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.

FFB: Alias Basil Willing - Helen McCloy

THE STORY: Dr. Basil Willing encounters a man claiming to be him when he stops in a local cigar shop for some cigarettes. Intrigued he follows the impostor in a taxi. He ends up at a dinner party of the prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Zimmer. At the party Basil learns that one of the guests, Katharine Shaw, knows him and has hired him to do something for her -- or rather she has hired the man pretending to be Dr. Basil Willing. Confusion follows when the fake Basil shows up and both eventually leave the party headed for a restaurant where Basil intends to uncover why the man is pretending to be him. But the impostor suddenly dies, apparently poisoned by codeine, yet not before uttering a cryptic phrase; "And no--bird--sang..." Basil needs to solve several mysteries, including two murders, and find out if he was in fact the intended target of a killer.

THE CHARACTERS: The party guests make up the majority of the cast and of course provide us with a large pool of murder suspects. Basil must help the police interrogate all of the party goers a as well as the host Dr. Zimmer and his sister Greta Mann who lives with him. Over time Willing discovers that most of the guests are also Zimmer's patients and that the dinner parties are held regularly as part of Zimmer's unconventional treatment plan. Zimmer disapproves of typical Freudian psychoanalysis which he says relies on "the passive dream-side of the mind." By observing his patients in a social setting he can study the patient "in his most completely active, conscious state--when he is reacting to the people in his life." But Basil begins to see a strange pattern in the behavior of the guest/patients and is troubled by this odd style of psychiatric treatment.

Typically for McCloy most of the characters come from Manhattan's elite society and the stand-outs in the cast include the amoral Rosamunde Yorke, who was acquainted with Basil prior to his marriage to Gisela; Stephen Lawrence, an aged and ailing poet and his neurotic daughter Perdita; and the warring married couple Hubert and Isolda Canning. The Cannings allow McCloy a chance to skewer post-WW2 American life in this couple grown tired of each other and living in a sterile "modern" apartment done up in the latest trends of personality-less interior decoration while drowning their sorrows and anger in numerous bottles of booze and cocktail glasses. They are a sad couple and the portrait McCloy paints is as ugly a commentary the highbrow high life as you will find in her books.

INNOVATIONS: Perhaps the only reason one should read this book is the motive for the crimes. I was reminded of a forgotten novel by Guy Boothby called The Woman of Death and an equally forgotten short novel by Robert Louis Stevenson as it became clear to me what was going on at Zimmer's home. It's a terrifying notion.

The detection in the novel, however, is also a highlight and recalls some of McCloy's finest work in her early career. Alias Basil Willing (1951) comes almost exactly in her mid-career and is one of her last genuine detective novels before she turned to suspense and psychological thrillers in the 1960s. The clueing is fair play with teasing classic gimmicks like ambiguous initials in a cryptic diary entry, a dying message, and a devilish murder method. This time, however, the clues consist largely of intellectual and literary references that may have some readers crying "Foul!" If you're a fan of Innes, Crispin and other literary-minded detective novelists, then you may enjoy Alias Basil Willing all the more. There are ample references to romantic poetry including Keat's Gothic masterpiece "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and a very obscure Victorian short story collection called Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy (more on that in the "Things I Learned" section below). Kipling and Coleridge are also quoted at length, but it is Keats and a writer named Charles Allston Collins whose work provide the biggest clues to the solution. Students of British literature will truly have a field day with this particular murder mystery of Helen McCloy.

QUOTES: Here are two examples of McCloy's prose. Both are fine examples of character descriptions. The first ends with an unusual metaphor I envy. The second is absurdly arch yet perfectly suited for the pseudo-sophisticate McCloy is describing.

Basil had spent too much time in hospitals not to see at a glance that Stephen Lawrence was a man chronically ill. [...] It wasn't altogether a matter of frail body, sunken cheeks, thinning hair and faded blue eyes. It wasn't even the lightness of this breathing, the slowness of his motions and the gentleness of his manner. It was rather his singularly sweet-tempered smile and his look of detached serenity. He was like paper which has burned away so slowly that the dead ash retains the shape of solidity yet actually is so fragile that it will crumble to dust at the first touch.

Charlotte fumbled at her jabot and detached a long, slim, Italian lorgnette, silver worked in a repoussée design. Daintily she peered though the lenses at the grubby scrap of paper.

THINGS I LEARNED: Bizarre vocabulary word of this book: fissiparous. The sentence was of no help to me: "When the fissiparous process was completed Basil found himself beside Yorke." The definition is "inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups." Its root is the noun fission. I would have chosen a simpler synonym or just use "break-up" and forget about the adjective. McCloy does like to show off her erudition quite often.

