Thu 13 Aug 2009
A Review by David L. Vineyard: E. BAKER QUINN – One Man’s Muddle.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[22] Comments
E. BAKER QUINN – One Man’s Muddle. Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1936. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1937.
Two years before Raymond Chandler introduced us to Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1939), E. Baker Quinn, a British writer, anticipated both his voice and his attempt to do something more serious with the detective novel with her first novel about former Scotland Yard sleuth James Strange, an accomplishment noted by critic James Sandoe in his famous list of notable hard-boiled writers.
When we first meet her sleuth James Strange, he has fled to a “… tu’penny ha’penny inn a hundred miles from nowhere,” to escape his past. But he knows it’s hopeless. “Do a bunk to the jungles of Africa and ten to one you’ll meet your mother-in-law’s char coming around the first bush …”
And for Strange it is much worse than his mother-in-law’s charwoman. He’s runs smack into the former Mrs. Boynton, now Mrs. Geoffrey Wharton, a former London snowbird, an addict, who knows all about Scotland Yard’s former bright young thing who has just completed four years in the pen for possession of illegal drugs.
And of course Mrs. Wharton is promptly murdered, and Strange finds himself forced to help her husband cover up her past while trying to cover up his own and keep the police from finding the .32 caliber automatic hidden in his luggage, the gun he used in a manslaughter case he was acquitted in — but would rather not bring up again — and coincidentally, the same caliber Mrs. Wharton was shot with …
His attempts to keep his head above water push him deeper into the mess, and force him back to his ex-fiancee in London and to Ratchet, the partner who ratted on him and testified against him as King’s evidence.
That’s the set up for a novel that anticipates the style and voice of Chandler’s novels:
Before it is over Strange will solve the case, but find himself facing another two years in prison.
In later books Strange gets out of prison and goes to work as a private eye with his despised ex-partner Ratchet. The voice continues in the Chandler vein.
Who Quinn was, and how she came to discover a voice and subject matter so close to Chandler is a mystery in itself. But her books are worth discovering and reading, and Strange a curious compliment to Marlowe and his world.
Here are a few samples of Quinn and Strange:
“It’s a curious thing, Mr. Strange,” he said, but I never go to the cinema.”
“I never go to America,” I said, “but I know what Roosevelt looks like.”
“Anything I tell that old bargepole,” I said, “you can cook three minutes and throw away.”
If one-eighth of the publicans in England began telling all they knew, divorce and civil courts would take over the nation.
Curious how the saving of great honour usually involves the destruction of several small honours. Like the nobleman’s son who saved the families honour by not marrying the dairymaid.
He made me think of Luther and Savonarola and Reformations, possibly because he had what I call the Righteous Eye. Believe me I’m an authority on the Righteous Eye. The judge who sent me up had it.
A thin chill pimpled all over me.
She gave me a rake over then, twice the voltage of mine.
I wondered irritably how anything as peaceful as the village could be so damn unpeaceful.
The cows gave me the same kind of look coming home with an old lady in my arms and a dripping child on my heels as they gave me going out and I thought it must be wonderful to be beyond surprise like that.
Tonight I’d ride the old nightmare, I’d cease to walk erect and unafraid. Four years of dreams, I thought, bitterly, and just a handful of hours to kill the dream …
One Man’s Muddle and its sequels are an interesting look at a Marlowe that might have been, one of those curious side roads that sometime run parallel to a more successful track. And well worth reading and discovering as first rate mysteries by a writer who deserved more recognition than she got.
Bibliographic data: [From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]
QUINN, E(LEANOR) BAKER
One Man’s Muddle (n.) Heinemann 1936. Macmillan, 1937. [James Strange]
The Dead Harm No One (n.) Heinemann 1938. (**)
Death Is a Restless Sleeper (n.) Heinemann 1940. Mystery House, 1941. [James Strange]
(**) While it seems likely that he is, it is not known whether James Strange is in this book or not.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
David, I agree One Man’s Muddle is a very interesting and even significant work. Also interesting is that the author is claimed to be a woman. Death is a Restless Sleeper was less striking, more conventional. Haven’t read the middle book.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I agree Restless Sleeper isn’t as innovative as One Man’s Muddle, but both are interesting for the way they anticipate and even reflect the kind of thing Chandler was doing with his books.
It’s not unknown for two writers in completely different venues to hit on something similar around the same time, but it’s always interesting when one of them becomes a legend and the other obscure. You have to wonder if she had been writing in the States if she might have gotten more recognition.
A similar situation of course is Latimer’s Solomon’s Vineyard which anticipated Spillane but ended up obscure and hard to find (then at least).
