CELIA FREMLIN – The Hours Before Dawn. Lippincott, hardcover, 1958. Dell D-422, paperback, 1966. Academy Chicago Publishers, softcover, 2005. Dover Publications, paperback, 2017.
Celia Fremlin has the unusual ability to take a perfectly normal, if not mundane, situation and create an atmosphere of sheer terror. The Hours Before Dawn, which won an Edgar for Best Novel of its year, introduces us to Louise Henderson, a sleep-starved young housewife with a fretful new infant that is causing complaints from both her family and neighbors.
The only person who doesn’t complain is Miss Vera Brandon, the boarder the Hendersons have recently taken in. In fact, Miss Brandon is so self-effacing and quiet that at times the Hendersons don’t even know she is in the house.
Soon the boarder’s actions begin to arouse Louise’s suspicions, and she finds herself doing all sorts of things she has never done before — attempting to search the woman’s room, contacting total strangers for information about her, and finally taking the baby for a nocturnal stroll in his pram, only to fall asleep and lose him in a park.
The author skillfully weaves truly frightening events into Louise’s daily routine of meals, housecleaning, and childcare, and her superb characterization has the reader thoroughly on Louise’s side — and just as terrified as she is — by the time the story reaches its surprising conclusion.
Other Fremlin titles of note: Uncle Paul(1960), Prisoner’s Base(1967), The Spider-Orchid (1978), With No Crying (1981).
NATIONAL TREASURE. Walt Disney Pictures, 2004. Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer. Director: Jon Turteltaub.
National Treasure was released about twenty years ago. I’d heard of it, of course. But never took the time to watch it as I always thought it was going to be merely a shallow imitation of the Indiana Jones franchise. I was wrong. Although the film has its myriad flaws and lacks grit, this Nicholas Cage vehicle is definitely its own thing.
For those unfamiliar with the basic premise, Cage stars as Benjamin Franklin Gates, an early American historian and adventurer who decides to steal the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives. Why? Because he’s convinced it’s got an invisible treasure map on the back, one that would lead to the Templar Knights’s war spoils.
Along for the ride are Gates’s sidekick, computer expert Riley Poole (Justin Bartha), and Dr. Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger), an archivist and Gates’s nascent love interest. Opposing the intrepid trio are Ian Howe (Sean Bean), a criminal who wants the treasure for himself and FBI Agent Sadusky (a somewhat miscast Harvey Keitel). Then there’s Gates’s father, Patrick Henry Gates (Jon Voight), a disillusioned old man who no longer believes there’s a national treasure to find. He’ll eventually change his mind.
There’s something very childlike and innocent about National Treasure, which makes sense given that the movie was released by Walt Disney Pictures. But there’s plenty to admire about a film that tells a story, sticks to it, and never cheats the audience. Just because the critics didn’t particularly like this one doesn’t mean you can’t. Overall assessment: goofy, watchable fun with a cast committed to the bit. You don’t have to feel guilty if you like it.
PIERS ANTHONY & ROBERT E. MARGROFF – The Ring. Ace A-19, paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Published as part of the Ace SF Special series. Cover art by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon. Tor, paperback, 1986.
A flawed Utopia, with a machine acting as conscience and punishment for wrong-doers; crime is rampant on Earth, although need is theoretically abolished – indeed crime is licensed through Vicinc, and inflation takes its usual toll from the average man. High-minded theory vs. ugly reality.
This is the world Jeff returns to from the stars, with dreams of revenge against his father’s former business partner who was the cause if his father’s exile from Earth. But Jeff is caught before he can carry out his plans, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be ringed.
The ring is an instrument of the Ultra Conscience, painfully enforcing firm ethical standards, But there are degrees if honesty, and the ring can be bio substitute fir human judgment: the concept of self-defense is not recognized, making the ringer the target for universal criminal attack. How can a truly ethical system be formalized as law? Is the ring the only answer? The ring can be effective with the proper programming. But who does the programming?
Meanwhile, Jeff struggles within the restrictions of the ring to avenge his father, but he discovers he does not know the whole truth. Exciting, suspenseful writing. With imagination providing for a future society which is easily extrapolated from our own. Since the characters are easily translated to those of Tennyson, it is no wonder they interest the reader so deeply.
R. AUSTIN FREEMAN – The Singing Bone. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1912. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1923. Popular Library, US, paperback, as The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke. Reprinted many other times.
The Singing Bone consists of five novelettes, averaging a bit over fifty pages each: “The Case of Oscar Brodski,” “A Case of Premeditation,” “The Echo of a Mutiny,” “A Wastrel’s Romance,” and “The Old Lag.” Though the final story is fairly routine, Freeman broke new ground with the first four and invented the “inverted” detective story.
