Mon 17 May 2010
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: H. C. BRANSON – The Pricking Thumb.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[3] Comments
by Bill Pronzini:
H. C. BRANSON – The Pricking Thumb. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1942. Paperback reprint: Bestseller Mystery B76, digest-sized, 1946.
During his Ann Arbor days, Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar) was a close friend of H. C. Branson and an admirer of his work. It is easy to see why. Branson wrote literate, meticulously plotted (but flawed) novels in which the emphasis is on deep-seated conflicts that have their roots in the dark past.
Branson’s detective, John Bent, like Macdonald’s Lew Archer, is less a human being than a vehicle around which to build a narrative, a catalyst to mesh all the elements so that each novel’s final statement becomes clear.
In The Pricking Thumb, Bent is hired by an acquaintance, Marina Holland, to investigate the disappearance of her stepson, Bob, and the odd behavior of her husband, Gouvion. But when Bent arrives in the small town of New Paget (in an unnamed state, probably Michigan; a sense of place is almost nonexistent), he finds Gouvion dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Also found dead this same night are Marina and Gouvion’s doctor, Brian Calvert, under circumstances that suggest the two might have been lovers. It appears to be a case of double homicide perpetrated by Gouvion, who then committed suicide.
But there are too many inconsistencies, leading Bent to believe that it is instead a case of triple homicide. His search for the truth takes him along a tangled trail of relationships, old and new hatreds and jealousies, and not a little double-dealing.
There is a good deal of passion among the characters; unfortunately, there is very little in John Bent or in the writing. Bent is a virtual cipher, about whom we know only that he once practiced medicine. “Someone was feeding [one of my patients] arsenic,” he says to Marina Holland in the first chapter. “The only way I could cure him was to find out who it was and make them stop, which was a little more difficult than it sounds. At any rate, I ended up with a new profession.”
The writing, while well crafted, is so detached and emotionless that the reader tends to lose interest. Had Branson possessed more of Ross Macdonald’s talent, had he been able to make Bent more human and sympathetic, had he injected some passion and vividness into his work, he might have become an important figure in the mystery field. As it is, he is chiefly notable not for his work but for his relationship with Kenneth Millar.
Among his other novels, all featuring John Bent, are I’ll Eat You Last (1941), Case of the Giant Killer (1944), and The Leaden Bubble (1949).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
May 17th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
I liked this one, but Bill’s comments are dead on. Bent never becomes a character and Branson doesn’t have the chops at either the language or the plot to overcome that.
I know Macdonald was reacting to the overwhelming Marlowe character when he made Archer a cipher, but I have to think that doing that with your narrator probably wasn’t a great idea unless you had Macdonald’s talents and abilities, and even then it has impacted his works long term impact.
Hopefully we will see a Macdonald revival, but you wonder if Archer isn’t just too remote and unformed for a new generation to embrace his adventures the way they have Chandler over the years.
Branson and Bent are a good example of the limits of that particular form. You keep seeing what might have been, but never quite is.
May 17th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
For me, Branson is an author I keep meaning to read and I never have. He wrote seven John Bent novels, of which I own three or maybe four.
I’d just posted Marcia Muller’s Christianna Brand review from 1001 MIDNIGHTS, and of course H. C. Branson came next after Brand.
What caught my eye was of course the Ross Macdonald connection, which if I’d known before, I’d forgotten.
What it should do now is convince me to find my copies of the Branson’s books, or at least one of them, and do something with it besides keep it there sitting on the shelf.
May 18th, 2010 at 1:40 am
There is a lot of potential here, and you will see why Macdonald liked his work, but as the review says there is something missing. The writing is remote to the extent of being a case study in places where just a little color and passion would be appreciated. Melodrama can easily be overdone, but it shouldn’t be skipped entirely. If Archer is a cipher, Bent is little more than a ghost.