Timing or luck of the draw?
August 13th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Milward Kennedy raved One Man’s Muddle in the Sunday Times, but I’m not sure what the overall response was. It had a major publisher in the US as well as Britain, though apparently the second one was rejected in the US (?) and the third published by a lesser publisher.
Odd that virtually nothing is known about the writer.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
I know the book got good reviews when it came out, and it was well enough known here that Sandoe read it and recalled it when he read Chandler.
I suspect the war might have shortened her writing career, but it’s hard to find anything about her. I’d love to know if she was interested in the American hard boiled school or if her style was the natural way she wrote, or influenced by someone or something else.
I can only think of a handful of Brit writers of the time who were doing anything in a similar vein and almost none trying to write a more or less serious crime novel at the same time. In some ways she’s closer to Greene or Ambler in that period than most writers in the detective field.
Of course Muddle isn’t quite as startling or new as The Big Sleep was, but it is a remarkable anticipation of Chandler’s voice and his desire to do something more serious within the bounds of the detective novel.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Yeah, a lot of the English imitative tough stuff tries to be “tough” without being especially literary. Maybe Peter Drax could be said to more closely resemble Quinn, in that he was trying to write about more realistic situations. Little seems to be known about him too. Something I found suggested that he might have been naval officer killed in WW2. I never followed that up, don’t know whether I was on the right track.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:18 am
The success of Cheyney and Chase twisted the British hard boiled school, and it really isn’t until the late sixties that a more serious hard boiled British voice started to appear eventually producing writers like Derek Raymond, William McIlvaney, and even the Hazel books.
I’m sure there are more serious books and writers I missed or I’m just not thinking of, but I don’t think I can name another hard boiled Brit writer outside of the Cheyney, Chase, Hank Janson type thing until at least the mid sixties.
And too, the hard boiled British school came out of Thriller instead of Black Mask and Dime Detective, and that emphasis seems to have affected the type hard boiled novel produced. Even Gerard Fairlie’s good Johnny McCall series owed more to Cheyney and Edgar Wallace than the American school, and some of the better written ones just seemed to do American setting and characters ala much of Chase and Cheyney’s Lemme Caution.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Found this at Fiction Mags Index. But that’s all I’ve found on her, but it does suggest she may have had some American experience though either or both stories could be a reprint.:
QUINN, E(leanor) BAKER (stories)
Too Logical (ss) Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine Jan 16 1932
Sewed up Tight (ss) Clues Aug 1932
August 14th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Sounds juicy. I’ll swap you my disc of JESSICA for it.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I’ve just received an email from Steve Holland, whose Bear Alley blog is always worth a look-see. He says:
Hi Steve,
She was American, born c.1898/99, and was resident in Mallorca in the 1930s. She was, I suspect, a friend of Ruth C(haplin) Stickney, another writer, as the two travelled from Palma to London, in 1933, where they were expecting to live at 43 Southwick Street, London W2.
Ruth Stickney didn’t stick around, as she is to be found on another passenger manifest arriving in the UK in 1928 which gives her permanent address as USA. She was staying at 21 Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale, London, on that trip. Ruth Stickney would appear to have been born in Jacksonville, Florida, 8 September 1907, was living in New York in 1936 and was still alive in 1954.
As for Eleanor Quinn, I’m not sure if I can add any more. The 1900 US census has an Eleanor Quinn, daughter of Thos. E. Quinn and his wife Florence M. Quinn, born in Pennsylvania in March 1898 but no equivalent in the 1910 census; there are a couple of alternatives in census records so I can’t say with any certainty that the March 1898 birth is that of “our” Eleanor.
I can’t find her in UK phone records in the 1930s. It could be that her trip to London in 1933 was brief and she moved on again.
Not much, but at least we have a nationality (American) and an approximation for a year of birth (c.1898) now.
Regards,
Steve
August 14th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
That’s very interesting, the American birth would help explain why she was able to write so well in an American idiom while employing a British setting.
I’m glad she was highlighted here. One Man’s Muddle I believe is a significant neglected work that should be reprinted, while Restless Sleeper had some merit too (haven’t read the second one).
August 14th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Good to know something, even speculative about her, and it adds to the irony since Chandler, and American had a British public school education, which might help explain how two people across an ocean came up with so similar a voice at the same time.
Likely we’ll never know what happened to Quinn, but Steve certainly clears up some of it, and it does explain her American pulp appearances.
