Fri 13 Jul 2012
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: FALLON EVANS – Pistols and Pedagogues.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[9] Comments
William F. Deeck
FALLON EVANS – Pistols and Pedagogues. Sheed & Ward, hardcover, 1963.
A placid town, at least on the surface, is Stratford, home of Saint Felicitas, a small Catholic college for girls. About the biggest thing that has happened there is the recent ostensible elopement of a professor with one of the students, the daughter of a Chicago gangster.
Into this placidity comes Red Withers, professional student and sponger. Withers has been invited to temporarily give up racking balls in a billiard parlor and lecture on James Whitcomb Riley at the college.
The invitation has come about through the good offices of a friend, who should have known better. The lecture doesn’t go well, though the reader will enjoy it, Withers is mistaken for the eloping professor by the gangster and for a flasher by the police, finds himself under attack by all sides, discovers a murder, and has to clean up the town’s drug element.
Withers is five foot three in his elevator shoes, when he has them. He also has a scraggly red beard, without which he looks like a wizened juvenile. People think that he is trying to conceal something with the beard, and he is: all that wizen.
This is an amusing picaresque novel, with a rogue who does not laugh in the face of death but who can joke about it afterwards. [Hubin says the setting is Chicago, but Stratford is half a day’s journey from Chicago by train.]
Bibliographic Data: This is my nominee (so far) for the most obscure detective novel to be reviewed on this blog this month. It was the author’s only work of detective fiction. Evans’ other novel, The Trouble with Turlow (Doubleday, 1961), is described by one online bookseller as “A light-hearted spoof on life and the education system.”
If this might lead you to believe that Evans real-llife profession was in the realm of academia, you would in all likelihood be correct. A “Fallon Evans” was the editor of the Twentieth Century Literature: a Scholarly and Critical Journal in the late 1960s and early 70s. Although the online WhitePages site finds 13 Fallon Evans in the US, the name is still relatively uncommon, and one can easily assume the two to be one and the same. [Perhaps the Fallon Evans described on one website as being “a professor of English at Loyola Marymount University” in the mid-1980s.]
Also note that Hubin’s current edition of Crime Fiction IV has updated the setting of the novel to Illinois.
July 13th, 2012 at 5:45 pm
I had never heard of the publisher let alone the author and so I did a little digging. Sheed & Ward has been in business for 84 years according their website. They state their mission is “to publish, promote, and distribute books of contemporary impact and enduring merit primarily within the Catholic tradition.” Knowing that the story takes place in a Catholic school and was put out by a Catholic publisher, it is probably safe to assume (though I try not ever to assume anything) that Evans was indeed the professor at Loyola Marymount – a Catholic university. Apparently his full name was Francis Fallon Evans.
July 13th, 2012 at 6:06 pm
John
Yes, that has to be the fellow. I hadn’t thought to check the Sheed & Ward website. Good work on the follow through!
Since Bill Deeck and I were always on the same wave length, I’ve gone ahead and ordered the book on the Internet. Copies are easy to come by. I paid less than $5 for one described as being in Fine/Near Fine condition, including postage.
March 6th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Fallon Evans was my father, and I’m delighted to see this review 49 years after initial publication. PISTOLS & PEDAGOGUES was indeed his only published detective novel, though he wrote several UNPUBLISHED “Red Withers” novels that never got any traction (I suspect the Catholic publishing house didn’t see a future in the wizened-grad-student-detective genre).
The back-story was based on my father’s own experience as a professor at a small Catholic college (Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles). He taught English, edited a small literary journal, wrote articles and book reviews for the L.A. Times and, occasionally, dabbled in fiction. He died in 1996.
Thanks for your kind review. My father would have been delighted to be nominated “most obscure detective novel this month!”
March 10th, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Tim
Thanks for stopping by here. I suppose it doesn’t hurt that Bill Deeck, who is no longer with us, liked your father’s book!
As I suggested I might, I did buy a copy of the book on the basis of his review, but alas, I have to confess that I have not read it, or at least not yet. All the reason more to, now!
Thanks for the additional information about your father. I am, of course, especially intrigued by the fact that he wrote several other Red Withers novels. Do they still exist? Have you ever had any thoughts of getting them into print, even as only ebooks?
— Steve
January 23rd, 2018 at 12:24 pm
Dr. Fallon Evans was my Faculty Advisor when I entered Immaculate Heart College as an eager freshman in 1959. I chose his line because he looked to me just like I always imagined a college professor to look-distinguished, with a beard, and corduroy jacket. He even smoked a pipe, which wasn’t in evidence at the time, but very much so whenever one visited his little office in the college. Wonderful academic aroma, but most certainly an unhealthy choice. I remember when “Pistols and Pedagogues” came out, because IHC hosted him a Literary Tea. Many of my fellow students came, purchased an autographed copy, and felt honored, as I did, to have one of our teachers a published author. I liked this book, and was always sorry that there weren’t more. I think that Red Withers could have developed as many mystery protagonists do and made a place for himself in mystery fiction. I don’t remember liking “The Trouble with Turlow” as much, but perhaps I need to dig it out and reread it before passing final judgment. I am delighted to find this post, especially to see that Tim Evans responded. I would love to know what path his Dad followed after the college was forced to close, and to offer my condolences on his death. Dr. Evans was an important influence in my life! I am so sorry to learn of his death, and wish both he and Red Withers could have been with us longer!
January 23rd, 2018 at 8:11 pm
Therese
A wonderful post! Thanks for sharing your memories of Dr. Evans with us.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:56 am
Hello,
I am coming late to this site. What prompted me was a review in The Paris Review of J. J. Phillips’ novel Mojo Hand. In 1968-1969, I worked as associate editor on Twentieth Century Literature, the journal that Fallon Evans edited, and I vividly remember his praise for Mojo Hand.
I was four years out of college then, a mother of two, and working with Fallon on the journal made me feel I could go back to school and become a college professor like him. And that was indeed the career I have had until I retired in 2010.
I’m glad to be able to publicly mention how important Fallon Evans was for me for my entire life.
April 24th, 2020 at 6:31 pm
Armine —
A wonderful tribute to a man who’d otherwise be only a name to most of us. Thanks for sharing a bit of his life, and yours, with us!
May 15th, 2021 at 4:14 pm
I loved Pistols and Pedagogues. I had heard that Fallon Evans wrote a series with Red Withers and would like to know if one can purchase the unpublished books???