Wed 13 Feb 2008
Review: URSULA CURTISS – Catch a Killer [The Noonday Devil].
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[14] Comments
URSULA CURTISS – Catch a Killer.
Pocket 940; 1st pr., June 1953. Hardcover edition: Dodd Mead, 1951, as The Noonday Devil.
It’s my guess that every time one of Ursula Curtiss’s books is reviewed today, it begins with the observation that her mother was mystery writer Helen Reilly, and that her sister was mystery writer Mary McMullen. (And equally obviously, I’m no exception.)
It must have been in the genes, but during the time when all three were actively writing (Reilly from 1930 to 1962; Curtiss from 1948 to 1985, with a posthumous collection of short stories; and McMullen from 1951 to 1986), do you suppose that anyone ever asked them what was in the water they were drinking?
While Helen Reilly had a series detective who appeared in most of her books – Inspector McKee of Manhattan Homicide – Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen, from all I know, gained largely from reading about them, were heavy practitioners of (suburban?) domestic malice and/or romantic suspense, and neither of them used a repeating character in any of their books.
For me, this is largely hearsay, especially as far as Curtiss is concerned, as this is the only book of hers I’ve read. So far. In any case, what you expect is not always what you get. In Catch a Killer, for example, I was surprised (although far from nonplussed) to discover that the leading character is male, and that the story begins in Manhattan. I had the uneasy feeling that I was leaning one way, and the book, with Curtiss in charge, was going another.
In the second half of the book, the scene changes, however, and rather drastically. Under some pretext or another, all of the leading characters seem to find their way to the same small country town in New England, and when they do, everything seems to revert to normal. (By which I mean, closer to what was expected, if not anticipated.) And as a direct consequence, most probably with the characters’ closer proximity to each other, the action seems to pick up as well.
The atmosphere is black, introspective and moody throughout. And as you well know, or you should, coincidences simply thrive in such climates – beginning as they do here, in Chapter One. When you walk into an unfamiliar bar for the first time, for example, you never know whom you’ll meet, and that’s where Andrew Sentry finds a man who’d been in the same Japanese prison camp as his brother Nick – an encounter occurring solely by chance.
Nick had died in a subsequent attempt to escape, and his death, Andrew for the first time is now told, was no accident. There was an informer in the camp – someone Nick knew – who told their guards of Nick’s plans, which were then foiled. This is an unusual (if not unique) means of killing someone, but who was the mysterious man who called himself Sands? And what was his motive?
More coincidences begin to pile up. Every male in Andrew’s small circle of friends and acquaintances suddenly seems to have been a Japanese prisoner in the Philippines at some time or another during the war. Nick’s fiancée Sarah Devany may have received a postcard in code from him just before he died, but when a simple question might have unraveled the mystery before it has even begun, there are barriers which by fate have carefully been laid in the way.
When Andrew came to break the news of Nick’s death to Sarah, it is revealed, he found her kissing another man, and he has not spoken to her ever since. And since the case for murder is so flimsy, the police cannot be called in, which limits Andrew’s resources to himself and whoever he feels he can trust, the list of those in this category changing chapter by chapter.
And in similar fashion does the reader’s grip on the story, or vice versa, the story’s grip on the reader. Excellent characterizations are mixed helter-skelter with a plot that’s held together with a strong, industrial brand of duct tape. Nonetheless, New England summer towns can be filled with as much malice as large population centers such as Manhattan, and the generally capable touch of Ursula Curtiss goes a long way in proving it.
[UPDATE] 02-13-08. I read and reviewed this book four years ago, and do you think I remember it? If I hadn’t written this review, I don’t believe I would even have remembered reading it, if you’d asked me.
But after reading and slightly revising the review, it all came back to me — everything, that is, except whodunit. I’m willing to wager that if I started to read the book again now, I still wouldn’t remember who the killer was.
I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.
But in any case, I mentioned in the course of the review that this was the first mystery I’d read that Ursula Curtiss had written. It’s also still the only one, not through any fault of hers!
February 13th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Dear Steve,
I’ve found your website while looking for some critiques on Ursula Curtiss, and found it quite informative. She seems to come from a dynasty of mystery writers.
