Tue 24 Mar 2009
MIKE NEVINS on Graham Greene (re Perry Mason), Ellery Queen, and Harry Truman (re Stewart Sterling).
Posted by Steve under Authors , Columns[29] Comments
by Francis M. Nevins
At the thought of Graham Greene reading Perry Mason novels the mind boggles, but we now have documentary evidence that he did — and apparently so did his friend and fellow titan of 20th-century English literature, Evelyn Waugh.
“Maybe we’ve been wrong about Perry Mason,” Greene wrote to Waugh on September 29, 1951. I’ve just been reading an early one — perhaps the first. The Case of the Velvet Claws. He kisses Della [Street] right on the lips & when his client notices the lipstick, he says ‘Let it stay.’ His client’s a girl & at one time he pushes her roughly onto a bed. He also makes her faint by third degree & slaps her with a wet towel to bring her round… [I]n the next case he drinks some red wine with a little French bread.”
The letter can be found on pp. 191-192 of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, ed. Richard Greene (Norton, 2007) but it’s never mentioned in the Index.
The three men and the lovely Asian woman arrived a few minutes early that Saturday morning. I was reminded of the invasion of Ellery and Richard Queen’s apartment in the first pages of The King Is Dead (1952) but these invaders — Japanese director Naoto Tanaka and two camera operators and a female interpreter — were on a more prosaic mission: to shoot some footage with me for a documentary on Ellery Queen, one of a series of four that are being made for Japanese TV. (The subjects of the other three are Poe, Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler.)
They stayed for half a day and as far as I can tell the filming went well. At one point I was asked to name my two favorite Queen novels. This was almost impossible for me even when the director made it clear that I could exclude the four originally published as by Barnaby Ross.
Since the early EQ novels (1929-35) were so radically different from those of the third period (1942-58), I argued that I should be allowed to pick two from each and chose The Greek Coffin Mystery and The Egyptian Cross Mystery from Period One and Ten Days’ Wonder and Cat of Many Tails from Period Three.
Tanaka then insisted that I opt for one from each of those periods. When I went for the Coffin and the Cat, he beamed, and said that those were his favorites too. Whatever footage from our interview winds up on the cutting-room floor, I suspect that bit will survive into the finished film. Of which I’ve been promised a DVD.
Just about everyone knows about the sign on Harry Truman’s desk, but how many know of its possible connection with mystery fiction? The story is briefly told on page 481 of David McCullough’s 1992 biography Truman.
“In the fall [of 1945, soon after FDR’s death and Truman’s unexpected rise to the presidency], Fred Canfil had given him a small sign for the desk. ‘The Buck Stops Here,’ it said. Canfil had seen one like it in the head office of a federal reformatory in El Reno, Oklahoma, and asked the warden if a copy might be made for his friend the President, and though Truman kept it on his desk only a short time, the message would stay with him permanently.”
The obvious follow-up questions are: Where did that warden get the sign? Was he or the person who had it made for him aware that a sign with an almost identical message figures in a mystery novel published just a few years before FDR’s death?
Five Alarm Funeral (1942) was the first novel in what became a long series about New York fire marshal Ben Pedley, written by super-prolific pulp writer Prentice Winchell (1895-1976) under his most frequently used pseudonym, Stewart Sterling.
At the beginning of Chapter Three, Pedley tells his assistant Barney that on the arson murder he’s presently investigating the Police Commissioner “has to pass the buck to somebody.” Barney: “You’d ought to have a new sign up on the door there….” Pedley: “What kind of a sign?” Barney: “‘The Buck’ — it oughta read — ‘Stops Right Here.'”
Perhaps Truman’s next biographer will look into the connection, if any, between this passage and the most famous sign in recent presidential history.
March 24th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Stewart Sterling! I was surprised to see his name among the writing credits on “Having Wonderful Crime,” based on the Craig Rice novel. IMDB doesn’t list him as working on other films – but maybe he just didn’t receive screen credit? Does anybody know if he wrote other screenplays?
March 24th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Cullen —
I don’t know what other films he may have worked on either, and this is a mystery, since his entry in Al Hubin’s CRIME FICTION IV says, and I quote:
STERLING, STEWART; pseudonym of Prentice Winchell, (1895-1976); other pseudonyms Jay De Bekker, Spencer Dean, Dexter St. Clair & Dexter St. Clare; Born in Illinois; living in Florida in 1960s; newspaper man, editor of trade publications, journalism lecturer; wrote and produced over 500 radio mystery shows, wrote for films and TV; published some 400 magazine detective stories, including 40 about Fire Marshall Ben Pedley, besides those books listed below….
