JAMES DALTON – City of Shadows.

Forge; paperback reprint, May 2002. Hardcover 1st edition: Forge, 2000.

   Historical mysteries are all the rage, and this qualifies as such, I think, in both of the possible ways, but only just barely. The late 1960s and early 70s were not that long ago. The era is certainly within my lifetime, if not my children’s (in any sense that they knew what was going on). And the crime, or at least the major one, was the one called a “third-rate burglary,” at least by some at the time.

   Watergate, that is, and all of the incidentals surrounding that particularly tumultuous moment in the country’s history. Beginning before then, and continuing on, woven solidly into the background of this hefty novel, was Viet Nam and the anti-war protests; Kent State; the assassination of Martin Luther King; Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters; Richard Nixon; Henry Kissinger; Howard Hughes; JFK’s failed attempt to take out Fidel Castro; Spiro Agnew; the Saturday night massacre; Patty Hearst; and … I’ll leave some surprises.

   That’s the setting. Three main characters take up the rest of the space: DC police office John Quinn, and a bit of a loose cannon on the job; National Security Council aide and former Marine officer Nathan Holloway, whose loyalty is tested as never before; and Senate assistant Vaughn Conner, whose stint on the Watergate committee starts to open doors that certain other parties desperately need to keep closed.

   Their paths, painstakingly drawn, slowly converge. Quinn’s lover, a one-time call girl, and another young dead girl in the same line of work seem to be the key, the reason why these “certain other parties” have their interest aroused.

   The opening chapters are told in an onrushing, cinematic, hard-boiled style that’s very effective, but it seems to dissipate as the need to work with the facts on record, the events of the time, starts to take over. The plot is set into place in a long interconnected process that takes a while to develop, yet the story itself is accompanied with a sense of urgency that prevails for a while only to lose (surprisingly) a large chunk of its coherency and focus at the end.

   When it comes down to it, those were terribly dangerous days. No matter how the events of Watergate are embellished, with new theories or other fictional fabrications, these enhancements are still overpowered by the facts on record, as they’re known so far. Dalton (not his real name) gives it his best shot, and even though he may have hit on something here, I think he tries too hard, loses control, and comes up a notch or two short.

[UPDATE.] 10-04-08. I didn’t know this when I wrote the review, and I don’t believe it was common knowledge at the time, or I’d have mentioned in the review. But “James Dalton” turns out to have been James Grady, whose career began in spectacular fashion with Six Days of the Condor in 1974 and Shadow of the Condor in 1975.

   This seems to be the only book he wrote under this pen name. I’ve found nothing that would suggest otherwise.

PETER DICKINSON – The Lively Dead.

Pantheon, paperback reprint; 1982. Hardcover editions: [UK] Hodder & Stoughton, 1975; [US] Pantheon, 1975. Other paperback editions: Avon 33811, US, August 1977; Mysterious Press/Arrow, UK, 1988 (shown).

   Here’s another author about whom I can say I never read one of his books until now. In crime fiction circles he’s probably best known for his Superintendent Pibble novels, of which there were six, published between 1969 and 1976, but of which, even though it’s of the right time period, this however is not one.

   Dickinson, by the way, was born in 1927 and is still active as a writer. You can find his biography online here, and a link at the bottom of that page will take you to a complete bibliography, so if you’re interested, there’s no need for me to reproduce it as part of this review. His most recent work as been poetry and books for young adults, the latter usually having a strong fantasy component.

   As for The Lively Dead, there is a lot I can tell you about it – and some I can’t, and if I can, I’ll let you later why. We meet the primary protagonist, Lydia Timms (we later learn she is Lady Lydia) attacking a joist with a crowbar and inspecting the wood for rot in the basement of the London boarding house she and her husband live in and own, then rushing up the stair to fix the duplicating machine that the ineffectual old men of the exiled Lavonian government have in their rooms and offices in the upper two floors (grandfathered in when the Timmses arrived).

   Richard, her husband, has had a recent breakdown but is now on the road to recovery and is studying furiously for his law exams; her small son Dickie is autistic, but is a marvel with recreating battles with small toys and other paraphernalia. He also knows Morse code better than he can read.

