Tue 27 Jan 2009
Following Steve Mertz’s review of The Deadly Kitten…
I’ll admit to a great deal of affection for the Carter Brown books that goes beyond my appreciation for Bob McGinnis sexy stylish covers. The Brown books are fast, fun, and harmless time killers that you might use like a bowl of sorbet to cleanse your mental palate after reading a heavier (and better book).
And it isn’t as if the books are badly written. Al Wheeler is different enough from Danny Boyd, who is different enough from Rick Holman and so on, and the Mavis Seidlitz books deserve to be rediscovered and rightly praised.
In some sense the Brown books are a continuation of Robert Leslie Bellem and the screwball school of writing, similar to Richard Prather and Shell Scott (though lacking the qualities that set the Scott books in their deservedly higher position of regard), or the Fickling’s Honey West. Anthony Boucher was one of the few critics to go out of his way to praise some of the better Brown books.
The Brown books always reminded me of a good episode of one of the old Warner’s private eye series like 77 Sunset Strip or Hawaiian Eye, pleasant time killers you could enjoy and forget like a good hamburger.
Interested readers should note that a few of the author’s other books under other pseudonyms made it in print in the States, including at least one written as Dennis Sinclair.
Lt. Al Wheeler was popular enough in his native Australia to star in his own comic strip which often featured Carter Brown as a somewhat comic Watson to the L.A. detective.
I have to admit that I miss the equivalent of these entertaining and inexpensive books today. Sometimes you would rather spend time with Danny Boyd than wade through War and Peace, and the Brown books were always what they were intended for, a pleasant diversion, simple, and in their own way, charming escapism.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:42 am
Though I have to admit that I love the novel WAR AND PEACE and have read it four times, I also have to admit to a weakness for the Carter Brown paperback novels with the sexy covers. I have a couple stacks of the Carter Brown novels that I stumbled across at a used book sale. The previous owner had rated each novel and written a brief comment in the books, a practice that I’ve been doing for 50 years now(By the way, I write my notes on a slip of paper, not on the book itself).
I agree the novels remind me of a good episode of a wise cracking private eye TV series. I guess that’s what makes reading so much fun and a lifetime activity. At one end of the spectrum you can enjoy a great novel like War and Peace, and the other end you can also enjoy, on a different level, the Carter Brown novels.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Exactly, even though I love War and Peace there are times when you want to read something lighter and quicker, and the Carter Brown books fit a special niche, good enough to spend time with, but not demanding of your time or intellect.
A Carter Brown novel was entertaining without asking anything more of the reader than the brief time it took to read them. And to be fair, books by better writers than Brown sometimes blend together so you can only recall one from the other by the covers, and few series have the advantage of those great McGinnis covers to help you tell them apart.
The Brown books, in their own quiet way, provided a quick escape from everyday tedium and a pleasant diversion, and if we often want more than that, there are times when all you want is to get away for a few moments and not tax your mind. Carter Brown was consistently entertaining, and even some of the greats in the genre can’t always claim that.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:38 am
I have to admit that I’ve never read WAR AND PEACE, though I owned a paperback edition of it for a long time.
I’ve also never seen the movie, the one with Mel Ferrer, Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn, and I think I should. I’m sure I’d enjoy it a lot more now than when I was younger. Even so, and even though it’s three and a half hours long, I imagine that some parts of the story got chopped out.
I’ll bet the paperback edition I had was abridged too, come to think of it.
— Steve
January 28th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I last read WAR AND PEACE in 2007 and I also viewed the three main films based on the novel. The version that you mention above made in 1956 and starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn is by far the poorest version of the three simply because so much had to be left out of the three and a half hour length.
The Russian version made in 1968 and directed by Bondarchuk seemed to have half of the Russian army as extras. But again at only 7 hours alot had to be left out.
The best version is the BBC mini series made in 1972 and starring Anthony Hopkins as Pierre. It managed to cover quite a bit of the novel in 20 episodes and 15 hours.
