Thu 6 Aug 2009
STUART PALMER – The Puzzle of the Red Stallion. Bantam, paperback reprint; 1st printing, February 1987. Hardcover edition: Doubleday Crime Club, 1936; hc reprint: Sun Dial Press, date unknown (cover shown). British title: The Puzzle of the Briar Pipe. Collins, 1936. Film: RKO, 1936, as Murder on a Bridle Path (with Helen Broderick as Hildegarde Withers & James Gleason as Police Inspector Oscar Piper).
I’ve not seen the movie recently, which means not within the past 40 years or more, but the synopsis and the various comments on IMDB makes it sound as though the book was translated into film, amazingly enough, about as closely as it could be done.
When a young woman riding her horse through New York City’s Central Park is found dead on the ground, it is presumed at first that her horse threw her, but when schoolteacher Miss Withers finds a spot of blood on the horse’s upper leg, even Inspector Piper has to agree that something suspicious has happened.
And when more clues prove conclusively that the woman was murdered, there no shortage of suspects, including an ex-husband whom she had jailed for non-payment of alimony; her ex’s father; the stablehand whom advances she spurned; another fast-living type named Eddie for which the same goes; the obnoxious stable owner who’d love to get her hands on the titular horse; that lady’s meekish sort of husband; and more.
This is a good but far from great example of the 1930s concept of the comic crime novel, and no, you should not expect anything resembling good professional procedure on the part of the police and medical experts who are called in. In fact, quite oppositely, both are fairly inept at what they are supposed to do.
But what can you expect when the police allow an old maid, a spinster, if you will, to follow the head of homicide around on his cases, picking up and stashing away clues at her own discretion, running interference for him when he?s about to go off in wrong directions, and generally being in charge of the case, albeit of course strictly unofficially?
Comedy is a matter of taste, and in this case, it worked only intermittently for me. The was the sixth novel Hildegarde Withers was in, and by this time I think Stuart Palmer simply fired up the plot and let things cruise along on automatic.
There is some good detective involving pipes and the people who smoke them, and there is also the reddest of red herrings. You get the good with all of the pleasure of watching an author work up a fine case of deductive reasoning, and you take the bad with a small grimace of my goodness, did he really do that?
He does, and he did.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:09 am
This seemed to me one of the poorest of Stuart Palmer’s novels. He’s an author who has often done much better. I agree with Steve’s conclusion that here Palmer “let things cruise along on automatic”.
From the brief notes in my web article on Palmer:
“The best part of this book is Chapter 7, in which Hildegarde gets arrested, and in which there is some good Dr. Thorndyke like detective work concerning pipes. [Steve singles this out in his review.]
The dream sequence in Chapter 4 is also inventive.
The faithful but dreary film version of this book is also the poorest of the Withers films.”
August 7th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I have not read THE PUZZLE OF THE RED STALLION and it does seem like a book not to be placed near the top of my reading list. I’ll put other Palmer books ahead of it. Regarding the improbability of Withers being permitted to butt-in on murder investigations. Of course Palmer was writing comedic mysteries but, within the context of the stories themselves, Piper allows Withers to intrude for two reasons: He was in love with her (see THE first two books of the series) and if the carnal desire eventually died out the two certainly maintained a close friendship over many years. Additionally—Withers had a successful track record of solving murders—why not let her hang about if she manages to catch killers?
The plot and especially the setting reminds me of Rex Stout’s 1948 Nero Wolfe novella “Bullet For One”. I wonder if Stout had read THE PUZZLE OF THE RED STALLION?
August 7th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Bob
You’re right, there’s no “carnal desire” between Miss Withers and Inspector Piper in RED STALLION, only a close friendship, and nothing more.
But as you say, the first book in the series, THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER, ends with the two of them heading off to get a marriage license — an event that never happened and apparently was never mentioned again. (For more on this, I’ll reprint Ellen Nehr’s review of the book from 1001 MIDNIGHTS. Look for it sometime later today.)
Getting back to RED STALLION, though, Inspector Piper also calls Miss Withers, on page 20: “She’s just a meddlesome old battle-ax who happens to be the smartest sleuth I ever knew in or out of uniform.”
So you’re right on both counts.
But while I’m a long-time fan of amateur detectives, including little old ladies, even humorous ones, I just couldn’t get a solid grasp onto this one. Comedy-based detective fiction can be hugely enjoyable, but they have to keep at least one foot on the ground.
Having an amateur detective involved doesn’t mean that the police work can’t be serious, and when I used the word “inept” in my review, I meant inept — in every facet of the case.
There were also a lot of balls being juggled in the air at one time, mostly I think to cover up the weakness of the plot, which never caught my interest.
Too much seemed to happening, in other words, when in reality, nothing was.
— Steve
PS. Not having read “Bullet for One” recently, Bob, I hope someone else picks up on your suggested connection between the two story lines. I’m not a big believer in one author’s reading another mystery writer’s work and doing something new or different with it, but I’m sure it happened more than once or twice!
August 7th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
If we are going to read detective fiction from this era there are a good many improbabilities that have to be accepted. Frankly I can see Piper putting up with Hildy faster than Markham putting up with Philo Vance, and try as Sayers might I never quite bought Parker putting up with Peter Wimsey, even when they were brothers in law.
