Tue 23 Feb 2010
A Review by Curt Evans: JONATHAN LATIMER – The Lady in the Morgue.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[12] Comments
JONATHAN LATIMER – The Lady in the Morgue. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1936. Paperback reprints include: Pocket Books #246, 1943; Dell, Great Mystery Library, 1957; International Polygonics, 1988. Film: Universal, 1938, with Preston Foster as PI Bill Crane.
With its suggestions of necrophilia and glimpses of female bondage and nudity, as well as explicit racism on the part of the “sympathetic” characters, torture, grave-robbing and non-stop drinking, Jonathan Latimer’s The Lady in the Morgue is a rather spicy and unpleasant mystery tale for 1936 (or any other year, really!).
I find it interesting that the explicit depiction of sex acts between LIVE people was verboten, but frank discussion about the physical allurements of female corpses evidently made the grade!
Latimer is often paired with Craig Rice as a “zany” hardboiled writer of the period, but I would say Rice is the more simply zany of the two, while Latimer is much more hardboiled.
The humor in this novel is black indeed, having been filtered, surely, through earlier works like William Faulkner’s Sanctuary. The lead detectives are an exceedingly callous group of individuals. There is also an unpleasant racist edge in their treatment of blacks, Filipinos and Italians (though I have to admit the “game” played in the morgue had its lurid fascination).
Certainly this novel is a long way from modern “political correctness” (I doubt for that matter that it was politically correct in 1936).
Buried in all this sensation is a quite solid mystery plot, one that would be at home in a classic British tale, revolving around a female suicide’s corpse stolen from the city morgue that becomes the target of interest of the cops, the detectives, a snobbish old-money family and two rival gangsters.
If you can stomach all the grand guignol stuff, you should enjoy The Lady in the Morgue for its undeniable inventiveness. And if you enjoy very spicy narratives you have a definite barnburner on your hands!
Editorial Comment: For a long insightful essay by John Fraser on Jonathan Latimer and his mystery fiction, plus a complete bibliography compiled by myself, go here on the main Mystery*File website.
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Fine review. Damn, I love this book. Gotta read it (and the other Cranes) again.
February 23rd, 2010 at 6:05 pm
As I told Curt, I wish I could say I’ve read this one, but if I have, it was so long ago I don’t remember it, and from his description, how on earth could I have forgotten it?
I saw the movie, though. No comparison, with all they’d have to leave out, I’m sure.
February 23rd, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Latimer’s Bill Crane novels have been favorites of mine ever since I discovered them in the 1970’s. I’ve reread them 3 or 4 times over the years and they are excellent examples of the hardboiled, screwball comedy mystery genre.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:27 pm
This was my intro to Latimer and quite an eye opener, though I would suggest that Hammett’s The Thin Man was in many ways the biggest influence on the sexual element of the novel.
As for the racist comments I tend to take them to be a fairly accurate depiction of how Crane and his co-horts would talk, and the necrophilla seems to me fairly honest about the grim humor found around a morgue. Latimer seems to primarily be influenced by Hammett in an attempt at at least one level of realism. Not that it is any more pleasant for that.
I think Latimer was reflecting the world Crane and company moved in rather than making racist comments, but I grant later editions of the book were often abridged for just that.
I’ll agree that Latimer is less ‘zany’ than Rice, but the screwball school also ran to black humor in the Latimer vein.
But where ever you come down on the subject this is classic of the form.
Steve
Next time you see the movie, keep an eye out for a young actor billed as Gordon Elliot — Wild Bill, before his western career began.
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Yeah, David, to me Latimer seems actually closer to Hammett than does Chandler. Chandler is more of a romantic underneath the toughness and tends to be oddly prudish about sex. Latimer’s not sentimental or prudish at all– far from it! Latimer’s depiction of casual racism and moral callousness on the part of his characters may well be realistic, but it gave me something of a distaste for the characters. Of course I’m reading this as a sensitive, tamed 21st-century male! I’m sure many more 1930s white male readers took it for granted that, for example, there was something inherently distasteful about Filipinos and white women dancing together and didn’t find anything objectionable in the characters’ comments about that. Or the reference to “buck nigger” corpses, etc. (how come no one in these books ever refers to a buck caucasians 😉 ).
Or maybe we are too hyper-sensitive in this day and age. Anthony Boucher, a very committed 1940s liberal who condemned racism strongly, appears to have been a big Latimer fan. I accept that cleansing the terminology in the book would falsify its pungent and unique, if sometimes unpleasant, flavor.
There definitely are drink-fueled screwy antics and mix-ups in this book, but there’s also a Grand Guignol element that reminded me of Faulkner. All the frank and to me frankly pretty gross discussion about the sexual appeal of the female corpses, the callousness of the grave-robbing (where Crane, I believe it was, carries on the imaginary conversation with the corpse, nodding its head for “yes”) seemed strong stuff to me. Probably not many mysteries published in 1936 retain the power to shock, but I thought this one did.
Nobody commented on the plot, but there really is this sort of classical Golden Age puzzle at the bottom of it all and there is, amazingly, genuine detection on the part of the drunks–I mean the detectives. So despite a lot of comments about the unpleasantness of the book, I’d say it’s all-in-all a pretty impressive achievement. A good puzzle and truly striking goings-on. Latimer was obviously an accomplished genre writer.
I’m reading The Dead Don’t Care and will review that. Symons found earlier Headed for a Hearse and The Lady in the Morgue Latimer’s best books. I’m guessing he found The Dead Don’t Care a bit tame by comparison. It is toned down, though the sexual commentary is still strong for the period (there’s strong hints about lesbianism, for example). The detectives seem more likeable in this one and there seems to be less drinking and more thinking.
