FFB: Comets Have Long Tails - Madeleine Johnston

I've read a lot of "Yellow Peril" thrillers in my day with the Fu Manchu saga leading the list but I don't think I've come across a more humanistically offensive murder mystery than Comets Have Long Tails (1938). First off I hadn't a clue what the hell the title meant but when I learned within the first two chapters that the victim is a Chinese woman (dubbed White Flower!) cast in the role of exotic and amoral villainess I thought for sure I was going to learn of some obscure Confucian snippet that led to the title. I was sort of right, but we don't really learn of the true meaning of that odd metaphor until the final pages of the last chapter. Until then we must be affronted with the despicable life of the murder victim who certainly had it coming to her and yet at the same time discovering that this Chinese woman is one of the worst stereotypes of the "evil Oriental", and an "exotic female evil Oriental" at that, in all of Golden Age crime fiction. I couldn't wash away the bad taste in my mouth with each new revelation and racial slur Johnston felt it necessary to use.

Our super sleuths on the case are Noah Bradshaw and Tony Craig, rival reporters from two different newspapers. Craig's editor is so impressed with the reporters' detective skills he asks why he is a cub reporter rather than a cop. Craig, ever the wisecracker, replies, "Feet aren't flat enough." This is another book along the lines of Daniel Mainwaring's series (writing as Geoffrey Homes) where reporters are more observant, more astute, and generally better at everything than the police. Even D.A. Teasdale jibes the Chief of Police, "If the newspapers keep on there won't be any need for a detective bureau. Why don't you try training journalists instead of Sherlock Holmeses?" The somewhat overly complicated plot treats us to Bradshaw's expertise in the Chinese language and its various dialects (he had worked there for several years) and the fact that Tony at one time dated White Flower and was in love her.

Bradshaw and Craig are tasked with aiding the police and in one case challenged to actually solve the murder of White Flower, the adopted ward of Beulah and Roger Allison. White Flower is found hidden behind a hedge in a park wearing only black pajamas and strangled with a dog leash . It's a sordid crime perfectly suited as tabloid fodder. Add to that the young woman is Chinese whose looks are constantly described as "almond eyed" and "exotic" and you know that the story is headed for lurid and murky waters. Is it because she's Chinese that she will turn out to be a truly nasty young woman? A thieving blackmailer of the worst sort, a seducer of young men tempting them with her body and her charm, and plotting the worst sort of revenge. Is she just a symbol of exotic decadence or is there something more insidious at the heart of the book? I don't know what to make of it all.

Here's some choice writing for you to mull over:

Anything that peps me up is a nice fresh murder now and then. And if it had to be anybody I'm glad it wasn't someone who would be a loss to the community. Like a husband and father. Now this Chinese gal--"

"Why was the girl bumped off if not to get possession of the jade bracelet?"
"Why anything," Lt. Hogan demanded, "when it come to the yellow race? Revenge, some ancient grudge dating back to God knows when -- the first century, or dynasty, or whatever it's called in China. [...] When a Chink gets his mad up it's handed down from generation to generation."

The girl would play with him, drain his manhood, drive him insane with jealousy, but she would not marry him. No. She was playing with bigger fish. She would not marry [him]... But she would ruin him.

He was only a reporter. But he had eyes. And ears. And -- what was it [his editor] had said of him? -- a nose for crime. Well, this crime was beginning to smell unpleasantly Chinese.

It was the oriental equivalent of "Get the hell out of here."

It was pure "Pekingese", which to the Chinese language is what true "Parisian" is to the French. (On closer reading that's really just an example of snobbery.)

Oh, how about this one? A rare case of a racist joke:

"Wong not know. Not sure. White man all lookee like same man."

There is another victim. Guess what? He's Chinese. Guess what happens to him? Strangling is not enough to dispatch him. He's also mutilated and tortured in a grotesque manner. The book is not only drowning in Chinese stereotypes and xenophobia. Bigotry is liberally sprinkled on all the non-whites in the cast. There are stereotyped Jews and a black servant character. She is introduced as "a large black woman of the mammy type" and then referred to as "the Negress" and "the servant." But she is never given a name. Of course she speaks in an "Amos & Andy" style comic dialect. It's all way too much. And when it's laid on this thick can it all really be satire? I'm not so sure.

At one point in the novel a character says to himself, "What in hell is this anyway? A murder investigation or a Mickey Mouse cartoon?" No comment.

But here's something I started to do just to put the book into less offensive and modern context. I recast White Flower as an Islamic girl or a Latino girl or any other non-white and I started looking at all of the anti-Chinese remarks and all the racial slurs as if she were one of the many maligned and ostracized "minorities". In fact I made her all of them at once. Suddenly the book was like something that was out of the front page headlines of the past five years. Because really nothing changes when it comes to bigots finding "the other" and ostracizing them, casting them in the roles of monsters or freaks or infidels or sinners or what have you in order to make them less human, less worthy. Just lesser than anyone. Perhaps Johnston was only holding a mirror up to us and showing us the ugly truth. That, at least, is my hope to help explain why she wrote what amounts to a very ugly detective story.

Madeleine Johnston wrote only two detective novels and much to my surprise Coachwhip Publications has reprinted both of them in an omnibus edition entitled Bradshaw Investigates. Included with Johnson's debut is Death Casts a Lure, a sequel of sorts, both featuring --as the title implies-- Noah Bradshaw as the reporter/sleuth. Despite this unusual choice in a vintage murder mystery reprint I'm not sure I'm interested in further exploring Johnston's world.

