Fri 14 Jun 2013
Reviewed by Jon L. Breen: ARIEL S. WINTER – The Twenty-Year Death.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
ARIEL S. WINTER – The Twenty-Year Death. Hard Case Crime, hardcover, August 2012; trade paperback, August 2013.
Ariel S. Winter’s The Twenty-Year Death sets a challenge both ambitious and unique: three crime novels, each in the style of a different writer, that could individually stand alone but as a group tell a connected story.
“Malniveau Prison,” set in France in 1931, is a classical detective story with a bizarre plot in the style of Georges Simenon. “Falling Star,” set in 1941 Hollywood, is a hardboiled detective novel inspired by Raymond Chandler. “Police at the Funeral,” set in 1951 Maryland, is fiction noir in the Jim Thompson vein. (That last is one of the great mystery-novel titles, previously used by quite a different writer, Margery Allingham.)
The common character in the trilogy is novelist and screenwriter Shem Rosenkrantz, whose drinking problem and institutionalized wife make clear he was inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who for all his faults surely was not as unsympathetic, weak, and pathetic as Shem. Just as well we don’t have to live through three whole books with him. He’s just a minor presence in the first two but no more likable when you get to know him better in the third one.
I believe Winter has done a superb job on all three stories, and they’re worthy of the praise they have received. But what I want to discuss here are some errors and odd choices.
Anachronisms are the bane of historical writers, and as I’ve pointed out before they are both harder to avoid and more likely to be noticed when the history is relatively recent. I don’t believe the term “senior citizens†or a French equivalent was current in 1931, nor was the meaningless expression, “It is what it is.†Nor was Ms used to designate women in 1951, except maybe in regional dialect which is not how it’s used here.
In the Chandler pastiche, British expressions not likely to be used by an American turn up: “the chemist’s†for druggist’s, “in the cinema.†I don’t think Winter, who lives in Baltimore, is British. Is it a nod to the fact that Chandler was educated in Britain? Unlikely, and the typically British phrase “on about†occurs later in the Thompson pastiche. (While it’s true the co-publisher with Hard Case Crime, Titan Books, is headquartered in London, I would assume Charles Ardai was at the editorial reins.)
In “Falling Star,” a horse race is started with a pistol shot. It’s never been done that way to my knowledge, and the odd terminology describing the race makes clear the track is not the author’s milieu.
Moving from errors to odd choices, “Falling Star” takes place in a fantasy Hollywood. Where Chandler famously renamed Santa Monica as Bay City in his Philip Marlowe novels, Winter carries it to a greater extreme, changing place name and street names in a manner disorienting to the Southern California reader. Sunset Boulevard becomes Sommerset, Wilshire becomes Woodsheer.
Even Los Angeles is not called by its right name, becoming San Angelo. As for the racetracks, Santa Anita in Arcadia becomes Santa Theresa in Arcucia, but Hollywood Park keeps its right name, though it is not and never was actually in Hollywood.
Finally, in “Police at the Funeral,” one character reacts to unwelcome news with the following bit of censored dialogue: “S—t! S—t, s—t, s—t.†Now surely, the style book of Hard Case Crime allows for the use of the actual spelled-out obscenity. Would it have been presented this way in Thompson’s day, and is that the reason?
Anyway, quibbles aside, I highly recommend this three-part book. I’m just curious how these particular errors and decisions came to be. Anybody want to speculate?
June 14th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
I never made it past the Simenon pastiche. I had similar problems with anachronisms in style and mood. But Winter does tell a good story. I just wasn’t wowed by the first part of the trilogy to keep me moving onward into hardboiled PI territory and finally Thompsonesque noir.
The censored swear word is a very odd choice. I don’t own any original PBOs of Thompson otherwise I’d look to see if Winter is mimicking one of those books. They were mostly done by Lion, weren’t they? I have come across all the popular hardcore swear words completely spelled out in Gold Medal books as early as 1958. I think it’s too quaint to resort to dashes for 1951.
June 15th, 2013 at 1:04 am
Sounds like a talented writer and his editor haven’t done their homework.
Pity for something better, that might have been achieved .
The Doc
June 16th, 2013 at 3:57 pm
Hello, gents. Always interesting to read a critique like this, though it’s also impossible to respond to one without sounding defensive. Delighted you enjoy the book (“I believe Winter has done a superb job on all three stories, and they’re worthy of the praise they have received”) and that you would highly recommend it; although this sort of judgment on my part is of course highly subjective, I think it may be the single best book we have ever published. (Or the triple best, if you prefer.)