   Recently dead is Mrs Newberry, who also lived in the building and was the cleaner for Mr Obb and the others on the top floors. Mrs Newbury’s notorious daughter (and only heir) Procne is currently in jail for what we easily perceive as being high-level prostitution reasons. At any rate, there is continued interest in her (and her well-being) from several sides, not all of which make themselves known right away.

   Mrs Newberry is the key to everything, as it happens. Even though given a proper burial at some time during the events of the first two chapters, she turns up again circa page 110, when a body is found in the Timms’s back yard. It is Mrs Newberry.

   Superintendent Austen investigates, and in his arrogant fashion (thinks Lydia) manages to antagonize her so greatly that she will not (she says can not) answer his questions.

   It is up to her, then, to solve the case, as greatly muddled as it more and more becomes, at considerable risk to herself and Dickie. Somehow or another there is yet another malice-supplying factor that enters in. I do not believe that at the end I had indeed straightened them all out.

   What carries the day, if the detection is weak, is the beautiful, humorous and picturesque writing. Picking a page at random, and spotting a portion with the delightful Dickie in it (he is seven), here’s an example. It’s taken out of context, of course, but this is Lydia and Dickie as they are checking out Mrs Newberry’s room on page 61:

   Neither Lydia nor Superintendent seem to have ever made another appearance, unfortunately in regard to the former, never so much concerning the latter. Will I read another book by Peter Dickinson? Indeed, yes, I will.

J. R. RIPLEY – Lost in Austin

Worldwide, paperback reprint; 1st printing, April 2002. Hardcover edition: Longwind, May 2001.

   If you’re interested in the down-and-dirty behind-the-scenes aspects of the country music business, then this is the mystery for you. If not, if you’re more interested in a detective story, this second adventure of rhythm guitarist Tony Kozol will have you scratching your head, looking for more. Taken on by the Clint Cash band when a broken arm forces his predecessor to the sidelines, Tony soon finds himself once again in the starring role on a murder scene. (An earlier appearance was in Skulls of Sedona, also in paperback from Worldwide.)

   The dead man is a roadie, a member of Clint Cash’s crew, but the story really begins with a wild-eyed young Mexican trying to find his sister, and he claims the murder victim was the person who allowed her to go backstage. No one else, by the way, says they ever saw her.

   What with the non-stop partying going on — mostly booze — and the nonchalant after-hours sexual dalliances, even though Tony finds that the detective in charge is an old college buddy named Izzie Ibanez, it takes a while for any serious questions to be asked. (In a note I jotted down for myself, I can say with some certainty that this point in time occurred on page 184. There are 253 pages in all.)

   So, light and frothy is the order of the day, with a huge helping of inept police work on the side. (On something of a positive note, some of the more touristy attractions of the city of Austin are carefully pointed out.) It’s a readable combination, but all in all, for devout mystery fans, there’s little here to sink your teeth into.

[UPDATE] 10-01-08.   Since this review was written, I’ve discovered that J. R. Ripley is the pen name of pop rock musician Glenn Meganck. This is not surprising, since the music business was so authentically portrayed in Lost in Austin. A second series under the Ripley byline is totally different. It takes place in St. Barthelemy in the French West Indies, and features Charles Trenet, an inexperienced police officer newly transferred from the Gendarmerie Nationale.

       Bibliography:

   The TONY KOZOL mysteries:

Stiff in the Freezer. Beachfront, hc, 1998.
Skulls of Sedona. Beachfront, trade pb, 1999. Worldwide, pb, 2001
Lost in Austin. Longwind, hc, 2001. Worldwide, pb, 2002.
The Body from Ipanema. Longwind, hc, 2002. Worldwide, pb, 2003.
Bum Rap in Branson. Beachfront, hc, 2004.

   The GENDARME CHARLES TRENET mysteries:

Murder in St. Barts. Beachfront, hc, 2003.
Death of a Cheat. Beachfront, hc, 2006.

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR – Judgment of the Grave.

St. Martin’s; reprint paperback; 1st pr., Aug 2006. Hardcover edition: St. Martin’s; July 2005.

   It is impossible to keep up. When I go looking for whatever book to read next, I often pick one out at random, and invariably it’s the second or third in a series, almost never the first. (I used to teach college courses in probability, so I’m not complaining. I know exactly what the odds are, and they’re against me.)

