Thu 22 Oct 2009
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: ANTHONY ABBOT – The Shudders.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[4] Comments
William F. Deeck
ANTHONY ABBOT – The Shudders. Farrar & Rinehart, US, hardcover, 1943. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, February 1943. UK title: Deadly Secret: Collins, hc, 1943.
“The author requests that in discussing The Shudders readers and reviewers do not give away its plot.” An understandable request by Anthony Abbot (who in reality was Fulton Oursler), one must admit, since the plot is asinine.
Still, a reviewer must mention something about the book, besides declaiming that Anthony Abbot, the narrator and Watson for Thatcher Colt, is an even bigger twit than S.S. Van Dine, the narrator and Watson for Philo Vance, which is a claim many won’t believe until they encounter Abbot the narrator.
Briefly then — and I hope that Abbot’s shade does not come back to haunt me — Thatcher Colt, New York City Police Commissioner, more detective than administrator, has been responsible for the conviction of a villain who poisoned his boss and mentor and made off with two million never-located dollars.
The evening he is to be executed, the poisoner asks Colt to visit with him. He warns Colt that an even greater villain — a Dr. Baldwin — who kills for sport and who kills undetectably is lurking about ready to do untold damage.
The poisoner is executed, with Colt looking on, and then Colt begins an unsuccessful three-year search for Baldwin. One day the former warden of the prison at which the poisoner was executed rushes into Colt’s office to tell him that he has met Dr. Baldwin, that the poisoner’s executioners are dying off, and that the warden is to be next.
He also has more important information to impart, but he’s too busy talking about side issues to do so, and then he dies — of apparently natural causes.
Why is Dr. Baldwin seemingly avenging the executed poisoner? It’s all too silly and impossible to narrate, even if the author’s request was to be flouted even more than I have, already.
Skip this one.
Editorial Comment: I’ll post a review by Mike Nevins of Anthony Abbot’s About the Murder of the Clergyman’s Mistress next. At the end of his comments, he points out that the last two Abbot mysteries, The Creeps and The Shudders, are said to have been written by someone else.
And, yes, it appears to be so, or at least it’s highly conjectured to be true. In Part 7 of the online Addenda to his Revised Crime Fiction IV, Al Hubin names Oscar Schisgall as the probable suspect.
Which makes me curious, of course. Why should Fulton Oursler have farmed off his series character to someone to write up his last two adventures? If anyone knows or learns more, please elucidate!
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:16 am
I liked this and The Creeps much better than this, though it may have been the injection of new blood and the move away from Van Dine a bit that caused that. I seem to recall reading some good reviews for both books despite their reception here.
The whole Van Dine school is pretty much an acquired taste, and I can certainly see that it can be tough to adjust too, but for all its flaws and my own jaundiced comments on it and all things related to it, it is still a good deal of fun in the right frame of mind.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:07 am
Re why Oursler farmed out the last two Colt books I do know that in 1942 he left his editorial role with Liberty and in 1944 took the job with Reader’s Digest as senior editor. His article as Abbott for the 1945 Digest became the basis for the movie Boomerang with Dana Andrews, Lee J. Cobb, and Arthur Kennedy.
It’s quite possible he was working on the manuscript for The Greatest Story Ever Told for much of the forties, and only continued the Colt series to fill a contract, and since The Shudders came out in 1943 a year after the film of The Panther’s Claw with Sidney Blackmer he might have decided to revive the character in relation to that.
Among other things he wrote the play The Spider (made into a film in 1945) and the book that became the basis for Boy’s Town.
He sometimes wrote with his brother Will, who also penned a good post war mystery Departure Delayed.
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Jamie Sturgeon points out that Will was Fulton’s son, not his brother. (In age they were were only 20 years apart.)
What’s interesting is that when DEPARTURE DELAYED was reprinted by Bestseller in paperback, they retitled it BULLETS FOR A BLONDE.
Guess they didn’t think the original title was going to sell many copies!
— Steve
October 24th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Departure got its original title back when Ace reprinted it as part of an Ace Double.