DANA CHAMBERS – Rope for an Ape

Jonathan Press Mystery J63; digest-sized paperback; no date stated, but circa 1951. Hardcover edition: The Dial Press, 1947. Previous paperback edition: Bestseller Mystery B-103; abridged; no date stated, but circa 1948.

   Jonathan Press and Bestseller Mysteries were each published by the same company, which was essentially Mercury Press, with Lawrence E. Spivak the actual publisher. Back in the 1940s Mercury Press also published Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, to set a frame of reference, perhaps. I have no idea why this particular book by Dana Chambers was so popular that they did it twice. The books they reprinted are not considered very collectible, since more often than not, many of them were abridged. In this case I read the uncondensed version, and I’m sure I’m far better off for having done so.

   Since Dana Chambers is all but a brand new author for me, you’ll have to indulge me. Let me check in with Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV to see what other mysteries he might have written:

CHAMBERS, DANA; pseudonym of Albert Leffingwell, (1895-1966); other pseudonym Giles Jackson

LEFFINGWELL, ALBERT (1895-1946); see pseudonyms Dana Chambers & Giles Jackson

JACKSON, GILES; pseudonym of Albert Leffingwell, (1895-1946); other pseudonym Dana Chambers

   There’s a year of death discrepancy there, I see, but I suspect that 1966 is the one that’s wrong, and that it was really 1946 when he died. If so, that would mean both that Leffingwell died young and that the book in hand was published posthumously. If and when I learn more, I’ll let you know.

   While I have some of the books listed above, I’m almost positive that Rope for an Ape is the first one of them I’ve read. As for who Jim Steele was, I admit I have to cheat and tell you what Bill Crider had to say about him on his blog, where he recently reviewed The Blonde Died First:

   So Jim Steele is a radio writer, is he? Then what’s he doing being listed on Kevin Burton Smith’s master list of private detectives on his Thrilling Detective website? Acting like a PI in all his stories, as a wild and probably not-so-far-off-the-mark guess.

   Jim Steele’s not in this one. Suffice it to say for now that the detective of record is a fellow named Nile Boyd, he has a girl friend named Anna Warriner, and I’ll say more about both of them more in a minute. First, though, what caught my eye was a short sentence on page 65 of this edition to the effect that he and Anne were involved in a case very much like this one “up in Connecticut a while back.” Aha! Here’s a series character appearance that Al Hubin didn’t know about before – see the pair of books written by Chambers as by Giles Jackson listed up there not too long ago.

   Boyd works for the New York Clarion, and now that the war has ended, he’s back from overseas as a war correspondent. Anne, who works for the same newspaper, is nearly twenty years younger than he, and since he’s now on the East Coast and she’s in California visiting her mother, and maybe having a good time out there as well, he’s beginning to worry about how strong the attraction he has on her may actually be.

   He needn’t worry too much, only just a little, as it turns out. As far as the detective puzzle is concerned, the one that Boyd soon finds himself in the middle of, this is one of those wealthy “upper crust affairs” that are the equivalent of the British manor house mysteries that were so common back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. A well-to-do family is hosting a slew of guests over a long weekend, the only problem being that some of them starting to turn up dead.

   The chief suspect, and a huge negative as far as I was concerned, is a giant ape who has recently escaped from a circus train which derailed nearby. Forget that. I’ve heard too many bad radio shows and watched too many equally bad B-movies that’ve been based on this same old plot gimmick, which was tired and worn out even the first time.

   But the killer is all too human, as it turns out, and it takes all of Nile Boyd’s ingenuity to nab him. And all the while he’s doing so, with Anne’s assistance eventually, there is plenty of witty upscale dialogue to keep the reader amused on a fulltime basis – at least this one was – and as usual in novels like this, particularly in the beginning, everyone is drunk, was drunk or is about to get drunk. Well, yes, perhaps I am exaggerating, but maybe that’s because I am getting a little high on the fumes myself. (Never touch the stuff otherwise.)