Incidentally I enjoyed the HAVING WONDERFUL CRIME as a movie quite a bit. My review of it appears here https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=99
— Steve
March 25th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Don’t be too surprised to find Graham Greene reading Perry Mason. He was also known to have nice things to say about Rider Haggard and Edgar Wallace among others and attributed the birth of the modern spy novel to John Buchan’s The Power House. He did have some hateful things to say about Allingham’s Tiger in the Smoke, but then he claimed to have read it while floating down a river in West Africa. It’s a favorite of mine, but perhaps he was just in a bad mood.
Greene didn’t just write ‘entertainments’ he enjoyed them as well. I particularly recall glowing reviews of Lionel Davidson’s The Rose of Tibet among others, and he and his brother collaborated on an anthology of Victorian mysteries. Then he also wrote the play The Return of Raffles.
It’s not always easy to track down the screenwriting careers of many writers due to the peculiar politics of screen credit. Many writers contributed much more than they actually get credit for as screen doctors. I can only think of two films with Max Brand credited as the screenwriter (Uncertain Glory, and The Adventures of Don Juan) but he was one of the highest paid writers (if not the highest) in Hollywood who frequently ‘fixed’ problem screenplays. For that matter F. Scott Fitzgerald doesn’t get credit for the work he did on Gone With The Wind either. William Goldman labored uncredited for years as one of the best screen doctors in the business. Too often the names in the credits are just the ones who won the argument with the union.
Finding who really wrote a screenplay can be tricky. I’ve heard lines in Howard Hawks films attributed to William Faulkner and others who claim all Faulkner did in Hollywood was drink with Hawks. Likely no one but Sterling knew how many films he worked on, but it wouldn’t be unusual if he worked on hundreds of films and only got screen credit on a few. The politics of who gets their name on screen are a mystery Sherlock Holmes couldn’t unravel.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:32 am
My favorite Queen novels are DRURY LANE’S LAST CASE, THE GREEK COFFIN MYSTERY and the one off THE GLASS VILLAGE.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
When I was younger I read all of the EQ novels but one, THE FRENCH POWDER MYSTERY, telling myself that if I read that one, I’d have run out and that there wouldn’t be any more the read.
Little did I know then that I’d (eventually) forget most of the plot lines, and when I’d read them all and waited a few years, I could easily start all over again.
Which I haven’t and which is why I find it difficult now to say what my pair of favorites would be. THE TRAGEDY OF X might be one, since I’ve read it most recently, but GREEK COFFIN stands out in my mind as excellent, as does THE KING IS DEAD.
(My review of X is at https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=239.)
Not to forget any of the mysteries that took place in Wrightsville. I don’t think they’re regarded too highly by many these days, but I remember enjoying them, back in the mid-1950s, it would have been. I haven’t read them since.
Nor have I ever read THE FRENCH POWDER MYSTERY, then or later.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
David
Most likely you’re right about Stewart Sterling and his movie writing career — lots of work with no onscreen credit. I’m not sure who else to ask that might know, so for now, we’ll have leave it as an open question, only semi-answered.
Steve
March 25th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I recalled that some of the blurb bios on the Stewart Sterling books stated he had written over 500 radio programs. Checking William DeAndrea’s ENCYCLOPEDIA MYSTERIOUSA (perhaps the best one-volume reference on mysteries), it says that Sterling received “special billing” on two programs “The Eno Crime Club” and “Bill Lance.”
John Dunning’s TUNE IN YESTERDAY (a great reference on old-time radio) had a good many details on the programs. “The Eno Crime Club” (named for the sponsor Eno Salt) began in February 1931 as a 15 minute five day a week “thriller” on CBS. Soon it was reworked as a 30 minute twice a week program on the Blue Network and continued there through 1934 when it changed its name to “Eno Crime Clues.” It went off the air in 1936. Dunning notes the special billing: “Written by Stewart Sterling, who got unusual up-front billing…”
The program featured the exploits of Spencer Dean, “The Manhunter.” Of course, Prentice Winchell, aka Stewart Sterling, later used that name as one of his many by-lines.
I would be surprised if many of these programs survived as they predate the period when transcriptions were common.
