FFB: Voice from the Grave - Doris Miles Disney

1st US Paperback
(Macfadden, 1970)

THE STORY: Adele Van Ostrand refuses to believe her son and his friend died in a canoeing accident when they went away for a camping trip and never returned. Neither body has been found, but the smashed remains of the wooden canoe washed up along the river banks leading police to believe that both boys drowned. Adele holds out hope that Howie survived while her family, friend Ursula, and police try to convince her otherwise. Then the phone rings. Howie is on the other end. He begs her not to tell anyone he is alive. Something has happened and he needs money. He outlines a plan and pleads with his mother to carry it out. And so begins a sinister plot tinged with deceit and exploitation of grief culminating in a truth more horrible than Adele could imagine.

THE CHARACTERS: In Adele Doris Miles Disney has created one of the least sympathetic portraits of a grieving mother in all of crime fiction. Voice from the Grave (1968) is both an exploration of mother too in love with her son whose devotion spills over into co-dependence, an obsessive need to control and a delusional hope that the person who is exploiting her must be no one other than her boy Howie. Only when her friend Ursula gives her solid proof that Howie and Dennis both must have died does Adele begin to suspect that she is being used. When she relents  she turns her attention against her stepson Lee, a young man who she has basically ignored all his life.

Adele has been married three separate times and has several step-children while only Howie is her own child. Unable to give love or see it offered from others, Adele is a pathetic picture of narcissism and selfishness. She claims others are self-interested, like her step-son Lee, but cannot recognize her own self-absorption. The reader cannot really sympathize with her in any way. She is being victimized by someone and, whether it is Howie or not, we feel that she absolutely deserves it.

US 1st edition (Doubleday, 1968)

The only real satisfaction in reading the book is trying to figure who is on the other end of the phone and why that person is taunting Adele and taking from her everything they can -- money, her trust and eventually her sanity.  Is it some sort of revenge for the past?  In part perhaps, but there is another aspect of the novel that will tie into the Adele/Howie story.

Disney also uses this novel to write about troubled young people desperate to find themselves, to be free from controlling and suffocating adults, and who in their rebellion lead themselves down the path of destruction. The opening of the novel tells us that two teenage boys have broken into an elderly man's home in order to steal his prized collection of whiskey. Caught in the act and fleeing from the house one of the boys strikes out at the man causing him to fall. The man hits his head on the stone steps in front of the porch and is sent to the hospital in critical condition. The reader awaits the old man's fate and the boys worry that if he dies they will be then guilty of a felony -- death caused during the commission of a robbery.

The camping trip that Adele thinks is going to be nothing more than canoe paddling and fishing turns into a hedonistic indulgence of underage drinking, picking up girls at the beach, and wild partying. When news surfaces in town of a young girl who has gone missing, the reader starts to put together the cleverly dropped hints that Howie and Dennis must have got up to no good and may be responsible for her disappearance.

These ostensibly independent plot threads must connect somehow leading the reader to ask multiple questions. Who survived the canoe accident?  Was it merely a sham? Are both boys dead?  Is someone pretending to be Howie? Who would want to prey on Adele and keep asking for her to drain her bank account? And is the missing girl dead or alive?  Could she be involved in causing the canoe accident?  Is she behind all the mysterious phone calls?

QUOTES: [Adele's] skin looked too tight for the bones of her face, Her pallor made her eyes look even bluer than they were. She had an indestructible elegance, Ursula thought, that neither time nor sorrow would ever take from her.

THE AUTHOR: Born in Glastonbury, Connecticut Doris Miles Disney (1907-1976) lived most of her life in her home state. She published at least one book a year throughout her writing career beginning in 1943 with A Compound for Death. With the exception of one mystery novel all of her work was published by Doubleday's "Crime Club" who said that Disney's books sold approximately 675,000 copies over her long career.

Her novels were a mix of hardboiled crime novels, domestic suspense, and some of the earliest examples of an inverted historical detective novel, with a particular leaning for the 19th century. She created three series detectives -- Jim O'Neill, a cop; Jeff DiMarco, an insurance investigator whose novels are the closest Disney came to writing genuine noir; and a postal inspector named Dave Madden. However, the bulk of her novels feature no series characters and tend to feature guileless senior citizens as the victims; duplicitous husbands and wives plotting murder against each other; adultery and blackmail. Disney employed familiar motifs of noir and hardboiled crime fiction but transplanted the usual urban scenes and gritty city life to rural and suburban settings recalling the work of her contemporaries Charlotte Armstrong and Ursula Curtiss.

Disney had one daughter, Elizabeth Disney Laing, with whom she was living in Fredericksburg, Virginia at the time of her death. Disney also had two sisters who both lived in Connecticut.

MOVIES & TV: Three of her books featuring insurance investigator Jeff DiMarco were made into movies. Fugitive Lady (1950) (probably taken from her 1946 crime novel Dark Road, aka Dead Stop) was an Italian & British co-production which included Janis Paige the only American actor in the mostly Italian cast. Stella (1950) was an attempt to make a contemporary black comedy based on Disney's much darker novel Family Skeleton (1949) with Ann Sheridan in the title role alongside Victor Mature as DiMarco. The Straw Man (1953) adapted from the 1951 novel of the same name is a B movie that changes DiMarco's name to Jeff Howard in the script adaptation.

In the 1970s three more novels appeared as TV movies. Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (1971) starring veteran actresses Helen Hayes, Myrna Loy, Mildred Natwick and Sylvia Sidney in a strange tale that combines computer dating and a psychopath. Betrayal (1974),based on the novel Only Couples Need Apply (1973), is about an elderly woman (Amanda Blake) preyed upon by a murderous con artist couple. Yesterday's Child (1977), based on her 1967 book Night of Clear Choice, stars Shirley Jones as a mother whose 3 year-old daughter was kidnapped and never returned, fourteen years later someone claims to be that missing daughter.

FFB: The Flight of the Doves - Walter Macken

In celebration of the upcoming St. Patrick's Day weekend activities out here in Chicago here's a perfect book that embodies of the idea of the Luck of the Irish.

THE STORY: Fed up with the abuse of their cruel stepfather Finn Dove and sister Derval run away with plans to find refuge with their kindly grandmother who lives in Ireland. Their journey entails crossing the ocean by boat and then relying on their wits, what little money they've scraped together, and the kindness of strangers to help them reach their destination. But the police and nasty "Uncle Toby" (the nickname they call their stepfather) are hot on their trail.

THE CHARACTERS: Finn and Derval make for an immensely likeable pair. Finn is devoted to his sister often acting as surrogate parent since the death of both of their mother and father. He arranges their escape, pools their limited funds, packs clothes and comes up with the clever, if burdensome, idea of wearing multiple layers of clothes to lighten their makeshift luggage that will allow room for more important items like food and drink. He's wily and street smart knowing that children can seem invisible if they are in the company of adults. So he tries to make it appear that he and his sister are part of a large family in order to get aboard the boat to Ireland.

Remarkably, his resourcefulness need not be tested or challenged too much for the two children seem to be watched over by the powers of good wherever they travel. Nearly everyone they encounter -- from some ruffian boys playing football to a truck driver whose sideline is dealing in stolen goods -- helps them move along to their final destination. The Doves also meet up with a family of Irish travellers who temporarily adopt them, escape being handed off to the police for a £100 reward, and repeatedly manage to outwit the law and their "Uncle Toby" by a hair's breadth until they come to a much needed rest in Carraigmore.

