Tue 9 Nov 2010
Comment on FIFTY FUNNY FELONIES, by David L. Vineyard.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists[30] Comments
by David L. Vineyard
A funny thing happened on the way to the post …
Most of you have had your own ISP nightmares so I won’t bore you with mine, but because of the down time between your comments on my Fifty Funny Felonies and my getting back to it, Steve suggested I do a post rather than bury my comments at the end of the original.
First, I’m gratified with the responses, and the only thing I would point out to any of you is that I warned from the start my choices were subjective and favorites instead of bests. Almost every name everyone mentioned could easily have been on the list, and in some cases nearly were.
In the end I tended to go with some more offbeat choices and a few certainly more eclectic ones, but only because if you don’t, these lists can easily end up nothing more than a rehash of the same titles; a bit like those AFI 100 Best specials that always end up with Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, and The Wizard of Oz in some variation of the top five films.
Among the writers I was surprised no one brought up were Michael Bond of the Monsieur Pamplemouse books, Robert Barr’s Eugene Valmont stories, Agatha Christie (in Tommy and Tuppence mode), Michael Avallone (who granted was sometimes unintentionally funny — at least I think it was unintentional), and Damon Runyon.
As Steve pointed out in one of his comments these could easily run to five hundred titles in short order.
There was one deliberate omission on my part. And please be gentle — but I just don’t like Ross H. Spenser that much. I found it a one joke gimmick that was amusing one time, and after that the books more annoying than clever. Again that is a subjective judgment.
I didn’t find him.
That funny.
Really.
I probably would have included Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Colin Watson, or Sarah Cauldwell, but it has been a long time since I read them, and they just weren’t fresh in my mind. As it is I have no excuse for leaving off some of Michael Gilbert, Peter Dickinson, certainly John Mortimer, Jasper fforde, Liz Evans (I even reviewed one of her books), or some of the others. As I said, at different times I might have gone with some different writers.
In regard to Geoffrey Household, since his favorite form of novel is the picaresque (a la Don Quixote, Candide) and at least one of his short stories was filmed as the delightful British comedy Brandy For the Parson (1952) I was surprised there was any question about including him.
Many of his short stories (and he did at least four collections of them) are humorous, and there are humorous elements in many of his books. Granted there aren’t a lot of laughs in Rogue Male, Watcher in The Shadows, or Dance of the Dwarfs, but Fellow Passenger, Olura, and The Life and Times of Bernardo Brown are all picaresque tales and there is some rather black humor in A Rough Shoot, A Time to Kill, and The Courtesy of Death.
Victor Canning and Eric Ambler aren’t generally laugh riots either, but both wrote some comic works. Graham Greene is one of the few writers who was ever tragic and comic at the same time in the same book.
I was a little surprised no one questioned my choice of Allingham’s Sweet Danger, so I’ll defend it anyway. The opening sequences in the French hotel are as good as anything in a classical farce. That’s the whole defense.
So there.
Re Edmund Crispin and why Love Lies Bleeding, I grant it is not as farcical as some of the others, but it is my favorite because it includes one of the great dogs in the literature, a creation of Falstaffian complexity, whose passing may be one of the rare times in any kind of fiction you will be laughing and crying at the same time.
I grant The Blind Barber is funnier than Arabian Nights, I just happen to like the latter and think it gets less attention than it deserves. If nothing else it is worth reading just to see Carr’s portrait of what he considers a sexpot.
For that matter a few of the Carter Dickson are probably bigger belly laughs than any of the Fell novels. Sir Henry Merrivale’s summation to the jury in The Judas Window is one of the high points of Carr-ian humor.
I seriously debated 101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, so count yourselves lucky.
In regard to Jonathan Latimer I don’t disagree with Curt’s points about the necrophilia, sexism, and racist language in Lady in the Morgue, but much of that went part and parcel with the whole screwball school of the hard boiled mystery and many of its proponents like Richard Sale, Norbert Davis, Geoffrey Homes, Cleve Adams (at least in the Rex McBride books), Robert Reeves, Dwight Babcock, and Robert Leslie Bellem worked similar territory.
Since Latimer didn’t have to deal with pulp prudery he went farther than most and pushed the boundaries, but it’s honest writing, it feels real and not contrived, and “readers were supposed to be shocked.”