   The case eventually turns to the tough, though, what with guns and blows to the head (Boyd’s) and a small amount of generally restrained violence such as that. After the second murder, it begins to dawn on everyone that they’re not playing fun and games any more. Nonetheless, this is a fairly-clued detective puzzle, with a long explanation at the end, with all of usual trappings.

   Something for everyone, you might say. An unusual mix, and maybe the book suffers a little for it, but if you ever come across a used copy and want my advice, I think you might take at least a second scan through it before saying Yay or Nay.

[UPDATE] 04-18-07.    S. B. has asked me about the cover of the paperback edition. “Is that what I think I see?”   Yes, indeed. If you think you see a man sitting in a bathtub with a gun in his hand, that it is exactly what it is. Is the scene in the book?   Yes, indeed again. What you see is what you get.

[UPDATE] Later on 04-18-07. I’ve just received a pair of email messages from Victor Berch, who says in the first one:

    The second is a copy of Leffingwell’s obituary notice taken from The New York Times for August 15, 1946, so the year of death stated for him as Dana Chambers is the one that’s wrong, as suspected. Leffingwell, aged 51, was a former advertising executive who lived in Scarsdale NY at the time of his death, which occurred after a few months’ illness. He founded his own advertising agency, Olmstead, Perrin & Leffinwell, in 1925, the Times goes on to say, before turning to writing. It isn’t clear from the obituary whether he was ever a writer on a full-time basis or not.

   On page 11 of the June 8-14, 2006, online edition of the Canadian newspaper The Express is a bittersweet article about author Rachel Kimor-Paine and the release of her first mystery novel, Death Under Glass, published by Killick Press. Between the time she finished the manuscript and the book itself was delivered to her door, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

   And on February 1st of this year, as reported by The Gumshoe Site earlier this month, Ms. Kimor-Paine lost her two-year battle with the disease. She was 55. The manuscript of a second book in the series, Death in the Tai Chi Retreat, is said to be in the hands of her publisher.

   Death Under Glass introduces as a series character Olga Erdos, a retired lawyer from Budapest now living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The murder of a high society woman (and real estate agent) who is poisoned with pesticide is the first of several deaths and suspicious accidents that she must solve.

   The following is excerpted from the short biography of her as posted on her publisher’s website:

   A longer tribute to Rachel Kimor-Paine, including much more information about her very interesting life, can be found in the online edition of The Globe and Mail.

RICHARD BURKE – The Frightened Pigeon

Unicorn Mystery Book Club; hardcover reprint, June 1946. First Edition: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944. Paperback reprint: Dell 204, mapback edition, 1947.

   When Victor Berch, Bill Pronzini and I did our annotated bibliography of the Ziff Davis line of Fingerprint Mysteries , we included a short profile of Richard Burke, which of course you should go read. Many of his books, we said, involved a Broadway private detective named Quinny Hite, but as it happens, this is not one of them. In fact The Frightened Pigeon takes the reader to another part of the world and (one imagines) another kind of mystery altogether.

   But first a word on the cover that’s shown, though, before getting down to details. This is, of course, the Dell mapback edition that’s mentioned above, and in case you can’t make out the details, the map on the back below is that of the city of Marseilles, which is where the last eighty percent of the story takes place.

   The setting of the first fifty pages is Paris, 1942, with the Germans solidly in control of the city. An American dancer named Valerie Bright is still there, however — the pigeon of the title –- and very determined to stay non-political. From page 8, of the Unicorn edition:

   Her close male friend, Charles John Dillon, nicknamed “Ching,” is working closely with the French underground, however, and events, beginning with a stolen German diary, bound to be embarrassing if it falls into the wrong hands — as, for example, into Ching’s hands — soon make the light-hearted Val realize how dirty — and dangerous — war really is, not knowing what will happen next nor whom your friends really are. By page 40, she is one frightened pigeon indeed, as off to Marseilles they and a small group of displaced others go, hoping to find a way out of France and its closed borders.