   Judgment of the Grave is the third of four of the recorded adventures of Harvard-based art historian, Sweeney St. George. It’s early in this review, instead of at the end, where I often do it, but here’s a list of all four. All came out first from St. Martin’s in hardcover, then in paperback:

      O’ Artful Death. 2003 / June 2004.

      Mansions of the Dead. July 2004 / May 2005.
      Judgment of the Grave. July 2005 / Aug 2006.
      Still As Death. Sept 2006 / Oct 2007.

   And in spite of excellent reviews and good sales rankings on Amazon, these four appear to be all there’s going to be. Sarah Stewart Taylor’s website does not seem to have been updated since October 2007 and the last entry in her blog is dated May 2, 2007.

   That’s a shame. In spite of some quibbles which I’ll get to shortly, I enjoyed Judgment of the Grave quite thoroughly. So well, in fact, that if I knew where my copy was, I’d read Still As Death next, just to find out what happens to Sweeney and her romantic difficulties in her followup adventure. And failing that, go back and read one or both of the first two (see above), just to learn how all of her romantic difficulties began in the first place.

   Quibbles: These very same Sweeney’s romantic difficulties — and all of the problems the other characters have in Judgment of the Grave. They’re a major part of the story, and they tend to overpower the detective story involved.

   But what they also help create is a dark, atmospheric tale filled with angst, anxiety and sorrow, beginning with the opening scene (after a short prologue) in which Sweeney meets a young 12-year-old boy with leukemia while she’s researching gravestones in a Concord MA cemetery.

   Cambridge police detective Tim Quinn, whom Sweeney has met before and seems to have a history with, meets her again as he follows up on a missing person’s report — a professor having a similar interest in gravestones and the history of the Revolutionary War has disappeared after taking part in a battle re-enactment up near Concord. Quinn’s wife committed suicide, we learn, and he’s forced to take his 10-month-old daughter along with him. Sweeney is a multi-tasker. She babysits and helps solve the mystery at the same time.

   Meanwhile Sweeney’s almost-but-not-quite-affair with Ian has been put on hold while he’s home in England. Phone calls every night. I don’t quite understand where Toby fits in, but he somehow seems to have overnight privileges.

   Also often crowding the mystery aside are long expository pages on the War of Independence, how it was conducted, how not all of the colonists were fighting for freedom, and how much the British depended on spies.

   The latter may be the reason for the present day killings, or perhaps not, because all of the other character’s marriages are either broken or on the verge, and jealousy or revenge are also excellent reasons for murder. A veritable Peyton Place, without the same degree of notoriety or sensationalism.

   I suppose you already know, having gotten this far, whether or not you will ever read any of the books in the series, but nonetheless, with a bit of pruning down and firming up, and filmed in black-and-white, or with dark, shadowy indoor scenes contrasted with the bright colors of an autumn New England sky, Judgment to the Grave would be as noirish as they come. It’s not Los Angeles, but there are a lot of dark secrets in Massachusetts too.

[COMMENT.]  Later the same day. I’m embarrassed to point this out, but while searching for some more information about the author on Google, I discovered that I’d totally forgotten that Walter Albert reviewed this same book here on Mystery*File, and not too long ago.

   He liked it too.

DIG ME LATER – Miriam-Ann Hagen.

Mercury Mystery 157; digest-sized paperback; no date stated, but generally accepted as being 1951. Hardcover edition: Doubleday/Crime Club; 1949. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, August 1949.

   I mean no offense to anyone named Hortense, or who knows anyone with the name Hortense, but it IS an old-fashioned name, I believe you have to admit, and a series of mysteries with a leading character named Hortense Clinton is going to be considered light-hearted from the outset, whether it is true or not.

   But true it is, or at the least, this second of three mysteries she was involved in certainly is. When a murder occurs across the hall to her in her Manhattan apartment, Hortense accidentally confronts the killer with her night clothes on, blemish cream on her face, chin strap on, and a band across her forehead.

   Of course squatting down on the floor as she was, all she could see before she was knocked unconscious was the killer’s pant legs and shoes. But if the killer was the dead man’s nephew making his getaway as she was putting her milk bottles out, why did he take the time to take her diamond watch?