I know that may seem far removed from today’s market where almost nothing is shocking any more (Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho — a black comedy most took seriously — is a rare exception), but once upon a time there were writers who dared to dare us — to shock, titillate, and even challenge us — and Latimer was one of the best, and did within the framework of some first class detective work too.
I would only point out that Curt’s reaction was exactly what Latimer wanted much as Chandler would use a rough rather black and grim humor to color his stories and novels. Both writers wanted the reader to notice “the tarantula on the angel food cake.” It’s a very American tradition that goes back to Washington Irving and Poe and is notable in Mark Twain. In some ways it is the American literary voice.
Again, thanks to everyone for the intelligent and cogent comments and additions. The comic mystery too often gets short shrift in the histories of the genre, as if somehow producing genuine laughs and good detection was simple or easy, and I’ve never understood why. It’s far easier to be grim than amusing, and much simpler to perplex a reader than to make him laugh. These responses show that some of us appreciate the effort.
And on a personal note I find, that while I still appreciate the thrills, puzzles, and scares, the older I get the more I appreciate the ones that made me smile, laugh, or just chuckle in recognition.
November 9th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Humor is so subjective. What I find amusing or outright hilarious, others would not consider funny at all. I was reminded of this in a recent discussion with another collector about the comedy elements in the screwball detective fiction of the 1940’s pulps. He hates private eye detective fiction and finds nothing funny in the stories no matter how whacky or crazy the plots and characters are. I, on the other hand like the stories.
I agree with David about the Ross H. Spenser novels. The joke got old real fast but evidently many readers found the series funny.
Concerning Mike Avallone, I got to know him the last ten or so years of his life and found him to be very funny and always ready with a joke. A group of around half a dozen pulp collectors used to meet quite often at my house or at pulp conventions and Mike kept us in stitches with comments on the movies and books. Alot of so called Noonisms kept us laughing. However, I also met some people who did not find Mike amusing and were very annoyed when he would get too friendly or familiar. Same thing with his novels, you either like them or hate them.
Speaking of Jonathan Latimer, I’m a big fan of his Bill Crane novels and find them to be among the best of the screwball detective school. I just finished DEAD IS THE DOOR-NAIL by Paul Haggard which was recently reviewed on Mystery File and found it to be a very well done example of screwball fiction. It looks like the novel was influenced quite a bit by Latimer. The main character, reporter Mike Warlock, acts just like Latimer’s Bill Crane.
November 9th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Walker
Humor and the hard boiled school go together, and have from the start. There is certainly a rough humor to Carroll John Daly’s work, to Hammett, and to Gardner. Much of it is that American voice I mentioned which comes out of Twain, Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Hemingway (and of course the dime novel), and tends to be cynical, smart aleck, self deprecating, and wry and more than a little defensive about the romanticism at its roots.
In fact it is amazing how many hard boiled novels start out in a largely humorous tone from Hammett’s Op talking about ‘Poisonville’ to Marlowe’s first encounter with Moose Malloy. That and the wise cracking tone virtually define the genre until Spillane turned things a bit grimmer (and there is humor in even his darkest books).
The screwball school was filled with these wisecracking tough guys — Bill Crane, Hank Heyer, Daffy Dill, Lester Leith, Cellini Smith, Dan Turner, Rex McBride to name a few. And you need only watch movies and television to see their cultural impact. All those wise cracking cops on television today are there direct descendants, much as Monk was just a variation — albeit a clever one — on the defective detective from the pulps.
November 10th, 2010 at 4:11 am
One question I forgot to answer, sadly, no, Jean Bruce’s OSS 117 novels are not the droll comic masterpieces the recent films have been. They are well done but standard serie noire material in the vein of Peter Cheyney for the most part. They aren’t even as humorous as Ian Fleming or Cheyney’s Lemme Caution or Slim Callaghan. They aren’t bad tough guy secret agent books, but they aren’t sly commentary on the whole Eurospy film genre like the recent films.
However, the San Antonio series and Delacorta’s books about Serge Gorosh as well as Leo Malet’s private eye Nestor Burma are all humorous to some extent. San Antonio borders on the surreal, and it is only a shame the clever puns and plays on words don’t always translate into English intact.
Nestor Burma is a somewhat more cynically French and grounded Philip Marlowe, and Delacorta’s tales of Serge Gorosh and the fourteen year old hustler Alba who travels with him are well worth reading.