   The diary appears and disappears with amazing regularity. It is, in fact, amazing, how much mileage an author (Burke) can make of one small important object. Otherwise here is a novel one can learn a large amount from — supposing, that is, that one has never been in a place controlled by Nazi-like enemies one is trying his or her best to avoid — both in term of locale (well-described) and people, especially those like Valerie, whose mind is soon brought down to earth in satisfying (but not very surprising) fashion, but also the large number of others who find themselves caught up in events far beyond their say.

   Don’t get me wrong. This is by no means a major work. It’s no more than ordinary at best, in the overall scheme of things, but what it does have is atmosphere, and plenty of it.

  Dear Steve,

   Someone sent me your review of my long lost book Dreamboat. I write to say that you are correct that the Flippo series is packed up and put away, and that I remain at the Dallas Morning News as a reporter and editor. You were too kind to Dreamboat, I thought. I wrote it in a tremendous hurry, and never liked it. But thanks, anyway.

   Writing crime novels started out as a hobby, then became a part-time job, then a burden. The books weren’t making enough money for me to quit my newspaper gig, and after number five all the pleasure had drained away. So I stopped writing for a few years.

   About a year ago I started writing again, but once again as a leisure-time activity. The new book is a one-off suspense that bears little resemblance to the previous five. Don’t know if I’ll ever finish it..

   It was a fun ride for a while, but you’re right: it didn’t last long. Long enough, though. I had a good time while it lasted.

>>   Thanks for writing, Doug, and best wishes in return on getting that new novel finished!    — Steve

   Jill McGown, best known as the author of a series of thirteen British police procedurals starring Chief Inspector Lloyd and Sergeant Judy Hill (later also Chief Inspector, and Lloyd’s wife) died last Friday, April 6th, after a long illness. This according to a statement recently posted on her website.

   She was 59 at the time of her death.

   Also on the website is a lengthy autobiography, where among many photos and details about growing up in Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland, she says: “Campbeltown is on the Mull of Kintyre, made famous by Paul McCartney and Wings, and I knew the piper who plays the solo on the record, so there!”

   Also of interest, she says in passing: “From junior school, I went to Corby Grammar School, where I was taught Latin by Colin Dexter who went on to write the Morse books, though I didn’t know that when I wrote my first book.”

   Her detective stories bridge the gap between the meticulously plotted stories of the 1930s and 1940s Golden Age of mysteries, and the psychological crime stories of the 1950s, suggests one source. Not only do Ms. McGown’s series characters, Lloyd and Judy Hill solve the most deviously twisted crimes together, but they’re also lovers, their slow-moving romance part of the reason readers kept returning for the next installment.

   Excerpted from an online interview with Jill McGown:

How do you start your novels – do you have a character, plot, ending or title first?

   I start with a character, almost always. I then rummage in my mental plot drawer for a plot that might fit this character. My ‘plots’, if you can call them that, are minimalist to say the least, so that bit isn’t difficult. With Redemption, for instance, it was simply a joke someone told me.

   The character of the vicar came into my mind one night, complete with a daughter who had an abusive husband. I thought about the vicar and his family for a little while, and then saw how they could fit my ‘joke’ plot.

   The complexity comes as I write, and is dictated by the characters as they are revealed to me. The plot will always give way to the characters, so even I don’t always know how the story will end.

   The title usually emerges during the writing, but sometimes it’s the very last thing I think about. And it often has to be changed.

If someone was going to read one of your novels – which one would you recommend they start with?

   The Lloyd and Hill novels are, of course, each complete in themselves, but there is a continuing story and the characters develop through each novel, so I would recommend starting with A Perfect Match, being the first one.

   This is not, however, essential — the back-story is sketched in each time. That in itself is quite a challenge — finding new ways to explain the set-up to readers requires some ingenuity!

BIBLIOGRAPHY, as expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

McGOWN, JILL (1947- 2007); see pseudonym Elizabeth Chaplin.