   As it happens, the answer to that question is clear to any reader who’s been paying attention and has read Chapter One carefully, so anyone who reads detective stories for the detective work in them isn’t going to find much of any substance to mull over in this one.

   But the characters are what might keep you reading, as the did me, somewhat wacky and somewhat confusing, or confused themselves as to why so many of them end up with Hortense in a resort hotel in Nova Scotia where she flees when her notoriety in Manhattan proves to be too much for her.

   The killer is obvious enough in retrospect, but there are plenty of false trails to be followed and examined carefully before the final denouement. Most – but not all – the questions are answered, and Hortense Clinton survives to be involved in another murder another day. (See the bibliography below.)

   But before getting to that, I didn’t do any research on the author before beginning the book – I seldom do, as I prefer to let the book speak for the author, not his/her reputation or background. I almost never even read the blurbs on the jacket flaps or the back cover.

   So it took me a while to place Ms. Hagen’s style of writing, even though I have to admit that I should have known. It’s a style that feels itself necessary to explain the smallest detail, to spell out things so that the reader will fully understand, and yet is smooth enough, and clever enough to stay interesting. I am not denigrating it in any way. It’s a style of writing I most certainly and definitely admire.

   I wish I could explain better what I mean, but here’s a sample, and maybe that will help. Picking a page and a selection at random from the first chapter, take this as an example. Hortense is being asked by the police to identify the nephew’s shoes:

   Which was, to cut the story off short, that she wouldn’t later be able to testify in court that it couldn’t have been the man that the suspected of being the killer.

   I don’t know if that was enough of a sample for you to tell, and maybe you never heard of Aaron Marc Stein, also known as George Bagby and Hampton Stone, but the writing is identical. But if you have, then I’m sure you spotted the similarity, and probably even before I made the connection. And if you’ve been paying attention to this blog, as I should have been, or at least my only claim for ignorance was that I forgot, in one of Mike Nevins’s columns for M*F, he happened to have mentioned in passing that Miriam-Ann Hagen was Aaron Marc Stein’s sister.

   The title comes from a bit of jazzy jargon from the 1940s that I don’t think was used appropriately in the novel, but to expand the context a little, take a look at the three mystery novels that Miriam-Ann Hagen wrote, courtesy of Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

HAGEN, MIRIAM-ANN (1903-1984)
       Plant Me Now (n.) Doubleday 1947 [Hortense Clinton; Train]
       Dig Me Later (n.) Doubleday 1949 [Hortense Clinton; Canada]
       Murder-But Natch (n.) Doubleday 1951 [Hortense Clinton; Ship]



[UPDATE] 09-28-08.  I asked Mike Nevins to read my comments and then to consider the possibility that Aaron Marc Stein might have written the Hortense Clinton books under his sister’s name. Here’s his reply. I’m sure he’s right, but the thought lingers on…

   Back in May it was that I posted an inquiry from John Herrington about some records in North Carolina that should shed some light, he thought, on the true identity of British mystery writer A. Fielding, until recently thought to be a pseudonym of Lady Dorothy Feilding, 1889-1935.

   Catching up with what John’s learned since then, here are a couple of emails from him. From late July:

   More recently, here’s an email from John that reached me a couple of days ago:

   Just another reason for everyone with an interest in Golden Age and (mostly) traditional mysteries to anxiously await the next issue of CADS (short for Crime and Detective Stories).

   Geoff Bradley, the editor, doesn’t maintain an online presence, but information about issue 50 can be found here. The issue most recently mailed is #54. His email address is Geoffcads @ aol.com

   If there’s ever a biography of Ellery Queen—not of the detective character but of the cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee who created Ellery and also used his name as their joint byline—the following incident from Fred’s life deserves to be included.

   The first part comes mainly from one of the long introductions that he wrote for each story published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine during its early years; the follow-up was unearthed by radio historian Martin Grams, Jr. and will appear in one of his forthcoming books.

   In the spring of 1946, soon after being discharged from the Army at the end of World War II, Dashiell Hammett arranged with “a certain school of social science in New York City” to offer a Thursday evening course on mystery fiction aimed at writers and writer wannabees.