That said, if you are going to accept the amateur sleuth at all you have to take the whole set up with a grain of salt. Bill Weigand’s long suffering acceptance of the North’s or Lt. Trant putting up with Peter Duluth are both a stretch, but I still love the books.
Anthony Abbott may have had the best idea with making Thatcher Colt Police Commissioner, where you got the best of both worlds. Barring that Ellery Queen’s policeman father was a stroke of genius as well, and as late as the Rabbi David Small books his relation ship with Lanagan felt right however much nonsense it might be.
For that matter the new series Castle is pure nonsense, but so far entertaining. And it isn’t as if CSI isn’t utter fiction and nonsense even when they get the procedure right.
I’m not sure anyone would watch or read a series where the police clump all over the evidence and the CSI techs miss and contaminate evidence then mis label it in the lab where they face low pay, old equipment, and sexual harassment from colleagues, which is what happens in the real world.
I long ago quit sweating the ‘realism’ in detective fiction so long as the writing was good enough to keep me turning the page. After all Conan Doyle refers to Lestrade as ‘little’ at a time when you had to be 6′ to even be a British policeman. If anything the tradition in the field is to get everything wrong that possibly can be wrong.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I may have overstated my objections to the Inspector Piper-Miss Withers relationship, David, but to tell you the truth, I do find the Markham-Philo Vance connection an easier one to accept, but of course that one’s not meant to be humorous.
My unhappiness with RED STALLION has a lot more to do with the weak overall story, but even so, I’ve been skimming through it again, and I can see Palmer working harder on it — placing the clues into the story at the right time, for example — than I got the feeling for the first time.
The slipshod police work, though, that’s the crux of the matter. And now you tell me that’s actually what happens at crime scene investigations. Well, what happens in RED STALLION would be totally realistic, if that’s the case!
August 7th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
The police aren’t always incompetent or slipshod, but even at their best it’s never like what you see in films or read in a lot of books. Good people trying to do their job make small mistakes, evidence is never as pristine as in books and films, and even the best labs in the world slip up. Nor or criminals half as cooperative in real life as in books and films.
I may be a little prejudiced by the fact that since I have been in Oklahoma City all the DNA evidence over ten years had to be thrown out because of one incompetent tech and currently there is a major stink in the Medical Examiner’s office where a combination of low pay, no budget, and sexual harassment is causing daily headlines in the local news.
The OJ case is much closer to the norm than anything we see on television. That’s not because the police or forensics experts don’t do their job, mostly it is because they do it in the real world. But police and others try to act in a professional manner, human nature being what it is though that doesn’t always happen.
Just to give an example, it takes over a month to process DNA evidence in the real world — not the couple of hours shown on television. The work they do isn’t slipshod, but on the other hand it’s as often as not subject to human failings and Murphy’s law. That said, most crimes are still solved by routine police work, and all the science in the world won’t change that.
So long as most writers show the police as halfway trying to do their jobs I try to give them a little leeway. Probably Joseph Waumbaugh, 87th Precinct, and the Gideon books come closest to ‘reality’ — where half the cases don’t get solved, some fall in the policeman’s laps, some are solved by sheer stupidity on the crooks part, and a few solved by good or even excellent police work. But then if I wanted all that much reality I probably wouldn’t be reading mystery fiction to begin with.
Neither the mystery genre nor the western are exactly steeped in realism, and frankly I prefer it that way. I’m reading for escapism, not a degree in police science. If I read a western I want a walk down a dusty street at high noon, not two drunks in a saloon banging away from three feet apart and both missing every shot. Reality is highly over rated.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:09 am
What would you say the best Withers novels are, as far as detection goes?
The Catalogue of Crime seems to have rather despised poor Hildegarde, finding her, I suspect, too comical a creation.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:35 am
In terms of detection, puzzle plots and mystery, the best Stuart Palmer novels are:
Murder on Wheels (1932)
The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (1937)
The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (1941)
Miss Withers Regrets (1947)
In addition, the story telling is good in:
Murder on the Blackboard (1932)
The Green Ace (1950)
Nipped in the Bud (1951)
(Quite a few Palmer novels are reprinted by
The Rue Morgue Press – you can buy these on-line.)
Like other Golden Age writers, Palmer was as interested in short stories as novels. He did some of his best work in the short form. Everyone should read:
People Vs Withers and Malone
Hildegarde Withers: Uncollected Riddles
(This last is published by Crippen & Landru).
There are two ancient, now impossibly rare Palmer paperback collections, edited by Ellery Queen:
The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers (1947)
The Monkey Murder and Other Hildegarde Withers Stories (collected 1950)
I’ve never seen either! (Most people haven’t – these books barely exist…)
There are some very good tales reprinted from these in anthologies, such as “Green Ice” and “The Riddle of the Black Museum”.
All of the above novels and shorts star Hildegarde Withers. What I’ve read of the non-Withers tales of Palmer so far, just aren’t as good, IMHO.
I wrote a long article on Palmer:
http://mikegrost.com/palmer.htm
It is great to see Palmer get such attention at MYSTERY FILE!
August 9th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I wonder why on Earth no one reprints the first Hildegarde Riddles book? I have the Crippen & Landru one, great cover, almost makes Hildy look hot!
August 8th, 2021 at 5:35 am
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