Wed 18 Apr 2012
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: LAWRENCE LARIAR – Death Paints the Picture.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
William F. Deeck
LAWRENCE LARIAR – Death Paints the Picture. Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1943. Crime Novel Selection, nn [#6], digest-sized paperback, as Death Is the Host, no date [1943].
A cartoonist himself, Lariar has as his detective Homer Bull, quite overweight and mastermind of the daily comic strip “True Stories of Crime.” Bull writes the strip while his assistant, Ham MacAndrews, does the cartooning. Ham also narrates Bull’s investigations. “‘Great jumping ginch!’ I blatted” is an example of MacAndrews’s speech which leads one to hope he draws better than he speaks.
Because his man Shtunk was on a binge, Bull misses the invitation to weekend with Hugh Shipley, famed illustrator for the weekly magazines. It is an ill-assorted group that includes Bull’s ex-wife, a gossip columnist, and a tobacco mogul.
If Bull had attended, he might have been able to prevent Shipley’s alleged suicide, alleged because Bull, who shows up afterwards, is convinced Shipley was murdered, despite the room having been locked with no way for any murderer to have escaped.
Another murder made to look like suicide, though it doesn’t fool Bull, takes place before Bull figures out who and how. Probably because I have perverse tastes, I enjoyed the book.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES:
The Homer Bull series —
Death Paints the Picture. Phoenix Press, 1943.
He Died Laughing. Phoenix Press, 1943.
The Man with the Lumpy Nose. Dodd Mead, 1944.
The Girl with the Frightened Eyes. Dodd Mead, 1945.
Lawrence Lariar has his own page on Wikipedia. Here’s the first paragraph:
He wrote nine mystery novels under his own name; nine as Adam Knight, including eight adventures of PI Steve Conacher and one with female PI Sugar Shannon; two paperback originals as by Michael Lawrence, both cases for PI Johnny Amsterdam; and one book as by Michael Stark.
If he wrote the one mystery credited to Marston La France, it is news to Al Hubin. (Marston La France was a long-time professor and academic dean at Carleton University in Ottawa. The mystery he authored, Miami Murder-Go-Round, was copyrighted in his name. It features yet another PI, Rick Larkan.)
April 18th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Back in the late 1950s, when I read almost every PI novel that came out in paperback, I must have read some if not all of Lariar’s later ones, but do I remember any of them? Not a single one.
April 20th, 2012 at 5:23 am
I have perverse tastes, too, though I’ve never quite described them that way. I had a beat up copy of this book but it was just too grubby to handle in order to read. But someone bought it from me! Probably because it still had the DJ glued to the book even if it was chipped and peeling.
I much prefer the lurid cover of the PB reprint. Someone auctioned a copy of that on eBay recently but it went out of my tightwad price range. Can’t afford to compete with the rabid collectors anymore.
April 20th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
The asking price for the paperback on the fixed-price sites seems to be in the $20 to $30 range, and there are not too many of these, either. I don’t know how high the eBay copy that you’re referring to went for, but if I didn’t have a copy and wanted it, I still probably wouldn’t go over $10. Or I’d hate myself if I did.
Luckily I don’t have to make that kind of decision, as I have the book, the paperback edition, and if I spent more than a dollar for it, I’d be surprised — it was that long ago that I obtained it.
I’ve not read it in all the years since then — as you I’ve only admired the cover — but that may have been a mistake. I have much the same interests in books that Bill Deeck did, so my reactions may have been the same as his.
Any book with a piece of dialogue like “‘Great jumping ginch!’ I blatted.” can’t be all bad, can it?