Derval & Finn Dove
illustration by Charles Keeping,
from 1st UK edition (1968)

Along the way a police inspector named Michael in charge of the children's search becomes one of the most unexpected Good Samaritans of the novel. After hearing of the overly dramatic reaction of Toby, the stepfather's seemingly genuine weeping and how he manipulates the entire police force into consoling him Michael suspects something false in the melodramatic display. If this man's sorrow were genuine indicating a caring and compassionate guardian then why did the Dove children flee his home? Something must not have been right. He decides to resign from the case and go "on holiday" with his supervisor's permission. In reality he goes undercover to find the kids himself and secretly helps them to their grandmother's home. Michael will play a big role in straightening out the legal mess of the children having been made Wards of the Court, ensuring they are released from Uncle Toby's clutches, and that they get their just rewards of their inheritance from a distant relation and a home where they can be genuinely loved.

INNOVATIONS: Intended as a children's book The Flight of the Doves(1968) often reads like a fairy tale for adults. The best of children's literature can appeal to a wide audience and it never seems as if Macken is limiting himself to younger readers though he clearly set out to write it for kids. As with most children's books there are lessons to be learned. He reminds us that Michael the conflicted police officer is a representative of the legal system and must not ever break the law even if he finds himself bending the rules a bit in order to help the children achieve their goal. It is the overarching theme of connectedness, responsibility, and innate decency that make the book so enjoyable and mature. Macken manages to do all this without once becoming treacly or sentimental in any way. Derval is the only character in the book who suffers from cuteness (excusable for a child so young, I guess) but everyone else has an edge to them in spite of being kind and extravagantly generous. Even Granny O'Flaherty when we finally meet her is far from the saintly type of grandmother one encounters in children's books. She's tough as nails and puts up a fight using her steadfast Irish common sense and an iron will. The law will not take her grandchildren away from her if she has any say.

QUOTES: "If it wasn't for you we would have been caught," said Finn.
"How do you know?" Michael asked. "Something else might have happened. You might have got away. If a fellow wants a thing badly enough, he will get it."

[Michael] would have to be prepared to meet the law with the truth. This was what the law was about. Truth had no law to fight. He hoped the children could keep free for the time he required to find the truth that would really free them. He thought, with Finn's determination, that they might.

"No! Don't tell me. I like mysteries, see. I can be makin' up stories about it for the rest of time. If I knew, there'd be no fun in it. [...] Most stories has no mysteries in them. It's just nothing when you hear the truth. Sometimes lies is better than truth for the sake of adventure."

Movie tie-in edition
Pan Books (1971)

THE MOVIE: The Flight of the Doves was filmed in 1971 starring 19 year-old Jack Wild as Finn, Dorothy McGuire as Granny, and Stanley Holloway as the Judge. The movie also reunited Wild with his Oliver! co-star, delightful British character actor Ron Moody who played Hawk Dove, a new character created especially for the movie. I believe Hawk was the brother of the kids' father (so their real uncle) who is next in line to inherit the money if anything should happen to the children. In the film Moody is the main antagonist as he tries to find the kids and ...uh... dispose of them so that the trust fund money can be his alone. He adopts a variety of disguises (I think he was a failed actor, but my memory is fuzzy) in order to cajole and befriend Finn and Derval. Despite Finn and Derval's attempt to disguise themselves by reversing their genders, they cut their hair, dye it, and change clothes, Hawk Dove is able to track them down. I saw the movie ages ago when it was first released in movie theaters back in the 70s when I was a kid and just recently watched a few clips on the TMC website to help refresh my memory. But none of the clips I viewed were of scenes with Moody and the two children. Basically it's very similar to the book with the added tension and suspense of a murderous relative trying to do in the kids. The movie is available on DVD and various clips are on both the TMC website and YouTube.

THE AUTHOR: Walter Macken (1915-1967) was born in Galway and began his career in theater as an actor then playwright and director. In his youth he was with the Little Gaelic Theater in Galway where plays were presented in his native Irish language in which Macken was fluent. In 1948 he joined Abbey Theater where his playwriting flourished. His play Home is the Hero was the first Abbey production to travel overseas to Broadway and was also filmed three times (once for German TV). The 1959 film of Home Is the Hero was the first movie to be produced and filmed at Ardmore Studios in Dublin and featured the entire company of the Abbey Theater with American actor Arthur Kennedy as Willie O'Reilly the only non-Irish performer in the cast. Macken later turned to novels and is best known for his trilogy of books -- Seek the Fair Land (1959), The Silent People (1962) and The Scorching Wind (1966) -- forming an epic saga about Ireland's struggle to gain freedom from England. He wrote one other children's book The Island of the Great Yellow Ox (1966) prior to The Flight of the Doves which turned out to be his final work. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack at his home in Galway at the age of 51.

EASY TO FIND? To my great surprise I discovered that The Flight of the Doves has remained in print since it was first published. It's most recent edition is dated 2007. There are hundreds of copies for sale in the used book market, mostly paperback editions from both US and UK houses. The UK first edition appears to be a genuine rarity though just last year I managed to find a copy with a DJ much to my delight. It should not be difficult to locate a copy of this book no matter where you live. I'm sure it's still on the shelves of library children's sections, too.

I loved this movie when I was a kid and have never forgotten it. I only just read the book for the first time this year. It brought back a flood of memories and it was such a welcome relief from the gruesome and horrific novels I have been reading for the past couple of weeks. For some The Flight of the Doves may seem to be overflowing with convenient plot incidents, coincidence, and too much of the kindness of strangers.  For me, however, it was just the book I needed. This adventurous story will remind any reader that  goodness does exist in the world and of how we all have a responsibility to each other to do the right thing no matter how much the world seems to be against it.

FFB: Dreamland Lake - Richard Peck

THE STORY: Philip "Flip" Townsend and Brian Bishop, two teen boys guided by a dated book on the history of their hometown Dunthorpe, Illinois set out to find and explore an abandoned amusement park near the shores of Dreamland Lake (1973). To their horror they stumble across a skeleton and they make the local newspapers and receive celebrity status for a few weeks as adventurers. They continue to return to the ruins of the amusement park and discover some sinister artifacts and a weird shrine decorated in swastikas. With a new found tag-along friend Flip and Brian will be forced to confront the fragility of friendship, the stigma of being ostracized and the inevitability of death.

THE CHARACTERS: Flip and Brian are perfectly realized 1970s teen boys. They talk and behave like thirteen year-olds and the adults around them seem just as real. I can speak from authority here because I was thirteen myself in 1973, the year the book was published. The entire story rang true with an astonishing resonance that at times it seemed as if Peck had stolen glimpses from my own life. Everything from their slang, their past times like a very 1970s obsession with old time monster movies on late night TV, the problems with finding a sub for Flip's paper route when other activities take precedence and even their hero worship of a twenty-something athletic and down-to-earth swimming coach -- all of it was spot on. The two boys never once seem older than their years and in fact get a healthy dose of life lessons from Peck's finely rendered adult characters like a teacher trying desperately to instill a respect for modern poetry in her students; Old Man Sanderson, an anal retentive curmudgeon typical of the bullying paper route customer who is out for blood any time Flip deviates from the rules of newspaper delivery; and Old Lady Garrison who I'll talk about in a section below. Not to be left out is the pathetic figure of lonely outcast Elvan Helligrew, a perfectly named misfit who is eager to become Flip and Bri's best friend. Elvan is willing to do anything to impress them. The two boys exploit Elvan for their own ends fooling the boy into thinking he has become "cool" in their eyes. But what happens to the three boys will have dire consequences for all of them and will be the most painful growing experience for Flip and Brian.

