Mon 29 Jun 2009
TMF Review: JUDSON PHILIPS – A Murder Arranged.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Pulp Fiction , Reviews[9] Comments
JUDSON PHILIPS – A Murder Arranged. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1978. Reprint hardcover: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1978. No US paperback edition. (Shown is the cover of an Italian softcover edition.)
Journalist Peter Styles’ crusade against senseless violence leads him to an out-of-the-way New England village where he becomes the champion of a young man accused and convicted of murder. All the evidence seems to point directly to Tim Ryan, but the feeling of at least half the townspeople is that the state police wrapped up their case far too quickly.
Obviously there’s more than a little resemblance here to a story that recently made Connecticut headlines, and the reader is swallowed up at once into the affairs of a small town. In spite of some fast deductions and the long arm of coincidence in the final chapters, Philips demonstrates once again that few authors are so non-stop reliable as he.
(very slightly revised).
[UPDATE] 06-29-09. For an author as popular as Judson Philips (1903-1989) was, it never made sense to me that a good percentage of his books never came out in paperback. Including the books he wrote as Hugh Pentecost, his hardcover mystery fiction would have filled at least two long shelves at your local library.
Philips began his career writing an even longer list of stories for the pulp magazines in the 1930s, and books continued to come from his typewriter very nearly up to the day he died. A list of his book-length fiction can be found online here.
If it weren’t for readers and collectors of pulp magazines, I imagine that Philips would have fallen long ago into that ever-growing limbo of mystery writers who sold tons of books in their day, but who are fast fading from memory today. (A list of his “Part Avenue Hunt Club” stories from Detective Fiction Weekly that have recently been reprinted in a two-volume set from Battered Silicon Dispatch Box can be found online here.)
June 30th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Pentecost was one of the midlist writers who was the backbone of the hardcover publishing industry and had solid lending library and book club presence, but not as big in paperback. Some aren’t represented in paper at all, though at least Pentecost did pretty well from the late sixties through the nineties compared to others. I don’t think any of Richard Lockridge Captain Heimlich or Nathan Shapiro books were ever in paper.
These writers often had better sales than the writers who we collect today who appeared in paper, and better reviews too. They even made more money, but because their hardcovers aren’t collectible we don’t here about them as much today.
I don’t recall seeing much of Pentecost in paper at all until the mid sixties when John Jericho cracked the market for him at Pinnacle. Later the Peter Styles and Pierre Chambrun books did well.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:04 am
There are some notes on Hugh Pentecost at my web site:
http://mikegrost.com/laterimp.htm#Pentecost
I’ve only read a small fraction of his work. It is very uneven, with some stories with clever, well-constructed plots, and other works that seem just to be taking up space…
He’s an author who needs further study.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:59 am
David
It looks like more of Pentecost-Philips’ books came out in paperback than I was thinking. Many of the John Jericho books were published by Pinnacle and later on by Zebra. Some but not all of the Peter Styles books came out from Pinnacle, and many of the later Chambrun books were published by Worldwide.
I guess the key phrase here would be “some but not all.” The fact still remains that lots of his books never did appear in paperback, with A MURDER ARRANGED as a prime example. And you’re right about both of those series of Richard Lockridge’s books. They were extremely popular in terms of library sales and book club editions, but if more than one or two came out in paperback, I’d be surprised.
Mike
In terms of Philips (or Pentecost) being a detective story writer, with the emphasis on the word “detective,” you’re absolutely right. His work was very uneven. I think he was more interested in fast-moving fiction of all kinds, without quite going in the direction of out-and-out thrillers so common on bestseller lists today.
— Steve
June 30th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
I think Pentecost did at least one book of short stories that made the Queens Quorum book of detective shorts, Steve, but otherwise I agree. And wasn’t John Jericho one of the members of the Park Avenue Hunt Club?
The Styles books always dealt with social issues and headlines (befitting Styles job), and seemed to me perfect for a television series, but never made it.
I don’t recall Pentecost having much paperback presence at all before the mid sixties. His John Jericho shorts were a regular in EQMM in that period, again, often with a sociological angle. I think I first read him either as part of a Detective Book Club triple decker or from the library.
As Mike says Pentecost could be very uneven. At his worst he was pulpy in a bad sense, at his best he wrote fast moving thrillers with good plots if not exactly detective novels — though the Pierre Chambrun books were more formal in that area.
Still, he was much more successful than what we may recall because his relatively small paperback output skewers our view. There are any number of writers who are virtually forgotten today who actually had successful careers without much paperback exposure. Many of them had better sales and careers than some of the writers who are more collectible today because of their paperback exposure.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I liked HOT SUMMER KILLING, from 1968, that stars Peter Styles, even though it’s a bit patronizing. I’ve also read, alongside some short stories about which I don’t remember much, CANCELLED IN RED, a stamp mystery for which I didn’t much care for, but I can’t tell whether it was due to the bad Finnish translation or the book itself.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
I’ve never read any Peter Styles books – and am looking forward to the recommended HOT SUMMER KILLING and A MURDER ARRANGED.
Pentecost wrote some terrific novellas, including impossible crimes like “The Day the Children Vanished” and “The Murder Machine”.
But CANCELLED IN RED seemed uninspired to me, too. It is all part of the strange career of Pentecost, who could be a first rate mystery writer sometimes, and ordinary at others.
June 12th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
[…] A Murder Arranged (by Steve Lewis). A long discussion of Philips’ crime fiction follows in the comments. […]
September 29th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
What’s amazing to me about Jud is not only his output, sales and recognition as a writer, but his role as the founder/backer of the Sharon Playhouse in Sharon, CT, while also being publisher of the Harlem Valley Times in Amenia, NY. (He also acted on occasion, playing the manufacturer/protagonist in Miller’s, All My Sons,(with an Equity cast).
September 29th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Walter —
Thanks for leaving the comment above. Judson Philips and I both lived in Connecticut (and I still do) but we never met. I knew about his involvement with the Sharon Playhouse, but not about his running a newspaper. He sounds like an interesting person to have known!
— Steve