   At this time Fred’s main tasks in life were keeping EQMM afloat and, after his wife’s death from cancer, raising two young sons. He read the announcement of Hammett’s course and was impelled by curiosity to attend the first session, on May 2.

   Hammett invited him on the spot to co-teach the course and Fred agreed, each two-hour stint followed by “all-night bull-and-brandy sessions” between those giants of crime fiction. At the end of the May 16 class a young woman named Hazel Hills Berrien approached Fred and offered him the manuscript of a story she had begun writing after the first session.

   Fred, as always, suggested certain changes — “in the character of the detective, in the plot construction, and in the title,” he said later—but when they were made to his satisfaction, he bought the tale, which appeared in EQMM for September 1946 as “The Unlocked Room” by Hazel Hills.

   Then as now, magazines appeared on the stands some time before the publication month listed on their front covers, and the September EQMM had been available at least for a few weeks before August 31, 1946. That evening’s episode of the popular ABC radio series The Green Hornet was called “Death in the Dar” and dealt with a civil servant accused of embezzlement who is found shot to death in a room with the door locked and the window bolted. Newspaper publisher Britt Reid, a.k.a. the Green Hornet, rejects the obvious theory of suicide and eventually proves that the man was murdered.

   Hazel Hills Berrien wrote ABC four days after the broadcast, admitting that she hadn’t heard the episode but claiming she’d been told by a friend that it “bore a peculiar resemblance to a recently published short story of mine.”

   In this and several subsequent letters, each more threatening than the last, she demanded a copy of Dan Beattie’s script but refused to send ABC’s lawyers a copy of her story.

   Eventually Fred heard of the dispute and, on October 11, wrote to Green Hornet creator George W. Trendle, promising a copy of September’s EQMM and asking in return for a copy of Beattie’s script.

   Four days later and after reading “The Unlocked Room,” Trendle replied to Fred, rejecting any allegation of plagiarism but saying: “[H]ad Miss Hills handled the matter as diplomatically as you have, I think a copy of our script would have been in her hands long ago.”

   A later letter to Fred from Green Hornet attorney Raymond Meurer made the same point: “[W]e regret that the matter was handled so clumsily by Miss Hills…. [H]ad we received the request originally from you, we would not have hesitated a moment in supplying the script.” The tempest in a teapot quickly blew away since the only similarity between Hills’ story and the Hornet script was that both involved a murder in a locked room with a gimmicked window.

   As far as I know Hills never wrote another story, certainly none published in EQMM.

   Among the reprints in the EQMM issue that contained Hills’ story was one by Agatha Christie (“Strange Jest,” a Miss Marple tale originally published in 1941), again with an introduction by Fred Dannay, this one quoting a stanza from one of Christie’s poems.

   It comes from “In the Dispensary,” which was included in her collection The Road of Dreams (Bles, 1925):

         From the Borgias’ time to the present day, their power
            has been proved and tried:
         Monkshood blue, called aconite, and the deadly cyanide.
         Here is sleep and solace and soothing of pain—
            courage and vigour new;
         Here is menace and murder and sudden death—in these
            phials of green and blue.

   Okay, so it’s doggerel. Thanks anyway, Fred, for giving me this item for my column’s Poetry Corner more than sixty years ago!

   John Michael Hayes (1919-2007) never wrote a mystery novel or short story but, thanks mainly to his screenplays for several Alfred Hitchcock films, most notably Rear Window (1954) and the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), his memory remains green for us.

   I recently had occasion to read a deposition Hayes gave in August 1991 in connection with some litigation over Rear Window and was delighted to find some information about Hitchcock’s connection with Cornell Woolrich that I believe has never appeared in print.

   Among the six tales brought together in the second collection of Woolrich’s short fiction (After-Dinner Story, as by William Irish, 1944) were “Rear Window” (first published under Woolrich’s own name in Dime Detective, February 1942, as “It Had To Be Murder””) and “The Night Reveals” (first published in Story Magazine for April 1936).

   Hitchcock was interested in both. Shortly after Hayes began working on the Rear Window screenplay, “Hitch asked me…if I would read [“The Night Reveals”] and comment on it because he had [had] a choice between the two stories and wanted to know if he’d made the right choice. And I said he certainly had because “Rear Window” lent itself to intense suspense material and intense personal relationships which the other story didn’t.”

