Sat 10 Jan 2015
GOLD MEDAL Mystery Review: STEPHEN MARLOWE – The Second Longest Night.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[13] Comments
STEPHEN MARLOWE – The Second Longest Night. Gold Medal #423, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1955. Gold Medal 1003, reprint, 1960.
Here on the right is a photo of the box of Gold Medal paperbacks that I’m starting to work my way through. I’m choosing at random from these that you see here as well as the shelf in my closet where I have something like a thousand more.
But the box is handier, at least for now. That’s another New Year’s resolution: to clean up the upstairs study enough so that I can actually reach the shelf in my closet.
The Second Longest Night is one I’d never read before, not until last night. I’d have been 13 at the time it was published, and I didn’t start buying any of the Gold Medal’s straight from the spinner rack at the local supermarket and reading them for another two years or so. It’s the first recorded adventure of Stephen Marlowe’s Washington DC-based private eye, Chester Drum, who tells the story himself.
There were 20 of these cases in all, including Double in Trouble, a cross-over case solved with Richard S. Prather’s Shell Scott, a book I hope to be able to re-read again soon. As I recall, when I read it when I was 17 or 18 (and never since), it was a doozy.
In The Second Longest Night, the case is personal. Drum’s ex-wife Deidre (divorced) has just committed suicide, and her father, a lame-duck Senator, wants Drum to find out why. There are also rumors that she was flirting with joining the Communist Party, which in 1955 would have raised all kinds of questions.
Later on, Drum’s adventures were more and more involved with foreign espionage, but I had always assumed his earlier ones took place in and around the DC area. While this one starts there, it also takes him to the jungles of Venezuela before heading off to San Diego before the case is closed.
Why Venezuela? As it happens a third-string diplomat for the Venezuelan embassy is responsible for the death of the man Drum had asked to look into the case for him, and while Drum does not consider himself a vigilante avenger, he does feel responsible. (The suave and sinister but nevertheless minor flunky invokes diplomatic immunity before scramming out of the US.)
Encountered along the way are two women, naturally, one a young perky reporter who is also on the case, and the dead woman’s sister, but while Drum is attracted to each in their own way, the first has a Congressman fiancé, and the second is married to a well-known astronomer based in California, hence the trip to San Diego.
The action is fast and furious at times, and at others rather sluggish. There a lot of plot crammed into 160 pages, much of it background material for all of the many players involved. As for the solution to the matter, I really don’t think it works. Maybe it might have in 1955, but I don’t really think so, and certainly not today. Unfortunately I cannot say more without Telling All.
January 10th, 2015 at 9:03 pm
Steve,
That’s one heck of a stack of G.M.’s! I see the title of the one that’s flipped over is a David Goodis. How’s about pulling that one next for a review?
Of course, you can’t go wrong with any that I see, except maybe for the Rohmer’s. I’ve tried him a couple times, but he just didn’t do it for me.
Happy reading!
January 10th, 2015 at 9:07 pm
Later Drum’s improved on the model, but he was one of the more sophisticated private eyes of the era, one of the few you could actually imagine making a good living in DC.
Marlowe, Milton Lesser, wrote science fiction as well and a few stand alones. When he left Drum he wrote some solid spy novels like SUMMITT and THE MAN WITH NO SHADOW and then an award winning novel about the artist Goya, COLOSSUS.
Before his death his book THE LIGHTHOUSE AT THE END OF THE WORLD featuring Edgar Allan Poe in France with Dumas and Baudelaire (it’s more complex than that because he also meets Dupin and actually never leaves Baltimore — or does he?)was a bestseller in France and a NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. Not a place you find most of the Gold Medal veterans.
The Drum novels were always well written if they lacked the quality that made Prather’s Shell Scott so much fun. It’s been forever since I read this, but I don’t recall liking it as much as the later Drum novels.
I notice DEATH TAKES THE BUS in that stack. I wonder if I read it now I would hold it or MEXICO RUN as highly as I did then? Maybe you can give me an idea.
January 10th, 2015 at 9:35 pm
Paul
You have good eyes to pick out that Goodis that’s upside down. It’s not one that I’ve ever read, so maybe I will read that one next. Or just shut my eyes and pick at random, which is what I’ve done so far.
January 10th, 2015 at 9:43 pm
David
I’ve read some of Milton Lesser’s science fiction, halves of Ace Double’s, I think, and was never very impressed. Like John D. MacDonald who also gave up on SF and turned to writing crime fiction, I think Lesser had the right idea too.
This book, though, I did not find much better than mediocre. Well written, especially in terms of descriptions, including the various parts of the world the story takes place in, but the plot itself was sub-par. I’m sure the later Drum books got better as time went on — that’s how I remember them, anyway.