INNOVATIONS: Ostensibly a book written solely for a young audience, Dreamland Lake has the remarkable paradox of being a book so fully and truly realized as a microcosm of what is what like to be a kid in the 1970s that it seems almost like a novel of nostalgia. To a kid in 1973 reading this book probably would have seemed almost mundane with its everyday details like Flip's paper route difficulties or the dullness of being forced to compose a modern poem in English class -- called Language Arts in a typically 70s education reform re-labeling. But to an adult reader in the 21st century reading the book now was like the most vivid trip down Memory Lane. Interestingly, as Peck's writing career progressed he would become increasingly drawn to the past and one of his most successful books was an adult memoir he wrote of his own boyhood. In writing a contemporary book about boys growing up in 1970s Illinois, where Peck himself grew up, he had already mastered a kind of reality that few writers -- both those writing for adults and children -- ever really accomplish.

The mature themes of confronting the ugly truth of Life's finality, particularly unexpected death, is a topic that many 1970s children's writers were incorporating into their work. Often the topic of death in kids' books is ever so gently introduced into the story, sometimes cloyingly depicted and discussed. Peck talks openly about death in Dreamland Lake. The scene where the boys are invited to Mrs. Garrison's home and she relates the story of how she lost her son in a horrible milk truck accident is handled matter-of-factly and without a drop of sentimentality. Mrs. Garrison is not the typical wise old woman who pontificates on somber Very Important Subject Matter the way other writers would use a character like her. She's lived a comfortable life, still grieves for her son, and in telling her tale shows the boys that death is ever present. Better to get used to it at a young age, she tells them, rather than have to deal with it unprepared as an adult. You didn't get scenes like this in kid's books during the 30s, 40s, 50s and rarely in the 60s. The 70s were the decade when children's books were finally growing up.

I’m no real expert in what is now known as young adult genre, but I do know that when I was growing up children’s writers were only just beginning to tackle formerly taboo subject matter for children’s books like puberty, divorce, child abuse, date rape, racial inequality, and even -- as in Dreamland Lake -- facing one’s own mortality. Cute books about talking animals, stories inspired by fairy tales or similar tame "kiddy fare" were no longer making up the majority of children’s books. Children increasingly wanted to read about themselves and their very real problems. Gone too were the teen sleuths who chased after crooked real estate agents and avaricious treasure hunters. The teen protagonists were often criminals themselves – shoplifters, bicycle thieves, burglars and gang members. Flip and Brian engage in some less than legal activities themselves.  Richard Peck was definitely a ground breaker along with his fellow 1970s young adult writers Paul Zindel, Judy Blume and S. E. Hinton.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Flip and Brian talk about their days of swim classes at the YMCA where they were required to swim nude. Believe it or not, this was a national rule in the United States. Nude swimming was required of all males who used YMCA public pools from about 1926 to 1962. This was mandated by the American Public Health Association and thousands of high schools and middle schools that gave swimming lessons also enforced the rule of nude swimming for boys which continued well into the mid-1970s. Girls, luckily, were allowed to wear swimsuits in school swimming pools.  I had to find out more so I went a-Googling. As early as the 19th century when swimsuits were made of woolen textiles, fibers would clog the early filtration systems making for added work of cleaning them almost hourly. To alleviate this unnecessary, time consuming labor the rules about nude swimming were instituted. There were also some supposed added benefits that the APHA created in order to justify the lack of swimsuits in public pools. Prior to getting in a YMCA pool all men's bodies were examined for open wounds or indications of infectious disease. The changing social attitudes towards nudity in YMCA pools and the entire history of nude swimming in the US is outlined in a fascinating article you can read here.

Richard Peck as seen
on a DJ from a 1989 book

THE AUTHOR:  Richard Peck was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois. He grew up during the Depression era with a father who owned a Phillips 66 gas station and a mother who instilled him at a very early age a love of reading and books.  He was educated at DePauw University, Exeter University as an undergraduate and Southern Illinois University and Washington University in St. Louis, MO as a graduate student. During the late 1950s he served two years in the US Army stationed in Stuttgart where he worked as a chaplain's assistant.

His first novel for young people was Don't Look and It Won't Hurt (1972) which addresses teen pregnancy and was later adapted as the movie Gas Food Lodging.  He has also covered such formerly taboo topics as stalking and the aftermath of teen sexual assault in Are You in the House Alone? (1976) which was adapted as a TV movie in 1978. This novel won Peck an Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery. At the advice of some junior high school readers who he visited with he began to explore the burgeoning popularity of supernatural themes in his books for children. His first efforts resulted in a series of well received books featuring Blossom Culp, a girl with skills of a medium who acted as an occult detective of sorts. Blossom first appears in The Ghost Belonged to Me (1975) narrated by an older man looking back on his youth in 1904. While the book is reminiscent of a Mark Twain novel, complete with an alternating folksy and sarcastic humor, the TV movie adaptation Child of Glass (part of "The Wonderful World of Disney" anthology series) is decidedly different and updated to be set in the 1970s.

In addition to the Edgar Peck has won the Newberry Medal, a Newberry Honor, the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and been nominated for the National Book Award. He died May 23, 2018 at his home in New York City following a long illness. He was 84.

EASY TO FIND?  Most of Peck's children's books have remained in print since they were first published, no mean feat for someone so prolific. Dreamland Lake can be found in numerous paperback editions dating from 1975 all the way to 2000. Each edition received multiple printings. His many books continue to be very popular in libraries all over the US and Canada. There should be no problem finding a copy of any of his books. Happy hunting!

FFB: Clay - David Almond

THE STORY: There’s a new kid in northern England town of Felling. Stephen Rose has been sent to live with his aunt, known as Crazy Mary by the kids in Felling for her eccentric ramblings about Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Stephen is an odd boy, a loner of sorts, with a talent for sculpture. His breathtakingly beautiful human figures draw the attention of the art teacher at school and the admiration of a handful of Stephen's fellow students. Not one to make friends easily Stephen nonetheless is drawn to Davie, a mischievous altar boy who steals communion wine and smoke cigarettes with his pal Geordie down by the abandoned quarry. Stephen tells Davie that they have a lot in common not the least of which is a talent for creating things. When Davie shows Stephen the rich clay deposits by the marshy land surrounding the quarry the two begin a strange friendship fueled by a secret experiment that unveils a unnatural creativity defying science, religion and logic.

THE CHARACTERS: Davie narrates Clay (2005) in a mix of Felling’s Irish tainted dialect and a colloquial teenspeak. The reader watches him in his various personae as he flits between allegiance to his best mate Geordie, the burgeoning bond with eerily fascinating Stephen Rose, and a first taste of teen romance in his attraction to Maria. Looming menacing in the background but never really encountered in the flesh is Martin Mould, the local brute of a bully known as Mouldy to those he terrorizes. Described by Davie as having evil eyes, fierce breath and vicious spit Mouldy is a giant of a boy with massive hands, an apish muscular body and towering height. Though “only sixteen but already [drinking] like a man” Mouldy is the ostensible villain of the piece. All the kids talk of him and the fear he instills in them. Davie suffers from nightmares after a particularly violent encounter with Mouldy. He’d like to see him dead. Eventually the secret friendship between Stephen and Davie leads to a campaign of revenge with their secret weapon being a statue Stephen and Davie call Clay that Stephen swears the two of them can bring to life with an unholy ritual.

INNOVATIONS: Clay may be targeted to young readers, but it reads like a profound adult novel. Almond touches on a variety of mature themes all involving creativity and the power of imagination as a tool of survival. He covers everything from divine inspiration, the mystery of innate and inexplicable talent seen so early in young people, and the love/hate dichotomy of intense yet callow friendships. In Stephen Rose author Almond has created a Machiavellian artist reminiscent of a teen Faust armed with occult powers, seductive attraction and inescapably hypnotic words. The story draws on the legend of the Jewish Golem and subverts it with blasphemous use of Catholic ritual in the creation and animation of the statue Clay. Clearly there are also allusions to Shelley’s Frankenstein throughout the story as well as in the never-ending rhetoric Stephen taunts Davie with:

Are we not gods ourselves when we make something new? And why is it God who can only create? Stephen poses: “Mebbe there was a time of beasts and monsters before there came the time of us. Mebbe there’s things like them things walking still. Mebbe there’s things around us that was created by the devil and not by God. Things like the thing that snarled through the door at you. Things like your Mouldy.”