Each of the tales is told in two parts of about equal length. In part one, “The Mechanism of Crime,” as it is subtitled in the first story, we actually see the crime committed and are furnished with all the facts that could be used in solving it. In part two, “The Mechanism of Detection,” we follow Dr. Thorndyke as he investigates the crime, finds the clues, and finally solves it.
Although the classic question ‘Whodunit?” is necessarily absent for the reader, there is a challenge of a sort to match wits with the detective and spot the clues in advance.
The inverted form has never been popular in fiction, although Freeman used it in three more stories and two novels, and the popular television series “Columbo” did very well by it for several seasons. Perhaps the secret was that Peter Falk’s Sergeant Columbo was a far more interesting character than Dr. John Thorndyke. whose microscopic examinations lack the flair and showmanship of Sherlock Holmes. Still, the stories in The Singing Bone deserve rediscovery, especially “The Echo of a Mutiny,” which is probably the best of them, with its atmospheric setting in a lighthouse.
Dr. Thorndyke was first introduced in the novel The Red Thumb Mark (1907), notable for its first use of fingerprint forgery in detective fiction. The collection John Thorndyke’s Cases (1909) features eight conventional detective stories and is especially noteworthy for “The Blue Sequin” and “The Aluminum Dagger.”
THE HUNTER. Paramount Pictures, 1980. Steve McQueen (Papa Thorson), Eli Wallach, Kathryn Harrold, LeVar Burton, Ben Johnson. Director: Buzz Kulik.
Steve McQueen, in his final movie role, portrays bounty hunter Ralph “Papa” Thorson, a towering real life figure whose unorthodox career choice was the source material for The Hunter. The movie is very much a mix of action, drama, and romance, with plenty of time devoted to Thorson’s relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, Dotty (Kathryn Harrold).
As far as the aforementioned action sequences, they are probably the best part of the film. We get to see McQueen drive a combine harvester while chasing outlaws; fight bare-fisted with a sheriff’s nephew who skipped bail; and chase a vicious killer through Chicago, with a particularly breathtaking scene taking place on a train. Literally.
The glaring problem that The Hunterhas is similar to the flaw found in many biopics. The writers simply don’t choose a good entry point into the story. Here, it takes nearly thirty minutes for the movie to find its legs. There’s a lot of effort devoted to showcasing Thorson’s eccentricities, such as his love of classical music and old vintage toys.
Which is fine. But not as the expense of introducing a primary antagonist early on in the running. (Eventually, there is a primary villain: an ex-con who blames Thorson for being sent away to prison.)
Overall assessment: in many ways, the movie feels more like a TV pilot tasked with introducing a character than a comprehensive feature film with a solid plot. But there’s plenty of good stuff in here too. Eli Wallach being one of them.
S. S. VAN DINE – The “Canary” Murder Case. Philo Vance #2. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1927. Reprinted many times, including Gold Medal T2004, paperback. 1968. Film: Paramount Pictures, 1929, with William Powell as Philo Vance.
For the most part, Philo Vance is a dispassionate and impartial observer, often with an air of studious amusement, analyzing the crime and suspects impartially, yet he has bursts of enthusiasm that keep him well involved in the problem at hand.
His attorney S. S. Van Dine, who records his exploits for posterity, has nothing to say. Ever.
The studious amusement reaches cynicism and class snobbery, however, and can you believe getting all the murder suspects together in the District Attorney’s apartment to play poker as a pretext for learning their basic characters? The murder of Margaret Odell, popularly known as the “Canary,” is a locked room mystery, but Vance withholds vital information not only from the police, but from the reader as well.
The explanations are overdone by far; most of what is happening is clear, but definitely not to the police or to District Attorney Markham. The mystery and solution are otherwise quite adequate.
ROSS MACDONALD – Sleeping Beauty. Lew Archer #17 (of 18). Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, March 1973. Bantam, paperback; 1st printing thus, May 1974. Reprinted many times since.
One of the later books in the series, and to my mind, not one of the better ones. Archer meets a young woman against a backdrop of a huge oil slick off the southern California coast. She is married but distraught, not only because of the disaster, but the oil company responsible for the damage is owned by her parents and other members of her family.
After he takes her home with him, she leaves with a massive amount of sleeping pills along with her. And then disappears completely. Archer is hired by her husband to help find her, but matters are complicated by a ransom note received by her family. Is it real, or is it a fake? A scheme designed for revenge. For the money? Is she part of her disappearance herself?