January 10th, 2015 at 10:26 pm
Steve, Just close your eyes and reach in to select. You can hardly go wrong. I read every single Rohmer novel one summer years ago. It was strange because one book would be great and the next not so great. Sax Rohmer was one of the most uneven writers I’ve ever read. THE BROOD OF THE WITCH QUEEN was one of the best and I swear one novel read like the Boris Karloff film THE MUMMY. Oddly, I can’t remember which one that was.
January 10th, 2015 at 11:15 pm
The GM Fu Manchu’s aren’t that great, I was more impressed with Summuru, who seemed to add a bit of zest to Rohmer’s routine.
Some of the non Fu Manchu books are outstanding occult fiction. THE QUEST OF THE SACRED SLIPPER with it’s hero a cross between Indiana Jones and Raffles, THE BAT FLIES LOW and GRAY FACE both from the Paul Harley series, THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED the best of the Gaston Max books, THE GREEN EYES OF BAST, ORCHARD OF TEARS, the short story collection BIMASHI BARUK, and some of the Fu Manchu’s, DAUGHTER OF, DRUMS OF, THE MASK OF. and ISLAND OF is sort of a precursor to DOCTOR NO set in Haiti replete with an invisible killer and UFO’s (literally Fu fighters).
Of the two GM I preferred RE-ENTER to EMPEROR.
January 11th, 2015 at 12:47 am
David, I think those are all early books that you mention. By the time he was writing for GM Rohmer was on a decline. The two Fu Manchu novels for GM were the last he wrote. The Sumaru novels were written to order for GM and he never cared for them.
January 11th, 2015 at 11:46 am
The first GM I ever read as a kid was Re-Enter Fu Manchu, and I thought it was great. Of course, he’s the last name people think of when you say “Gold Medal writer.” His style changed considerably with the times during his long career and while his earliest work is the most highly regarded, he did good and lousy work at each phase of his career. His influence on Fleming is undeniable (in one Fu Manchu that predates Goldfinger, old Doc Fu is out to hit Fort Knox). I highly recommend the memoir, Master of Villany by Cay Van Ash and Elizabeth Sax Rohmer. In it we learn that Sumuru originally appeared in a series of eight radio plays written for the BBC in the mid-forties right after WWII. Van Ash opines that THE FIRE GODDESS is the best of the Sumuru novels.
January 11th, 2015 at 2:25 pm
I read the Sumuru novels long, long ago and really enjoyed them.
January 11th, 2015 at 3:21 pm
I recommend Rohmer’s Tales of Secret Egypt, an early collection of short stories. They’re an odd but beguiling mix of weird mystery and Arabian Nights hugger-mugger, with a nice leavening of humor. Not for everyone, maybe, but lots of fun. The Dream Detective tales of Moris Klaw are also favorites of mine.
January 11th, 2015 at 5:15 pm
Rohmer did good work off and on. I rather admire the short Fu Manchu stories he did for THIS WEEK the newspaper supplement and were collected finally but DAW in THE WRATH OF FU MANCHU.
I’ll double up on that recommendation of the Van Ash book which is far and away the best assessment of Rohmer’s work. Van Ash also wrote two fine pastiche of Fu Manchu (TEN YEARS AFTER BAKER STREET and THE FIRES OF FU MANCHU) pitting him in one against Sherlock Holmes.
My own Arsene Lupin pastiche, “The Jade Buddha” pits Lupin against the Si Fan and an agent of Fu Manchu’s, the real Chinese criminal mastermind of the French underworld, Hanoi Shan (TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN), though no where near as well as Van Ash.
For anyone who has never read them the BIMBASHI BARUK OF EGYPT stories are quite entertaining as are all the short story collections (the early Fu Manchu’s being written in serial form are largely interconnected shorts, a bit of what they called a ‘Fix Up’ in SF circles).
Fu Manchu fans might want to look up Old Time Radio’s collection of the SHADOW OF FU MANCHU, the radio series that adapted several of the novels. There are at least three complete adaptations before they start to break up a bit.
I would have to second on FIRE GODDESS as the best of the Summuru novels, though I enjoyed THE NUDE IN MINK and a few of the others. The films are only really worth seeing just for Shirley Eaton as Summuru, though George Sanders is in the second. I’m afraid Frankie Avalon as a serious secret agent in the first one gave my willing suspension of disbelief a hernia.
January 11th, 2015 at 6:26 pm
I understand that Rohmer might have preferred to write stories like those in TALES OF SECRET EGYPT, but the publishers kept asking for more Fu Manchu.
January 11th, 2015 at 7:34 pm
Like Doyle and Holmes many writers become slaves to success, but to Rohmer’s credit some of the later Fu Manchu books are very good and he never just sat still with them. He even came up with an intriguing romance with Smith and Fu Manchu’s daughter toward the end.