For a taste of Delacorta rent the wonderful film version of DIVA, which captures the style and appeal of the books perfectly. Luckily most of his books were translated into English and published in fairly easy to find hardcover and paperback editions. Several Nestor Burma books are available in English too, but both they and the Jacques Tardi graphic novels are generally more expensive.
Delacorta, Daniel Odier, taught for a while at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and was a fairly respected poet. Frederic Dard, who wrote the San Antonio books (as San Antonio) was a respected surrealist writer — the San Antonio series continues by Dard’s family (as does the OSS 117 series by Bruce’s family)and though it is not available in English or even with subtitles you might still enjoy the recent film SAN ANTONIO co-starring Gerard Depardieu as San An’s fat stupid cop friend. You really don’t need French to follow the plot about the President of France being kidnapped off the toliet in the Presidential palace and the complications while seeking him out.
November 10th, 2010 at 7:28 am
I’m not at all surprised that David didn’t find Ross H. Spencer’s books hilarious. See Walker’s first line above.
I always knew the Spencer books were very silly and in fact the humor could be characterized by the less kind as “stupid.”
But then I’ve always admitted to liking a certain brand of ‘stupid’ humor and I found the Chance Perdue books amusing, though with diminishing returns as the series went along.
I still do have the signed and inscribed books sitting on my shelf.
Avallone is another story. I got along well with Mike personally but he had a nasty streak that made some of his behavior very unfunny indeed.
November 10th, 2010 at 8:47 am
Concerning Mike Avallone’s nasty streak that Jeff mentions above, I know what he is referring to because every now and then Mike would lose it when we would start talking about an author who Mike felt was unworthy of attention. During the last years of his life, occurring sometime in the 1980’s, Mike’s paperback markets all dried up or disappeared. Instead of being “the fastest typewriter in the East” as he laughingly referred to himself, he became the invisible man.
To go from publishing all sorts of fiction in over 200 books, to all of a sudden being unpublishable, hurt him deeply and he was bitter over the change in his fortunes. I’m not sure of the true story, but Mike told me that the main problem was he that kept questioning sales figures and royalties. This attitude angered editors and publishers and he was blackballed. This may be true especially since Mike was less than diplomatic.
But I have another theory which simply rests on the fact that he got older and lost the ability to write for the paperback market. Just about all writers eventually get old and lose it. In fact many writers do their very best work as young men or early in their career. Often their later work is far inferior. A good example of this is Ernest Hemingway who wrote excellent fiction as a young man but his later work, except for THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, lacked something.
And howabout Hammett, who basically shut down for decades after writing his great work for BLACK MASK in the twenties. And even Chandler who started late in life, really headed down the wrong path with Marlowe being married in POODLE SPRINGS, which he never finished.
Of course there are exceptions but I believe the world finally just passed Mike by and he was left behind in the writing game.
November 10th, 2010 at 11:25 am
The sad thing about Mike Avallone, was that while he had some success he never wrote the kinds of books that recieved critical attention or recognition. For those of us who sought him out and appreciated what he did we can be grateful to have had so much of his work, but I do wish for his own sake he had gotten a little more of the attention he deserved outside of that small group of admirers.
It’s not unusual for any artist in any field to turn bitter under those circumstances, and it is always perilous for fans when meeting heroes to find out they are just human beings with follies and foolishness like the rest of us.
I was once on a panel with cartoonist Burne Hogarth (the classic Tarzan comic strip and a legendary art instructor and illustrator) discussing science fiction (they were short a man so I ended up on the podium with Harlan Ellison, Hogarth, and Bill Gaines), and Hogarth proved to be an awful bore refusing to let anyone discuss anything but Karel Capek’s RUR. Still we all kept in mind who he was and despite an annoyed audience we talked about RUR and Capek. Sometimes you have to bury your ego and pay respect to the talent. If Gaines and Ellison could I certainly didn’t have any reason to carp. In retrospect I’m prouder of the fact we let Hogarth go on about RUR than if we had shut him out to talk about STAR TREK as the audience would have prefered.
There is certainly some truth in Walker’s hypothesis about age and writers though as he admits there are exceptions (Robertson Davies comes to mind), and in fairness Raymond Chandler didn’t start until he was 45 — hardly a young man. And in Hemingway’s, Chandler’s, and Hammett’s case lifestyle and inordinate amounts of booze likely had as much to do with decline as age. Pickled isn’t the most productive state for a creative mind.