      Lloyd & Hill titles:

* A Perfect Match (n.) Macmillan 1983
* Redemption (n.) Macmillan 1988 [US title: Murder at the Old Vicarage]
* Death of a Dancer (n.) Macmillan 1989 [US title: Gone to Her Death]
* The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale (n.) Macmillan 1991
* The Other Woman (n.) Macmillan 1992
* Murder Now and Then (n.) Macmillan 1993
* A Shred of Evidence (n.) Macmillan 1995
* Verdict Unsafe (n.) Macmillan 1997
* Picture of Innocence (n.) Macmillan 1998
* Plots and Errors (n.) Macmillan 1999
* Scene of the Crime (n.) Macmillan 2001
* Births, Deaths and Marriages (n.) Macmillan 2002. [US title: Death in the Family]
* Unlucky For Some (n.) Macmillan 2004

      Standalones:

* Record of Sin (n.) Macmillan 1985
* An Evil Hour (n.) Macmillan 1986
* The Stalking Horse (n.) Macmillan 1987
* Murder Movie (n.) Macmillan 1990

CHAPLIN, ELIZABETH; pseudonym of Jill McGown

   A Shred of Evidence was the basis of a TV movie entitled Lloyd & Hill, starring Michelle Collins as DI Judy Hill, and Philip Glenister as DCI Danny Lloyd. According to Ms McGown, it was for this film that Lloyd gained a first name.

[UPDATE] 04-15-07. For another tribute to Jill McGown, Jeff Pierce has one he posted earlier on The Rap Sheet. It’s excellently done, as usual, and one you should most definitely read.

  Hi Steve,

   Another funny thing about my visit that I just remembered: I had an attache case full of Dime Detective and Black Mask pulps to have him autograph but I completely forgot to get his [Morton Wolson’s] signature! I’ve never been much of a collector of signed first editions and this incident proves that I have no interest in autographs. I just want to read the stories.

   Concerning the hero pulps, in 1969 I saw my first large group of hero pulps at Jack Irwin’s house. I had visited him to buy Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly and Weird Tales. I read and looked through a few pages of G-8, Doc Savage, The Shadow, etc. I still remember my puzzled reaction and question to Jack along the lines of: “But why are you reading and collecting children’s magazines?” I found the stories clearly unreadable and silly.

   He defended them along the lines of nostalgia which is OK, but to this day, I do not understand how adults can read these stories. That’s why I often engaged Harry Noble and my wife’s father in long conversations about the pulps that they and their friends read back in the 1930’s and 1940’s. I was curious as to pulps the adult working man really read. Because to read some of these recent articles, you would think that a lot of men read these poorly written, silly hero pulps. I guess some did read them, but according to my verbal research, the main readership of the hero pulps was definitely teenage boys.

   The teenage girls made the love pulps the biggest seller of all. If you really want to turn your brain into mush, try reading a love pulp. Talk about formula fiction! I read a few issues, and I still have not recovered from the experience. Every story had the same plot with a happy ending of course because that’s what the girls wanted in their romance fiction back in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. Boy meets girl, girl and boy have some troubles, things look bad for the romance, boy and girl resolve their problems, and live happily ever after.

   I only know of one collector that seriously collects the love pulps and I have to withhold his name to protect the innocent plus it would ruin his life and reputation if the news ever got out.

   As long back as I started to collect books I had as a habit to write to those authors I liked very much. After a while they were many of them and among the earlier ones was Colin Forbes , well known thriller writer from England. The first thriller by him was in fact Avalanche Express, which turned out to be a smashing movie some years later.

   Colin was kind enough to answer my letters and we were pen friends for many years before he wrote me a letter telling me he was going to visit Sweden ( Stockholm) in order to make research for his next thriller. Wow, how exciting! Hopefully I should meet him in person. Of course! Colin asked me if I wanted to help him with his research. To that it was only one answer – YES!

   Colin and his wife, Jane, should come for one week in June 1978 and we met the first day he was in Stockholm at his Swedish Publisher’s office. The Publisher invited us for a lunch and there were Colin, Jane and the publisher Bertil Käll and me, a captain in the Swedish Army. We had a nice – and very good tasting – typical Swedish lunch together and during it Colin informed me what he wanted for the research.