There may be more a chance for surviving episodes of the other program “Bill Lance.” dunning says it was a Sunday night “mystery-thriller” program heard on West Coast CBS stations in 1944-1945. Such West Coast programs were common in the 1940s. It starred John McIntire as a criminologist nicknamed “Fer-de-lance” among the criminal element. McIntire was one of the great radio actors and later became a familiar face on televisions “Wagon Train.” His sidekick on the program was named Ulysses Higgins, played by Howard McNear, another great radio voice, famous as Doc Adams on radio’s “Gunsmoke” and later as Floyd the Barber on television’s “Andy Griffith Show.”
Dunning says the program featured other top radio actors including Joseph Kearns and Mercedes McCambridge.
Richard Moore
March 25th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Re Ellery Queen, if I had to narrow it down to two books it would be Cat of Many Tails and The Player on the Other Side (yes, I know Theodore Sturgeon ghosted, but from a detailed outline by Dannay). From the classic period I think probably Greek Coffin Mystery and the transition novel The Door Between.
In the past The American Gun Mystery was always quoted as the highlight of the Queen’s output, and the Wrightsville books held in high regard as the Queen’s at their best, though I’ve never been a big fan of them. I have some admiration for The French Powder Mystery, but only because it was the first one I ever read.
However, I can say with some authority that for my money Fourth Side of the Triangle is the worst of the Queen novels even though it was the basis for the pilot of the Hutton series.
As for their best short I would think there is some agreement about “The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party,” though of the short shorts “Diamonds in Paradise” stands out as an example of Ellery at his annoying best.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Richard
Many thanks for your thorough rundown on the radio shows that Stewart Sterling is known have written. There’s a good summary of all of the various radio incarnations of Doubleday’s “Crime Club” series of books to be found at http://www.radioarchives.org/sets/RL38.htm, also including a mention of Sterling, as you’ve pointed out.
I’m told that there are about 10 shows of the Eno series around today, all from the 1933-34 era. Whether Sterling wrote any of these is not clear, from what I’ve read about them. I’ll see if I can’t track some of them down and listen to them myself.
I don’t believe that any of the Bill Lance series exist; if they do, they’ve come to light only recently.
By the way, there were in fact two Bill Lance series:
# THE ADVENTURES OF BILL LANCE(1944-45, CBS)
Starring John McIntire as BILL LANCE (later replaced by Pat McGeehan) and Howard McNear as Ulysses Higgins.
# THE ADVENTURES OF BILL LANCE (1947-48, ABC)
Starring Gerald Mohr as BILL LANCE.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it some more, I think my favorite EQ story of all time is “The Lamp of God,” which would probably be best described as a novella.
When it appeared in Dell’s 10-cent series of books, it was as a 64 page paperback.
When I read it for the first time, though, it really took my breath away. One of the most “impossible” crimes of all time, or so I thought back then, in the mid-fifties.
I don’t know if it would stand up for me today, but it did back then — and it probably helped make me a mystery fan for life.
— Steve
March 27th, 2009 at 11:50 am
This may be off-topic a bit, but it’s been nagging at me: On February 13, George Kelley posted a review on his blog of FACE TO FACE, which he attributes to Jack Vance. (I would have included a link to the post, if I had any idea how to do that.) Mr. Kelley maintains that Vance is the sole author of FACE TO FACE, citing similarities to other works of Vance’s as “incontrovertible evidence”. I tried to post an inquiry (very polite and civil, I assure you) as to any documentation of Vance’s participation, either from a Frederic Dannay outline or solo, but I screwed something up and it didn’t go through. So now I presume upon my brief acqauintanceship with Mike Nevins (we met briefly at the 2005 Bouchercon in Chicago)for an answer. As a lifelong EQ fan, any answer will be greatly appreciated.
March 27th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Perhaps because the Queen books were always collaborative in nature the cousins were never afraid to allow others to use the name. Even back in the thirties and forties there were novelizations of the B film series and some of the radio episodes (I think by Eric Taylor and Paul Fairman), and in the fifties and sixties a whole series of books under the EQ byline but not featuring Ellery by writers like Henry Slesar, Edward D. Hoch, and other well known mystery writers.
When Manfred Lee decided to retire Fred Dannay hired a number of talented writers to ghost based on his detailed outlines. The Player on the Other Side is by Theodore Sturgeon, and Fourth Side of the Triangle, And On the Eighth Day by Robert Silverberg. I forget who ghosted the novelization of the Sherlock Holmes Jack the Ripper film A Study in Terror.
