Wed 2 Sep 2015
RICHARD N. SMITH – Death Be Nimble. Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1967.
Here’s a book I’ve had since just about forever. I may have even purchased it new, but it would have been a long time ago, so I’m not so certain about that. It’s a private eye novel, so I’ve always meant to read it, and when a spare copy came along and I had it hand, I decided that its turn had finally come.
I don’t know, but back in 1967 I might have liked this book, but reading and finishing it these past couple of nights, just before going to sleep, I can find nothing in of interest in it to tell you about, other than of course that it’s a private eye novel.
His name is John Kincaid, and he works in the Boston area. He’s by a anonymous client who send him an invitation (along with $500 in cash) to a fancy party at a Yacht Club. He is, after all, known as the Boston area’s “society detective.” There he meets a good-looking redhead, who mysteriously disappears on him just before the wife of the man hosting the affair is found floating in the harbor. Somehow he also finds a small fortune in jewelry in his pocket. He immediately throws it overboard. Wouldn’t you?
So, OK, the opening is not all that bad. He never meets the person who sent him the invitation, but he’s hired the next day by the husband of the woman who fell or was pushed overboard. Kincaid assumes that what the man really wants him to do is frame his wife’s brother for the killing
After that there follows nothing but a series of dumb PI cliches; to wit: the brother-in-law objects to Kincaid hanging around; a gangster and his goons beat Kincaid up; Kincaid narrowly misses death from some adulterated suntan lotion; the previous mentioned redhead runs hot and cold before declaring her love for him; Kincaid is taken for a ride, but instead opens the car door, jumps out, and turns the table on the previously mentioned goons; and the real killer comes after Kincaid with a gun, but Kincaid turns the table on the killer…
Sorry. Maybe I’ve told you more than you want to know. None of the characters are given any motivation as to why they do anything, and Kincaid himself is nothing more than the person telling the story, without a whit of anything interesting to say about himself.
This was his only adventure to ever have been published. I probably wouldn’t have cared for it back in 1967 either.
September 2nd, 2015 at 6:21 pm
This famously — or infamously — bad book is one many of his had and either could not finish or simply loathed. It is a really bad pi novel by even the lowest standards unable to compete with a half hour pi television series plot. Don’t feel bad I made the mistake of reading it too.
September 3rd, 2015 at 10:47 am
In retrospect ‘society detective’ should have warned us both off. The funny thing is at this time I read and enjoyed a lot of generic private eye fiction from Frank Kane to John B. West, but none so singularly bland and uninspired.