We forget that Rex Stout was 40 when he created Nero Wolfe. Berkeley Gray was 50 (and had already written over six million words for Sexton Blake and related sagas) when he began the Norman Conquest series that would run another thirty years (and with little decline near the end). Ian Fleming was 43 when he wrote the first Bond novel. The late work of Mickey Spillane lost some of the early savagery but showed grace and maturity. Iris Murdoch and Ross Macdonald even turned out pretty good last volumes while suffering the onset of Alzheimers. Margery Allingham was still innovating and going in new directions with Albert Campion very late in her career, and if not at their best, Ngaio Marsh and Micheal Innes still wrote some hightly readable work at the end.
I’m not sure, but isn’t P.D. James 90? I haven’t read the latest Dalgliesh, but I don’t recall the reviews having anything bad to say about them. John le Carre just wrote one of his best recieved books in years, after a pair of (relative) clunkers, and I’ve heard some buzz about Frederick Forsyth’s upcoming book. Wilbur Smith’s most recent novel showed no slow down or drop off, and was actually one of his better recent efforts. The late Jack Williamson began writing for Hugo Gernzback and when he died in this century he was still publishing respected and well recieved fiction in a field that has always been considered a young writers field. The equivalent would have been someone who began writing on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo and was still writing successfully into the first decade of the twentieth century.
Health, lifestyle, and mental state have a good deal to do with it — that and if the individiual is writing because he still loves it or only because he has to pay the bills. I’m not sure there is a hard and fast rule, because for every example I can think of where a writer declined with age I can think of another who ripened or sustained his career so long as his health remained.
November 10th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for some new tips.
I only know of Michael Avallone because he wrote one of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels, and I really liked it.
Colin Watson was a very witty writer.
I am intrigued to find that some of the San Antonio novels have been translated into English. Although I read French pretty well, I find the colloquialisms and slang almost impenetrable. This is annoying because from what I have managed to read, his books are right up my street.
I hope I can mange to subscribe to this blog on Google Reader because you guys obviously know a lot about crime fiction.
November 10th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Roddy
I don’t know anything about Google Reader, so whether you can subscribe to this blog or not, I can’t tell you. If not, simply bookmark the home page and come back every day. And I hope you will!
As for me, I learn something from every post, I kid you not, and it’s my blog.
— Steve
November 10th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I first met Mike Avallone in person in the early to mid 1970s, at a pulp convention that Donald Grant, I think, put on in Rhode Island, and we’d corresponded before that, probably as a subscriber to M*F in its very early days.
I think he was the guest of honor at that convention, but I’m not sure about that.
No matter. Like Jeff, he and I got along well in person, but sometimes it was like walking on eggshells, because he took offense if you expressed admiration for an author he was on the outs with, and over the years the list of such authors got longer and longer.
He could sure talk about mysteries, and movies and comics, though, and everything else under the sun, but I think movies were his greatest obsession. Conversations with him were often monologues!
But even when he was in his prime as a writer, I’m told by others, the manuscripts he turned in were a mess, and had to be edited in overtime to whip them into shape. This is hearsay only. I have no way of knowing myself, but I can picture what they’re saying, remembering the letters he sent me, typed with multiple crossouts and handwritten corrections up and down and across the page.
He could be charming and personable, a wonderful guy to sit down and talk to, but if you got on his wrong side, there probably wasn’t any going back.
I love his books, especially the Ed Noon ones. Works of art, no, but they are fun to read, and funny too, to get back to the subject matter of this post.
November 10th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Steve, I was at that convention but wasn’t it Hal Kinney, The Bookie, who put it on? The one I attended and met Mike Avallone for the first time had Mike and Ron Goulart as co-guests of honor. I remember the panel they were on and Mike was wary of Ron since he was competition. But he and I got off to a fine start. The whole weekend Mike drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes while I drank beer and ate potato chips. Ron Goulart and I knew each other already from the time in the sixties when I bought his pulps and praised THE HARDBOILED DICKS as one of the ground breaking pulp collections.
Mike would send me those crazy letters packed with jokes and crossed out words. If his book manuscripts were turned in looking like the letters to me, no wonder he was finished in the paperback field!