Peter Pratt, the Felling school art teacher, joins in the discussion answering similar questions and more importantly offering advice and counsel. When asked if human creativity is equal to the creativity of God Pratt warns Davie not to think so immorally. To contemplate such ideas is to begin straying down paths that lead nowhere good. He reminds Davie that artists have “astounding skills that may indeed be God-given, but [are] nevertheless human.” Ultimately Pratt teaches that the difference between human and divine creation is that humans cannot create a soul and without that art is never truly divine. Stephen Rose will take those words as a challenge, lead Davie by the hand into a darker world where black magic overtakes the soul, where the desires of the artist seem to have a power greater than even the divine power of creating life. And in bringing to life their idol of Vengeance they bring about destruction and death.

Almond explores metaphysics, theology, art and even the ethics of modern science. When Clay at last begins to move and resemble a powerful and handsome human Davie wonders whether if he is just not one more monster that will bring them trouble. When with Maria Davie talks about genetic accidents, “freaks of nature” and “things there seems no reason for.” The conversation of taboo topics leads to Davie musing on the future of science and the observation that one day they may be able “to make life in a test tube. We’ll be able to create living creatures with chemicals and electricity and nuclear power.”

THE AUTHOR: Born and raised in northwestern England David Almond worked as a postman, brush salesman, editor and teacher before turning to writing novels full time. His first novel, Skellig (1998) won several awards and still remains in print as do all of his books. He has written over twenty novels and picture books for children and one novel for adults. Throughout his career his work has been awarded with the Michael L. Printz Honor Book twice, the Whitbread Award, a Carnegie Medal, and a Boston Globe Horn Book award.

EASY TO FIND? Of course it is! In a rare instance on this blog of presenting a book written and published in the 21st century what else would you expect? Clay is one of the most rewarding, penetrating and intense novels I’ve read in a long time. If all young adult books were this rich and dense, insightful and well written, rather than being derivative knock-offs I’d probably read more of them on a regular basis. But I know that this kind of book is so utterly unique and a clear expression of recurring personally felt themes found in all of David Almond’s work that it is a rare book indeed. Happy hunting and happy reading!

FFB: Angel Loves Nobody - Richard Miles

THE STORY: You think Holden Caulfield was a problem child? Take a look at Angel Martine, the sullen, smirking, reticent leader of an army of teen-age misanthropes at Betsy Ross Junior High somewhere outside of Los Angeles. How perfect that a teen rebel should be leading a revolution at a school named after one of the legendary heroes of the 18th century. The teachers have no idea that Angel is plotting a bloody massacre. He's arming his gang with knives and they plan to murder the teachers during sixth period on Friday afternoon that he's dubbed Zero Hour. The novel Angel Loves Nobody (1967) tells of the lives of the students and teachers in the days leading up to Zero Hour and the unexpected events of the day itself.

THE CHARACTERS: Like many novels of the 1960s this is a densely packed episodic exploration of character. Though named for the teenage leader of would-be Executioners (as they all dub themselves) the real protagonist is 27 year-old teacher Tim Nielsen. He is the replacement art teacher at Betsy Ross Junior High and this is his first job teaching young people. We get to know the staff through his eyes and on occasion through the more skewed perceptions of Angel and his band of terrorizing teens. Tim is trying to balance his new career with a burgeoning romantic relationship with Margie, his artist girlfriend who works at a gallery in downtown Los Angeles. But he is sensing something not quite right with his new group of students, especially the oddly quiet, antagonistic vibe he gets from Angel Martine. It doesn't help that his youthful idealism clashes with the senior faculty at the school, many of them several decades older than he and all of them grown jaded with teaching, utterly indifferent towards their students' lives and outside interests.

As the reader watches Angel recruit his Executioners, spies and armorers in preparation for Zero Hour one can't help feel that some of these adults deserve at least a good punch in the face if not the gruesome death Angel has planned for them. The principal William Conrad, nicknamed "ConRat" by the kids, is an overweight lecher always ready to put the moves on the typists in his administrative offices. Roger Post is a lout who insults the women, picks fights with the men, tells horrible off color jokes and is in general an asshole for much of the book. The few scenes of him at home also reveal him to be a misogynistic husband who treats his wife as nothing more than a sexual plaything. Elderly Cleaire Devereux doesn't earn much sympathy either. As the most senior teacher in the school she has little interest in anything other than lunchtime when she gets to gossip with her female friends about life outside of the school.

INNOVATIONS: Angel Loves Nobody seems to be the first of its kind in depicting high school violence as a sort of horror novel. Although the blurbs on the rear cover of the Dell paperback compare it to the juvenile delinquent nightmares depicted in The Blackboard Jungle and Up the Down Staircase Richard Miles' second novel takes teen angst and juvenile rebellion to the extreme in the planning of a high school massacre. I know of only one other infamous book that dealt with such a real life horror before we all suffered the 21st century plague of nightmare gun violence. In 1977 Stephen King, under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, wrote Rage about a boy who kills two teachers and holds a schoolroom of students hostage. Several teens used it as inspiration to commit violent acts in schools throughout the 1980s, but after a 1997 shooting in Paducah, KY King withdrew it from publication. He has never allowed it to be reprinted since.

While King's novel tells the story of a single violent youth, Angel Loves Nobody is concerned with a kind of mass hysteria conjured up by one very angry young man and the skill with which he manages to coerce and manipulate his army of angry and hateful kids. While it does ends in violence, altogether much differently than Angel ever planned, the telling of the story is controlled and never sensationalized. The book can be likened to a suspense novel, notably in the very tense and nerve-wracking final two chapters, but it really belongs to mainstream pop fiction. Miles is interested in a lot of what isn't noticed about the outcasts and loners among teens as well as the misfits of the adult world. There are insightful parallels drawn between the personalities of the students compared with those of the teachers that most "school in trouble" fiction of this sort never addresses.

In this second novel Miles also shows a more mature side to his writing rather than the often vulgar and melodramatic excesses of That Cold Day in the Park, his debut as a novelist. There are frequent vignettes with powerful evocative images, many of them capturing perfectly the struggles of the teens to reconcile their conflicted feelings about Angel's plans with their secret desires and dreams. One of the more unusual uses is a scene where Maria Estragon, one of the first students to regret her involvement in the plot, is leaning up against a wall and as she feels the surface of the bricks she imagines them to be small houses in a valley and she pretends "that each valley had its small houses filled with small people and children and dogs." She continues to imagine a blissful Utopia that includes beautiful blue eyed and brown eyed people and Mr. Nielsen smiling at her. Then she is brought back to reality when her body warms the bricks and a drop of sweat trickles down her back. "She tried to turn the drop into a tear from one of the blue eyes, but the tear was too big, and the eyes were too small, and the whole dream just ruined."

QUOTES: They went past the drugstore window, Angel stopping briefly to inspect some war games that were simulating a battlefield across a strip of phony cellophane grass. Between the signs TOOTH-PASTE REGULAR 69¢ TODAY ONLY 59¢ and GOOD FOOD, there was an impressive display of submachine guns, toy soldiers, and doctor kits next to a display sized bazooka. PLAY VIETNAM, said a hand-lettered sign.