FFB: Murder under Construction - Sue MacVeigh

THE STORY: Enter the exciting world of railway construction in the pre World War 2 era. No really. Come on along. It's not as boring as you might think. At least not in the hands of Sue MacVeigh, the ostensible author of Murder under Construction (1939) and the narrator and wife of railway detective Andy MacVeigh. Her husband has been hired to find out if a series of accidents are actually attempts to murder Winthrop Mason, the head of a railway bridge construction job in Slocum, New York. Andy has asked Sue to tag along as his Watson. They're going to pose as a civil engineer and his wife and infiltrate the small colony of engineers and contractors to find out who might want Mason dead. But someone still manages to kill the much loathed engineer and MacVeigh's job leads him to collaborating with the police in a murder investigation.

THE CHARACTERS: A large cast requires extra concentration so the list of characters and their relationships at the front of the book was extremely helpful in keeping everyone sorted out. Mason married into a wealthy family of railway people. His wife Gwendolyn, the daughter of the railway president, is a beautiful young woman very protective of her husband's reputation which as the story unfolds turns out to be pretty much a sham. Mason knew next to nothing at all about construction, let alone the intricate physics behind railway bridge construction. As Andy and Sue dig into the lives of the construction crew they learn that Mason was most likely responsible for ruining the project. The bridge is already collapsing due to poor judgment, bad planning and inferior materials. Andy reveals that Mason was faking his knowledge and putting everyone else's reputations at risk, to say nothing of the dangers and unsafe conditions at the bridge site. Motives are aplenty among the workers when Andy further learns of the anger and hatred that have been brewing around Mason's inept handling of the project.

Hillman Publ. #10, 1948
(digest paperback)

Perhaps the most fascinating element of the story is the subplot involving of the wives of the railway engineers. Sue learns that they are a close knit group of women who share nearly every facet of their lives with one another. She uncovers some secrets including a burgeoning extramarital romance. Between the professional rivalry and the bedroom shenanigans Sue and Andy have their hands full of possible murder suspects.

INNOVATIONS: Mason's murder is utterly mysterious. He's found halfway between his home and the construction site with his head bashed in. The ground is fairly muddy but there are no footprints around the body. No murder weapon can be found. It's a nearly impossible murder. One of the women turns out to be a highly skilled baseball player, especially in pitching. Sue remembers the affair and rampant jealousies leading her to believe that the woman might have thrown some heavy object at Mason from her backyard which abuts the murder scene. But the solution is much more complex and horrifying. The murder means, the weapon itself, is one of the most unusual choices to kill someone.

Andy and Sue are one of the better husband/wife sleuthing teams from this era. There is no artificiality in their banter; they are devoted to one another, very much in love; both are intelligent and exacting in their detection. Thankfully, Sue shows not an iota of light hearted whimsy (Haila Troy), vapid domesticity (Anne MacNeill) or absent-minded wackiness (Pam North). Too many wives in these detective duos act as the Gracie Allen of the piece and can have a tendency to irritate. While Andy is the lead detective dealing mostly with police and engineers Sue does her fair share of noticing the tell-tale clues and making suggestions to her husband that will lead them to the final solution.

THINGS I LEARNED: Obviously the setting itself and the microcosm of this railway construction village is teeming with opportunities to educate a curious reader. You learn all about the physics and math and geometry knowledge needed on a construction site of such complexity. And the human element of how the wives figure into the world of the project both as advisors and advocates was even more fascinating than all the work and labor involved. The role of women in this mystery was much more involved that I ever would have expected.

THE AUTHOR: "Sue MacVaigh" is obviously a pseudonym. Hardcore vintage mystery fans know this gimmick of character-as-author was used frequently in Golden Age crime fiction as exemplified in everything from the Philo Vance and Ellery Queen books to the short-lived Gale Gallagher series I wrote about two years ago. In reality the writer was Elizabeth Custer Nearing, a newspaper reporter living in New Jersey who wrote for three different newspapers including the New York Telegram and Philadelphia Ledger. She was married to a civil engineer involved in the railway business. Based on those credentials I'm guessing that everything you read in Murder under Construction is 100% accurate. This was her debut mystery novel and she went on to pen three other mysteries featuring the MacVeighs involved with trains, the railway business and murder. Her second novel Grand Central Murder, was turned into a very good movie with Van Heflin starring as an Andy MacVeigh stand-in named Rocky Custer. You can find it at various online movie websites for free since it has apparently has fallen into the public domain.

EASY TO FIND? MacVeigh's first two books turn up more often than the others in the series. Currently there are eight copies of Murder under Construction and four of Grand Central Murder. One copy of the book reviewed here is being sold for only $12. Hurry before it's gone! These books were published only in the US, yet even with reprints from Grosset & Dunlap and paperback digest editions all four titles are still scarce. Ah well. Did you really think otherwise? Libraries and used bookstores may turn up a copy or two. I serendipitously found my copy of Murder Under Construction in a Boise, Idaho bookshop on our vacation this past summer. That it came with a undamaged DJ in nearly pristine condition was astounding to me. And at only $22 I felt like I was stealing it from the bookstore owner.

Sue & Andy MacVeigh Detective Novels
Murder under Construction (1939)
Grand Central Murder (1939)
Streamlined Murder (1940)
The Corpse and the Three Ex-Husbands (1941)