November 10th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Yes, you’re right. It was one of the first conventions that Hal put on. He put one on in Providence, and Donald Grant was involved with that one, but perhaps only for advice and assistance. Hal then put on one in Wethersfield, the next town over from me here in CT, and that may be the one I’m thinking of.
I’d forgotten that Ron Goulart was the other guest. I’d met Ron before, however, at a Lunacon or some other convention in downtown Manhattan. Used to see you at those also, complaining about the prices Howard Rogofsky was asking for his pulps. Prices which, of course, would be very tame today. (If I remember correctly, Howard was one the first who actually made a living at selling pulps and old comic books.)
November 10th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Ah, the great Avallone. Walker’s take on Michael’s market problems in later years is on the money.
I knew Av quite well for like 25 years and may be the only guy around who has two Ed Noon novels dedicated to him. The cat could talk, yeah. I remember one visit to his home, sitting in his office listening to him going full tilt, while his wife, the also dearly departed and lamented Fran, periodically shouted up at him from the kitchen, “Michael, shut up and listen!” Her admonitions were mostly unheeded but I didn’t mind because I went to school reading Avallone (along with all of the other hardboiled 50s guys.)
Nearly all of Mike’s 50s stuff still entertains in that hardboiled screwball way of Prather and Carter Brown, and though the hits began to give way to the misses as the years progressed, there remains a handful of goodies from each decade of his career.
Anyway, Walker, you and I may not agree on Daly but bless your pulpy heart for giving the old tiger comfort and a good time during those difficult days.
Oh, a last note. I once wrote a story as a sort of letter of admonishment to Mike about his lapses into bad behavior (“The King of Horror,” in MURDER IS MY BUSINESS, edited by Spillane and Collins, Dutton 1994). I named the writer Rigley Balbo and, especially after Jon L. Breen brought the similarity to everyone’s attention in EQMM, I waited to get my ass royally chewed, having been too chickenshit to tell Michael that the story was coming out. When I heard from him about it, he’d moved to LA and the return address on the envelope was Rigley Balbo. He always called that story my love letter to him, and he was right.
He was one of a kind.
November 10th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Two of my top ten favorite authors (Ross H. Spencer and Jasper Fforde) have that sense of a cult following or better put you are either huge fans or wonder what we fans are smoking.
Thanks for the answer about Jean Bruce’s OSS 117 book series.
Certainly there is an endless list of screwball mystery writers. Doesn’t “Screwball Mysteries” sound like a title for a Ron Goulart book? There are more than enough starting with dime novels Harlan Halsey to today’s Paco Ignacio Taibo II (The Uncomfortable Dead). Maybe Otto Penzler needs a laugh after all those noir, Black Mask, thrillers collections he has been doing.
November 10th, 2010 at 11:55 pm
First I envy you guys getting to know Avallone — some personality glitches are a small enough price to pay to knowing someone that unique and colorful.
I wonder if he could even get published today? Editors expect your copy to arrive virtually typeset in the current market.
Roddy
There were about six American paperbacks of San Antonio books from Paperback Library (with footnotes to explain some of the French puns and wordplay) and a few more British paperbacks and hardcovers. Of course the series that has run from 1948 to now runs to hundreds of titles, television, movies, and comics. You can find the offical site for the series with covers from the history of the series with a Google search once you get past all the tourist sites for the city of San Antonio.
You can find the recent movie SAN ANTONIO fairly easily and it will play on any American DVD player though there are no English subtitles — they aren’t really needed as you can follow the plot and the fun with no French at all.
And I don’t think anyone, even the French, get all the puns and word play in the books. They can be elaborate and darn near require a dictionary of French slang at hand.
Michael
I agree about fforde, and never got on the Spencer bandwagon, but have no problem with anyone liking anything. It’s just that for me the joke got old fast.
Hmmm, a screwball mystery anthology — and by Ron Goulart — or maybe Bill Pronzini. From your lips to their ears. Although I think Otto would point out the screwball school is well represented in his pulp anthologies. It almost has to be with so many of the major writers working in that field.
Sadly, some of the best of the screwball school was done in novel form by writers who didn’t do shorts (or do many of them) — Latimer, Homes, Kurt Steel, Adams … Anyone who doesn’t know Kurt Steel’s Hank Heyer series has some great fun in store.
