REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


MATTHEW HEAD – The Smell of Money. Simon & Shuster, hardcover, 1943. Mercury Mystery #96, paperback, 1946. Dell #219, mapback edition, 1948[?]. Avon G1229, paperback, 1964.

   One of those terse, semi-existential, tough-but-sensitive mysteries for which I will always be a sucker.

   As soon as Head, in the first-person of Bill Echlen, started to describe his odyssey from Harvard to Greenwich Village, getting by on odd jobs, I felt myself transported back across time and space to the lean and hungry days of my own higher (?!) education, when the exigencies of making a living and chasing girls competed with what I seriously thought of as Learning and Artistic Expression. I began wondering when was the last time I skipped a meal to buy a book, and reminiscing about the sunny days and moonlit nights I spent in that musty, monolithic Library, poring over many a quaint and curious volume of…. but back to the review.

   Besides evoking that uniquely College frame of mind, Matthew Head also writes in an easy, conversational style, something of an urbane, Huckleberry-Finished effect, sometimes going back to mention something he forgot, and sometimes skipping ahead to make a point — more like an extended letter than a novel.

   I particularly liked his fussiness about describing colors and his easy knowledge of artists and their styles. It has that casual precision that Art Students really use — at least the ones I dated, anyway. I imagine Head must have found it natural, since in real life he was art critic John Canaday (played by Terrence Stamp in the movie Big Eyes).

   The story itself is of Murder, Love, and Retribution, and it’s a fine job, with an unerring feel for Drama. Perhaps too unerring; I was able to spot the killer, not so much because of clues dropped — although there are plenty — but because that character’s guilt would give more dramatic impact to the story than would anyone else’s.

   I should make mention of Head’s flair for terse characterization and of the neat way he manages to create a closed circle of suspects without seeming stagey. But for me, the major charms of this book are its relaxed, nostalgic tone and the gentle way it moves to tragedy.

   “…. But the real thing that will bother you, if you’re easily bothered, is that all this sinning wasn’t on a majestic scale, like a Greek tragedy, but was all a little bit shoddy. I’m sorry I can’t keep it from sounding that way, but if it’s grandeur you’re after, it’s Sophocles you want, not me … I can’t purge anybody with pity and terror, all I can do is set down the way we talked and the things that happened. But for me the summer was some such kind of purging, and I can’t think of anybody in or out of Greek tragedy I feel such pity for as I did for….”