All three of these versions are available on dvd and I recommend the 15 hour BBC Tv series. The Russian 7 hours movie is quite well done but too short and the Hollywood version at over 3 hours is, well, the usual Hollywood mismash.
The big mystery element of course is what possessed Napoleon to think he could invade Russia and beat the Russian winter? And then over 100 years later the mystery repeated itself with Hitler who proved the old saying “those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Walker
I really didn’t think that 3.5 hours would be long enough, but at least if I watched it I’d know whether or not there’s a chance I’d ever try tackling the book itself. The BBC-TV series does sound like a better use of my time, though.
— Steve
PS. Thanks for that last paragraph in your most recent comment. The word “mystery” gets us back on topic again!
PPS. Of course in 15 hours time, you understand, I could be reading 15 Carter Brown mysteries. They go very quickly.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:01 am
Re the 1956 War and Peace, it is certainly the least of the three major versions of the book, but I would at least point out one excellent scene with Henry Fonda and John Mills (as a serf) that verbalises much of what Tolstoy was trying to say. Though you may not want to sit through a 3.5 hour movie to get to it (sort of the Classics Illustrated version, though pretty to look at, and with a great cast).
You probably know the famous (though no doubt spurious) story regarding War and Peace. Tolstoy intended the book to include all aspects of Russian life, and had labored on it in a effort to reflect that. On the night the books was to go to press he supposedly went to bed satsified that he had achieved his goal only to sit up in bed in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and trembling.
“What’s wrong?” a frightened Mrs. Tolstoy asked.
“My God,” Tolstoy gasped. “It’s a disaster!”
“What? What’s a disaster?” his wife asked.
“It’s a disaster! I left out the yacht race!”
I think every writer can appreciate the feeling. Hard to beleve we started out with Carter Brown. This may be the only time in history a discussion of Danny Boyd and Al Wheeler led to Tolstoy and film criticism. Still, to bring it back around to the mystery, does anyone know what the longest mystery novel ever published is (not written, I’m sure there are some doorstops in forgotten drawers)? My guess would be a Victorian Triple Decker or perhaps something by Harry Stephen Keeler. Though not strictly a mystery my vote would be for Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris that runs to some 1200 pages in the Modern Libary translation. But if we limit it to books that were written as part of the genre and for the genre, then I’d be curious to know what the War and Peace of the genre (or the Ben Hur) was.
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:09 am
The basic problem with trying to find the War and Peace of the mystery/detective genre is that such novels usually limit themselves to the basic mystery or detective plot. And because lovers and fans of the mystery genre demand certain cliches, rules, regulations, etc, then mystery novels tend to limit themselves to certain plots, characterizations, dialog, having to do with the mystery.
This of course limits the subject matter and length of the novels, otherwise the mystery audience might not buy the book thinking it too “literary” or not really a mystery, etc.
Mystery/detective fans, for the most part like to see certain formulas and cliches in their stories. For instance the Carter Brown fan likes to see wisecracks, hardboiled action, beautiful women. Same thing with the hardboiled private eye fan. The puzzle lover likes Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, etc. The cozy lovers, the cat lovers, the spy fiction fans, all have their favorite formula that they like to keep reading about.
There are some readers, like Steve Lewis, myself, and others, who read all types of mystery fiction, though I do lean toward the hardboiled, private eye, wise cracking type. I think for most mystery readers, they don’t want to read a War and Peace type length mystery novel. They want the usual 150 to maybe 400 page plot concentrating on mystery elements. If other elements enter into the novel, such as the elements in War and Peace, then the novel is no longer a mystery novel and becomes instead a literary or mainstream fiction novel.
So I guess we can find “long” mystery novels like The Long Goodbye by Chandler, etc. But a mystery novel with all the themes that are in War and Peace, then many readers would simply say that’s not a mystery novel. It may have mystery elements and a detective, but only as a part of the main plot, which could be about all sorts of subjects.