November 11th, 2010 at 12:41 am
Speaking of Ron Goulart, which we have a couple of times now, it has finally dawned on me that no one’s mentioned his Groucho Marx mysteries — though David, you did include A Graveyard of My Own in your second flock of fifty funny felonies, back in the original post.
Anthology-wise, Richard Prather put together an anthology of comic (if not screwball) crime shorts, THE COMFORTABLE COFFIN, back in 1960.
Here’s a list of the stories that are in it:
The Bottled Wife (Michael Fessier)
A Coffin for Mr. Cash (Robert Arthur)
The Faith Of Aaron Menefee (Stanley Ellin)
My Queer Dean! My Queer Dean! (Ellery Queen)
Your Cake And Eat It (Berkley Mather)
Squeakie’s Second Case (Margaret Manners)
First Man At The Funeral (Dion Henderson)
The Strange Case Of Mr. Elsie Smith (Dana Lyon)
The Live Ones (Richard S. Prather)
The Gentleman Caller (Veronica Parker Johns)
Mr. Portway’s Practice (Michael Gilbert)
Fin de Siecle (William O’Farrell)
Kiss Me, Dudley (Evan Hunter)
To Strike A Match (Erle Stanley Gardner)
It Wouldn’t Be Fair (Jack Finney).
I’m sure we could do better than these, very few of which are familiar to me, even though they may be ROTFL funny. (This may have been an MWA anthology, which if so, would have restricted the choice of contributors.)
And I imagine there have been other humorous crime anthologies; it’s late at night, and nothing concrete is coming to me.
November 11th, 2010 at 2:33 am
Fred Dannay would often go out of his way to include at least one humorous short in many of his anthologies, though off hand I can’t think of any anthologies devoted specifically to humor other than THE DEFECTIVE DETECTIVE, a slim volume (not to be confused with the Bowling Greeen pulp collection of that name) more devoted to parody than humorous stories (Woody Allen, S.J. Perlman).
The closest thing I can think of is ELLERY QUEEN’S ROGUES GALLERY, devoted to tales of crooks and con-men. A preponderence of the stories in that one fall into the humor category.
Of course there are short collections like Rice and Palmer’s THE PEOPLE VS WITHERS AND MALONE, but thats a bit different. What is needed is one of those big thick anthologies of humorous detective stories from Poe’s “Thou Art The Man” on. There is at least one Norbert Davis Doan and Carstairs short, there is even a Mr. and Mrs. North short, and Hammett’s screen story for ANOTHER THIN MAN. Bob Fish would have to be in there, and Ron Goulart, Stanley Ellin and Roald Dahl, John Kendrick Bangs, Jacob Hay, John Collier, Fred Brown, James Powell, Rice and Palmer, a Psmith tale perhaps, one of Dornford Yates Berry tales, Richard Sale’s Daffy Dill, a Lester Leith … Darn, sounds like a good anthology already.
I’ll even throw in the title: YOU COULD DIE LAUGHING …
November 11th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
At 03:13 PM 11/11/2010, you wrote:
I asked Bill Pronzini if there were any comic crime mysteries he could think of. Here’s his reply.:
“In addition to Prather’s COMFORTABLE COFFIN, I can think of one other anthology of humorous crime stories: THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF COMIC CRIME, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Carroll & Graf, 2002), which has 580 pages of mostly first-rate stories by the likes of Mark Twain, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Peter Lovesey, Elizabeth Peters, and Simon Brett. There may be one or two others as well, but if so, my porous memory refuses to call them up.”
My response:
Talk about porous memories. Phooey on me. I bought this book remaindered at Borders about a month ago. Maybe I buy too many books?
If anyone reading this does decide to put together another one, here’s a title of my own: STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME, though I suppose it’s been used somewhere before by someone for something else.
Thanks, Bill!