August 14th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Cook & Miller’s pulp index lists her first name as Elynore Baker Quinn.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:17 am
A short note from Al Hubin:
Steve,
Interesting that the familysearch site lists an Eleanor Quinn, born 3/4/1898
in Philadelphia to John Quinn and Eleanor C. Quinn. In any case, I wonder
where the Baker came from.
Al
August 15th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Followed by one from Victor Berch:
Al et al:
Baker could have been her mother’s maiden name. After publication in England, her book was published on April 13, 1937 by Macmillan here in the States. An ad for it appeared in the NYTimes Book Review section on April 18, 1937 on p. 19. Apparently,the ad writer was under the impression that E. Baker Quinn was a male.
As for the spelling Elynore, this does not appear as a spelling for Eleanor in any of the census records I’ve looked at. Probably it was just an attempt to fancify her name in some instances. Although census takers have been known to have spelled names the way they thought the names were spelled or the way it sounded to their ears.
One other bit. When the book was published here in the States, it was only described as “an English novel.”
No hint that it was criminous in nature until the ad in the book review section.
Victor
August 15th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
And from Jamie Sturgeon:
If you put “Quinn, Elynore Baker” in Google Book search you get:
Bulletin of Information
by Columbia University – Education
… Cliffside 2043-W Quinn, Elynore Baker English Ext (Winter Session) ; 308 W 30; Chickering 1360 Rabinovitch, Alec Asst Neurology; 36 W 84; Schuyler 9275 …
No date for the Bulletin but doing a further search I found in a book called New York is Everybody’s Town (pub. 1931) that Irvin Apartments, 308 West 30th Street, is a non-sectarian residence for business women and students. Single rooms with a kitchen and bath shared…
So I assume she studied English at Columbia University in the 1920s,
Jamie
August 15th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
This could well be our girl, and it isn’t impossible that at sometime in her life she standardized the spelling of her first name for convenience.
The time line of many of these seems right, and it’s certainly possible, perhaps even probable, that she had some direct experience of the American school of writing (though of course Black Mask was published in England and many of the better known writers were reprinted there).
There is at least a good circumstantial case for her being this Elynore/Eleanor Baker Quinn, and likely the Baker is a maiden name for her mother, or some other family name that was preserved through the generations. It could well be an American version of the English hyphenated name.
Seems she is determined to continue to mystify even today.
August 16th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Apropos of nothing, I reread Death is a Restless Sleeper, and it certainly reads as if there should be a volume between it and One Man’s Muddle. That isn’t conclusive by any means.
Also it dawns on me that some confusion could arise from the fact the series character name “James Strange” is an alias used by the hero whose real name was James Strange Manley. That could well have cause some confusion with a second book.
There is no way to tell unless someone has read the second book, but between One Man’s Muddle and Death is A Restless Sleeper there certainly seems to be a gap that needs to be filled.
August 16th, 2009 at 2:00 am
The second one, not having been published in the U.S., is really hard to find on the used market. There are a few copies still in libraries, however.
Milward Kennedy raved One Man’s Muddle in the Sunday Times, picking it as one of the most significant crime novels of the year. Don’t recall coming across a big response to the other two, however.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I’m reading the middle book, “The Dead Harm No One” right now and, yes, James Strange is the main protagonist. Perhaps I should put SPOILER here…
In the 2nd book, Strange is “no longer James Arthur Strange Manley, ex-Scotland Yard, ex-convict, twice over, I was plain James Strange” by deed poll, filed while he was in prison (see end of “One Man’s Muddle.”).
So far (I’m halfway through) I prefer the first book in the series. It is more hard-boiled and dark while the second seems to make a more conscious effort at wordplay, is more arch, more frenetic somehow. The first book has many memorable, almost eerily Chandleresque lines, as noted above, while this one seems to strain a bit more for effect. It is also a more typical puzzle-solver of a murder mystery than was the first.
Having said that, I’d still recommend it as it’s still far different than most UK mysteries of the period.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Elisabeth
Excellent! Thanks for the information — and you certainly make a good case that all three books are worth reading. All I have to do now is find copies….
— Steve
February 26th, 2014 at 6:21 pm
RE: #15 Quinn’s name appears as a student in the Columbia University Directory for academic year 1926-1927 and as an “officer” in the English department for academic year 1928-1929. The abbrevation following her name (Ext) is an indication of employment in the University Extension, but probably not as an instructor or professor since those employees were notated as Instr or Prof. Plus, I did not find her name among any instructiors in the other areas of the 551 page publication.
April 15th, 2024 at 9:17 pm
[…] NOTE: David Vineyard reviewed it previously here on this blog: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1369 […]