Basil recalls a book called Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy which he claims is the work of Charles Dickens. This is only partly true, as the book is a collection of short stories by a variety of writers. The story he is talking about is really by Charles Allston Collins, a painter and writer, who coincidentally married Dicken's daughter. Originally written as Christmas stories in the magazine All the Year Round during the mid 1860s each tale is related by one of the lodgers in a boarding house run by Mrs. Lirriper, sort of a Canterbury Tales of the Victorian era. The second story in the collection, "A Past Lodger Relates a Wild Story of a Doctor," is the one Basil recalls. The main character and what he does are direct echoes of the action in Alias Basil Willing. Remembering the story leads the psychologist sleuth to the solution of the crimes.

EASY TO FIND? My ritual search of used bookselling sites turned up quite a few copies of this book in a variety of editions. Published both in the UK and US, Alias Basil Willing was reprinted in paperback only in the UK for some reason. Of the about fifteen or so copies I uncovered nearly all of them are priced affordably. For those who like digital books Orion has reissued many of McCloy's mystery novels as eBooks as part of "The Murder Room." Alias Basil Willing is one of those reissued digital books. At one time they offered Alias Basil Willing in a paperback edition, but this imprint stopped printing all paperback editions a few years ago. I found one Murder Room paperback edition being sold online, but no others. Good luck in your search!

Reflected Glory - John Russell Fearn

The forensic psychology subgenre was not well known or often utilized until the tail end of the Golden Age of Detection. It really only became popular with the rise of the serial killer novels in the mid 1980s when protagonists who were adept at criminal profiling become more and more popular. With the advent of TV series like Criminal Minds there seemed to be no stopping the trend of creating lurid murders committed by truly disturbed killers. Nevertheless, the idea of solving a crime based solely on the construction of the murderer’s psychological history and behavior can be traced back as early as the novels of Charles J. Dutton whose series detective John Hartley, a professor in abnormal psychology, aided police in gruesome multiple murder cases detailed in novels like The Crooked Cross (1923) and Streaked with Crimson (1929). Similar landmark novels appeared in the following decades as exemplified by The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) by Harriette Ashbrook, The Horizontal Man (1946) by Helen Eustis, and Ellery Queen’s seminal serial killer mystery Cat of Many Tails (1949). John Russell Fearn also entered the realm of abnormal psychology when he created psychologist and criminologist Dr. Adam Castle who appears in at least two novels: Shattering Glass (1947) and Reflected Glory (2005). The second of these was never published in Fearn’s lifetime though it was, according to Philip Harbottle Fearn’s literary executor, written many years later than Shattering Glass. Having just completed the second Castle title it is clear to me why it was left alone.  As an example of a crime plot based on rudimentary pop psychology it doesn’t hold up well at all.

The first half of Reflected Glory is perfectly fine. It’s all set up and exposition and it promises an intriguing story of impassioned characters, lovers betrayed and rejected, and rampant jealousies. There is a bizarre practical joke that takes place in an early chapter that results in a dreadful injury rendering painter Clive Hexley’s hand practically useless. As Clive is an artist he is horrified that he may never be able to paint again. And Elsa Farraday, his most recent muse, sees Clive’s injury as life altering to them both. If the story was to be focussed on psychology here was a veritable Pandora’s box of ills and troubles to write about. But instead we get the story of a troubled young woman haunted by her past with the cliché abusive parent who tortured and scarred her for life.

I thought this kind of thing wasn’t really part of pop fiction well until the late 1960s or mid 1970s. Hard to tell when exactly Reflected Glory was originally written, perhaps it did come from that time. Poor Elsa Farraday truly seems like she could only have been created after the publication of Sybil (1975) and similar stories both fictional and non-fictional. Yet here was Fearn dreaming up a little girl terrorized by a brutal father and imprisoned like a Gothic heroine. Granted monstrous mothers seemed to be more prevalent in this kind of fiction with Carrie White’s mother taking the grand prize, but a brutal abusive father was probably easier to dream up and possibly more palatable for the reader.

The detective plot involves the disappearance of Clive and Elsa’s apparent guilt surrounding his possible murder. Late in the novel (given away on the plot blurb of my edition) she confesses to his murder but the police don’t take her seriously. Without a body the confession is legally useless to them. They continue to search for the body in vain. The reason for Elsa’s open and brazen confession will not be entirely explained until the final pages. Rest assured it has a lot to do with her “abnormal” behavior. A major clue for that behavior comes in the explanation of the title which Elsa talks about with Clive prior to his disappearance: “My glory such as it is, Mr. Hexley, is reflected. I said that I am not an artist in the same sense that you are. By that I mean I cannot paint or draw I’m a writer.”