   The next morning I met Colin outside his hotel, Grand Hotel, in Stockholm and we started to have a typical Swedish breakfast. Then we started by car to my hometown Strängnäs, situated 70 km west of Stockholm. During the drive Colin gave me more details about the book and what help he wanted from me. First of all he wanted two things:

1.    First an exciting place where his hero should be involved in a fight and nearly killed
2.    The second thing he wanted to see was a typical Swedish forest with giant trees. He had heard we had trees being as high as 30 meters.

   I suggested a place, which I had visited many times and found very, very exciting. It was situated in the middle of a forest and had once been used for mining. Still there were many deep (I mean really deep) holes and the fence was gone many years ago. Some people used the holes to put their old cars in). Colin inspected the place carefully and he was very satisfied with the place I had chosen.

               Outside the Mälsåker’s Castle.

            Colin and I deep in the cellar vaults.

   On our way to my home we took a little extra driving and found a place with the kind of trees he wanted (so far I didn’t know why he wanted to find them). Colin was very satisfied with his first day on his research. We drove to my home and had some tea and Colin inspected my library and he was especially satisfied with my collection of signed books by so many famous authors. At that time I had around 15,000 mystery books (Mystery/Thrillers and Science Fiction plus non-fiction in the genre).

   We offered Colin and Jane to stay over night but they refused. Colin wanted to work on his book and wanted to be in his hotel then, which I respected of course. So I drove them back to Stockholm and their hotel.

   Before I left Colin asked me if I knew someone who knew Stockholm on his five fingers, as we say in Sweden. Of course I did and I phoned my old friend Henry Augustsson, a goldsmith in Stockholm, who was more than happy to be of help. He was also a keen book collector.

   Next day we were outside the hotel very early and our first goal was the Russian Embassy, situated in the middle of Stockholm. I parked my car (a Volvo Station wagon) outside the Embassy and took out a big (large?) map and put it on the car. It took only two minutes and a special guard, not from the Embassy, but from a Swedish guard company who have guards outside every embassy in Stockholm. The guard told us to leave at once but we told him we would not.

Henry and Colin outside the embassy.

   This is a common place where everyone who wanted it could stay or park his car. So we continued to study our map over Stockholm and make some notes and drawings when the guard disappeared. Henry, who knew what he was doing, told us he phoned the Swedish police. Before the police arrived we took our photos and waved goodbye to the guard – the “Dummy”, we called him.

   Our next stop was Djurgården (Animal garden, roughly translated), one of the most beautiful places in Stockholm with water, open places, parks and paths for walking etc. Colin wanted to find a luxury yacht for his book. And that was very easy to find here where the rich people in Stockholm had their yachts and big motorboats.

   Next stop was Kaknäs tower, a tower from where you could view the whole of Stockholm. I think it is around 60 meters height and on top there is a restaurant. Colin invited Henry and me for lunch. From the top we could see the Värta Harbour, from where the ferries to Finland go and were also most of the oils are placed. Colin asked Henry if it was possible for a big Russian fright boat to anchor there. The answer to that was YES and Colin was satisfied again.

   Next goal was Stockholm’s The Old Town (Gamla Stan) where he could look at all those very old houses, walk in the narrow streets and also have a look inside the yards of the houses. We talked to some people who lived there and they showed Colin the use of the key locks (the coded ones). He liked that and told us it should be in the book.

   Colin was very satisfied with his day and asked us if we would like to join him and Jane for dinner at Grand Hotel’s French Veranda (a glassed veranda), from where we could have a nice look over The Strömen (the water between Grand and the Royal Castle). Another YES, of course!

   This was Colin’s first visit to Stockholm, but not his last and later on I was to be invited to their home in England (Woking, Surrey).

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

FORBES, COLIN; pseudonym of Raymond H. Sawkins, (1923-2006); other pseudonyms Jay Bernard & Richard Raine (books)

SAWKINS, RAYMOND H(arold); see pseudonyms Jay Bernard, Colin Forbes & Richard Raine.