Angel: "We gonna kill 'em each one in a special, poetic, proper, diff'rent way like they deserve. It wouldn’t’ be fair to kill 'em all the same way. Charley, would it? […] Some people deserve to die, don't they, Charley, if they don't fight back? Or if they fight so good but not quite good enough?"

"You force [people] to be uncultured. Everything they see is their culture. You take advantage of a child's natural selfishness, his natural cruelty, and prolong it by pandering to it until he becomes a cruel, selfish adult, proud of his cruelty and selfishness because it conforms to the national ideal."

Tim: "Television is practically everywhere. In a few more years there won't be a house anywhere that doesn't have a set. ...[W]hen the kids are home from school, till the time they're supposed to be in bed, you have nothing on any of the channels except things that are educational, but well done."
Marge: "That's ridiculous. [...] You're talking about nationalizing. You're talking about 1984"

THINGS I LEARNED: Miles had a prophetic vision for quality children's programming on national television broadcasting. The section (partially quoted above) where Tim talks to Marge about the power of TV and how it can be a force of good in helping to shape young minds beneficially was amazingly on target. Only two years after this book was published Fred Rogers of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" spoke before a Senate Committee on Communications in order to preserve multi-million funding for children's programming on public TV. After an impassioned argument he quoted the lyrics from one of his songs that reminds a child that he or she is always control of his emotions, that he can pause in a moment of anger and do something better, something constructive. When Rogers was done Senator John Pastore said, "I think it's wonderful. Looks like you just earned the 20 million dollars." You can view Fred Rogers' testimony on YouTube here.

Richard Miles, age 22, seen in
"The Betty Hutton Show"

THE AUTHOR: There is a brief biographical sketch about Richard Miles and his previous life as a child actor in movies and TV on the page for my review of his first, less controlled, more histrionic novel That Cold Day in the Park. I'll only elaborate here on the unusual way that Angel Loves Nobody came to be published. Miles won the Samuel Goldwyn Award in 1966. It was apparently first written as a script because the Samuel Goldwyn awards are for a screenwriting competition for TV and movie writers. Miles received extensive critique on the story and suggestions for its improvement. Apparently he decided to convert it into a novel and later earned a contract with Prentice-Hall for its publication.

EASY TO FIND? Miles' novel was published in both the US and UK. It was also reprinted in paperback in both countries. Despite the fact that there were four separate editions in two countries it seems to be rather scarce. I found only 15 copies for sale online, a mix of all four editions, in prices ranging from a $3.97 paperback to $35 for a copy of the US first in fine condition. You may want to check your local library. I found the book utterly fascinating, eerily prescient and, sadly, extremely topical and still relevant in our violence ridden world. It's very much recommended.

FFB: The Secret Keeper - Shirley Eskapa

"If you keep a secret properly, so that nobody but you knows about it, then it hasn't happened..."

THE STORY: Peter Pritchett-Ward has a diary into which his mother instructs him to write down all his secrets. She is leaving her husband because she knows he is in love with another woman. Peter knows this, too. His mother explains it as "your father's illness" and that for the next six months they will have several secrets to keep from Nigel, her husband and Peter's father. Be brave and patient she tells her son. If we win, we'll be a family again. If we lose, I will come back for you. Peter is unsure of the experiment but does his best to follow his mother's instructions. He does a lot of writing down of secrets. Along the way, the diary will also become a document of his slowly burning anger which leads to hatred which leads to violent fantasies which ultimately lead to tragedy.

THE CHARACTERS: The Secret Keeper (1982) is primarily about the Pritchett-Ward family and Ilsa du Four, the woman Nigel has fallen in love with. Though Caroline Pritchett-Ward is a central character we rarely get to know her as Eskapa chooses to have her appear offstage for the bulk of the novel. Additionally, we only know her through the observations of others. This is a subtly powerful device because Caroline ultimately is the main character although the title would have us believe it is Peter. For Caroline, though physically absent from the action, is ever present. Peter stays in contact with her, secretly of course, via clandestinely arranged phone calls and reports back to her on the progress of their experiment.

In the meantime, Nigel moves in with Ilsa and her asthmatic, spoiled brat of a son Jean-Pierre. Nigel has all but forgotten that he has his own family. He neglects his son and forgets his responsibilities as a father even though Peter is right there living under the same roof with the du Fours. Ilsa condemns Caroline as a heartless and "unnatural woman" for abandoning her son. The focus is always on what Caroline has done to Ilsa and Nigel and not what they have done to Caroline and her family. Nigel in essence is absorbed into Ilsa's family whose life consists of obsessively, often ruthlessly, maintaining her image among the wealthy members of the Mont Blanc country club in Geneva and keeping a watchful eye on her chronically ill son who she loves more than anyone else, including Nigel. All the while Peter suffers silently doing his best to win back his father's attention and love while believing wholeheartedly everything that his mother tells him and following her instructions to a tee.

Peter's diary eventually not only becomes a record of his secrets but an outlet for his hatred. He details violent and murderous fantasies in which he does in Jean-Pierre. A bully at his private school learns of Nigel's affair then taunts and humiliates Peter. The boy starts skipping classes to avoid the constant harassment, his grades plummet, and his simmering hatred previously confined to written word alone blazes into witnessed actions. He begins to spy on Ilsa who he grows to hate the most of anyone. He spends paragraphs on another murderous fantasy in which he repeatedly runs over Ilsa with a tractor. Her death is described with an adolescent's bloodlust.

Is Peter turning into a monster at the hands of his mother? She assures him she is coming back to Switzerland soon. All will be well. But will they achieve happiness at the expense of someone else's? Revenge may be sweet but can leave a very bitter aftertaste that will remain for months, maybe years.

INNOVATIONS: The novel is told in alternating viewpoints.  Eskapa begins in an omniscient narrative voice which allows us to know Nigel and Ilsa and all the supporting characters.  Every other chapter is told in first person in the pages of Peter's diary. The most notable part of the book, as mentioned earlier, is that Caroline is never allowed to be given her private thoughts. We only learn of what she is doing through the observations of others, mostly through Peter. Even the final chapter when she finally returns to Geneva and appears with both Peter and Nigel is told via the diary.

Peter's voice, for the most part, is captured well. Over the course of the novel he has a birthday and turns turns thirteen.  He sounds and behaves very much like a thirteen year old. Only on rare occasions do I get the idea that he's a much older but still a young man.  Eskapa does something very clever about halfway through the book when Peter talks about how he and his mother used to play word games. With the help of a college preparatory exam textbook she helped build his vocabulary by teaching him odd words like "opprobrious" and "asseverate". Peter knows these words can hardly be used in daily conversation but he has fun showing off. Anytime the syntax leans towards a more mature and literate voice Eskapa sort of gets away with it because of Peter's past wordplay.

When the story revolves around Ilsa, who at times threatens to take over the narrative, the book's tone is at its nastiest. Ilsa is portrayed as an ambitious woman who uses everyone and everything around her to achieve a status she doesn't really deserve. She exploits her sexuality to get powerful men to do her bidding.  She learns golf and becomes the best of the women players at the Mont Blanc club. Her devotion to Jean-Pierre borders on pathological obsession rather than maternal love. And her contempt for everyone, including Nigel, is slowly revealed over the course of the novel. When she invades Caroline's bedroom in an effort to get to know her through her belongings and wardrobe we realize what a superficial person she really is.

QUOTES: The first lesson from Madame Sanossian had been about hope. There was this simple Armenian proverb which is kind of like a formula. Hope gives strength because hope is strength.

The second proverb goes something like this: Encourage your enemies to believe you despair, so that hope may be your surprise weapon.

