JAMES M. FOX – The Wheel Is Fixed

Dell 573; paperback reprint; no date stated, but circa 1951; mapback edition. Hardcover edition: Little, Brown; 1951. Also: Raven House #33, pb, 1980; 2nd printing (#22), pb, 1982.

   I may have the Raven House numbering scheme all wrong. The first printings you got only by subscribing to their overall line of books, which is what I did at the time. I never paid their mass market distribution (the later printings) much attention — who cared? — and they WERE different. There was a noticeable discrepancy in which books were published in one versus the other, for example, and a different numbering on those that were. To get information on the later printings now, all I’m able to do is look online to see how sellers describe their books for sale, which I have to admit, even between you and me, is a pretty pitiful way to conduct honest-to-goodness research.

   [UPDATE: It belatedly has occurred to me that Michael L. Cook included a complete checklist of the subscription Raven’s (through #72) in his book on book clubs, Murder by Mail (Bowling Green University Popular Press, revised edition, 1983). I can therefore confirm that The Wheel Is Fixed was indeed #33. What the numbers were in the list of later printings, however, Mr. Cook does not say.]

   The other books by Fox that were reprinted in the Raven House line are:

      #45. A Shroud for Mr. Bundy. [A John and Suzy Marshall mystery published in hardcover by Little Brown in 1952 and reprinted by Jonathan Press as a digest-sized paperback.]

      #61. The Coven. [A paperback original; 1981.]

   Fox, whose real name was Johannes Matthijs Willem Knipscheer (1908-1989), had a mystery-writing career that began in 1943 with the first John and Suzy Marshall book, and ended in 1989 with a mystery western from PaperJacks entitled Crunch.

   Not that I know very much about the Marshalls, but since Fox’s career began with one of their adventures – and in fact The Wheel Is Fixed is the first one which is not – and it’s their books that Fox may be remembered most for, if at all, I’ll go ahead and provide you with a complete checklist of them, taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      Don’t Try Anything Funny. Davies, UK, 1943.
      Hell on the Way. Davies, UK, 1943.
      Journey Into Danger. Cherry Tree UK, pb, 1943.
      Cheese from a Mousetrap. Davies, UK, 1944.
      The Lady Regrets. Coward-McCann, 1947. Dell 338, pb, 1949.
      Death Commits Bigamy. Coward-McCann, 1948. Graphic 14, pb, 1949. Dell 845, pb, 1955.

      The Inconvenient Bride. Coward-McCann, 1948. Dell 463, pb, 1950.
      The Gentle Hangman. Little Brown, 1950. Dell 526, pb, 1951.
      The Aleutian Blue Mink. Little Brown, 1951. Dell 623, pb, 1952, as Fatal in Furs.
      The Iron Virgin. Little Brown, 1951. Dell 719, pb, 1953.
      The Scarlet Slippers. Little Brown, 1952. Dell 685, pb, 1953.
      A Shroud for Mr. Bundy. Little Brown, 1952. Jonathan Press J92, digest-sized pb, March 1957.
      Bright Serpent. Little Brown, 1953. Jonathan Press J96, digest-sized pb, probably early 1958, as Rites for a Killer.

   Plus one short story:

      “Start from Scratch.” Four-and-Twenty Bloodhounds, Anthony Boucher, editor, Simon & Schuster, 1950.

   Most of the stories took place in Los Angeles, CA. Why the first ones were published in the UK, I do not know, nor why they were never published here. (I do have a copy of Cheese from a Mousetrap. Perhaps I need to read it.)

   On his Thrilling Detective website, Kevin Burton Smith refers to the Marshalls as “Nick and Nora wanna-be’s.” Since once again I’ve not read one that I remember reading, I’m going have to fall back on quoting Kevin and leave it at that, for now: “Where Nick and Nora were rather urbane and urban sophisticates, constantly traveling from one trouble spot to another, martinis in hand, Johnny and Suzy were suburban all the way, beer-drinkers and homebodies, who didn’t have to go far, it seemed, to find trouble. It always seemed to find them, thanks to Johnny’s job as a private detective.”

   By 1953, the market demand for the Marshalls seems to have disappeared. All of the books written by Fox wrote after then seem to be action- and adventure-oriented, although I am allowing myself to say that only on the basis of seeing the names of the titles, in which stock you should know how much to put.       [FOOTNOTE]

   The Wheel Is Fixed appeared before at least the last three Marshalls, and it starts out as if it’s going to be one of the best unknown noirs ever written. A former orchestra leader named Rick Bailey and a girl named Lorna, described in a newspaper as a motion picture actress, are holed up in El Paso as fugitives from justice. Hunt Couple in Palm Springs Swim Pool Massacre, reads the headline of that very same newspaper. “They found the car in Phoenix yesterday,” Rick tells us, the reader, “which proves that we crossed a State line and makes us eligible for five years in the Federal penitentiary right there.”

    Lorna’s hands are bandaged, making it difficult for the couple to escape notice, and they see strange men on their trail everywhere they go. Checking into the Cortex Hotel, they hope against hope they will be able to cross the Rio Grande on the following day.

   At which point [end of Chapter One] Rick decides to put down the entire story down on paper, so that “at least the truth will be known, and the deal will have to from the top of the deck.”

   It’s flashback time, in other words, and unfortunately the next part of the story is not nearly as gripping as either the beginning. As for the ending, that comes later, which of course you knew before I told you, and I’ll get to it shortly. But what happens next, or first, if you are still with me, is that Bailey, down on his luck, is hired by a well-heeled gangster (and a heel to boot) to get a woman out of his son’s hair. A semi-interesting sojourn to Palm Springs develops from there, and several false starts later – or so they seem at the time – we finally, 150 pages later, get to the crux of the matter, and hence the headline.

   Thirty more pages from there, we have caught up with the present, and Rick Bailey has run out of things to put down on paper. The last remaining twelve pages are worthy of the opening chapter, let me tell you, in case I’d left you wondering, complete with at least one sock-removing twist I didn’t see coming, maybe even both sox, lulled perhaps to unawareness by the soporific middle stanza, or at least that’s the way I’m telling it.

    It is uneven, the story is, but in 1951 they built mystery and detective fiction of every subgenre and variety on puzzles and twists, and as I say,so it is here in the end. This particular effort on the part of Mr. Fox has not fared well over time, in terms of general recognition then and hardly now. All in all, this is mostly a forgotten book by an all but forgotten writer, but I’ll remember it for its good (if not great) parts at either end, and noticeably less for its lack of pace and cohesiveness in the middle.

[FOOTNOTE]  When I first wrote the review, which as you can see was nearly a year ago, I was somewhat less inclined toward completeness in providing checklists than I am now. Here is it the next day on the blog, and here are the rest of Fox’s mystery titles. I said they were action- and adventure-oriented. Feel free to judge for yourself.  [US first editions only, unless indicated; settings and series characters, if any, are included.]