BERNARD, JAY; pseudonym of Raymond H. Sawkins; other pseudonyms Colin Forbes & Richard Raine

RAINE, RICHARD; pseudonym of Raymond H. Sawkins; other pseudonyms Jay Bernard & Colin Forbes

   Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84. In many ways, he was the Mark Twain of our time, and there are many other websites which will discuss his life, his writings, and his awards and accolades. What follows in this blog entry will be less an obituary, however, than a personal note or two about the author, no more or no less.

   Back in the mid-1960s, I responded to a poll in a science fiction fanzine which wished to know my Top Ten SF novels. I remember only my top two choices, Number One on my list being The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, which won the 1963 Hugo award for Best Novel of the Year.

   Number Two was Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Thinking about the book as soon as I heard the news last evening about Mr. Vonnegut’s death, I realized that besides being about the mysterious substance “ice-nine,” a dangerous alternative form of water, I no longer remember very much else about the book. I probably do not remember the details of very many other books I read 40 to 45 years ago, but no matter; this realization is jarring, and it means that I shall have to do something about that.

   From the Wikipedia page for Mr. Vonnegut, I have excerpted the following passage:

   That the author gave himself an “A plus” for Cat’s Cradle reassures me somewhat, that as a critic at the young age I was at the time, my judgment on a book’s worth was not entirely lacking.

   Very soon after writing Cat’s Cradle, Mr. Vonnegut declared himself not a science fiction writer, as I recall, nor (I suspect) did he ever consider himself to be a crime fiction writer. But one of his books, Mother Night (Gold Medal s1191, paperback original, 1962) is included in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   I have to confess that I’ve never read the book, and my records reveal that I do not even own a copy. Nor do I remember the movie made from it, a 1996 film starring Nick Nolte, Sheryl Lee and Alan Arkin. It seems to have come and gone having made impression on me whatsoever. Whether this was due to a limited release to a diminishing number of “art” theaters in the country, or my own lack of attention, I do not know, but once again, here is a situation that I see needs remedying.

   I’ve tried to understand the detailed synopsis of Mother Night which I found on Wikipedia, but perhaps Mr. Vonnegut’s are too complex to be summarized in a short detailed synopsis. Either you write a book about one of his books, or you try not at all. Or maybe you resort to only one line – this one, perhaps, from the IMDB page for the movie:

   One thing I’m sure of, or maybe it’s two. Mother Night was certainly not a typical Gold Medal book, nor was Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a typical American author.

LEANN SWEENEY – Shoot from the Lip

Signet, paperback original, January 2007.

   There are a few private detectives in the world of crime fiction that Kevin Burton Smith doesn’t (yet) know about, he of the Thrilling Detective website, which attempts to list ALL of them, and in all honesty, he pretty well succeeds. Case in point, though: He’s missing Houston-based Abby Rose, who’s in this book, her fourth case overall, the previous three being:

   Pick Your Poison. Signet, pbo, May 2004. Abby inherits her late father’s home and computer business along with her twin sister, Kate. When she investigates the murder of their gardener, she learns some truths about their true birth parents.

   A Wedding to Die For. Signet, pbo, January 2005. Independently wealthy, Abby has started her own business as a private investigator finding birth parents for adoptees. Her client is a bride-to-be who hires Abby to find her biological mother so she can be at her wedding, but a murder occurs at the reception instead.

   Dead Giveaway. Signet, pbo, November 2005. After Abby is hired by a 19 year old basketball star looking for his birth family, the woman who found him on her doorstep as an infant is murdered.

    In spite of all of the murders and the fact that Abby is a fully licensed PI, these are all “cozy” type mysteries, and so is the book in hand, Shoot from the Lip. Yellow Rose Investigations is the name on her business card. Her twin sister Kate, a psychiatrist, does the psychological assessments on any prospective clients, and with money in the bank, she can easily afford to turn down clients whose cases she doesn’t wish to take.

   Her client this time around is young Emmy Lopez, who’s been responsible for her three younger siblings ever since their mother died. An upcoming appearance on a TV reality show brings out the possibility that there was a fourth child Emmy never knew about and who may have been put up for adoption, either legally or (more likely) illegally.

