FFB: The Doors of Sleep - Thurman Warriner

"Once again, " Mr. Ambo said, "we seem to be exploring those uncomfortable fringes of the mind..."

My Penguin paperback edition of The Doors of Sleep (1955) has a list of characters labeled "Present Company" preceding the table of contents. In addition to Thurman Warriner's trio of series characters comprised of Charles Ambo, an elderly gentleman; the Venerable Grantius Fauxlihough Toft, Archdeacon of Tonchester; and John Franklin Cornelius Scotter, private enquiry agent, we will meet The Rev. Howard Smeaton, Inspector Lavender, Charlesworth Vinery and family, Mary Gentle (the proprietor of a pub called "Repent at Leisure"), Amen Sleep and his improbably named granddaughter Starry Sleep. The list of characters alone is inviting enough, but then a look at the chapter titles -- all of which deal with the many metaphoric incarnations of sleep ("Into Dreadful Slumber Lulled" and "Sleep, Thou Ape of Death" are two) -- might lead one to expect a mystery novel along the lines of the sophisticated whimsy of Michael Innes or Edmund Crispin. What we get includes more than a fair share of arcane literary allusions and ample whimsy but the book also tends to veer into a metaphysical realm with a surprisingly medieval presentation of the nature of good and evil.

When the victim of the piece is introduced as a loathsome man who finds joy in all things unpleasant and whose life's goal seems to be inflicting cruelty you just know that the he will get his comeuppance. Charlesworth Vinery is literally a hellion on wheels. Confined to a wheelchair for a mysterious crippling ailment that has no biological cause he nevertheless manages to commandeer and intimidate all who meet him. His favorite target for his very special brand of spiteful mindgame play is his young wife Alyson who in the recent past was in love with his younger brother Amos, a professional musician and composer. Alyson seems immune to her husband's odious behavior  suffering in silence, actually laughing and smiling it all away. Deep down she is tortured as Warriner lets us know all too frequently.  Toft and Ambo fear the worst among this trio. As Charlesworth continues his lifelong campaign of nastiness and knowing that Amos has a very short fuse Mr. Ambo predicts an explosion of violence that may lead to someone's death.

Vinery disappears one night. His body is found in two different locations by two different groups of characters at two different times. Revealing any further details of either location or the circumstances of Vinery's death will truly spoil the reading of the book. Suffice to say, the crime is macabre and the displaying of the corpse is one of the most unique aspects of the detective novel. Simultaneously the most puzzling and intriguing plot point the explanation of the scenes of the crime will uncover both the why and the how. Typical of Scotter, a detective in name only who provides the common sense angle, he makes a sweeping generalization based on what he sees: "What you've got, without any frills, is the old collusion and conspiracy story." And it certainly seems that way for much of the book. The truth will be anything but glib.

Beginning with the setting, a group of Sussex villages known collectively as "the Slumbers", extending to the Sleep family and to the haunting orchestral work by Amos Vinery that gives the book its title The Doors of Sleep is literate to the point of distraction. Indulging in an Ellery Queen-like fascination with the word "sleep" the book contains an intoxicatingly rich use of all the metaphoric possibilities of the word, its meanings, connotations and opposites. Sleep and wakefulness, hypnosis, unconscious thought, and of course death -- all can be found within the pages of this detective novel that meanders its way inexorably down a path of Old Testament inspired morality. Charlesworth Vinery is indeed a nasty piece of work. Malicious, passive-aggressive and cruel -- none of these traits can be denied. But wholly evil? A Satanic incarnation? Evidence of superstitious practices and folkloric spell casting turn up. Our trio of detectives are just as easily swayed by their discovery of a waxen image as they were by Vinery's "evil eye" and his skillful manipulation of language.

Are there any photos of Warriner
without him holding a pipe?

Mr. Ambo even confesses half jokingly, "Yes, it smacks of the lusty Middle Ages" at one point. And any modern reader would agree. The use of the word evil crops up more frequently towards the close of the book. It seems too simplistic at first, rather off putting, a bit laughable, like the kind of ominous language spouted by crucifix wielding vampire hunters in Hammer horror movies. Better to weakly and awkwardly describe the pervading menace throughout the story as 'ungoodness'. Sometimes evil as such is better left unnamed.

Archedeacon Toft best articulates this concept when during the course of the murder investigation the three men infiltrate Vinery's forbidden sanctuary, a room no one was ever allowed to enter. It's an oppressive space, heavily curtained to block out all light. Ambo and Toft feel the presence of something ineffable. Even Scotter gets the willies. They all need to leave almost immediately. Toft conveys the importance of what they experienced in the room:

Perhaps we all saw the evil in our own minds or the things that we fear the most. Go into any dark room sometime, Scotter. Block up your ears and nostrils and lie so comfortably that the sense of touch is scarcely stimulated. What is left is the real you. [...] No, we're not wasting time, considering these things. They've a very real bearing on all these troubles.

I feel compelled to make one tantalizing allusion of my own. The book ends in a climax that seems directly lifted from a famous Hitchcock movie. Among Thurman Warriner's many odd jobs prior to his career as a novelist was "cinema technician". Could this be a fancy way of saying he was a movie projectionist? Knowing he must have spent hours watching movies I find it hard to dismiss the influence of this very well known movie which was in theaters several years prior Warriner's book being published. The similarities of the movie's finale and the thrilling last pages of The Doors of Sleep are hard to overlook. I won't mention the name of the movie or once again I will ruin the completely unexpected action sequence.

There were only eight novels in this series featuring Ambo, Toft and Scotter. Of these books only the first was published in both the US and Warriner's native England making it difficult for us on this side of the Atlantic to find any of the other books. However, The Doors of Sleep primarily because of its Penguin reprint edition is the title easiest to find. This is one of the most unusual mystery novels I've read this year. Apart from its overarching morality it was also the most satisfying read as a mystery novel for it encompasses so many connotations of that word, just as it explores all facets of the word "sleep."

Warriner is better known under his pseudonym Simon Troy his identity reserved for exploring crime in a variety of "psychological suspense" novels that sound reminiscent of the best of Highsmith, Rendell and Robert Bloch. He was praised by Francis Iles who said of one book that sent his spine "into cold storage":  "...goes to the top of the Horror Class." I've already purchased a small pile of Troy books (much easier to find in multiple US editions) and will be reporting back on those in the coming months. What I've sampled of Warriner has whetted my appetite for ample second helpings.

Mr. Ambo, Archdeacon Toft and
John Scotter Detective Novels
Method in His Murder (1950)
Ducats in Her Coffin (1951)
Death's Dateless Night (1952)
The Doors of Sleep (1955)
Death's Bright Angel (1956)
She Died, Of Course (1958)
Heavenly Bodies (1960)

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Reading Challenge update: Golden Age card, space D5 - "Book involves the Clergy or Religion."
And this makes BINGO #2 in the fifth row.

FFB: Picture of Millie - P. M. Hubbard

"I wish I could give you a proper picture of Millie," he said, "but I won't try, I don't think."

There are many perceptions of Millie Trent, the carefree vivacious wife of Major Trent, who serves as muse, object of desire, and dear friend for many of the characters in Picture of Millie (1964). Here is a story where the life of a dead woman is a greater mystery than the circumstances surrounding her unfortunate death. We only get to know Millie after her death and as such it is the perceptions of others we get. Their portraits are as varied and colorful as any that could be painted on canvas -- deeply personal, secretive longings, inexplicable attractions are all there depending on the person describing Millie Trent. Paul Mycroft never really knew her and can only base his opinions on what he saw and how she related to the other guests of the Carrack Hotel where he and his family are vacationing. His own assessment of Millie Trent will change greatly over the course of the novel as he tries to learn the truth of how she came to be floating in the ocean.