What of all the “errors” you flag above? Well, some are not errors, they are conscious references to the work of the original authors (“S__t! S__t!” and re-naming Los Angeles “San Angelo,” for instance — yes, I believe that’s how it was spelled in at least one Thompson original, and “San Angelo” appears in Chandler’s BLACK MASK stories). Others are indeed errors — Ariel is human and so am I. Does it help to point out that the book is mammoth — close to 200,000 words — and mention the dozens of anachronisms and infelcities we did catch and fix? Of course not. If we rid your hotel room of a thousand roaches but leave a handful, you’re entitled to complain to the management. But I do question anyone who would say that the presense of the phrase “senior citizen” or “it is what it is” seriously detracted from his reading experience. Even if we grant the presence of, say, 1000 words of anachronisms (which I doubt), that leaves close to 199,000 words for you to enjoy unmolested by the untimely intrusion of modernity.
Now, the point that Shem Rosenkrantz isn’t likable is a more interesting one. I agree that I wouldn’t want him for a drinking buddy. But I did find him sympathetic, or at least worthy of pity, and isn’t that a fair description of many a protagonist of exceptional noir novels? That we don’t much like them, but we pity them as we watch them suffer? If we’re going to start condemning books for unlikable leads, half the genre or more is out with the trash.
Ah, well. As the book’s editor, I appreciate a close reading like this. I would just ask that you apply the same high standards to all the other books you read, since I suspect you’ll find similar cavils to make about all of them; and I ask further that you then temper the (entirely legitimate) criticism with whatever level of appreciation is warranted for however much the author does right. Most books give you errors of this sort and little indeed on the other side of the scale to make up for them. Winter gives you plenty of counterbalance — three really memorable, beautifully crafted crime novels in three very different styles, each worthy of standing alone on its merits and each also nicely forming part of the larger triptych. His errors, such as they are, are nothing unusual; his achievements, I think, are rare indeed. Let’s not ignore either — but spurning the latter because of the presence of the former would be nose-cutting/face-spiting behavior if I’ve ever seen it.
Respectfully,
CA
June 16th, 2013 at 5:06 pm
As always, it’s good to hear from you, Charles. Thanks for the long detailed response to Jon’s review and the questions he brought up. There’s nothing better than getting answers from someone so closely involved in getting the book ready for publication.
I’ve not read the book myself, but I intend to all the more now. Because of everything that I’d heard about it ahead of time, it’s one of the few new hardcover mysteries that I’ve purchased in the past several months.
June 17th, 2013 at 5:51 pm
Thanks for your response, Charles. I agree with just about everything you say, and I would never claim that this was a balanced review in the sense you’re talking about. I wouldn’t want anyone to think the matters I queried were serious enough to ruin the book for anybody, and if this were a full-scale review of a new book for a magazine or newspaper, I certainly would have spent more space on the merits. Addressing an audience of fellow crime fiction wonks on a book that has been out a while, I just wanted to bring up a few oddities I thought were interesting.
On the specific points: note that I didn’t call renaming Southern California place names or bowdlerizing “s–t” errors but rather deliberate choices. Whether they were good choices is strictly a matter of opinion, not fact. And I’ve often pointed out anachronisms in books. How serious a distraction they are, and whether they are even noticed, depends on the individual reader. As for Shem Rosenkrantz, it is nothing but high praise to say that Winter (like Thompson before him) is able to write a compelling novel from the viewpoint of such a despicable character.
By the way, I agree that THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH may be the best book you’ve published in the Hard Case line–and you’ve done a lot of great stuff.
June 17th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
Thanks, Jon. I wasn’t responding so much to your article (which I really did appreciate) as to the casually dismissive comment, “Sounds like a talented writer and his editor haven’t done their homework. Pity for something better, that might have been achieved.” Not that that comment is wholly unfair — something better MIGHT have been achieved (when is that not true?) — but such a lot of homework was done in this case, over a period of years by the author and then a period of months of the author and editor working together, and such a lot achieved, that it hurts a little to see it dismissed with a wave of the hand. Just so do we feel when the monumental struggle of Hemingway’s old man against the sea gets casually dismissed by a passer-by at the end of that book.
THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH is not a perfect book. But it knocked my socks off, and so few books do.
June 18th, 2013 at 1:26 am
Sorry to hear that, Charles . But in historical books, of which I read quite some in different genres, anachronisms hurt.
Like some archer building a longbow out of green yew, and sealing it, to keep the sap inside .
Or people in the 30’s, 40’s, in a mystery, gibbering politically correct nonsense.
I just went with the tenor of the review, and knowing my reading reactions, put my impression in a nutshell.
The Doc