   Still and all, “The Night Reveals” is also marked by powerful suspense scenes and an intense relationship—between insurance investigator Harry Jordan and his wife, who he comes to suspect is a compulsive pyromaniac—and it’s a shame Hitchcock didn’t at least use it as source for an episode of his TV series. Preferably one directed by himself.

JAMES M. CAIN – Cloud Nine. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1984; paperback, 1987. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1985. J. M. Dent & Sons, Canada, trade ppbk, 1987 (shown).

   In the 1930s and 1940s, James M. Cain was the most talked-about writer in America. His novels of that period, like the detective novels of Dashiell Hammett, a few years earlier, broke new ground in crime fiction.

   Until the publication of The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1934, sex was a topic handled with kid gloves and almost always peripheral to the central story line; Cain made sex the primary motivating force of his fiction, and presented it to his readers frankly, at times steamily. (Some of the scenes in Postman are downright erotic even by today’s standards.)

   But Cain, of course, was much more than a purveyor of eroticism. His lean, hard-edged prose caused critics to label him a “hard-boiled” writer, but he is much more than that, too. His best works are masterful studies of average people caught up and often destroyed by passion (adultery, incest, hatred, greed, lust). They are also sharp, clear portraits of the times and places in which they were written, especially California in the depression era Thirties.

   Cain’s success began to wane in the Fifties and Sixties, however, partly because of a desire to write novels of a different sort from those that had brought him fame, and partly because of a clear erosion of his talents (a seminal fear of all writers) brought about by advancing age.

   Cloud Nine is one of those “different” novels, written in the late 1960s when Cain was seventy-five. It was rejected by his publisher at that time and shelved. Resurrected for publication in 1984, seven years after Cain’s death, it was puffed by its publisher as “an important addition in contemporary American literature” and by an advance reviewer as “a minor masterpeice and publishing event of some note.”

   It is none of those things. It is, simply and sadly, a flawed novel of mediocre quality – a pale shadow of his early triumphs.

   The novel’s basic premise is solid. A teenage girl, Sonya Lang, comes to Maryland real-estate agent Graham Kirby with the news that his nasty half brother, Burwell, has raped her and that she is pregnant as a result. Through a complicated set of circumstances, Graham agrees to marry Sonya, initially for charitable reasons; but he soon falls in love with her.

   He then discovers that Burwell may be a murderer as well as a rapist, and that another murder may be part of Burwell’s future plans. The conflict between Burwell and Graham forms the central tension here, with Sonya as one catalyst and a million dollars in prime real estate as another.

   All the elements are present for a classic Cain novel, ones that should combine to keep the reader on tenterhooks, “anxious to find out what happens,” as Cain biographer Roy Hoopes says in an Afterword, “but always dreading the ending because of the horror [he senses] would be waiting – ‘the wish that comes true’ that Cain said most of his novels were about.”

   But the elements simply don’t mesh. The bulk of the novel is taken up with the relationship (much of it sexual) between Graham and Sonya, to the exclusion of everything else; Burwell doesn’t even appear on stage until page 108, and other major plot points are introduced sketchily and/or not developed until the final fifty to sixty pages.

   Graham is a rather dull and unappealing narrator, not at all one of “those wonderful, seedy, lousy no-goods that you have always understood,” as one of Cain’s friends described the protagonists of Postman and Double Indemnity.

   And the prose is anything but lean and hard-edged. It reads as if Cain, late in life, discovered and became enamoured of commas and clauses, as witness the novel’s opening sentence: “I first met her, this girl that I married a few days later, and that the papers have crucified under the pretense of glorification, on a Friday morning in June, on the parking lot by the Patuxent Building, that my office is in.”

   Not everything about Cloud Nine is weak; there are some crisp passages of dialogue reminiscent of vintage Cain, the character of Sonya is well developed, and there is power in the climactic scenes (although none of the existential terror and tragedy of the early books). But on balance, and like the other suspense novels Cain wrote late in life – The Magician’s Wife (1965), Rainbow’s End (1975), The Institute (1976) – it is minor and disappointing.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

JAMES M. CAIN – Serenade. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1937. US Paperback editions include: Penguin Books #621, 1947; Signet 1153, 1954; Bantam S-3864, 1968; Vintage, 1978.