This idea of “reflected glory” is key to understanding Elsa. The reader should be allowed to slowly realize that Elsa prefers to seek attention through anonymous means. Thus she chooses a pen name to write under. The chance to model for Hexley’s most recent portrait she sees as the crown jewel in her vying for attention without truly being seen or known. But we never slowly realize any of this; we have all of it spelled out for us. Repeatedly, Elsa will explain everything in confessional dialogue as if the reader is not smart enough to glean it all from situations and behavior. Dr. Castle uses the term “reflected glory” often throughout the story as he comes to understand Elsa’s decidedly perverse form of an “inferiority complex.” And he too will lecture and explain what we may have missed in an earlier scene.

The trouble with many of these fictional mysteries that rely solely on psychology as their method of detection is that the plots tend to be fabricated with utterly phony business that never rings true. When a writer creates a psychologist character he ought to have a sophisticated knowledge of the behavioral sciences and psychology theorists and their work that can then be diffused through the character. Relying solely on pop psychological terms like “inferiority complex” and then using some of the most absurd abnormal behavior to explain that complex may make for some luridly eyebrow-raising reading but it has not a shred of authenticity. For example, we are asked to believe that Elsa finds it easier to concentrate in her writing persona if she dresses up as a ten year-old girl and retreats to a reconstructed childhood bedroom with child-sized furniture. As someone suffering from “inferiority complex” her retreat to the safety of childhood is comforting and simultaneously she is dominant as she is an adult in a room of miniature furniture. If she was an abused kid why would she find it necessary to dress up as one? We are told she is haunted by her cruel past. And yet she has an entire wardrobe of little girl’s clothes she dons in order to feel safe and enable her to concentrate on her writing? Which of course is all about violence and torture.

The entrance to a forbidden basement in Elsa’s home has been screwed up tight. Castle manages to surreptitiously unscrew the doorway and gain entry. (Don’t get me started on the ridiculous stunt which results in his visit to Elsa’s home under an assumed identity. It involves his wife and daughter and is 100% unethical.) What he finds beyond that door is sure to startle any reader but will not shock or thrill as was probably intended. Fearn draws on Gothic novel horror motifs but then undermines the horrible with kitschy bad taste and sophomoric character traits. Elsa, who writes grisly crime novels, uses the pen name “Hardy Strong”. This Castle tells us is another signifier of her desire to be a dominant personality and yet paradoxically she prefers to be remain hidden in the guise of an assumed persona.

While reading Reflected Glory I was continually reminded of drecky horror movies of the 1960s like The Mad Room and Picture Mommy Dead, both of which make use of kitschy pop-psych motives for the criminal acts. Dr. Castle’s lectures when he attempts to explain Elsa’s troubles are less revelatory than they are predictable, and sometimes – unfortunately – laughable. Only in the final two pages when Castle adopts a paternal tone and reminds Elsa of her genuine self-worth and counsels her to abandon her strange rituals and pretenses does the story finally become what Fearn intended. But by then it’s really too late to care for Elsa or her future.

FFB: Mix Me a Person - Jack Trevor Story

THE STORY: Wannabe musician Harry Jukes is desperate to impress shallow Mona who is too easily impressed by expensive sports cars and movie star glamor. She dares him to steal a Bentley Continental for her. So he does. Little does he know he has stolen a Bentley that belongs to an IRA terrorist. On the same road Harry is driving the owner of that car is sitting next to another IRA member who is driving a truck filled with stolen guns. Harry has an accident in the Bentley, tries to fix a flat tire with the assistance of a passing cop. When they discover they are lacking the right kind of wrench to remove the unusual wheel the cop flags down the first truck he sees. Guess who’s in the truck? Mayhem follows, the cop is shot and Harry manages to run off with the gun that killed the policeman. Soon he’s on trial for the cop’s murder and no one seems to believe his outrageous story filled with alarming coincidences. No one but Dr. Ann Dyson, a psychiatrist of great insight, deep empathy and sheer guts. Dr. Dyson is determined to clear Harry’s name, find all the evidence to prove Harry’s story true and save him from the executioner’s rope.

