Fri 23 Mar 2012
Reviewed by Marv Lachman: GAYLORD DOLD – Bonepile.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
GAYLORD DOLD – Bonepile. Ivy, paperback original, 1988.
Bonepile by Gaylord Dold, the third Mitch Roberts novel, is more ambitious than the Rafferty book by W. Glenn Duncan (reviewed here ) but ultimately less satisfying.
Dold is another writer to be commended for moving the private eyes’ mean streets from New York and Los Angeles to more unusual locales. In this case it is a rural farming community in Kansas where Roberts, on vacation from Wichita (“…the world’s largest small town”), has gone to recuperate. One can feel the heat and wind blowing off the plains, imagine walking through the park in the middle of town, and understand the people, including their worship of the St. Louis Cardinals.
The book is set in 1956, but Roberts in true Lew Archer fashion permits guilt to cause him to try to solve a 1940’s murder. Unfortunately, Dold, like Archer’s creator, suffers from a severe case of a disease I believe I was first to diagnose and name: “metaphoritis.”
Its primary symptom is overwriting, with swelling of metaphors, those necessary usages which transform ordinary into very good writing. When poorly used, as in Bonepile, we get such lines as “Night grew in me like a tumor” and “The tree itself creaked as if its heart were broken.”
Sometimes, in an effort to be imaginative, Dold is merely anatomically unsound as he writes, “Sweat filled my mind and overflowed.” I suspect that the reason for all the overwriting and padding is that this time around he had too slim a plot and, based on the unsatisfactory ending, didn’t know how to conclude his book.
Yet I perceive real writing talent here, and Dr. Lachman suspects this case of metaphoritis will not be fatal.
Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 1989.
The Mitch Roberts series —
Hot Summer, Cold Murder. Avon, pb, 1987.
Snake Eyes. Ivy, pb, 1987.
Bonepile. Ivy, pb, 1988.
Cold Cash. Ivy, pb, 1988.
Muscle and Blood. Ivy, pb, 1989.
Disheveled City. Ivy, pb, 1990.
A Penny for the Old Guy. St. Martin’s, hc, 1991.
Rude Boys. St. Martin’s, hc, 1992.
The World Beat. St. Martin’s, hc, 1993.
Samedi’s Knapsack. St. Martin’s, hc, 2001.
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:23 pm
I read the first Mitch Roberts novel, and one or two of the ones published by Ivy, but from the description, I don’t remember that this was one of them.
Marv was right in saying that that Dold has a future — 10 books in a PI series is more than most fictional sleuths get — but I also have a hunch that no one remembers Mitch Roberts today.
The books must have been published and dropped into a well somewhere. There are only nine copies of BONEPILE offered for sale on ABE right now, for example, and for a mass market paperback of such relatively recent vintage, that’s far too few.
What’s interesting is that when Dold was finally able to sell the series to a hardcover publisher, the books never came out in paperback. The vintage Kansas setting was also dropped, which as Marv points out, was a good part of the series’ appeal.
March 23rd, 2012 at 10:38 pm
I discovered the original paperback PI series starring Mitch Roberts back in the late 1980’s and quickly read all of them. I definitely liked them alot more than Marv Lachman. In fact I see from my notes in each paperback, that BONEPILE was my favorite.
Dold captured the atmosphere of 1950’s small town life and in at least one novel, HOT SUMMER, COLD MURDER, the sensitive, moody private eye lives right across the street from a minor league baseball farm club. I’m a big fan of minor league ball and have seen hundreds of games in Trenton, Reading, Lakewood, etc, so these novels appealed to me.
March 23rd, 2012 at 11:08 pm
I wonder if Steve will remember the following story about The Case of the Gaylord Dold Paperbacks.
A few years ago I was making what turned out to be a hopeless attempt to downsize my paperback collection. Several collectors, including Steve, were allowed to enter what I call The Paperback Room and pick out books to buy. Steve always managed to control himself and never picked out stacks and stacks like some collectors. I guess he saw the prices I was asking($10 to $20 each for most).
But on one occasion, he picked out all the Mitch Roberts paperbacks by Dold and asked me what I wanted for them. But I couldn’t part with them and had to say that they were not for sale. If I don’t run out of time, I plan to reread them one day.
Do you remember the above, Steve?
March 24th, 2012 at 1:22 am
Indeed I do. You had the complete run of the Mitch Roberts paperbacks stacked on the end of a shelf, but even better, they were in beautiful once read, otherwise mint condition. I did ask you about them, and I might have paid you $10 each for them, but it was no deal. I had to settle for something else.
HOT SUMMER, which you mentioned in your previous comment, may have been the best one, but since I haven’t read them all, how can I say that for sure? But I love books with that midwestern 1950s setting, and as you say, the baseball connection was a pure bonus.