This is something that has happened in the past, several years earlier. It is part of her makeup. Part of her history.
The opening is fine. It’s the investigation Archer undertakes that follows this that struggles to match it. The woman has a large, complicated family, and there is a lot of baggage that has accumulated over the years. Archer’s job: to make his way through all the physical and mental debris that has piled up, including murder, questioning everyone as he goes, driving from family member to family member to near exhaustion.
There is not much action. This is adult stuff. It is also a book I had not read until now, but I’m sure if I had read it earlier, a lot of what Archer brings out into the light of day would have been over my head, in terms of having experienced anything similar. I would have been too young. And then there’s this. The back story, as revealed, is not as interesting even now as it should have been. A list of characters and who they are would have helped.
But, and I am still trying to work out how this is true, the story is compelling. There’s plenty of guilt to spread around, and that includes that caused directly by the killer. My greatest wish is that I’d rather have had the killer’s identity come out as something other than an anti-climax.
SHOPWORN. Columbia, 1932. Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, Zasu Pitts. Director: Nick Grinde.
In this Columbia pre-Code romantic drama, Barbara Stanwyck portrays Kitty Lane, a waitress who falls in love with David Livingston, an upper crust university student (Regis Toomey). The latter’s overbearing mother disapproves, to put it mildly. To separate the lovebirds, her friend, a prominent judge, creates a bogus charge against Kitty, alleging a public morals violation.
That gets Kitty sent to a women’s reformatory. After she gets out, however, she doesn’t return to her humble job at the diner. Instead, she becomes a world famous showgirl. Years later, David (Toomey) shows up at her doorstep. He’s still madly in love with her. But his mother, who now owns a gun, is still adamantly opposed to having Kitty as her daughter-in-law.
Truth be told, there’s not a whole lot to recommend about Shopworn. It’s not that the movie is completely abysmal or anything like that; it’s just rather tedious with a color by numbers type of script that gives the viewer the bare minimum of drama and conflict but nothing more. It’s anemic.
Overall assessment: Stanwyck takes her role seriously, but the overall product remains something of a dud.
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini
R. AUSTIN FREEMAN – Mr. Pottermark’s Oversight. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1930. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1930. Reprinted a number of times, including Dover, US, softcover, 1985.
R. Austin Freeman was one of crime fiction’s true innovators. He developed the “inverted” mystery story to an art; and in Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, he created a series detective of significant capabilities one who has been called “the only convincing scientific investigator” in the genre.
Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke novels and short stories can be said to rival Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes canon in quality and cleverness of plot. Where Holmes uses deductive methods, Dr. Thorndyke draws on a wealth of scientific knowledge — everything from anatomy to zoology-to solve his cases. And although many of his plots involve technical explanations, Freeman was a master at making science and its jargon explicable to the lay reader.
Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight is Dr. Thorndyke’s most celebrated case. Anthony Boucher called it “a leisurely, a gentle novel, yet an acute one …. No other detective in fiction has ever equaled Thorndyke in the final section of explication, often so tedious in lesser hands. The scene is especially effective in this novel; and the lucid unfolding of the reasoning of John Thorndyke carries that intellectual excitement and stimulus so often attributed to the detective story so rarely found.”
Marcus Pottermack is a gentleman of leisure who spends most of his time studying British mollusca (snails) in his garden. As the novel opens, he has realized his dream of purchasing a sundial for the garden, and in preparing the site where he intends to place it, he uncovers an old well. The discovery proves fortuitous; Mr. Pottermack receives a visit from a gambler named Lewson, who has been blackmailing him.
It seems Pottermack is in reality Jeffrey Brandon, a runaway convict who is supposed dead. Lewson has had financial reverses, and once again he puts the bite on “Jeff.” Pottermack lures Lewson into the garden, has a fight with him, and Lcwson falls, hitting his head on the edge of the well before tumbling in. Mr. Pottermack then sets about covering up his crime.
The main problem is footsteps leading to his house in the soft earth. He can’t obliterate them, and so he decides to continue them on, past his home. There is a problem, though: Lewson’s shoes are on him in the well.
The resourceful Mr. Pottermack decides to manufacture shoes, taking a plaster cast of the footprints and reproducing their soles. He then walks some distance in them, creating the impression that the person passed on by. Of course, there are other details to be dealt with, and Mr. Pottermack takes further steps (no pun intended) to assure his crime will never come to light. But he hasn’t counted on John Thorndyke’s scientific methods — methods that eventually reveal Mr. Pottermack’s oversight.
Readers who enjoy the inverted detective story and/or a good intellectual puzzle will find this an absorbing novel.