Jack Vance wrote a number of mysteries as John Holbrook Vance, most receiving good reviews and it’s certainly possible that he wrote all of Face to Face or part of it though I would be surprised to find it wasn’t written from a fairly detailed Dannay outline. Still, it was the first EQ after a long silence and received a cool reception when it was published so it may well be Vance wrote it alone. I think Hubin lists all the ghost writers though I haven’t checked for a while and their ought to be more info in the Nevins book. All I really know is that Dannay was known to write really detailed outlines for the books which Lee and others worked from.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
George Kelley’s comments on FACE TO FACE can be found on his blog at http://georgekelley.org/?p=289 .
I hope I don’t end up copying too much, but here’s part of what he has to say:
“In the 1960s and early 1970s a number of writers ghosted Ellery Queen novels. Face to Face […] certainly reads like a Jack Vance novel: the murdered singer leaves a dying clue: the letters “f a c e” are scrawled on a piece of paper. Given that Vance later wrote a novel in his Demon Princes series called The Face the evidence seems incontrovertible. And then there are the fanciful Vancean character names: Ardene Piggyback Vlietland, Daffy Dingle, Gertie Hodge Huppenkleimer, and Glory Guild. […] Jack Vance ghosted three other Ellery Queen novels: A Room to Die In, The Four Johns, and The Madman Theory.”
I’ve forwarded Mike Duran’s question on to Mike Nevins with no reply so far, but Al Hubin does not list FACE TO FACE as being by any one but Dannay and Lee.
Al does list both PLAYER and FOURTH SIDE as by Theodore Sturgeon, but EIGHTH DAY he attributes to Avram Davidson. David, you may have had the wrong SF writer in mind.
STUDY IN TERROR, Al says, was written by Paul W. Fairman. I’m sure that most of these were written from Dannay outlines, as David suggests.
— Steve
March 28th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Yes, of course Davidson, and it even reads a good deal like him. One of his short stories was a good episode of the Hitchcock Hour with Ron Randell a Scotland Yard detective whose adventuruous American fiancee may have fallen victim of a poetic serial killer played by David Carradine. Davidson also wrote the entertaining Dr. Ezterhazy stories.
Weren’t there a couple of Ellery Queen Big Little Books later published in paperback?
March 28th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Dear Steve:
I read the full version of what George Kelley had to say moments ago, but frankly, I don’t think George made his case.
Since we know that all the EQ novels with Ellery as a character originated with detailed outlines by Fred Dannay, the supreme master of the Dying Message clue, it’s almost a dead certainty that the FACE gimmick was Fred’s and is therefore irrelevant to the claim that the book was written by Vance.
The fact that Vance later wrote a novel called The Face doesn’t strike me as terribly significant.
As for the strange and almost Keeleresque character names George mentioned, I’m just not familiar enough with Vance’s work to know how much weight to give that element.
I can tell you that Fred never mentioned Vance to me as the co-author of Face to Face but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility either.
Oh for easy access to Fred’s correspondence with Manny!
Best,
Mike
March 29th, 2009 at 7:12 am
The more I read, the less likely it seems that Face to Face is completely Vance’s work, though it’s hard to eliminate the possibility Vance worked on the book at all. Of course Francis Nevins is the expert, but even those of us who are much more casual students know about Dannay’s famous detailed outlines.
It’s hard to imagine his suddenly throwing all that aside for what was a fairly important return to print for Ellery. And, as Francis Nevins says, the dying message has more weight with Dannay than Vance. As for the Keeleresque names I don’t think we can eliminate Dannay there either considering the puns, plays on words, and other devices that run trhough the Queen novels and stories.
There is a third possibility, namely that for some reason Vance was called in as a script doctor for some reason on the finished Face to Face. That certainly seems more likely than Dannay abandoning Ellery completely for the first time.
While George’s circumstantial evidence is interesting I don’t think it makes the case, and from what I recall of Vance’s own mysteries I can’t think of anything that particularly resonates with the Queen novel. The fact that Vance and others worked on the Queen novels without Ellery or that Dannay wrote with Sturgeon or Davidson from detailed outlines neither proves nor disproves the argument. The only thing that is really intriguing here is that in all four cases (Player on the Other Side, Fourth Side of the Triangle, And On the Eigth Day, and possibly Face to Face) Dannay turned to writers who were primarily science fiction writers rather than mystery writers. I can think of a few possible reasons why he might, but I wonder if anyone knows conclusively why he didn’t turn to someone better known in the genre(and yes, I know Sturgeon, Silverberg, Davidson, and Vance all wrote non sf too).
