Fri 12 Sep 2014
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: HELEN REILLY – Dead Man Control.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
William F. Deeck
HELEN REILLY – Dead Man Control. Doubleday Crime Club, 1936. Sun Dial Press, hardcover reprit, 1937. Paperback reprints include: Macfadden, 1964; Manor, 1974.
Breaking down a study door, locked and bolted on the inside, the police find a millionaire shot in the back of the head and his wife of three months lying on the floor unconscious. Her fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and investigation proves that no one could have left by the windows.
Furthermore, the millionaire’s wife loved another man, hated her husband, who was cruel and vindictive, and, horror of horrors, had discovered that that very night, after a three-month honeymoon on his yacht, he was claiming his — ahem — conjugal rights.
Anyone else would be convicted on the spot, but the wife is beautiful. By definition in most mystery stories this makes her innocent or, stated perhaps more correctly, not guilty.
Inspector Christopher McKee is called back from a visit to London to take over the case. While there are a couple more murders, at the end McKee has things under control and the locked-room circumstance is somewhat lamely explained.
Still, this novel is well worth reading, despite the unpleasant characters who populate it, all of whom have their own ends to further and thus complicate what ought to have been a relatively simple case.
An odd datum: McKee, at least in this novel, has a baby alligator, probably the oddest pet of any professional detective.
Editorial Comment: For a long essay by Mike Grost on Helen Reilly and he detective fiction, go here on the primary Mystery*File website. A complete bibliography complied by myself is included at the end.
September 12th, 2014 at 2:03 pm
They aren’t dull, but despite the varying plots the Reilly’s I read always seemed to suffer a ‘sameness’ for lack of a better word. Many if not most are Police Procedural. but not the PP we think of in relation to McBain or even Waugh. At times it feels as if her main interest was to portray the police at work but she wasn’t that interested in the suspects or the crime.
The old joke is that if you slavishly imitate one writer it is plagiarism and if you imitate everyone it is originality, I think Reilly falls into that second category.
What I do think of Reilly at first was that she presented a certain modernism of the genre. McKee isn’t brilliant or eccentric, but he is attractive and not a cypher or a plodder he’s not deeply drawn either though. I never could really give him a face.
Suspense and thriller elements sneak in, a bit of the HIBK school, a pale shade of the Van Dine school, and in many cases a cinematic touch, at least a visual flair; even a touch of the hard boiled school, and at least visually noir.
That may be the problem, I could never really differentiate the books, Reilly, or McKee. They felt very middle of the road, very mid mid-list, and there was always something better or interestingly worse to read.
The few I read were good enough, but not particularly special, and I saw nothing to suggest others would be either. I recall no negative feelings, just a feeling there were green pastures to explore.
September 12th, 2014 at 6:35 pm
Steve,
Thank you very much for the link!
I haven’t read this one for a long, time. Agree that the locked room aspects are inane. They are unimportant too – not central as they would be in Carr.
In “The Line-Up’ McKee has a pet cat. Don’t recall the alligator at all!
McKee is likable. But the other continuing characters in his employ are more memorable. Todhunter, the “gray little man” who is his almost invisible nebbish detective assistant, is one of the my favorite comic characters in mystery fiction. He’s a terrific sleuth, and forms a pointed contrast to everyone he has to investigate. His investigations are always top-notch.
Reilly’s powers of description are her strong suit. She has a remarkable visual sense, as David suggests.
September 13th, 2014 at 2:27 pm
Following up on David’s post, have been trying to think through what are Reilly’s strong points.
Film historians – but not mystery fans – have long been interested in films that seem like “visions”. These offer intense visual experiences, strange, remote from daily life, eerie, loaded with feeling, and with compelling imagery. Such films are praised by saying they resemble dreams, visions, hallucinations, reveries, or even that they are “delirious”: always a term of praise in film history. Reilly is a prose writer that has this “visionary” quality. Her best books are full of long passages that have this sort of hallucinatory intensity in their description.
I’ve never seen a mystery lover show the slightest interest in visionary fiction. By contrast, it is a deep interest of film experts. P. Adams Sitney called his famed history of experimental films “Visionary Cinema”.
In Reilly, this visionary quality is not always linked to pretentious or prestigious subject matter. Late in “The Farmhouse”, the characters take a night-time trip into the warehouse district of the un-glamorous industrial city of Poughkeepsie. Reilly’s descriptive powers soar.
September 13th, 2014 at 3:43 pm
That’s an interesting take on Reilly’s way of writing, Mike. Thanks! I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time I read one of her books.
The fact remains that she’s all but forgotten, except for a few of us, no more than the fingers of one or maybe two hands at the most. I think is David is right in saying that she was middle of the road all the way, and middle of the road in the 40s doesn’t get you read 70 or more years later. It’s telling that I can’t put a face on Inspector McKee either.
September 13th, 2014 at 10:58 pm
Visuals as Mike describes are what I recall most about Reilly, and probably why I read the second and third (not sure how many I did read, it was off and on). The problem with being so visual is you have to fill those visions with better drawn characters. Though her visions weren’t grotesque they reminded me a bit of German Expressionistic cinema in that at times the vision far overshadowed plot and character. And I don’t recall her vision being overly atmospheric, in fact at times they were overwhelming or distracting.