Ilsa was our enemy, right? Now Ilsa probably thinks that her enemy who is my Mom has given up, surrendered, retreated to London. Ilsa probably believes that she has conquered her enemy. My Mom hopes that Ilsa does not know the enemy is lying low, waiting to attack.

I don't like thinking about things. But I wonder is praying different from thinking? Praying seems easier -- because when you pray you hope, and when you think you worry.

THE AUTHOR: Shirley Eskapa was born and raised in South Africa. After marrying, she moved to Geneva where she lived with her husband Raymond for several years. Later she settled in London. While in college she studied sociology and psychology and later took a post graduate degree in international relations.

She began writing short stories which were published in The Telegraph, and the magazines Woman, Fair Lady, and Cornhill. The Secret Keeper was her second novel after Blood Fugue (1981), a romance featuring an interracial love affair which was banned by the apartheid regime. In 1984 she published Woman Versus Woman, a controversial non-fiction study of extramarital affairs with a focus on the wives and the "other women". Her findings based on interviews with 200 married women and 150 mistresses led to her thesis that extramarital affairs need not ever be a reason for divorce, that they can be resolved through stratagems between the women, and that most men are basically hardwired to have a "wandering eye" and prone to affairs either fantasized or real. The plot of The Secret Keeper can be seen as a fictional prototype of her theories about these types of reparable affairs.

For more on Eskapa see her in-depth obituary in The Telegraph.

EASY TO FIND? Looks pretty good. I found over one hundred copies for sale consisting of a variety of US and UK editions in hardcover and paperback. There are several signed copies out there, too. Be careful to look for the right copy of The Secret Keeper and enter Eskapa's name as author. The title itself is a popular one for women novelists.

FFB: Grieve for the Past - Stanton Forbes

THE STORY: Fifteen year-old Ramona Shaw wants to be a writer. Her literature tastes are eclectic ranging from Hugh Walpole to Ellery Queen. Her dream would be to solve a mystery and write about it. "How about a haunted house?" comes the goading dare from the Coleman sisters. So Ramona heads to what she thinks is the abandoned house in town and meets its sole occupant, Maurice Stone. Over a remarkably brief time she becomes friends with the young recluse. She changes his life when she gets him a job at the local grocer's. With that one act of kindness she initiates a series of adventures she never imagined and fulfills her wish of solving a murder mystery she never dreamed would occur in her quiet Kansas town.

THE CHARACTERS: It's rare for a novice writer to master the difficulty of capturing the worldview of a child without allowing the writer's own adult perceptions to otherwise color the story. But Ramona Shaw, the narrator of Grieve for the Past (1963), is one of the most authentic fictional teens I've encountered in a long time. Though the novel is set in 1930s Wichita it's hard not to draw analogies between Ramona and her easy friendship with the outcast Maurice Stone and the secret relationship that develops between Scout and Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. There's a lot of Harper Lee in this unusual novel which does not resemble anything like a typical detective novel, even though in the end it very much turns out to be a rather good one. All of the characters leap off the page with detailed and individual personalities and voices from Ramona's policeman grandfather in charge of the horrible ax murder case to Ramona's school friends and all the other adults she meets over the course of the novel. In addition to Ramona and Maurice the many memorable characters include the sinister handyman Victor Tabbot, dissatisfied and browbeaten alcoholic Carl Bragdon, vivacious Betty Vincent who thinks Wichita will never give her what she really wants out of life, Ramona's wise policeman of a grandfather and her kindly parents.

INNOVATIONS: Forbes has managed to weave a sly detective novel plot around this youthful coming of age story in an unexpected fashion. We know that Ramona is very much trying to be a budding detective (as well as a writer); her frequent talks with her Sheriff grandfather remind us of that fact. Still the story takes its time unraveling the mystery of who killed Mrs. Kirsten and her son and if indeed there was a hidden treasure in the house as rumor and gossip led everyone to believe. The story really is about Ramona learning about the way the world works, how a teenager grows up fast when unplanned for violence intrudes into her otherwise innocuous and mundane life, how we take for granted our neighbors, and how we tend to ostracize anyone who doesn't fit our ideas of normalcy. With the help of Maurice (who is considered the prime suspect in the murder), her grandfather, and some adult friends Ramona manages not only to solve the murder she has her entire worldview changed.

There are some brilliantly realized and unusual scenes like when Ramona after leaving a summertime dance makes a detour to a speakeasy courtesy of Mr. Smith who is driving her home. When he finds out she's only fifteen things change from fun to nasty very quickly. The climax takes place at an end of the school year prom that is almost like the nightmare prom from Carrie in reverse. Ramona, an ugly duckling of a girl, is transformed into a beauty for the night and becomes the object of all the young men's attention when before they paid her little notice. One of the young men has some inside information about the ax murders and takes her aside to deliver one of the most surprising denouements in mystery fiction.

QUOTES: I thought how funny it was that adults seemed to talk all the time about things they knew all about. Never about anything they didn't know. If they talked about what they didn't know, they might find out something.

I smiled but I didn't really like [being called Miss America]. I knew I was no beauty. [...]what hurt most was that sometimes I felt beautiful. It didn't seem fair that I should feel beautiful and not be beautiful.

Betty Vincent: "I'll get out of this Middle Western, middle class, middle- minded rut I'm in. And somewhere out there, there will be somebody. But not here. There's nobody here."

Betty Vincent again: "Money, mon enfant. D-o-l-l-a-r-s. Even when you're old enough you can't do what you want to, and often the reason is money."

And so they all were right, those who said there was money and those who said there wasn't. Somewhere in the middle had been the truth. I wondered if that was the way with everything.

Ramona: "You can't let someone kill and get away with it."
Grandfather: "There's many a murderer loose in the world , Ramona. And that's the truth."
I closed my notebook and I never did write a story about the Kirstens' murderer. Was there anything in this world that was the way it was supposed to be?

THE AUTHOR: Deloris Stanton Forbes was born in Kansas City, MO in 1923 and was raised in Wichita, Kansas. Her own grandfather was a deputy sheriff making much of what is in Grieve for the Past a fictionalized memoir. She spent the early part of her adult life as a journalist. She wrote for newspapers in Oklahoma, reported crime in Baton Rouge, and finally ended up at a Boston paper when she moved there after marrying her husband Bill Forbes. She settled in Wellesley, MA and covered city government for a weekly community paper while raising her family. In the early 1960s she turned to writing crime fiction and romantic suspense first in collaboration with a fellow journalist and then on her own. Grieve for the Past was her first solo novel using her pseudonym "Stanton Forbes". In the late 1960s she created the character of Knute Severson, a Massachusetts policeman, who appeared in over 15 novels published under her other pen name "Tobias Wells." After living in St. Martin in the Caribbean, where she and her husband ran an apartment building and owned a tourist shop for about 13 years, she finally settled in Florida where apparently she still lives today. Her last novel was published in 2003 and shortly after she retired from writing. She is apparently still alive at 93 years old.

THINGS I LEARNED: Ramona uses Wichita's nickname of "Air Capital of the World" a couple of times. This led me to find out all I could about that claim to fame. Wichita was the center of airplane manufacturing in the 1920s and 1930s. Beechcraft, Cessna, and Stearman Aircraft were among the leading manufacturing companies and the city became a major hub for U.S. aircraft production for over two decades.

One Way Passage starring Kay Francis and William Powell is a movie that Ramona goes to see at one point in the story. It helped me to date the year of the novel's events to no earlier than 1932, the year the movie was released.

EASY TO FIND? Apparently this one is rather scarce. I could find only three copies for sale online, all of them the original Doubleday "Crime Club" edition, also the one I own and shown at the top of this post. There is also an Avon paperback reprint that came out in the 1960s. Forbes' books under both her pseudonyms were very popular during the 60s and 70s and my guess is that you'll be able to find many of them in local libraries throughout the US. I'm not so sure you'll be as lucky if you live in the UK.