I came across her 1960 novel, SO DIES THE DREAMER, in a used book store in northern Virginia and found it to be superb. Then, more recently, I found at the same store her 1980 novel, THE POISONED ORCHARD, and found it to be — one of the most confusing and just plain bad mysteries I’ve ever read!
I wonder if you are familiar with the title, or if any of your readers would be? I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but I just couldn’t grasp fully who was doing what to whom and why. . . .
Best, JC
February 13th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Jonathan,
No, I don’t know either book, I’m sorry to say. I also don’t know whether this is a instance where a publisher let one of their well-established (and profitable) writers continue on writing too long.
Not that I’m saying that’s what happened here, but it’s been known to happen. A number of readers don’t believe that the books Agatha Christie produced toward the end of her career are among her best, for example.
As you say, maybe somebody else knows more than either you or I.
— Steve
February 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Jonathan,
The greater a mystery writer, the dimmest his or her later works. Ngaio Marsh to my knowledge is the only exception to that rule. Thus I am not surprised that Curtiss was running out of her skills by the early eighties. But her earlier works are definitely worth seeking-out and reading; at her best she was one of the finest writers of the suspense era, matching more famous names as Charlotte Armstrong or Margaret Millar. This fan recommends “The Stairway”, “Out of the Dark”, “The Forbidden Garden”, “The Deadly Climate” and of course “The Noonday Devil”.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I’ve actually read THE NOONDAY DEVIL twice! I didn’t remember reading it, when I started it again, but it came back to me when I browsed the pages. Still I finished it. I remember it being quite good, even though there was some confusion as to why they went to that New England town. A piece of fine female noir, though, even though not hardboiled in any sense. I don’t know if I have the book anymore, otherwise I’d scan the cover. (As if I did that anymore, now that I’m a pretty slow blogger.)
February 15th, 2008 at 10:19 am
“Fine female noir […] though not hardboiled in any sense.”
Juri, I know what you mean. Relying on my review only, I see that I said: “The atmosphere is black, introspective and moody throughout.”
How close do you think that comes to defining “female noir”?
— Steve
February 15th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Yes, sure, that’s the main point, but I think the lead character should have to be a woman (well, in that case, Curtiss’s novel wouldn’t fit) and the settings would have to be somewhat mundane and ordinary, just everyday life which is suddenly filled with terror. I think, and I must point out that this is based only on hearsay and not any research, that female noir was mutated into gothic romance in the late sixties and seventies. Gothic romance just became so formulaic so soon that it got difficult to tell its roots.
And I also think that female noir, for some reason or another, isn’t so strong on negative endings as male noir. Even though Dorothy Hughes is pretty bleak in her own novels that fit the bill. (Not her last one, what’s it called, from 1963?) Margaret Millar and Patricia Highsmith have also rather pessimistic endings. I wish someone with better knowledge than mine would do an article on female noir. Wait, Kevin Burton Smith is writing a book on female hardboiled authors, so he’ll be covering this ground too.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Juri,
As usual, whenever you start listing the “rules” that define a genre, you come across immediate examples in which the rules are broken, such as the leading character has to be a woman, and yet in the Curtiss book, he is not.
Not that I’m disagreeing with you, because I don’t.
You may be onto something with female noir morphing into Gothic romance. That is, if you consider Daphne du Maurier’s REBECCA to be female noir.
I saw in one of Phyllis Whitney’s obituaries that when her editor saw the success REBECCA was still having, several years after it had first been published, he asked Whitney to write something in the same vein. Thus came about THUNDER HEIGHTS in 1960, which according to the obit, started the whole “gothic” craze.
I’m not so sure about the timing of this, as Whitney did several other books for the same hardcover publisher (Appleton) beginning in 1955. Maybe THUNDER HEIGHTS was a step in this new direction. At the moment, I’m only reporting. I simply don’t know.
–Steve
PS. Here’s a quote from the obituary I mentioned: “The best-selling author’s Thunder Heights is considered the first of the modern paperback gothic romance novels, according to 13 Mistresses of Murder, a 1986 study of mystery writers.”
and another “…released it in 1960 as the first in a new gothic line aimed at women. The category experienced swift success.
“Whitney’s suspense stories set in exotic locations were known for their ‘dauntless damsel in distress’ formula, but she bristled at the term ‘romance writer.'”
