnap victim and put an end to the reign of terror begun by a duo of master criminals. In addition to this circus juggler's act of criminal activity Fletcher dares to throw into the ring the time worn detective novel cliché of mistaken identity related to twins!

The book is fairly typical of the crime fiction of the time. Nothing very original or surprising occurs though the supporting cast of characters comprised of a lively and colorful bunch provides for some entertaining moments and amusing dialogue. What makes the book slightly notable is the sheer inventiveness of the multi-dimensional plot and the fast pace with which Fletcher manages to churn out set piece after set piece. It would have made a fabulous movie serial during the silent era as the chapters tend to end with cliffhangers or melodramatic pronouncements. The US edition apparently was originally serialized as my copy published by G.P. Putnam & Sons states it is copyright by Consolidated Magazine Corporation, who published among other periodicals The Blue Book Magazine where Tarzan debuted.

The Charing Cross Mystery is now available as the inaugural volume in a series of vintage crime reprints published by Oleander Press. The imprint, dubbed "London Bound", plans to highlight long out of print books that have been recommended by a British bookseller and former judge for the CWA Gold Dagger Award. Here is how they describe the imprint:

LONDON BOUND – A series of classic crime novels, largely from the Golden Age of detective fiction, faithfully transcribed, re-set and reprinted by Oleander under the series name London Bound - owing, unsurprisingly, to their all being set in the nation's capital.

Each title will be released in a limited hardcover edition as well as affordable paperback editions. Other authors whose work will be reprinted include Henry Holt, William LeQueux, and the exceptionally rare detective novel Fatality in Fleet Street by Christopher St. John Sprigg. I was so excited about the Sprigg book I immediately pre-ordered it. That one is not out until June 2013.

UPDATE, JAN 2015: Oleander Press suspended operations of the "London Bound" imprint series sometime in the summer 2013. Only three titles ever saw the light of day: The Charing Cross Mystery, Fatality in Fleet Street and Doctor of Pimlico by William LeQueux. The planned releases of books by Henry Holt (still mentioned on their website) were abandoned.

FFB: President Fu Manchu - Sax Rohmer

What do South American spiders, neurotoxic drugs, booby-trapped sewers and Huey Long have in common? Why President Fu Manchu (1936), of course. Fu Manchu turns 100 years old this month. I know it's hard to believe because he always seemed so ancient in the books, but it's true nonetheless. The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu (published in the US as The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu) was published in February 1913 and introduced to the world one of the greatest master criminals in all of crime fiction. He lived out his nefarious deeds in thirteen novels and one collection of stories. Remarkably, five of the titles were just reprinted by Titan Books last year. What better way to end President's week than to salute Rohmer's immortal creation in the most unusual book of the series.

But Huey Long? Really? I hear you ask in your usual puzzled voice. Well, a reasonably facsimile of Huey Long. Much to my surprise Rohmer ripped his plot from the headlines circa 1935 and fashioned the only Fu Manchu novel set in the good ol' U S of A, soon to be the writer's adopted home. Just as Sinclair Lewis was inspired by Long's politics to write It Can't Happen Here Rohmer turned social and political critic in writing the eighth adventure of the Asian evildoer. To the possible nightmare of a totalitarian American government Rohmer adds his unique pulp action ingredients resulting in the oddest of books in the series. For after all no one can really overthrow a government without resorting to drug-induced amnesia, assassination by post-hypnotic suggestion and eliminating your enemies with venomous spiders, now can they?

If you're a good student of American history then you know all about Huey Long. Even if you're a good student of cinema or literature you should be relatively acquainted with him. All the King's Men, anyone? Long, of course, was the outspoken Louisiana governor who ruled the state like a tyrant, was elected to the US Senate, and attempted a bid for presidential nomination. His dream of becoming America's first dictator ended with an assassin's bullet. About the time of Long's race for the White House Father Charles Coughlin, a controversial priest with a radio talk show and former supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, took to the airwaves to help boost Long's chief executive aspirations.

In Rohmer's novel Long is transformed into Harvey Bragg; Coughlin becomes Patrick Donegal, the Abbot of the Holy Thorn; and Long's political rival, socialist Norman Thomas, appears as Dr. Orwin Prescott. The similarities are uncanny extending even to Bragg's organization of followers called the League of Good Americans and his catchphrase "America for every man and every man for America" which reflect the motto "Every Man is King" for Long's Share Our Wealth Society. How's that for ripped from the headlines? If Rohmer were alive today would he be a scriptwriter for Law & Order? Imagine how more fun that show would be with plots borrowed from current affairs and then gussied up with exotic poisons derived from tropical plants and zombie-like murderers on the rampage in Manhattan.