More reviews on Stanton Forbes and Tobias Wells are coming later this month. She was a diverse and imaginative crime writer who novels tended towards bizarre plots, quirky characters and highly unusual events the more she wrote. With the exception of her series featuring Knute Severson none of her mysteries are vaguely like one another.

COOL FLICKS: Pretty Poison (1968)

Pretty Poison is a mostly faithful adaptation of Stephen Geller's novel She Let Him Continue. The characters remain fairly true to their original incarnations and remarkably all the names remain intact.Usually movie writers like to "waspify" all the ethnic surnames in movie adaptations, but thankfully we still get to know Sue Anne Stepanek and Mr. Azenauer and Bud Munch with their original names.

I was afraid I was going to see Anthony Perkins do just another version of Norman Bates in this, but due to one of the interesting changes to the movie script Dennis Pitt is not only fully aware of his fantasy life of being a CIA agent he shares those weird stories and fantasies with everyone. So in the opening scene where we see him meeting with his parole officer for the first time (a scene not in the book) he is playing with Azenauer and teasing him. Dennis makes fun of his apparent diagnosis of mental illness with a story of aliens being responsible for polluting the town's water supply. Azenauer then cautions him about indulging in those wild stories. He's supposed to be rehabilitated and ready for the real world now. Dennis smirks, tosses off the advice, and heads out to start his new life.

Immediately afterward he sees Sue Anne for the first time and is entranced. She happens to be dressed as a drum majorette and is inexplicably marching down the street with her high school marching band. This image allows for a recurring musical motif throughout the movie that signals Dennis is daydreaming and drifting off into his private world. The marching band also adds a surreal element that will pervade the movie tying into Dennis' refusal to commit to entering the real world despite all the advice given to him by his landlady, parole officer and other adults.

The strength of the movie is in the scenes between Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins. They have an fascinating chemistry together. Weld seems like an easily impressed, easily manipulated teenage girl sick of adults and her homelife and craving adventure. She oozes enthusiasm and cheerfulness but is never cloying or stupid. There are sly hints about what she's really up to if you already know the ending. It was fascinating to see her play the subtext in the early part of the movie. What I didn't think was a wise choice was to turn her into another two-timing noir temptress.

The film devolves into a series of histrionic scenes beginning with arrest of Dennis at the hands of some hysterical policemen and ending with Sue Anne in the police station revealing that she turned him in. In the book Dennis makes this decision to call the police and confess to the crime himself because he finally realizes that he will never fit into the real world and wants to do the right thing by sparing the girl he has fallen in love with. Yet no matter how hard he tries to be believable he's still treated as if he's a lunatic. It's more effective and tragic than having him become a victim of Sue Anne's devilish betrayal.

In fact Dennis is made to out to be a cowering baby when it comes to actually doing something deadly. Perkins quivers and gives us his wide-eyed innocent looks while Weld laughs and giggles and is turned on by all the violence done mostly at her hands. Too many scenes in the original story where Dennis is complicit in the violence are removed. Weld's Sue Anne is turned into a cackling psycho in the climactic murder scene collapsing into laughter on her bed surrounded by the framed ballet dancers and flowery wallpaper of her girly bedroom. An unsettling scene for sure, but to my mind not really right for Geller's intended themes.

John Randolph (right) as Azenauer, more of a father
figure than a parole officer

The book gives us a series of ineffectual adults who don't really care about Dennis or Sue Anne, who are more interested in enforcing rules and ordering them to do the same. In the movie nearly every adult is sympathetic, especially the all too caring parole officer Azenauer (veteran character actor John Randolph), diminishing the impetus for their rebellious natures. This undermines Geller's intent of having two young people at the mercy of an adult world of hypocrites. In the novel they are reacting to a blasé world of indifference and unimaginative zombies who live their dull lives following the rules blindly. One improvement in the movie comes from the intensity of Perkins' involvement in his fantasy world of CIA rules, alien threats and paranoid delusions of being scrutinized by everyone he and Sue Anne encounter. An interesting choice is how Dennis is flippant and sarcastic when dealing with the adults and so serious and officious when he's with Sue Anne who is both starry-eyed and curious, eager to figure out just who Dennis is, why he's so strange and itching to take part in his adventures.

The only adult character who remains true to the original story is Sue Anne's mother even more of a harpy than she was in the book. As played by Beverly Garland Mrs. Stepanek is the best supporting part in the movie. She is epitome of the bitch mother. Philandering with wannabe hunks and yet keeping a tight control on her "slut" daughter who is only following in her mother's footsteps. Garland appears in three scenes but she makes the most of them delivering her lines with vehement gusto, puffing away on a cigarette, slapping her daughter like Ida Lupino in Women's Prison. It's no wonder Dennis retreats to the kitchen or inches his way to the front door when in her presence. No one would want to be in the same room with such a Fury.

The movie works largely thanks to the presence of Perkins and Weld and their very magnetic chemistry. Their scenes are the strongest, most powerful and most imaginatively composed and lit. If there are a few unintentionally campy moments like the shot of Sue Anne straddling her first murder victim like she's won a wrestling contest or some dreadful dialogue like Perkins oft quoted "What a week...!" speech they only enhance the weirdness of the movie. This is supposed to be a story of young people -- a 22 year old man and a 17 year old girl -- committing sabotage, murder and having drug enhanced sex in the 1960s. Watching two people much older than their parts (Perkins was 36, Weld 25) carry off their roles with 100% commitment and never once parodying themselves or their past roles is both impressive and wildly entertaining.

She Let Him Continue - Stephen Geller

I’ve not read any JD pulp fiction, but I’m pretty sure that She Let Him Continue (1966) is a reaction to a subgenre of popular fiction that flooded the drugstore paperback racks during the 1950s and 1960s. There are no leather jacketed, motorcycle riding, juvenile delinquents in Stephen Geller’s novel but the rebellious youth attitude, the beat poet prose and the disregard for all adult authority are present in this high octane, reinvented version of a JD pulp novel.

She Let Him Continue is narrated by 22 year-old ex-convict Dennis Pitt who imagines himself to be a CIA operative. He works in a chemical factory in the aptly named New England town of Gravemoor where nearly everyone he meets is half dead or so bored with life any sort of diversion will entertain them. Take for instance Dennis’ quasi landlady Mrs. Bronson who along with her husband runs the motel where Dennis lives. When not discussing with Dennis the sensationalized crime stories of rape, child murder, and kidnapping in the local tabloid she’s showing an unusual interest in Dennis himself. Or is her Mrs. Robinson-like seductive posing only part of Dennis’ elaborately constructed delusions? Dennis spurns the attentions of Mrs. Bronson and focusses instead on recruiting 17 year-old Sue Ann Stepanek as comrade in his covert missions. And true to this JD pulp Sue Anne is more trouble than Dennis can handle.

Stephen Geller writes the book in a sort of hipster Beat Lit style shunning chapter divisions and the use of quotation marks in all the dialogue. The result is like reading the transcript of an uninterrupted drug induced hallucination. Pill popping is one of Dennis' hobbies along with his baroque fantasy life and he and Sue Anne freely take drugs as they turn into thrill-seeking daring adventurers as part of Dennis’ strange plan to sabotage the chemical plant. Dennis is fully aware of his pretense as a CIA agent and lets us in on that big lie fairly soon. But we believe along with him that Sue Ann is just a naïve teenage girl he’s exploiting for companionship and eventually sex.