March 29th, 2009 at 10:22 am
First, the books I first mentioned as novelisations of Queen works were a pair of radio plays that appeared in a Better Little Book format and were later republished by Pyramid as The Last Man Club (with the Murdered Millionaire). Neither Hubin or Nevins attributes the writer though Nevins makes it clear it isn’t the Queen team(and having read them I would assume they were done by one of the lesser contributors to the Better and Big Little Book oveure). The movie novelisations are Ellery Queen Master Detective aka The Vanishing Corpse, The Penthouse Mystery,and The Perfect Crime which are all based on Eric Taylor screenplays, but again there is no author attributed for the novelisations although they are clearly not by the Queens, again as Nevins makes pointedly clear. The Ellery Queen portions of A Study in Terror are by Dannay and Lee while the Holmes portions are by Paul Fairman.
Since all this began I went back and read some of the Vance books, both under his own name and other pseudonyms and as EQ, and Face to Face, as well as what Francis Nevins has to say about it. In relation to Vance I think it is less and less likely he wrote Face to Face. To begin with most of his novels save for The Deadly Isles (including the Queen books), are set in California and many have rural settings like his books in his Sheriff Joe Bain series. Nor do any of his mysteries feature particularly colorful off beat names for characters. Certainly none of them are written in the style of Face to Face. That doesn’t eliminate the possibility he could have written the book from a very detailed outline (and non writers may not realise just how detailed an outline can be), but does make it unlikely he wrote the book on his own.
Re-reading Face to Face (I didn’t mean to, but it’s fairly short, and once I started …) I’m struck by how much it echoes themes from earlier Queen books and particularly how much it sounds like classic Dannay and Lee rather than the books done with Dannay and Sturgeon or Davidson. In tone it has some similarities to The Finishing Stroke, the last collaboration between the cousins before the ghosted books, and while no where as good nevertheless sounds like authentic Queen. The only thing that I find a bit jarring is Ellery calling his father ‘daddy’ early on, but it has been years since I read the Queen books and may have just forgotten that.
I don’t hold the book as highly as Nevins does. It is dated, and while it’s clever lacks the depth of the better later Queens in both the character of Ellery and the moral questions surrounding solving crimes. But there are a number of elements that echo Ellery’s earlier adventures, and the quotes offsetting the episodes would seem to reflect Dannay and Lee more than Vance. Then too, the book references the Roman Theater and Judge J.J.McCue from the earliest Queen novels which would again seem to suggest at the very least a detailed outline by Dannay.
Short of Francis Nevins discovering the secret correspondence of Dannay and Lee or someone from Vance’s family producing a check or contract we will likely never know one way or the other, but since the original case for Vance was circumstantial I think the case against him is equally strong circumstantially. If we can’t rule out the possibility of Vance having written the book in part or in whole I do think we can seriously bring it into question until some stronger evidence arises for one argument or the other. Based on nothing but having read both the Queen novels and Vance’s mystery and science fiction intellect tells me that at most he might have written from a detailed Dannay outline or touched up a Dannay and Lee ms, but my gut feeling is that this is pure Dannay and Lee, not at their best, but still well within their creative abilities late in the game. I think we have to at least question why Dannay would have turned the character over to Vance at this point for what was a fairly important return to print for Ellery and, unlike the collaborations with others, a straight up detective novel in the older mode.
The ghosted books are:
Player on the Other Side (Theodore Sturgeon)
House of Brass (Avram Davidson)
The Fourth Side of The Triangle (AD)
And on the Eigth Day (AD)
There are also eleven juvenile novels as by Ellery Queen Jr. not written by the cousins; a play written by William Roos as William Rand; two nonfiction collections by Mandred B. Lee of true crime (most orginally from American Weekly); 15 novels from Pocket Books under the Queen name written by Vance, Stephen Marlowe and others and not featuring Ellery; six Tim Corrigan books from Popular Library by Talmage Powell and Richard Deming; three books from Dell no author given by Hubin; and four from Lancer including three in the Troubleshooter series by Deming, Ed Hoch, and Gil Brewer. Hubin says all but The Blue Movie Murders were editied and supervized by Lee.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:10 am
I seem to have kicked off a mini-firestorm with my innocent little query. Since those who can really answer are either long-gone or not talking, this obviously won’t be settled until(unless) the definitive Ellery Queen biography ever comes out. In the meantime, may I say that I don’t believe “ghostwritten” is really an accurate term for these books, given Fred Dannay’s role as their plotter. I’m not sure what term you could use – “channeled”, perhaps?
