Sat 12 Jun 2010
HENRY KANE – A Corpse for Christmas. Dell #735, reprint paperback, no date given [1953]. Originally published in hardcover by J. B. Lippincott, 1951.
Also reprinted in paperback as Deadly Doll, Zenith ZB-19, 1959; and as Homicide at Yuletide, Signet D2877, 1966; and under its original title by Lancer in 1971.
Seasons greetings! Private richard Peter Chambers gets mixed up with a dead man with a red beard and a false identity, a gorgeous lady PI, several more luscious women (some with husbands, some with not, it doesn’t seem to matter), a mobster, and a box of missing jools.
The story is told with lots of short, snappy dialogue, sometimes a page or so at time, which is neat, but sometimes it is so short and snappy that it can also give you a headache if you’re not careful.
Also [WARNING: Plot Alert] beware of the gimmick of the clocks that are stopped at the scene of the murder. Maybe it wasn’t old hat at the time, but I think it was.
COMMENT: Here’s a prime example of a PI novel that you can enjoy while at the same time realizing what kind of lowbrow, generic entertainment it really is. Kane should be commended for writing a completely adequate Fair Play Detective Story, however, with lots of clues for the reader to pick up on. And even though I knew the killer’s identity some time before Peter Chambers did, I was surprised to learn I hadn’t spotted them all!
slightly revised.
[UPDATE] 06-12-10. For some reason I seem to sound embarrassed to have been caught reading a low level paperback for its entertainment value only.
If that was the case, and it certainly sounds as though I was, then I apologize and shame on me!
I am glad to see, however, that I pointed out Kane’s ability to write a Fair Play puzzle story at the same time as he was doing a lowly PI novel, at least in his early days of his career.
One of his best efforts in this regard was Too French and Too Deadly, an Avon paperback from 1955 and a Peter Chambers novel that was reprinted in its entirety in Hans Stefan Santesson’s The Locked Room Reader (Random House, 1968).
Bill Crider, by the way, likes this book, too. You can read his review of it over on his blog.
To be posted here shortly, reviews of Trinity in Violence (Avon, 1955) and The Midnight Man (Macmillan, 1965), the former with Peter Chambers, and the latter one of Kane’s trio of McGregor novels.
June 12th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I always liked Kane and Chambers for what they were and never found them that “low level.” Granted he wasn’t Chandler or Macdonald or even Bill Gault (there was a touch of Robert Lesilie Bellem in some of Chambers wise guy narration), but the Chambers books (at least the early ones) were decent (or better) mysteries with snappy patter and kept the pages turning.
And I’ve said before they could not have found anyone better to do the novel based on the PETER GUNN television series. Chamber’s virtually invented the buttoned down eye of the fifties and early sixties.
Kane also invented what most consider to be the first major female eye since the pulps and Stout’s Dol Bonner, Marla Trent (PRIVATE EYEFUL). Been a while since I read this one, but I know she appeared in some Chambers outings, is she the female eye you are referring to here?
June 12th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
You can blame my comments about Henry Kane’s books being on a “low level” on my stunted sense of humor, or at least the second time around.
Who knows what I was thinking the first time.
I also would like to take credit on the neat segue between this post and the preceding one, or that is to say, the PETER GUNN one, but I can’t.
Maybe it was my subconscious that was at work, but I didn’t make the connection until you pointed it out. You can believe that or not, but it’s true.
And as far as Marla Trent is concerned, I don’t believe that she’s the female PI that shows up in A CORPSE FOR CHRISTMAS — I’m sure I would have recognized her name — but it could have been an early prototype.
Besides PRIVATE EYEFUL (Pyramid, 1959), Marla Trent made a joint appearance with Peter Chambers in KISSES OF DEATH (Belmont, 1962).
I’m sure I read the former, but the latter does not sound familiar, no how.
June 12th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Likely a prototype for Marla as you said since she didn’t debut until 1959 (then the deluge). Lady eyes were nothing new, but towards the end of the fifties and early sixties everyone seemed to have the same idea at the same time — Marla, Mavis, Honey, and others.
Come to think of it, other than her one solo outing Dol Bonner appeared in both Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Tecumseh Fox series. Maybe it’s something about female eyes.
Don’t tell on yourself. I just assumed the segue from Gunn to Kane was so obvious you felt no need to comment. How does it go, better to remain silent and appear wise than open your mouth and confirm the opposite — not that I’ve ever mastered that art either.
June 12th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
That’s advice I’ll remember — or ought to. Next time!
June 13th, 2010 at 10:36 am
I’ve finally remembered why I put this review into the queue to be posted. It’s a long story, but here goes:
Henry Kane wrote My Darlin’ Evangeline, the novel that was the basis for “An Out for Oscar,” the episode of THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR that Mike Tooney reviewed back here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=2039
Sometimes it takes a night’s sleeping on it before I remember everything I should.
— Steve
June 13th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
You’ve left out Bertha Cool. Sure in most of the Cool/Lam books the detcting was done by Donald lam. But I believe there was one written during World War II when Lam was away in the service in which Bertha did a case be herself.
June 13th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I don’t know if Doll Bonner was a “doll” or not, but Bertha Cool was not, certainly not in the sense of Marla, Mavis, Honey, and the others that came along in the 1950s. The antithesis, you might say!
But you’re right. If we’re talking “the first major female eye since the pulps,” then Bertha Cool has to be right up toward the top.
June 13th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Actually Bertha comes before Dol since she made her debut before the war and Dol during the war (HAND IN GLOVE). There were several pulp female eyes, but the sexy version really didn’t show up regularly until Kane’s Marla Trent (despite some false starts — Berkley Gray’s Norman Conquest encounters a sexy American eye in one novel from the era).
Still Bertha only does actual sleuthing in one book and even then has to call on Donald to solve the case. Dol on the other hand has a solo outing doing her own detecting as well as assisting Wolfe and Archie and Fox.
There are several good collections of tough females from the pulps including DEADLY DAMES.
And Dol was a “Doll” but also tough. Crystal Bernard of WINGS played her in a made for television movie based on HAND IN GLOVE. She was tough but a babe. I’m not sure how many stories she appears in — but at least in a Wolfe novella and a Fox novel that I’m certain of.