THE CHARACTERS: Mix Me A Person (1959) is a blend of the inverted detective novel, a juvenile delinquent novel, and a gangster thriller. The odd title is an allusion to a passing slight about the profession of psychiatry, in particular Dr. Dyson’s personal approach of listening intently to her client’s life stories and gleaning from their anecdotes telling behaviors and reactions that help her understand them. She builds a close bond to Harry rather quickly but is more successful with his small circle of friends who hang out a local cafe/jukebox joint. They all sport odd nicknames like Socko, Gravy, and Dirty Neck, which she uses familiarly to help build up camaraderie. Only later when they've helped her out of scrape with the IRA ruffians does she bother to ask about their real names and how their got their unusual monikers. Story does a good job of making these young people extremely likeable in their refusal to believe in a generation gap. That Dr. Dyson is in her early thirties, very attractive and given to wearing close fitting, eye catching outfits might also have a lot to do with her getting Harry's male friends to act as her cohorts in crime solving. But it's mostly due to Anne's being the only adult who believes in Harry's innocence that gains her such a loyal group of allies among the cafe crowd. Their hip lingo and British teen slang add a nice touch of retro verisimilitude to the plot.

In one of the more strikingly poignant moments Mona joins the gang of do-gooders in a way only she would think suitable. Mona is starstruck, living in a daydream world of idolizing screen stars and the fantasy lives they portray in the countless movies she is always talking about. She's also completely delusional in thinking that she will someday have a career in movies and does everything she can imagine in order to fulfill her dream as soon as possible. Through a combination of feminine wile and luck she uncovers a crucial piece of evidence -- a gun Harry once owned then traded away -- by seducing the young man who got the gun from Harry. Once she has the gun in her possession Mona dreams up a ludicrously melodramatic scene right out of the kinds of movies she is obsessed with. She plans to call the police, tell them she has the gun all the time staging a fake suicide attempt involving the coin operated gas heater in her bedsit apartment, figuring the suicide attempt will speed the police to her home and they can get the gun promptly. She spends half the day making herself up, positioning herself in a suitable dramatic pose, just before inserting the few shillings into the gas meter. Never once thinking that extra touches of reality may lead to a fatal accident rather than an act of heroism.

The IRA baddies are a nasty lot, quick to catch on to Anne's questionable interest in Mr. Taplow, the owner of the stolen Bentley, who runs a fruit distribution company. Anne pries into his business operation alarming the hot tempered Irish who think nothing of imprisoning Anne in a walk-in freezer and setting up other death traps. Taplow may not be fully cooperating but he recognizes that to endanger Dr. Dyson's life or foolishly kill her would be tantamount to admitting guilt in the policeman's death. This disagreement in how to deal with Dr. Dyson's prying questions leads to the nail-bitingly suspenseful final chapters with Taplow turning the tables on his IRA associates in an last ditch attempt to do good.

THE PREVIOUS VERSION: In addition to his own novels Jack Trevor Story was one of the many writers contributing thrillers to the Sexton Blake series. His sixth novel for Amalgamated Press (he wrote about twenty books for the series) was Nine O'Clock Shadow about young Harry Jukes who "borrows a flash car to impress a girl. Unfortunately, the car belongs to an IRA arms smuggler and Harry is implicated in the murder of a policeman." Yes, indeed! It's the very same story as Mix Me A Person. When Story rewrote that plot he substituted pulp hero Sexton Blake for the attractive Dr. Anne Dyson, psychiatrist turned detective. The title of the first version of this story refers to the "shadow of the gallows" figuratively looming ominously in the background as Blake races against the clock to prove Jukes' innocence in the same time constrained manner as Dr. Dyson.

THE AUTHOR: Jack Trevor Story is perhaps best known in the US as the author of The Trouble with Harry (1949) which was adapted for the movies and became Alfred Hitchcock's comic thriller about a dead body that won't stay hidden or buried. In his native England Story is better known for a trilogy of semi-autobiographical comic novels featuring Alfred Argyle and another trio of books about Horace Spurgeon. How he came to write for the Sexton Blake series is one of those "sheer luck" stories that often literally save a writer from a life of poverty. Story wrote about meeting Bill Baker, a former editor at Panther Books, who was going to take over the Sexton Blake series in an essay called "Sexton Blake Saved My Turkey." Great memoir! I suggest you all click on the link and read all about it. In the essay Story says the only Blake novel he and Baker could use as their model was one by Rex Stout. But that's an error of memory. He means Rex Hardinge. Stout never wrote a Sexton Blake novel as all us Yanks know he was strictly about Wolfe and Goodwin.

