Thu 3 Mar 2011
GEORGE BAGBY – I Could Have Died. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1979.
I find the stories that “Bagby” tells us about the exploits of Inspector Schmidt of New York City Homicide about as fast and easy to devour as a fresh batch of hot, buttered popcorn. And he must write them at just about the same rate — after all, this does make seven now that have appeared in just the last three years.
It doesn’t actually begin as a case of homicide. Following the kidnapping of Bagby and two lady companions as part of a successful hotel robbery, quite inexplicably the younger of the two ladies finds herself falling in love with one of her captors. And of course a murder eventually occurs.
There are a few too many holes for the engagingly pleasant and witty plot that results to hold up well under close observation, but in all honesty it also very nearly works the way it’s supposed to.
[UPDATE] 03-03-11. I’m going to suggest this book to Patti Abbott for inclusion in tomorrow’s weekly roundup of Forgotten Friday mystery novels on her blog. I don’t believe that George Bagby — in real life Aaron Marc Stein, under which name he wrote an equally long list of other detective novels — got nearly the critical attention that I always thought he should have, and he’s definitely forgotten by all but a few devoted aficionados now.
Perhaps he was too prolific, and maybe the endings didn’t match the cleverness of other writers’ mysteries (nor perhaps the openings of his own books), but I always admired the way he had for descriptive passages, making the most prosaic actions — such as taking the cap off a toothpaste tube or hunting for a set of lost keys — seem interesting.
George Bagby, by the way, if the review wasn’t quite clear on this, was both the pen name and the character in the Bagby novels who tagged along with Inspector Schmidt and chronicled his cases for him.
March 4th, 2011 at 12:40 am
Whether as Bagby or Stein I don’t think he ever wrote a bad book, and certainly he is underappreciated today.
They weren’t all gems, and some of them didn’t hold up in terms of plot, but they were engaging, and intelligent, and the popcorn analogy fits well enough.
After all, what is more appetizing than fresh hot buttered popcorn — for the belly or the mind?
March 4th, 2011 at 5:46 am
Stein/Bagby was also Stein/Bagby/Stone and contributed the A.D.A. Jeremiah Gibson series as “Hampton Stone”. In 1979, he became the 22nd person to be named a MWA Grand Master.
So many MWA Grand Masters are virtually unknown by today’s mystery readers: Hillary Waugh, Judson Philips, Vincent Starrett, Baynard Kendrick, W. R. Burnett, Mignon G. Eberhart, and Dorothy Salisbury Davis among them. A publishing house promoting the works of these people would surely be a mitzvah to the field today.
March 4th, 2011 at 9:13 am
Grand Master Press. Couldn’t hurt. “Bagby” is another who seemed to used to be around everywhere, but indeed now, not so much…
March 4th, 2011 at 10:33 am
Inspired by Francis M. Nevins’ comments on Bagby here at MYSTERY*FILE, last fall I read 4 Bagby books. Never read him before.
They are uneven, but sometimes lively. The best is BLOOD WILL TELL (1950), which works both as a mystery and a piece of story telling. DEATH AIN’T COMMERCIAL (1951) is not much as a mystery, but it has a zany and often surreal look at a pop music singing idol group of the era that works as story telling.
These are reminders of how many forgotten mystery books there are out there.
March 4th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Jerry and Todd
If the Grand Masters can be so easily forgotten — and you’re right, a reprint press devoted solely to their crime and mystery fiction truly is a Grand idea — what about all of the other mystery writers of the same time period who were only a notch or two down from the top rung?
Each generation of mystery readers has a right to their own favorites, but there’s also no reason why they should be here today and gone tomorrow, but that’s how it is.
Would a Grand Master Press be commercially successful? I wonder.
Mike
Even though you’re modest enough not to include a link to your comments on the four Stein/Bagby/Stone books you read, I’m certainly not:
http://mikegrost.com/abbott.htm#Stein
I see that you agree with me about the weaknesses in Bagby’s endings, but also about the pleasure the stories themselves often bring.
— Steve
March 4th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Grand Masters Press — from our lips to God’s ears — or at least some publishers.
I forgot Hampton Stone. Good series. Paperback Library tried to do with the Stone books what they had done with M. E. Chaber’s Milo March and the Robert McGinnis covers featuring a James Coburn look a like as Milo. The Stone books if I recall used Steve McQueen, but without McGinnis help didn’t catch on or have as long a run as March and Chaber (Ken Crossen). I think Avon and Popular both did some of the Stein titles in paperback, but I don’t recall the Bagby titles — or not many of them — in paperback.
Many of the Grand Masters were successful mid list writers with strong presence in the lending library circuit and the Detective Book Club. Some like Eberhart, Kendrick, and Burnett were actual best sellers.