Fu Manchu is everywhere!
Detective Comics (August 1938)

An upcoming debate in which Bragg will go opposite Dr. Orwin Prescott (modeled on a debate Long had with Thomas) is the focus of an involved plot orchestrated by Fu Manchu's ubiquitous network of spies and killers. In a scene that foreshadows The Manchurian Candidate by nearly three decades we watch as a nearby Si-Fan agent utters the key word "Asian" and Herman Gosset, a thug for hire previously drugged and now under the influence of post-hypnotic orders, shoots Bragg dead in full view of spectators during the debate. Chaos ensues! Meanwhile Dr. Prescott, also under the influence of a mind altering drug, has been left babbling a  maze of meaningless words and is looking like a boy lost at the World's Fair.

It's up to Nayland Smith (formerly of Scotland Yard and now a Federal Agent #56 in the employ of the US government) and his Marine captain associate Mark Hepburn to put an end to Fu Manchu's reign of terror and prevent his choice for the presidential nomination from capturing the hearts of America the way Bragg had. But with The League of of Good Americans now in the hands of the Si-Fan and slowly taking over the agriculture and business worlds it may be already too late for the country.

Any attempt to overlook Rohmer's usual race issues will frustrate the reader. Discussions of race are as omnipresent as the myriad cast of Si-Fan agents popping up on every page. Depending almost exclusively on race or nationality characters are labeled as sexual predators ("negroid" and "quadroon"), devious (Jews) and untrustworthy (Italians) to name the most blatant examples. Is it any surprise that Paul Salvaletti, the person elected as Fu Manchu's real presidential hopeful, is of Italian descent? Never mind that someone born in Italy could never be elected to the presidency. This little matter of the Constitution seems to have eluded both the world's most devious master criminal and Rohmer himself. Or is it all just literary license?

There may be the standard pulp trappings of Sax Rohmer to spice up the proceedings, but the most remarkable thing about the book is his insightful observations about the power of rhetoric to build or destroy a politician's career and reputation. Bragg, Donegal and even Prescott are all described to have near magical powers in their speech making and vocabulary. The evil doctor and his Chinaman assistant Sam Pak even discuss their utter fear of Abbot Donegal who is the only man who can single-handedly collapse Fu Manchu's carefully constructed plan. And what is it about the Abbot they fear the most? The information he will relay via a radio broadcast. Words. Nothing but words.

The final chapters offer eyebrow raising scenes with Fu Manchu acting nobly and heroic before he once again eludes a face to face capture at the hands of Nayland Smith. There is also a spectacular disaster that may recall the events of 9/11 to some readers. And in the final two paragraphs Sax Rohmer gives us his most brilliant cliffhanger echoing another famous cliffhanger from a classic short story by another writer. From a Huey P. Long clone to surreal methods of murder to the fear of words and rhetoric and surprising atypical behavior from the master villain himself President Fu Manchu is surely one of the most unusual entries in the whole series.

Drawing on the Past #7: STANLEY L WOOD

Work: Dr. Nikola by Guy Boothby
Publisher: Ward Lock, 1902 - a later edition
Artist: Stanley L. Wood (1867 - 1928)

To me Stanley Wood will always be remembered for the iconic portrait of Dr. Nikola. I know you've seen it. It's what I use as my avatar over there to the right in the "About Me" section on this blog.  What surprised me was all the other work he is better known for.

Born in Monmouthshire in 1867 Wood traveled with his father a cement manufacturer to America in 1878. The family settled on a ranch in the Ute Indians territory of what would soon become Kansas. There is an amusing anecdote about how Wood's mother tried to ward off the Ute Indians when he husband died.  You can read it here. Soon after her husband's death, Charlotte Wood took her children back to England.  It was in London that Stanley became an illustrator for newspapers and magazines.

In 1888 he was sent to South Dakota by The Illustrated London News where he was better able to study the geography to give his work more authenticity.  Three examples of his western art can be found here, here, and here. From an art gallery website I learned this about Wood:

Book dealer Jefferson Chenoweth Dykes ...wrote in Fifty Great Western Illustrators that “no better horse artist ever lived than Stanley L. Wood - there was more action in a Stanley Wood illustration than in the story itself".

Later in his career Wood would also become well known for his military illustrations.  There are several websites devoted to displaying his work in this genre.  You can visit one of the best ones here.

Below are some excellent examples of Wood's work taken form Dr. Nikola (originally published in 1896), the second novel about one of the first master criminals in all of fiction. As always, be sure to click on each picture in the tables to enlarge for full appreciation.