The amateur sleuth can be handled in a variety of ways in a detective novel. The Golden Age gave us hundreds of egocentric amateurs eager to show off their arcane knowledge, dozens of geniuses both male and female ever willing to assist the police or go off on their own to uncover the truth of baffling murders. None of that rings true at all. Those detectives belong to a wholly fictional world. Hubbard eschews this type of character for one who is more grounded in reality. In one of Hubbard's few true detective novels Paul Mycroft becomes a detective ever so slowly, by accident even. He is a victim of his own curiosity and uncontrollable imagination.

High above them a tangle of green paths criss-crossed the broken slopes. Nothing moved on them, but Paul saw with his mind's eye a small figure, parti-coloured in two shades of blue, climbing eagerly while the last grains of sand ran out through the waist of the glass. Lord, lord, he thought, what a fearful way to fall. Then he thought, but it can't have been like that.

He's on holiday and his main concern is his family. But while entertaining them with boat tours, line fishing for mackerel, and a visit to an estate dating back to medieval times he finds his mind wandering. Those pictures of Millie painted by all her friends, acquaintances and husband, her horrible fall from a cliff, the oddness of her missing life jacket which she always wore when anywhere near the water, all of these thoughts and images cannot be dismissed from his mind. Paul is compelled to learn the truth of why she was on the cliffs, who she might have be traveling to meet in secret, and how she ended up dead in the ocean.

Even as early as this second novel Hubbard's talent for describing the landscape and geography is a highlight. He arouses so many moods in his sensual writing and the action is inextricably linked to the setting. The coastline with its ominous jagged rocks, the turbulent ocean, a hidden cave where the unexpectedly violent climax takes place -- each are characters in their own right. Comparisons to John Buchan and Robbert Louis Stevenson, both writers of adventure stories who knew their settings well and wrote of them with lush detail, are not at all exaggerated. Readers who enjoy their thrillers taking place in evocative settings will find much to admire and absorb in reading any Hubbard novel.

As for the human characters the focus is on the men, all of whom find themselves drawn to Millie in one way or another. Dawson is the drunken fantasist with a harridan for a wife who, when he isn't engaging in public marital spats, drowns his sorrows in whiskey at the hotel bar. Mike Cardew, the local Adonis fisherman, catches the eyes of every women from teenage Susan to Mary, Paul's wife, and seemed to have a relationship with Millie that to everyone seemed purely sexual but was much deeper. Major Trent, a colorless personality rendered all but invisible by his young wife's death is seen by Paul and Mary as "the hollow man." And then there's Bannerman, a "professional bachelor" whose wealth is his identity. Aloof yet affable, somewhat sinister in the way he is always smiling, Bannerman is like an anachronistic medieval landowner treating the townspeople as his serfs and vassals.

Millie is their femme fatale. But she is not at all like the temptresses of noir cinema and hard-boiled private eye novels. For one thing she has no ulterior motives in the friendships she develops with these men. Described as full of life, always beaming, always laughing joyfully, and radiating attraction in all its forms Millie is not out to use people. She genuinely wants to be with them whether in order to learn the fine art of sailing with Dawson or to bask in the male beauty of virile Cardew. Never really aware of her allure she managed to weave a spell over all these men like the mermaid that Paul and Mary jokingly call her. In one way or another each is responsible for Millie's death.

Copies of Picture of Millie are rather scarce in the used book market. There were no paperback reprints that I could find and only one printing of each hardcover edition in the UK and the US. The US version has the collectible Edward Gorey DJ as shown above. But have no fear -- once again Orion's vintage crime imprint The Murder Room has released the book in digital format. This time the book is available to everyone with no "country of residence restrictions" as with some of Joan Fleming's books. While not as violent or dark as Hubbard's more signature works like The Holm Oaks or A Hive of Glass as one of his few forays into a traditional detective novel (albeit one with some non traditional twists) Picture of Millie is definitely worth reading.

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Reading Challenge update: Silver Age card, space L6 - "Book involves a form of transportation"
Boats and sailing are prominent in the story.