Wed 7 Oct 2009
WILLIAM DENBOW – Chandler. Belmont Tower, paperback original, 1977.
A while ago back, Bill Crider said something in his blog about Chandler, by William Denbow. The cover says it’s “…the toughest novel since The Maltese Falcon and Farewell, My Lovely,” but it’s more like a cheap attempt to exploit the success of Joe Gores’ Hammett (1975).
Like any responsible critic, Crider savaged the book, but I remembered buying it at a grocery store when it first came out, and I remembered thinking it wasn’t awful. And that’s all I remembered — I’m afraid I was quite drunk at the time. So I figured I’d try reading it sober and see what it was really like.
Well it just ain’t that bad. It ain’t that good, either, but somehow it didn’t strike me as completely awful.
For starters, I should warn potential readers (both of you) that there’s a lot of flat-footed explication here, some of the characters don’t exactly come to life on the page, and there’s a truly dreadful conversation between the fictional Raymond Chandler and the fictional Dashiell Hammett where Hammett comes up with the name ‘Philip Marlowe,’ and while I was getting through it, I seriously considered ripping my own eyes out rather than reading another line, it’s that bad. So you’ve been warned.
On the other hand, as I say…
Well, the plot moves along quickly, probably because it has to in a hundred-and-fifty-page paperback; the bad guys are engagingly nasty; one or two of the characters do come to life on the page; there’s some good research, and author Denbow occasionally comes up with bits like:
Hammett opened the door and the reek of stale booze and cigarette smoke hit Chandler like a fist.
“What’s his name?” Chandler.
“Maybe I should just call the cops.”
“Maybe you should do a lot of things. Here’s two more dollars.”
It was a stale smelling little store crammed with newspapers and pulp magazines. The store carried The News, The Jewish Daily Forward; Chandler didn’t see Black Mask, and he figured there was enough real crime people didn’t read crime stories.
I don’t care what anybody says, that’s good writing. There’s also a vivid shot of a stint in a Mexican jail, and an interview with a half-drunk widow just enough like the scene with Jessie Florian in Farewell, My Lovely to evoke it without imitating it.
In all, what you’ve got here is a book that doesn’t merit a lot of praise, and I’m not going to lend it out to my friends, but when I finished reading it, I put it back on my shelf.
Which I guess is something.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA: William Denbow, according to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, was the pen name of George Stiles. Chandler is his only entry in CFIV under either name. Nothing else is known about Stiles. (He does not appear to be the British composer of such stage and screen musicals as Honk! and Peter Pan, as the latter was born in 1961).
October 7th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
I appreciate that you could find something nice to say about this flatfooted thud ear book. Arguably it was better than the unrelated movie Chandler with Warren Oates, but that’s about as much appreciation as I can work up for it.
All things considered, you have to wonder if Chandler would actually notice the reek of stale booze on someone else.
That said, I didn’t thow it away when I finished it — or at least I picked it back up after throwing it across the room.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:40 am
A “thud ear” book?
October 8th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Thud ear for the language and dialogue. The writer can’t hear when his own prose falls flat, with a thud… Oh, well, I stole the phrase from Leslie Halliwell the British film critic. Maybe it works better with movies…
October 8th, 2009 at 2:55 am
Is it just me, or is that Ralph “Dick Tracy” Byrd on the cover?
October 8th, 2009 at 11:25 am
David
When I looked up “thud ear” in quotes on Google last night, I couldn’t find anything but accidental matchups. Today when I went to look, your comment comes in as number one.
If you hadn’t mentioned Halliwell, the phrase would have been attributed to you from now on!
— Steve
PS. As for Ralph Byrd, now that you mention it …
December 18th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
[…] credit as fictional characters in other detective novels. Hammett and Chandler both appeared in Chandler, by William Denbow, for example; and obviously Hammett appeared in Joe Gores’ […]
September 8th, 2012 at 10:25 pm
For what it’s worth, I believe that a story by the George Stiles referred to above called “A Return” was published in the Winter 1943 issue of The Kenyon Review, and subsequently selected by Martha Foley in The Best American Short Stories of the Year 1944. I can find nothing else about him at all; the biographical entry in the back of the book is deliberately uninformative (“Lives in New Yorlk City and working on a novel”). Other than that … nothing. I also don’t know if Denbow was the pseudonym of Stiles, or vice-versa. I see it both ways.
March 23rd, 2024 at 10:03 am
Just bought the Portuguese edition. Hey, it was 0.50 cents. Guess I will have to read it!