February 15th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
This sounds plausible. I haven’t read REBECCA, though, so can’t really say, or any other du Maurier, for that matter. There must be some same elements that I’ve found in the books I call “female noir.” Of course, writers like Margaret Millar, take elements of the hardboiled crime, which don’t apply to du Maurier or even Ursula Curtiss.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Yes, I think most readers today would take for granted that anything called “female noir” would have a harder edge to it than anything either Daphne du Maurier or Phyllis Whitney ever wrote. And yet, as you said at the beginning of this discussion, noir does not necessarily mean hardboiled.
I’d have to read Curtiss again to be sure, but my sense is that she (or her earlier books) would fall into the “female noir” category, and for some reason I can’t otherwise define right now, du Maurier and Whitney would not.
—Steve
February 16th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I think, and I must point out that this is based only on hearsay and not any research, that female noir was mutated into gothic romance in the late sixties and seventies.
I think you’re taking the story backwards, as gothic romance came first, then mutated into HIBK which in turn evolved into suspense, of which “female noir” as practiced by Ursula Curtiss and Margaret Millar is an offshoot.
The [gothic romance] genre can be traced back to Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and sensation fiction. It went into hiatus with the advent of the detective story, but was revitalized and modernized by Mary Roberts Rinehart in the early twentieth century. DuMaurier and Whitney just brought it back to its roots.
[ Steve here. I asked Xavier to expand on his statement “… HIBK […] evolved into suspense…” ]
Mystery fiction prior to Rinehart was concerned only with detectives and treated crime as a puzzle to be solved. The HIBK revolution was to shift the focus from the omniscient detective to the hapless putative victim, which would give birth to modern suspense fiction in the forties. You are right that HIBK didn’t serve as a template for the whole genre as traditional mystery and hardboiled were also a strong influence, but some suspense novels were actually HIBKs with an edge — Charlotte Armstrong comes to mind.
February 16th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
With your clarification, Xavier, I certainly see nothing in your comments to quarrel with. It’s a long complicated story all right, with lots of characters and subplots.
I think, though, that what Juri intended in his statement, the one you italicized, is that that “female noir was mutated into [the revamped form of] gothic romance [that occurred] in the late sixties and seventies.” (This language is mine, of course.)
Except that “the late sixties” is too late, given the anecdote taken from her LA Times obituary. The birth of the “new gothic romance novel” seems to have been 1960.
—Steve
February 18th, 2008 at 6:26 am
As I said, I hope someone with better knowledge than mine would write about this. Xavier is right about Brontë and all, but I still believe Curtiss and others must’ve served as some kind of inspiration to gothic writers. (Who penned the term, by the way? And when? And I don’t mean the original Gothic literature, Walpole and Radcliffe and others.)
February 18th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Here’s the entry for “Gothic romance” that I found in the The Columbia Encyclopedia. The closest I’ve come to an actual starting point for the 1960s revival is still the note about Thunder Heights in Phyllis Whitney’s obituary. Others have mentioned Donald Wollheim at Ace for his strong marketing efforts for the genre in paperback form. I remember publishing a letter from him in the print version of Mystery*File back in the mid-1970s. He took a lot of credit for the popularity of gothic paperbacks, but whether he first used the term “gothic” to describe them, I don’t know. I’ll have to see if I can’t find those early issues. They’re here somewhere, but I haven’t come across them in a long time.
Gothic romance type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th cent. in England. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they were usually set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the forerunner of the type, which included the works of Ann Radcliffe , Matthew Gregory Lewis , and Charles R. Maturin , and the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley . Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey satirizes Gothic romances. The influence of the genre can be found in some works of Coleridge, Le Fanu, Poe, and the Brontës. During the 1960s so-called Gothic novels became enormously popular in England and the United States. Seemingly modeled on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, these novels usually concern spirited young women, either governesses or new brides, who go to live in large gloomy mansions populated by peculiar servants and precocious children and presided over by darkly handsome men with mysterious pasts. Popular practitioners of this genre are Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Catherine Cookson, and Dorothy Eden.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Hi again,
Thanks for this, most illuminating. It seems that Xavier is right and that there’s no evolvement from female noir to gothics. They must’ve filled some of the marketing and reading place, though.
Juri