I don’t know why Latimer toned things down. Was it hard to keep up the pace, or was the earlier stuff too strong for the serials (it must have been for films!)? Then he dropped the series after Red Gardenias and gave us the really controversial Solomon’s Vineyard! I’d like to know more about that sequence. Latimer would seem a good subject for a biography, what do you think?
February 23rd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Oh, Steve, thanks for the link on the Fraser piece on Latimer. Definitely recommended reading.
February 24th, 2010 at 6:02 am
Curt
There is a fairly good classical mystery at the heart of HEADED FOR A HEARSE too.
As for the racial and other elements in Latimer, I think they were meant to shock even then, as well as to show the rough edge of the characters. LADY is by far the biggest offender of the series, though MURDER IN THE MADHOUSE is less than complimentary about mental disease and alcoholism.
But again I suspect Latimer was trying to write in the Hammett vein. I may be wrong, but he strikes me as the type who would have found SANCTUARY a bit pretentious.
I’ve beat this poor horse to death, but the simple fact is that it can be difficult divorcing our own view of the world from that of earlier popular fiction, and trying to decide when a writer is merely reflecting his world and when he is reflecting his own feelings.
And it gets even more complicated with someone like Sidney Horler or M. P. Shiel who weren’t very nice men to begin with.
Strangely Dorothy Sayers racist touches bother me more than Latimer’s because they reflect less an attempt at realism than a nasty streak. I know at least one person who can’t read Chesterton at all and abhors Father Brown because of his anti-Semitism. It may be as simple as what bothers us or happens to sound the wrong note.
But I agree with virtually all you have to say about LADY IN THE MORGUE, though I would say those elements are exactly what makes it a classic of the form.
Cleve Adams also attempted something similar in his books, particularly the Rex McBride series. He wasn’t as good a writer as Latimer, or as original, but like Crane and his associates McBride is presented as a less than sterling character. To some extent Brett Halliday did the same thing with Michael Shayne who is cynical, mercenary, and largely unsentimental. Kurt Steel’s too little known Hany Heyer is from that school as well, as is Peter Cheyney’s Brit private eye Slim Callaghan.
It was a school within the hard-boiled genre and if Hammett was it’s dean, Latimer was certainly the prize student.
February 24th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
David, I’m not suggesting anything about Latimer personally. Obviously what we know about Horler, for example, indicates that he was a repulsive racist personally, but I assume most writers from that era threw in certain today non-PC elements because it was just what was done, and it doesn’t really reflect on them personally. Even G. D. H. and Margaret Cole had some bits in their books that would be seen as anti-Semitic today, though, if anything, they would have tended to be politically philo-Semitic.
British Golden Age mystery gets a lot of criticism, some of it deserved, for classism and anti-Semitism and prejudice against other minorities, so, in the interest of historical balance, I note it when I run across this stuff in the Americans. I wonder whether hardboiled tends to get more of a pass because (A) critics like it better and we tend to give a pass to what we like OR (B) hardboiled books tend to be anti-rich, so in critics’ eyes that helps make up for PC deficiencies OR (C) British books are genuinely worse than American ones when it comes to these things?
What I find most unpleasant in Morgue, though, is just the behavior of the characters in general. Some of it’s funny, but some of it’s just kinda repulsive. But I’m probably on the squeamish side. Trying to view it objectively, I think Morgue is a inventive, unique book and I can see why it gets praised. It’s just not as much my personal cup of tea.
I personally like The Dead Don’t Care better (should finish today). It’s actually kind of a hardboiled version of a British country house mystery. It’s still funny, but less in a ghoulish way, and the detectives are somewhat more sympathetic.
But you have to give Latimer credit with Morgue for taking a bravura idea and running all the way with it, no holds barred!
February 25th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Many of Latimer’s books were censored in later editions so I won’t say hard boiled writers get a ‘Pass’, but your point is true and I think the difference is because hard boiled characters were trying to present a more or less ‘realistic’ view of the world — warts and all so to speak, where their intrusion in the clearly fantasy world of classical detection seems uncalled for.
For me Crane and companies attitudes seem more natural and less intrusive than the same thing dropped casually in one of Lord Peter’s adventures. Maybe it is because Crane and his pals are supposed to be down to earth types while from Lord Peter it feels like snobbery. Maybe we don’t expect as much of Crane and company.
Then too the critics of the classical school likely were more sensitive to the problem in general. For a terrific book on the subject check out Colin Watson’s SNOBBERY WITH VIOLENCE. He has a good many thoughtful things to say about the social background of thrillers and classical detective fiction, and the book reprints some fine cartoons from the era about mystery and thriller fiction in general.
I didn’t mean to infer you were commenting on Latimer. I understood you meant the characters. I don’t know enough about Latimer as a person to even begin to guess his politics or racial feelings. But I do get the impression that like Hammett he was mostly being true to the voice of his characters, and honestly I find this from the Hammett school less bothersome than from the Chandler school or classical detection.
Hemingway’s Harry Morgan in TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT has some pretty rough stuff to say, but I think it is more true to his nature than Hemingway sneaking his social judgment on us. When Sayers does it I can’t help but seen she is expressing her opinion and not Lord Peter’s.
February 26th, 2010 at 11:52 am
David, I am familiar with Snobbery with Violence, in fact I’m pretty critical of it in my book manuscript.
February 26th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Don’t know if you’d care to, Curt, but maybe you could tell us more sometime where you part ways with SNOBBERY.
Either briefly, as a comment here, or as a separate post.
May 13th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
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