THE MOVIE: In 1962 Mix Me a Person was adapted for the screen by writer Ian Dalrymple and director Leslie Norman. American actress Anne Baxter played Dr. Dyson and pop star and sometime actor Adam Faith co-starred as Harry Jukes. In the novel Harry is a mediocre guitar player, but he's changed to a singer allowing Faith to sing at least two songs based on YouTube clips I found. The strangely sunny title track "Mix Me A Person" was released as the B side to Faith's quasi country record "Don't That Beat All?" Faith also performs -- bizarrely -- a cover of "La Bamba" in one of the many cafe scenes. Check it out here if you want to. He was actually perfectly cast as the naive, pretty boy Harry though his acting is not very memorable. You can watch Faith and Baxter in a prison interview scene at YouTube. Baxter is too old for Dyson as she is described in the book and way past her glamor years, too, to be suitably alluring to Harry's friends. The film is available on DVD from Rare Movies, who impressively will code your copy for the proper region as well as the putting it in correct DVD format.

THE RECORD: I listened to Adam Faith's song "Mix Me a Person." Pleasant and innocuous, but with sentimental lyrics and an upbeat melody completely unfitting for a movie about a young man facing execution. To me it sounds like something Pat Boone would have recorded with an arrangement that oddly reminds me of Gene Pitney's "24 Hours from Tulsa".

EASY TO FIND? There were a couple of reprints of this title, including a movie tie-in paperback edition (Corgi, 1962). The US first edition shown at the top of this post is the most common these days and easy to find (as well as reasonably priced) in the used book market. And I'm sure you might stumble across one of the many UK editions, hardcover or paperback, in any of the bookstalls and shops on the other side of the pond. The book hasn't been reprinted since the 1960s.

FFB: Cruel as a Cat - Kyle Hunt (aka John Creasey)

Dr. Emmanuel Cellini is one of the least known in John Creasey’s teeming crowd of series characters. The saga of Cellini begins with Cunning as a Fox (1965) and continues using a simile formula, with and without animals, for another ten titles. Cellini is another in a long line of fictional consulting psychiatrists/psychologists who work with the police. Based on the one entry I’ve read Dr. Cellini isn’t much of a psychologist or even a detective. In fact, he is hardly featured as a supporting player in this fourth entry in the series – Cruel as a Cat (1968).

The plot could’ve worked far better as a short story or novella. As a novel it is very short and very padded with much of the action reiterated and played over repeatedly over the course of its 170 pages. Essentially, it’s one of those “psycho lady holding a person captive” stories. You’ve probably seen a few of these books turned into movies like Die! Die! My Darling! (aka Fanatic), You’ll Like My Mother, and That Cold Day in the Park. Usually this plot formula is played out with a domineering, over-the-edge, middle-aged mother cast as the lunatic captor who is desperately trying to protect some dark family secret while the kidnapped victim is usually a young woman seen as an interloper.

In Creasey’s novel there is a slightly original twist. The loony is Midge Benison, a young woman and her captive is Jim Clayton, a handsome young man who she recognizes from newspaper and TV reports as an accused murderer on the run. Midge agrees to hide Jim and when he foolishly agrees he finds himself trapped in an attic with only one entry/exit that is locked every night. The novel basically tells us the story of Jim's attempts to escape his prison, the police investigation to locate his whereabouts, and the backstory of why Midge behaves the way she does.

Sadly, it’s not really very interesting. Creasey’s writing is matter of fact and sort of dull. The young woman is a cartoon cutout of a "schizophrenic" and we get all sorts of misinformation about that mental illness from the very unknowledgeable Dr. Cellini. What books did Creasey read to get his information? Or was he only drawing on bad movies of the past? It’s an insulting portrait of a mentally ill character and the supposedly psychological explanations for her behavior are reduced -- as expected for this era -- to nymphomania resulting from an abused childhood.

The only reason I kept reading was for the portrait of the landlady Ermyntrude Stern, who catches onto the young woman’s plotting. In fact, Midge -- who is Miss Stern's only lodger -- is so transparent in how she brings men into the landlady’s home for obvious sexual encounters it’s a wonder she wasn’t evicted within a few months. But Ermyntrude is the most human and fully realized character in the story; each time she appears the book truly comes alive. There is a sort of corny fantasized romance she dreams up when she meets Dr. Cellini. The two of them join forces in ferreting out the various hiding places where the young woman has hidden her captive. But Cellini does not really solve anything. It’s Miss Stern who is the real detective of the book.

This is not at all recommended even for the mildly curious. I doubt I’ll be checking out any of the other Dr. Cellini books. For the record the books are published under the pseudonym "Michael Halliday" in the UK and as "by Kyle Hunt" in the US. And of course reprints have Creasey’s names emblazoned across the cover as if he were the world’s leading bestseller writer. Apart from a few of the outlandish spy fantasies featuring Dr. Palfrey I have yet to find a Creasey mystery that I found either gripping or entertaining. They’re all sort of blah to me. This must be the price one pays for being such an outrageously prolific writing machine.

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.

*   *   *

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