Mon 27 Apr 2020
Pulp Locked Room Mysteries I’m Reading: J. J. des ORMEAUX “The Poisoned Bowl.â€
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
J. J. des ORMEAUX “The Poisoned Bowl.†Novelette. First published in Clues Detective Stories, April 1939. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, edited by Mike Ashley (Running Press, softcover, 2006), as by Forrest Rosaire.
I used the term “Locked Room Mystery†up there in the heading, but that’s only in the loosest of terms. “Impossible Mystery†is far better: in “The Poisoned Bowl†a man falls dead of an instantly fatal poison with several people standing around him and no one giving him anything to eat or drink, including himself. How could it be done?
It’s an interesting question, and J. J. des Ormeaux, a modestly prolific pulp writer whose real name was Forrest Rosaire, does his best to confuse the issue by a lot of hand-waving and other such means of distraction. Lots of coincidences, in other words, not to mention keeping relevant information from the reader. The final result is a veritable hodge-podge of a story, but … it all does make sense in the end, sort of.
A question is, could a better writer (or editor) have taken this story, cleaned it up and made something more presentable out of it? Answer: There’s a germ of a good story at the base of it, so I’d like to think so, but in all honesty, without the hand-waving and the holding back of vital information from the reader, it would be awfully tough. Fun to read, especially if you love pulps, but all in all, no cigars for this one.
April 28th, 2020 at 7:44 pm
Fun to read but no cigar could sum up this writers career.
April 28th, 2020 at 10:59 pm
J.J. Des Ormeaux has caused me to wonder. Anyone will wonder why what might have clicked eighty years ago does not click now. Still I felt Des Ormeaux came up short with “The Devil Suit,†in the 1946 Joseph Shaw-edited The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, reprinting stories from Black Mask from when Shaw was its editor.
Why did Shaw, who fine-tuned and perfected better writers, select a story that was pale in comparison to the stories of other writers in the anthology? Did he see the potential for Des Ormeaux to be a better writer? Was something in the story that would have felt more relevant to readers then?
However other people then may have shared my ambiguity about “The Devil Suit;†the story was dropped when the Shaw anthology was reprinted in paperback in 1952.
Reviewing the paperback edition at blackmaskmagazine.com, author Ed Lin said this about “The Devil Suitâ€: “‘The Devil Suit’ was the leadoff story in the hardcover edition. Although it drags a bit, it shouldn’t have been dropped altogether. The plot was interesting enough to hold a reader for the 50-odd pages it ran, but maybe not for the very first story.â€
( https://blackmaskmagazine.com/blog/tag/joseph-t-shaw/ has three articles by Shaw, highly recommended, as well as Lin’s review. Lin also reviewed a story from Shaw’s 1951 Western anthology Spurs West! at http://whatarewritersreading.blogspot.com/2016/10/ed-lin.html )
I wondered about Des Ormeaux and what Shaw saw that I did not.
Des Oreaux’s stories are not often reprinted. “Nitroglycerin News†is available on Amazon Kindle, published originally in Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine, June, 1938. I read it looking for what Shaw saw in Des Oreaux’s writing that I did not.
The story about two police officers was raw and hard-boiled. Still I thought as Lin did about Des Oreaux, that his writing was good enough. Like “The Poisoned Bowl†and “The Devil Suit,†“Nitroglycerin News†was more minor than major.
April 29th, 2020 at 1:19 pm
A terrific summary of des Oreaux’s career. Thanks, Darryl. Quite a list of stories to his credit, and as a longtime pulp collector, I’d seen his name on contents pages any number of times, but I don’t believe I’d read anything else by him until this one.
April 29th, 2020 at 9:11 am
Both the review and comments are interesting. Thank you!
I thought: “The Poisoned Bow” was lousy; “The Devil Suit” is good; “Nitroglycerin News†is decent.
I agree that Rosaire so far is no Hammett or Chandler. Still thought “The Devil Suit” had good story telling, both times I read it. ( Borrowed The Hard-Boiled Omnibus through interlibrary loan.)
April 29th, 2020 at 1:21 pm
I read the paperback edition of HARDBOILED OMNIBUS from cover to cover when I was in my late teens, and it wasn’t until much later that I learned that I’d been defrauded. I never knew what I was missing!