March 31st, 2009 at 12:27 pm
The Ellery Queen Jr. novels pose an extra problem. I remember reading somewhere that the one hired to ghost these novels had farmed them out to other writers without Dannay and Lee’s knowledge or approval.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Since the last posting I have done some research, which, while not conclusive, does add to the general question regarding Vance and who wrote Face to Face.
First of all Face to Face falls between two books in which Dannay collaborated with Avram Davidson (And on the Eigth Day and House of Brass) making it unlikely he would have used Vance on the middle book unless some evidence arises that Davidson was unavailable.
Second, from visiting several sites devoted to Jack Vance’s writings, including the Vance Intergral site that in 2006 published a uniform edition of Vance’s works including the three books written under the EQ byline, several problems come up in regard to Vance writing Face to Face. For one thing Vance was unhappy with the three books written under the EQ byline because they were heavily edited and rewritten by Manfred B. Lee who oversaw the non Ellery books under the EQ name. Vance refused to even acknowledge the books, and in the Vance Integral Project the books reprinted are his original ms and not the Lee edits. Of course it is still possible that Dannay might have approached Vance and for strictly financial reasons Vance might have undertaken the job, but under the circumstances it seems unlikely. The collaboration with Vance doesn’t seem to have been overly productive for either side.
Also, Vance fans are fairly devoted to his work. The presence of a major Ellery Queen novel written by him would be fairly important, but there is no mention or even hint that he wrote Face to Face. And it should be noted that with two exceptions set in exotic locales all of Vance’s books are set in California, and most against rural backgrounds like his novels about Sheriff Joe Bain.
Rereading Face to Face it is almost certain that it was at least written from one of Dannay’s famous detailed outlines. There are references in the book to characters and places from the earliest Queen novels, themes from earlier Queen adventures, and one major key is a line from a song written by one time New York mayor James J. (Beau James) Walker, a detail more likely to have come from New York lovers Dannay and Lee than Vance.
As for the offbeat names in the book, that is inconclusive. Vance certainly used colorful names in his science fiction, but Dannay and Lee also used names that were playful and had hidden meanings throughout the Queen saga. Even the ‘face’ clue is well within the bounds of the famous dying messages the Queen books, and Dannay in particular, were famous for. Even the quotes offsetting the chapters would seem to be a throwback to early Queen books more than point to Vance. Also, reading Vance’s books nothing suggests he was overly fond of the fair play mystery in form or function. Chances are the crime reconstructions in the EQ books under his name are part of the rewrites done by Lee.
Vance did have several detective characters in his science fiction, notably Magnus Ridolph, but again there is no real nod to classical detective fiction. Short of one of the characters in Face to Face being an anagram of a Vance character the naming of names is inconclusive. Vance’s primary influences were Jeffrey Farnol, Lord Dunsany, L. Frank Baum, the Great Marvels and Tom Swift books, and Edgar Rice Burroughs — nothing to suggest he was as comfortable with the classic tec form as the style of Face to Face suggests.
Since even Francis Nevins isn’t willing to eliminate that Vance wrote part or all of the book then I don’t think we can catetgorically deny the possibility, but the evidence seems to be against it. Thematically the books reads like earlier Dannay and Lee works and contains many references to earlier works, and there is some evidence that neither side was wholly satisfied by the Vance collaboration on the previous books. Both the case for and against Vance as the writer is circumstantial, but at least for now I think the case against is a little stronger, however inconclusive. Short of new evidence from either side I think at best the case for Vance as the writer is the weaker of the two, but there is no hard evidence one way or the other.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:20 am
Just remembered something… the EQ novel after HOUSE OF BRASS, THE LAST WOMAN IN HIS LIFE, begins with the final scene of FACE TO FACE. Anyone want to grab that one? Mike Nevins? David Vineyard? George Kelley? Anybody? (Forgive me, all, but this is the most fun I’ve had since my bosses gave me this computer here at the office.)
April 1st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Subterranean Press is publishing a memoir, THIS IS ME, JACK VANCE! this summer. Perhaps the mystery of FACE TO FACE will be solved in its pages.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:10 am
The “three books from Dell no author given by Hubin” David Vineyard writes about, have all been written by Charles W. Runyon.
