Fri 4 Jul 2014
by Marv Lachman
FREDRIC BROWN – The Screaming Mimi. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1949. Paperback reprints include: Bantam #831, 1950; Carroll & Graf, 1989. Film: Columbia, 1958 (Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey).
– The Lenient Beast. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1956. Paperback reprints include: Bantam #1712, 1958; Carroll & Graf, 1988.
One of the best mystery writers ever is well represented in current reprints. Fredric Brown was equally gifted in both the mystery and science fiction, and Carroll & Graf has published two of this best books in the former genre. The Screaming Mimi is one of the earliest, and best, books about a Jack-the-Ripper type series killer.
Brown’s “fabulous clipjoint,” Chicago, is the well-realized setting, and the detective hero is, as in many Brown books, fascinating, albeit unlikely. Sweeney is a down-and-out alcoholic reporter: “… he was only five-eighths Irish and he was only three-quarters drunk.”
Brown does a superb job of taking the reader into his confidence, and we read compulsively as Sweeney tries to stay sober long enough to find who is killing nightclub beauties.
Among the similarities of Brown’s The Lenient Beast are a series killing and an alcoholic character, the wife of Tucson detective Frank Ramos. Otherwise, the books are very different except for their excellence.
Re-reading Beast thirty years later, I was surprised how well it stood up. A bonus is Brown’s integration of the macabre lyrics of Tom Lehrer into this book.
July 4th, 2014 at 1:24 pm
Carroll & Graf had a great reprinting program for classic mysteries in the late 1980s, but I don’t have many in my collection. Either their distribution was bad and/or didn’t reach into New England very well, or I passed them up because I had most of them already in earlier paperback editions. I don’t recall the covers being very enticing either. Neither of the two above appeal to me very much.
July 4th, 2014 at 1:55 pm
My favorite Brown novel remains WHAT MAD UNIVERSE, first published as a complete novel in STARTLING STORIES. Haffner Press has plans to publish all of Brown’s crime short stories in a massive two volume set.
July 4th, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Thanks for the reminder of what Stephen Haffner is doing, Walker, or is planning to do. I’m really looking forward to that set of crime fiction stories.
July 4th, 2014 at 3:11 pm
One wonders if Brown’s estate made even a penny from these reprints. Carroll & Graf apparently enraged Louis L’Amour by publishing a collection of his crime stories that had fallen out of copyright.
And WHAT MAD UNIVERSE is a wonderful book.
July 4th, 2014 at 3:29 pm
Yes, I’d forgotten about the Louis L’Amour business. Here’s a link to the story, but when litigation is involved, you have to take everything said with a huge grain of salt.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/29/books/publishing-the-dispute-over-l-amour-s-stories.html
July 4th, 2014 at 4:09 pm
I’ve got a number of Brown reprints. The first one was a ‘best of’ although it concentrated on his fantasy/horror/sci-fi short stories. My favourite was the Black Book novel anthology, with NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK/THE SCREAMING MIMI/KNOCK THREE-ONE=TWO and THE FABULOUS CLIP-JOINT. I’ve also managed to find copies of THE FREAK SHOW MURDERS and THE DEAD RINGER. He is one of those writers who is not exactly hard to find, but rather harder to complete a collection of. It’s hard to work out exactly why he is so little known, and perhaps it’s because he was too inventive. He didn’t do the same thing over and over again. In the introduction to one of the books by Ron Goulart he tries to claim him as a hardboiled writer (and damns all other crime writing!). In fact, I’d say that there’s a puckish, eccentric quality that makes him unclassifiable.
July 4th, 2014 at 4:39 pm
The way Kent Carroll framed his argument was both interesting and amusing.
Steve, thanks for the link. And a happy Independence Day to you.
July 4th, 2014 at 5:21 pm
MIMI is a surprisingly complex and simply entertaining book, the real maning of which is not revealed until the last page–like any fine mystery. It was the basis of a film of that title and also of Dario Argento’s BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE–the latter without crediting the source.
July 7th, 2014 at 3:35 pm
The trick about Brown is often that he will seem to be going off the deep end, then when he does the reveal you realize your hat has been neatly pulled over your eyes. I had the Black Book Anthology and it was an exceptionally good one.
Mimi and Knock Three-One-Two were both filmed, the former with Phil Carey, Anita Ecberg, and Gypsy Rose Lee and the latter as an episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller with Warren Oates in the cast. Mimi is a disappointment considering the source, but not a bad film otherwise.
I’ve too many Brown favorites to pick one. What Mad Universe, The Lights in the Sky are Stars, Rogue Planet, virtually all those above, but he is likely much better remembered for his short fiction on the science fiction side.