Fri 19 Jun 2009
A Review by Dan Stumpf: MALDEN GRANGE BISHOP – Scylla.
Posted by Steve under Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[5] Comments
MALDEN GRANGE BISHOP – Scylla. Ace Double D-40, paperback original; 1st printing, 1954.
The author of Scylla, Malden Grange Bishop, is a writer better known for his non-fiction (including a book on LSD that pre-dates the psychedelic era).
Scylla is considerably less groundbreaking, a standard tale of domestic murder, not very intelligently planned nor, surprisingly, found out. Its marginal virtues, in fact, lie in the very ordinariness of concept and execution.
The book reads as if it were written to fill out the back half of an Ace Double (which it does; the flip side is William Irish’s Waltz into Darkness) with the standard elements of sex, murder and not much else, and the writing is never bad enough to quit reading nor good enough to be memorable.
What emerges reminds me of what Raymond Chandler said about giving murder back to the kind of people who commit it: Scylla, the villain of the piece is just a half-smart housewife, bored with her husband. She kills him not so much for money as because he simply irritates her — one of the leading motives for murder, if truth be known.
The killing, as I said, is far from ingenious and the detection suitably uninspired, but the tale itself gains a certain verisimilitude from its own mediocrity. This is murder as it’s really done, by the kind of people who really do it, and if the singer is not particularly skillful, the song is like a familiar folk ballad heard and never forgotten.
Bibliographic Note: This is the only entry for the author in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.
June 19th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
If nothing else, at least we have a pleasingly pulpy cover to admire.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Sounds as if it is just as well he didn’t pen the sequel, Charybdis.
This type of James M. Cain style simple domestic murder is harder to do than it seems simply because the characters, setting, and crime are so mundane and the interest has to come from the writer’s style, insight, and empathy with flawed characters. If you want to do one you had best have something original and different to say about the fairly ordinary events happening.
Nothing is so hard as writing about ordinary people with ordinary passions meeting everyday crisis and facing the consequences of their actions. This is why soap opera resorts to so much melodrama and so little reality.
It takes a Cain, a Balzac, or a Flaubert to write this sort of thing well (and even they resorted to a good deal of melodrama). Joyce Carol Oates or someone of that caliber can do it, but in a mainstream novel, not a suspense novel. In a book like this style and voice are everything since there is so little to work with in terms of drama and character.
The limit of realism in fiction is when it becomes so real it takes on the same dull sheen of everyday life. In genre fiction where sensation and escape are part of a works appeal it takes genius to make the ordinary and mundane pay off.
Simenon did it in his non series psychological novels, Charles Williams managed it in some of his books, and John D. MacDonald could make this sort of thing sing, but it sounds as if Bishop is no Simenon, Williams, or MacDonald.
June 20th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I’ve not been happy with the coloring on the cover image, so I’ve working on it this evening. I think I’ve improved it, but sometimes my eyes get tired and it’s hard to tell. It’s still pleasingly pulpy, though, that I’m sure of!
And no, I don’t think Bishop transcended the crime pulp genre like any of the writers David named, but Dan’s review had the desired effect of making me dig my copy out to read.
At least, I think that was one of his desired effects.
What else is true is that in all likelihood, this may be the only review the book ever had.
— Steve
June 21st, 2009 at 5:09 pm
The cover is much improved. I’ve noticed a lot of images I download come out too dark, particularly paperback covers and need to be refreshed a little to get back to the original sheen. The revision looks about right for an Ace cover of the period.
There are some interesting books in the Ace Doubles series, particularly the mystery ones. Of course the most famous is probably William Burrough’s Junky, but there are others, and almost all of them have nice covers. I have a copy of a fanzine from way back that did a nice article on the Ace doubles mystery line. I’ll have to did around and see if I can find it.
February 11th, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Hi,
This is Lynn Maguire.. Bob’s daughter.. I am thinking Scylla MIGHT be my father’s work..Hard to tell. Is this credited????? It’s the woman’s face that has me wondering.. Also, I have found many dozens of Maguire covers not on any list. If I can get this **** checklist done, I will certainly be sharing it!!! Lynn M.