Wed 28 Jan 2015
LOUIS TRIMBLE – Stab in the Dark. Ace Double D-157; paperback original, 1957.
A bit of preamble before I get to the review itself. Earlier this month I read and reviewed the other half of this Ace Double, that being Never Say No to a Killer, by Jonathan Gant, a pen name of Clifton Adams, an author probably better known for his western novels for Gold Medal.
Having the book out and in my hands, it was quite natural for me to read the other half, a story I thought I’d like better, as it is a private eye novel, which I always enjoy, and the Gant book being rather derivative in nature, reminding Dan Stumpf in particular of Horace McCoy’s Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, as he so stated in an early comment to that post.
Well, trying to make a long story shorter, it’s been a struggle to finish the second half of the book, the novel by Trimble. So far I’ve been reading it at night just before bed, and managing to move along a a lizard’s pace of maybe 30 pages a night. I’m not finished yet, and I think I will continue on with it, but after reading a review I wrote of the book back in 1991, perhaps I will concede, saying that sometimes retreat is the better part of valor.
Here’s what I had to say the first time around:
Louis Trimble wrote a host of second- and third-rate detective novels through the late 1940s, 50s and early 60s, and this is one of them. During that same time period he also wrote a lot of westerns, many [also] packaged as halves of Ace Doubles, and somehow ended up writing science fiction, of all things, before he was finished.
Since Hubin doesn’t state otherwise, this one turns out to have been the only appearance of PI Paul Knox. He’s apparently a man of some wealth, having inherited some money, quit the police force, and joined an world-wide private detective agency. On this case, he’s after a huge pornography/blackmail ring, but his contact at the Winton hotel is dead on his (Knox’s) arrival, an icepick in his eye.
A few curious matters arise, but most of them — like the business of the whiskey bottle and Cora Deane’s missing panties — are merely thrown away [FOOTNOTE] and although it goes on for 171 pages, long by Ace Double standards, the basic flaw in this mystery is one that’s fatal by any standards. It;s dull, it’s not very interesting, and it’s boring.
[FOOTNOTE] and [WARNING: Extremely Minor Plot Alert.] The titillating bit with the whiskey bottle and the panties — well, it kept me thinking about it quite a while — is finally described on p. 167 as “Red herrings … just foolishness, really.”
In other words, it didn’t mean anything, anything at all, and it never did. It was something thrown in just to tweak the reader’s interest, and it wouldn’t [be] worth mentioning if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the only bit of the plot that’s worth mentioning at all.
[UPDATE] 01-28-15. I’ll probably skim on for a while on my current and second go-around. But this is discouraging. It’s been the only thing keeping me going and here I have my own review showing up in timely fashion to tell me to forget it.
January 28th, 2015 at 8:07 am
Steve’s experience rereading a mediocre and below average novel is one of the main reasons that I’ve been putting notes in all the books and magazines that I read. I’ve been doing it now for over 50 years and the practice has prevented me from wasting many hours rereading something I disliked decades ago.
I try and follow Sturgeon’s Law. He said 90% of everything is crap. I try and read the 10% that is not…
January 28th, 2015 at 11:03 am
Steve, I’ve never read Trimble and so will take your and Walker’s word on the guy. This is a very funny review. It’s like you’re arm wrestling with a book!
January 28th, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Walker
You certainly have a good system for reminding yourself about bad books, or even good ones, the ones you might take the time to read again.
Of course, it’s advice too late for me, unless you have a time machine that I could use to go back and tell to my younger self about, so I wouldn’t regret accidentally re-reading a mediocre book today.
Of course if I had a time machine, I think I could come up with a thousand other pieces of advice my younger self might have liked to have known about. Looking back, there are a few things I might have changed, had I but known.
January 28th, 2015 at 2:26 pm
Steve
All in all, I think, yes, you could take Walker’s and my word on Trimble. There are a lot of other authors more worth the time. I did take a look at the ending, and the Red Herrings I was talking about aren’t as bad as maybe I made them seem. The bottle of whiskey and the lady’s panties were left by killer just to confuse things, not the author (per se).
I don’t know if that makes any difference or not. My opinion right now, more than half way through the book this second time, mediocre is the correct word to use, not bad, just not very good.
January 28th, 2015 at 4:48 pm
While I’ve never read anything by Louis Trimble the fact that I had two or three titles by him convinced one visitor that one could find anything on my shelves.
January 28th, 2015 at 5:35 pm
I read this and at least one Ace Double Western by Trimble, I remember this one a little, but I’m not sure I finished it. I recall this as one of the lesser Ace Mystery Doubles. The covers were the most collectable thing about either book.
Trimble probably did better books but I never read them or about them.
January 28th, 2015 at 8:59 pm
Years ago I read his Murder Trouble, a Phoenix Press mystery. It was one of those supposedly humorous “Who’s got the corpse?” books with a lot of not-very-funny banter. I’ve never been tempted by any more Trimble, Ace Double or not.
January 28th, 2015 at 9:31 pm
The title is such a cliche I doubt I’ve ever bother with it. I laughed at this: “it wouldn’t [be] worth mentioning if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the only bit of the plot that’s worth mentioning at all.” Now that’s sad when booze and missing panties are the only things worth mentioning!
I find myself following Walker’s and Ted Sturgeon’s advice without even realizing it most of the time. This year I’m trying to finish *everything* I start. So far I’ve stuck to it. Though frankly I’m came very close to breaking my resolution and dumping the most recent book. DARKEST DEATH written in 1964 but set in Ghana circa late 1950s is a locked room mystery with a murder by archery and having a smidgen of African witchcraft interest. How could that ever be dull or pedestrian? And yet it was.
January 29th, 2015 at 3:49 pm
At the least Trimble could have done like Brett Halliday in one of the Michael Shayne books Lucy Hamilton is kidnapped and he solves the case based on which pair of her days of the week panties she left for him to find.
The oldest rule in mystery fiction is that if you introduce an element in a book you have to use it as more than a red herring, or at least a substantial one, before the book ends. If the hero finds whiskey and panties they better figure in the solution. Only introducing a suspect from left field at the last minute as the guilty party is worse.