As this hallucinatory journey continues each of Dennis’ encounters with the mostly ineffectual adult characters reveal a frustrated troubled young man orphaned at an early age, corralled into his aunt's house, bullied by teenage girls, abandoned by peers, and eventually turning to arson as his ultimate rage-filled teenage response. Upon release from prison he is badgered by his exacting parole officer and harrassed by his boss at the factory. He is coping with indifference and lack of empathy on a grand scale which he collectively labels “the pressure.” The chemical plant is a symbol of all that is corrupt in the world as Dennis watches it pour out filthy sewage, sinister “red dye” and stinking pollution into Gravemoor’s river. Blowing up the sewage chutes is an act of revenge on the world that turned its back on him, led him to commit a selfish crime and robbed him of five years of his adolescence in prison. We begin to feel an odd empathy for the young man as he dreamily riffs on "the pressure", the polluted river and everything promised to him that was spoiled or taken from him.

With Sue Ann as his sergeant he plans to battle the world. Under Dennis’ mentorship Sue Ann is given a test to prove her worthiness as a CIA agent. She surrenders to Dennis’ will and with the help of some pills to loosen her inhibitions we watch her unleash her inner demons in a violent climax. All too quickly we realize Sue Ann was not at all the naïve waif she was first presented as. The pills are not to blame. It’s clear that she and Dennis have a lot more in common than misfit sexual attraction. And Sue Ann actually turns out to be much more dangerous than the fantasy plagued Dennis.

Geller’s novel served as the inspiration for two movies. The first retitled Pretty Poison (1968) is something of a cult sensation among exploitation and psycho-thriller fans. Unsurprisingly, Anthony Perkins plays Dennis though he was three years shy of his fortieth birthday when he made the movie. Tuesday Weld is Sue Ann whose part is substantially rewritten to hint at a vixen in training just as aware of her capacity to corrupt as Dennis is aware of his CIA fantasy world. I’m not so sure I like this change but Weld carries it off with a sinister subtlety ultimately exploding into a kind of bloodthirsty teenage version of Bonnie Parker that another immature or less intelligent actress might overplay into a tired caricature.

The movie was remade for TV in a boring revamp updated to 1996. Grant Show, best known as one of the bland hunks on "Melrose Place", plays Dennis with an unattractive boyish haircut and as Sue Ann we get the uninspired Wendy Benson who went on to play supporting roles in a string of forgettable TV series throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Much of the TV movie is just a copy of the far more interesting original. The changes in storyline like Dennis’ aggressive sexual nature don’t add to a better understanding of what Geller was really after in his portraits of two furious young people of the 1960s. As acted by Show and Benson we get vapidness personified not deeply troubled frustrated souls caught in a world they want desperately to control but cannot.

More on the first Pretty Poison movie coming in a post in a few days.

FFB: The Tall Dark Man - Anne Chamberlain

Anne Chamberlain's debut novel The Tall Dark Man (1955) can barely be called a crime novel. Why this book was marketed as a cat and mouse thriller is beyond me. It's not. Yes, there is a crime. But the story is one of those experimental psychological novels that used to flood the shelves in the 1950s. What makes it noteworthy is the voice of the protagonist -- a 13 year old girl. And she is one troubled little girl.

The book is almost a retelling of The Window that remarkable movie with Bobby Driscoll as a boy known for telling lies who witnesses a murder and his desperate attempt to get any adult to believe what he saw was true. Driscoll's character is harassed and hounded by the villains and we fear for him legitimately. Sarah Gross, Chamberlain's heroine of sorts, also is an overly imaginative youngster with a flair for spinning tales but what she sees may not have been real. Unlike the Driscoll character Sarah is more akin to Mary Tilford from The Children's Hour, a mean spirited liar intent on causing harm.

Sarah lives under the shadow of an ugly reputation as a vindictive rumormonger after she tells a very nasty story about one of her male neighbors who slighted her one day. We learn that Sarah spends most of her lonely childhood gazing out of windows, dreaming up stories of the strangers she watches often ending those stories with a lurid finish. In the opening chapter Sarah witnesses a violent fight between two men in hunting garb that ends in a savage and bloody death. But who is going to believe the girl who told such a whopping lie about an adult and impugned the character of some of her schoolmates? Sarah lingers too long at the window and almost too late realizes in horror the murderer is staring at her through his binoculars.

Knowing she cannot tell anyone what she saw without being thought a liar again Sarah is forced to resort to her manipulative ways to escape the school and elude the murderer who she is sure is after her.  Having failed to convince any of the adults to accompany her home or drive her away (she usually walks to school) Sarah holes herself up in the girls' bathroom hoping against hope that the "tall dark man" doesn't get inside and finish her off. Over the course of the book, which takes place in a single evening, the reader gets to know Sarah and her secret life as storyteller and dreamer, her sad upbringing in a home where her father gambled away their savings, a home of heated quarrels and little love. Sarah retreats into her imagination further frustrating her mother and her teachers who have already suggested Sarah be taken to a child psychologist.

The book is a strange mix of psychological study of a borderline antisocial child and an allegory of childhood fears. Chamberlain manages to saddle poor Sarah with a closetful of character flaws ranging from self-loathing to pettiness to desperate longing for one single friend. She's a sad little girl and often one scary little girl as well. In one chilling passage she actually believes that she caused the "tall dark man" to kill the other and begins to identify with the killer recognizing in herself a streak of cruelty that could easily lead to violence. It's hard not to see her as a forerunner to a nastier, less victimized Carrie White. In the first paragraph she makes mention of having had her first period in the past six months and hating herself for "[becoming] a woman". There is a later sequence where she and her mother discuss menstruation with Sarah becoming ever more indignant and spiteful towards her mother when she tries to explain her daughter's ongoing biological changes.

Lost in all of Sarah's ruminating and fixating is the tall dark man of the title. As the story progresses he becomes less a murderer in search of an eyewitness and more of a hazy marauding symbol of everything that a 13 year-old can possibly be afraid of. Chamberlain's writing also tends to waver in and out of nightmarish surrealism and cozy naturalism.  At times her gift for naturalistic dialogue, much of it rendered in spot on Midwestern idiom, gives way to a jarring kind of heightened theatricality peculiar to allegorical playwriting.

The story languishes too much in Sarah's past. Chamberlain heaps on pop psychology explanations for Sarah's tortured emotions. Her continual trips into her past trying to sort out her conflicted feelings for her father and her stepfather grow tiresome. At it weakest moments the story devolves into the well trodden terrain of soap operas. What's at stake and what Sarah fears for in the present is too often abandoned. Intermittently we are reminded of the looming threat when the murderer appears outside windows as a ghostlike face or is seen loitering by the school flagpole. However he never really seems like a menace. He's more of a lingering shadow than a palpable danger.

There are lighthearted moments amid all this grim and self indulgent dreaming. When they do come they are more than welcome. A scene between two janitors complaining about the slovenliness of teenage girls in the third floor girls' bathroom is hysterically funny. Later when a group of students rehearsing a play invade Sarah's bathroom sanctuary she at last finds a handful of allies and much longed for companionship and some long overdue compassion. For me the scenes with the drama students were the best part of the book.

The Tall Dark Man received numerous accolades when it was first published. The paperback edition I have is loaded with blurbs from laudatory reviews that highlight its suspenseful nature. All of the quotes used make the book seem like a real nailbiter and a page turner. One reviewer claims she started the book at 1 AM and didn't put it down until she finished three hours later. But this is a case of exaggeration coupled with overlooking what the book is really about. The final two chapters are the only sections I found to be fraught with tension and the only times I received a smidgen of a frisson. I enjoy being misled in the context of a plot when I read crime fiction, I don't like being misled by marketing hype.

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Reading Challenge update: One of two books I read for Rich Westwood's "1955 Book" for February.