November 11th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Contents of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF COMIC CRIME:
My Mother Was a Bank Robber · Nicholas Blincoe
Liz Peters, PI · Elizabeth Peters
A Double-Barreled Detective Story · Mark Twain
The Pomeranian Poisoning · Peter Lovesey
The Man Who Shot Kennedy
Here Comes Santa Claus [Nameless private eye] · Bill Pronzini
The Strange Tale of Hector’s Angel · Mike Phillips
Chapter the Last: Merriman Explains · Alex Atkinson
The Lion of Draksville · Julian Rathbone
The Absolute and Utter Impossibility of the Facts in the Case of the Vanishing of Henning Vok · Jack Adrian
The Great Detective [Sherlock Holmes] · Peter Guttridge
Smeltdown · Mike Ripley
Taking Care of Frank · Antony Mann
And the Buttocks Gleamed by Night · Mat Coward
The Last Snow-Flake in Texas · Liz Evans
A Sort of Miss Marple? · H. R. F. Keating
The Story-Bag · Philip Gooden
Slaughter in the Strand · Keith Miles
The Chicken · Jürgen Ehlers
The Postman Only Rings When He Can Be Bothered · Peter Guttridge
Father Brown in Muncie, Indiana · Ruth Dudley Edwards
Tickled to Death · Simon Brett
The Dettweiler Solution · Lawrence Block
Big Survivor · Peter T. Garratt
Dr Bud, CA · Michael Z. Lewin
Malice in Blunderland · Kevin Goldstein-Jackson
Driving Forces · Carol Anne Davis
Hopper and Pink · Barry Fantoni
Where Do You Find Your Ideas? · Martin Edwards
Death by a Thousand Cuts · Rebecca Tope
The Trouble and Strife [Insp. Sloan] · Catherine Aird
Brotherly Love [Angel] · Mike Ripley
An Acquaintance with Mr. Collins · Sarah Caudwell
Come Again? · Donald E. Westlake
Cry Wolf · Hilary Bonner
“It’s Clever, But Is It Art?†· M. J. Trow
One for the Monet [Johnny One-Eye] · David Stuart Davies
Who Killed Pyramus? · Amy Myers · ss
The Hampstead Vegetable Heist · Mat Coward
The Eleventh Labour · David Wishart
The Stolen White Elephant · Mark Twain
Bampot Central · Christopher Brookmyre
November 11th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Seeing Mike Ripley’s name twice in the list of contributors above reminded me that one of England’s funniest crime fiction writers has not been mentioned before, and it’s about time.
There are 15 books in his “Angel” series, of which only 2 or 3 may have published over here, which goes a long way in explaining his general lack of notoriety in this country.
Which reminded me in turn of the CWA “Last Dagger Award,” which Mr. Ripley (and Angel) won twice in the short period of its existence.
From http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/lastlaugh.html:
THE LAST LAUGH DAGGER
Between 1988 and 1996, the CWA presented an award for the year’s best humorous crime novel; this was initially known as The Punch Award, but subsequently changed to the Last Laugh Dagger
Winners
1996: Two For The Dough – Janet Evanovich
1995: Sunburn – Laurence Shame
1994: The Villain of the Earth – Simon Shaw
1993: The Mamur Zapt and The Spoils of Egypt – Michael Pearce
1992: Native Tongue – Carl Hiaasen
1991: Angels in Arms – Mike Ripley
1990: Killer Cinderella – Simon Shaw
1989: Angel Touch – Mike Ripley
1988: Death in a Distant Land – Nancy Livingston
November 11th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Every time I post I think of a few I forgot.
1986 MWA Anthology “Last Laugh” edited by Gregory Mcdonald
Grief Counselor by Julie Smith
Kindly Dig Your Grave by Stanley Ellin
The Nine Best Movies by Gregory Mcdonald
I Do Not Like Thee, Dr. Feldman by Henry Slesar
The Most Dangerous Man by Edward D. Hoch
The Last Meeting of the Butlers Club by Jeffrey Bush
Sidney, Seth, and S.A.M. by Charles R. McConnell
You Drive, Dear by Fred S. Tobey
The Problem of Li T’ang by Jeffrey Bush
Hizzoner’s Water Supply by Gerald Tomlinson
Light Fingers by Henry Slesar
It’s All a Matter of Luck by Tonita S. Gardner
Providence Will Provide by Thelma C. Sokoloff
Dogbane by Frank Sisk
There is the website Stop,You’re Killing Me that lists all the Lefty Awards and as Humorous Mysteries as a genre in there genre index.
I wonder what the next few comments will remind me I have forgotten to mention?
November 12th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Thanks, Michael. LAST LAUGH is a book I know I don’t have, and I don’t think I ever knew about it. Onto the want list it goes!