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:46 am
House of Brass is a sequel of sorts to Inspector Queen’s Own Case and if I remember out of continuity to some extent, picking up shortly after where Case ends even though four books have appeared in between. Inspector Queen re-marries in Case, and his wife, Jessie, figures in Brass, but I don’t think appears or is mentioned in any other books, but then Nikki Porter, Ellery’s secretary, just disappears too after The Scarlet Letters.
The Last Woman in His Life picks up at the airport bar immediately after Face to Face ends. That would seem to suggest that the same writers did both books, and I don’t think there is any suggestion Vance did Last Woman, but again it’s inconclusive.
Hopefully that Vance book George Kelley mentions will clear this up, but from what I’ve been able to glean about how Vance felt about the Queen books we shouldn’t be too surprised if he either fails to mention them at all or only glosses over them.
It seems to be a general consensus that Dannay and Lee wrote Face to Face, Last Woman …, and A Fine and Private Place, but that seems to be mostly based on internal evidence. The three books do have many thematic ties to eariler Queen novels, but again that doesn’t prove anything. We may have to just leave it in the air short of a seance. I lean towards thinking Vance likely didn’t write Face to Face, but I don’t see anything conclusive in either case.
These things are always easier to solve when someone leaves a convienent dying message.
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
If you read A ROOM TO DIE IN, THE FOUR JOHNS, and THE MADMAN THEORY and then read FACE TO FACE, I think you’ll see how all four books seem to share the same writing style. I’m looking forward to reading the uncut and uncensored versions of Jack Vance’s Ellery Queen books when the Vance Integral Project publishes them.
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Your theory is still a hypothesis, I think, George, but if we’re going to get the uncut versions of Vance’s EQ work sometime soon, that may sway the scales a little more your way, or even a lot.
And someday maybe somebody’s going to get a doctoral dissertation out this this, and this whole page of comments will be among the footnotes, what do you think about that?
— Steve
April 25th, 2009 at 3:19 am
One last comment on this and I’ll shut up, because as it stands there is no way to be certain one way or another, but as we do know Manfred B. Lee signifigantly rewrote the three Vance Queen’s we are certain of, to the point that Vance disowned them, then if Lee wrote Face to Face it would resemble the three Vance books he heavily rewrote. Of course it is possible Vance wrote Face to Face from a Dannay outline and Lee heavily rewrote that, but stylisticly the book is awfully close to previous Queen novels by Dannay and Lee and contains many references to earlier Queen adventures — much more so than the books written with Sturgeon and Davidson featuring Ellery. The book is also very close to the last two Queen novels The Last Woman in His Life and A Fine and Private Place, and as far as I know no one has suggested Vance wrote those.
I doubt even Vance’s original ms of the other Queen’s will really solve the question, since the three books have little in common with Face to Face, and California settings to boot. Short of Francis Nevins running across a note or contract in his Queen research or some one on the Vance side coming up with evidence I don’t think we can ever know with any certanty. From a recent rereading of Face to Face I can tell you much of it is a love letter to New York City, which hardly sounds like Vance, none of whose works are set there or even on the East Coast.
As Steve suggests someone may some day get an interesting paper out of this and use all this in the footnotes, but it will take harder evidence than George or I have uncovered to decide the question. It’s an interesting hypothesis, but I don’t think the evidence on either side proves anything accept there is an open question without a real answer as yet.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Oh Wow. A little over a month ago I put up a question (off-topic, I’ll admit) and managed to derail the whole blog. It reminds me of a story I read about Lou Costello, who was an inveterate gambler away from the movie set. One day at the track, Lou bet $4000 on the longest shot he could find. Soon word got around the track of the size of the bet, and everybody ran to bet on the long shot. The odds dropped accordingly, and the long shot became the favorite. When the race was finally run, the horse ran dead last. Lou Costello was delighted – he was out the $4000, but his wager had single-handedly controlled all the betting in the race! I guess this is what Roger Ebert meant when he wrote about “elevation” on his blog… Well, fun’s fun and all, and if I owe an apology of sorts to the commenters on the other subjects, they’ve got it. Still, being able to take over the room (virtually, anyway) is a kind of heady feeling, and I’m duly grateful.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
No apologies necessary, Mike. You can derail my blog like this any time you want to.
— Steve