Film: 1956, with Mario Lanza and Joan Fontaine.

   Though lesser known than his more famous The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, Serenade is equally a masterpiece. Most of Cain’s best work is of novella length, but Serenade is an exception; a wider canvas is required for this more ambitious work with its subject matter that was daring even for Cain.

   The operatic undertone of Cain’s work comes to the fore here as an opera singer who loses his voice regains it by spending a night of lust and love with a Mexican whore in a deserted church during a thunderstorm.

   When John Howard Sharp returns to New York City and his singing career, the healing prostitute, Juana, is at his side; but they are soon faced with a threat from the past, the man whose homosexual liaison with Sharp had caused the singer?s traumatic loss of voice. In James M. Cain, there can only be one solution to such a situation: murder.

   But murder in Serenade isn’t born of greed and petty self-interest as it is in other Cain novels. The man and woman who share this sexual adventure are admirable and self-sacrificing. Their love is noble, and their tragedy is the deepest, most affecting in all of Cain.

   Cain wrote Serenade and his two other masterpieces in the 1930s; but his later, lesser (if interesting) works have tended to dilute his reputation. He is easily the peer of Hammett and Chandler, however, neither of whom wrote with Cain’s unabashed passion.

   Among his better later works are Past All Dishonor (1946) and The Butterfly (1947); they are, characteristically, in the first person. Mildred Pierce (1941) is the best of Cain?s third-person works. Several other completed novels are among Cain?s papers, and remain unpublished.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright ? 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

JAMES M. CAIN – Double Indemnity.

Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #16; paperback original, 1943. First published in Liberty magazine in 1936 as the eight-part serial “Three of a Kind.” First hardcover edition: included in Three of a Kind (Knopf, 1944) with “Career in C Major” and “The Embezzler.” Many other reprint editions, both hardcover and paperback, including Avon #60, 1945 (shown).

Film: 1944, with Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray; adapted for the screen by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder.

   James M. Cain wrote of “the wish that comes true … I think my stories have some quality of the opening of a forbidden box, and that it is this rather than violence, sex or any of the things usually cited by way of explanation that gives them the drive so often noted.”

   Double Indemnity employs this same technique, already displayed in The Postman Always Rings Twice, with dazzling ease. Cain, making a quick buck writing a magazine serial in 1936, did not realize it at the time, but he was at the top of his form. Employing skillful, scalpel-like first-person narration, Cain tells his tale of love and murder from the point of view of a lover and murderer.

   Insurance man Walter Huff becomes embroiled in a plot to kill a beautiful woman’s husband. In addition to the sexual and financial incentives, Phyllis Nirdlinger manages to play upon Huff’s boredom and his pride – he knows the insurance game inside and out, and figures with his expertise he can beat it.

   The husband is murdered, according to Huff’s plan, without a hitch. But Huff is dogged by Keyes, a claims agent who also knows the insurance game inside and out. Huff begins to realize Phyllis is untrustworthy and just possibly insane, and falls in love with Lola, the daughter of the murdered man by a previous wife, who had very probably been yet another murder victim of Phyllis’s.

   Double Indemnity is a murder mystery turned inside out: We are forced inside the murderer’s skin, only to find it uncomfortably easy to identify with him, and then share his paranoia as the world crumbles piece by piece around him.

   Huff is a white-collar worker and he’s smart – smart enough to sense early on just how major a mistake he’s made. His sense of his own frailty and wrongdoing makes him a truly tragic protagonist, as does his sense of loss: “I knew I couldn’t have her and never could have her. I couldn’t kiss the girl whose father I killed.”

   Cain liked to explore the workings of businesses, and he never did it better than in Double Indemnity, through the characters of Huff and Keyes. But he also gave the pair an understated shared understanding of humanity (an aspect broadened in the widely respected Billy Wilder-directed, Raymond Chandler-scripted film version of 1944).

   In their final confrontation, Keyes says to Huff (renamed Neff in the film), “This is an awful thing you’ve done, Neff,” and Huff/Neff only says, “I know it.” And when Keyes says, “I kind of liked you, Neff,” Huff/Neff says, “I know. Same here.”

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.