November 12th, 2010 at 1:11 am
I notice these anthologies tend to be mostly new material (or newer) with a few exceptions. Not a complaint, just an observation. But it would be nice to see some of the humorous stories from the past collected together in a nice fat book by someone capable of doing informative and witty introductions to the tales. Hopefully one of the better anthologists is listening.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
David, Comment #21
Yes, I think we got away from the hardboiled screwball mysteries so common in the pulps, didn’t we? Mostly, I’m sure, because there must never have been one. Our loss, so far.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Aside from providing me with a truly insurmountable shopping list …
And did anyone mention ‘Emma Lathen’s’ satirical Wall Street mysteries from the 60s and 70s …
Well, anyway, the real reason I’m writing is to mention my favorite STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME.
It’s a Warner Bros remake of A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER, with Broderick Crawford in Edward G. Robinson’s old role.
What I mainly remember about it is …
Broderick Crawford sings.
A duet with Claire Trevor.
“You’re My Ever-Lovin'”.
And he’s not bad.
(And while I can’t say for certain, I don’t think they used a ghost-singer.)
Rest of the movie is so-so, but if it turns up on cable, I love to hear that song.
Thanks for the lists.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Mike Doran, Comment #22
A quick search of the usual sources hasn’t yet turned up a copy of the movie for sale, bootleg or not, but I imagine it’s out there. I’ll add it to my own shopping list. It’s just going to take a little more effort than usual, but your description of it makes it sound as though it’s worth it.
— Steve
PS. You’re welcome!
November 12th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
What I’d like to read is the comedy mystery book version of Otto Penzler’s “The Lineup”.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Michael, Re my Comment #25, I see you beat me to the idea with your Comment #23. It might be wishful thinking, but maybe someday Otto will start thinking along the lines we’re talking about. Given his stated antipathy to cozy mysteries, I don’t think that cutesy comic stories will cut it for him, but maybe the hardboiled screwball type will.
November 13th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Mike
Ironically Broderick Crawford is in LARCENY INC. with Edward G. Robinson — making him even more of a natural for the remake of Damon Runyon’s SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER — likely trying to capitalise in his role in BORN YESTERDAY.
As Mike says, the remake is mostly so-so save for that duet, and I think it was Crawford singing. Crawford also exersized his comedic muscles in two entertaining films, SLIGHTLY HONORABLE with Pat O’Brien and RUNAWAY, the latter a bright variation on IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT with Crawford and Rod Cameron feuding private eyes vying with each other and the agency that they once worked for (run by Albert Dekker I think) to return a runaway heiress.
Emma Lathen almost made the list, but in the end I bumped her because I couldn’t decide on just one title over the others — admittedly an unfair reason if there ever was one. She’s another example of a perfect blend of the mystery and humor elements.
Finally, re the admittedly humorous cozy school that is so predominant today, my problem in genreral is that while they are very often funny, they aren’t always equally mysteries, or at least the comedy and whimsey seems to overwhelm the mystery.
Admittedly a few titles on my list played fast and loose with the mystery element, but the ones that did tended to be thrillers or suspense novels and not mystery per se. The legitimate mysteries on the list tended to be ones where the two elements were not only blended, but balanced, which was why I left off things like John Kendrick Bangs MRS. RAFFLES or RAFFLES HOLMES.
There used to be quite a few in the category of humorous mystery, writers who weren’t always humorous, but often enough. The married with murder school alone had the Lockridge’s and the Norths, the Duluth’s, The Troy’s, Thomas Dewey’s Pete Schoenfeild and his wife, Powell.s Arab and Andy Blake, Johnny Marshall and his wife, and that was just one sub genre.
The screwball school of the hard boiled mystery was still going in the 90’s, though it doesn’t seem as active today since the cozy has pushed the private eye to one side for now, but I have faith we are never more than one smart crack away from a revival.
November 13th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
[…] commenting on “Fifty Funny Felonies” by David Vineyard on a post for November 9, 2010, several readers started to talk about Mike […]
November 15th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Quick addendum:
The first Emma Lathen I read was MURDER AGAINST THE GRAIN, set against a US-Soviet grain trade treaty. The cold open, a string of news stories from around the world, was spot-on. Best of all was a Soviet commissar’s encounter with a group of late-60s leftists who
were farther left than he was.
I also loved MURDER MAKES THE WHEELS GO ROUND (the auto industry), as well as “R. B. Dominic”‘s THERE IS NO JUSTICE (Supreme court nominanation goes awry).
I wish some of these were still in print …