   The story’s told in raw-boned but light-hearted Texas style, with lots of details of the two sisters’ various romances with their steady (and not so steady) boy friends, along with Abby’s continual references to her daddy, now gone but far from forgotten.

    Murders do occur in this book, which I have just realized that I have forgotten to mention, but unfortunately the detection involved is slim to none. Not only are Abby and her circle of family and friends relatively slow on the uptake when dangerous things begin to happen, but the killer makes the fatal flaw of simply hanging around too long. He or she is caught only by doing one evil deed after another, until eventually going too far, when at last the truth is revealed.

   Don’t get me completely wrong. For fans of low-keyed murder investigations, enhanced and enlivened by a crew of friendly folk who seem to come back book after book, they could do far worse than stay with Abby Rose, wherever her adventures may take her.

JOHN GALLIGAN – The Nail Knot

Worldwide; paperback reprint, October 2006. Trade paperback: Bleak House, May 2005.

   A “nail knot” is one of those clever devices that are used most often by fly fishermen, and as such it is something I knew nothing about before reading this book. (The last time I went fishing was with my grandfather when I was ten or so, when all we did was to drop our lines into water off a long pier jutting out into Lake Michigan. No casting abilities of any kind required. Nor did we catch anything, but why do I still remember the day, now well over fifty years ago?)

   The primary protagonist of The Nail Knot, a laid back sort of fellow who calls himself the Dog, is a fly fisherman, however, and I’ll get back to him in a minute.

   In the meantime, here is a short list of other mystery novels or series which I’ve just come up with in which fly fishing is a substantial component, in no particular order.

   There are probably others that I am not thinking of now. Please add others, if you can. This is the first of at least three books in John Galligan’s “Dog” series, but some research shows that he wais the author of one earlier mystery novel, Red Sky, Red Dragonfly, also published by Bleak House (in 2001), in which a hockey player from Wisconsin travels to Japan to teach English for a year and ends up being implicated in his predecessor’s disappearance.

   Subsequent and/or reportedly forthcoming follow-ups in John Galligan’s fly fishing series are:

   This is a long-range projection, and I suspect that some of these titles may turn out to be totally hypothetical. But assuming that you’re still with me, let’s take a look at the book in hand. As mentioned above, “the Dog” is how the leading character refers to himself — he tells the story, and on a strictly personal basis, it’s quite a story that has to tell.

   The Dog’s real name is Ned Oglivie, and he is what you might call a dropout from the human race, wandering across the country and checking out fishing spots as he goes. A nomadic fly fisherman without parallel, you might say. Until he reaches Black Earth, Wisconsin, that is, where it is that he finds a body along the edge of the creek that leading into (or out of) local Lake Bud. (You can see that even though it may be an important plot point, it didn’t make much of an impression on me.)

    He also finds The Woman, but not until she removes from the crime scene all of the evidence that (Dog later learns) points to her semi-senile father. But let the Dog describe the lady, from page 13:

   You can tell at once that the Dog is hooked. Her name is Melvina Racheletta O’Malley, or Junior for short, and the Dog discovers to his dismay that he cannot walk away when she asks him to help her in what she insists is a frame-up of her father, Mel.

    The dead man has only lately been a local, which first of all is not a good thing in rural Wisconsin, and secondly he had been an activist in trying to revive and save the fish in Lake Bud, which is also definitely not a good thing — activism, that is.

   The solution to the mystery depends greatly on who was able to tie a nail knot, and at what time. It wouldn’t have been a terribly difficult case to solve, if one had a protagonist who was a little more, shall we say, pro-active on the case — you soon get the feeling that if the Dog were any more low key than he is, he wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning — but then again meeting all of the local folk, some more local and inbred than others, and some not, would have been not nearly so much fun as this.

UPDATE. Quite coincidentally there has been a discussion of fly-fishing mysteries on DorothyL this past week (early November), in relation to a slightly different topic of “male cozies.” Here are a couple more mystery series that have been pointed out as belonging to the category, still small but obviously growing: