Thu 9 Jul 2020
Pulp PI Stories I’m Reading: RAOUL WHITFIELD “Mistral.â€
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[15] Comments
RAOUL WHITFIELD “Mistral.†Short story. Anonymous (“Bennâ€). First published in Adventure, 15 December 1931. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 22 April 1981, and in Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian (Oxford University Press, 1995).
The unnamed narrator of this short but very tough, hard-boiled tale is an European operative for an international detective agency based in Paris. After finishing one job in Genoa, he heads west along the Riviera coastline to Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes. Along the way his path keeps crossing that of another man, one with a red and very visible scar on his neck. The man is almost certainly an American. He is unfamiliar with European customs, but he seems to have money, spending one night in a casino playing with thousand-franc chips.
The narrator is intrigued, but is nonetheless surprised when a bulletin from his home office informs him that a client is on the lookout for him. Reporting in, he is told to back off, and that the client will handle things from that point on. Telling the man, whom he has taken something of a liking to, that his name is Benn, most probably not his real one, and what the score is, he then lets events take their own course from there.
Telling the story tersely against a backdrop of a continually rising wing (a mistral), Whitfield keeps the tension rising right along with it, to an absolute knockout of an ending. Other than the Pronzini-Adrian anthology, this story may be hard to find, but it’s well worth the effort.
July 9th, 2020 at 7:49 pm
It is certainly one of his best. In some ways it is closer to Hemingway in style than Hammett.
It remains my favorite Whitfield short, an example of the kind of word savagery Chandler famously talked about, and its appearance in ADVENTURE a reminder that the hardboiled style wasn’t limited to BLACK MASK and the mystery pulps even fairly early in the game.
July 10th, 2020 at 8:19 am
After this rave review by two people whose judgement i trust, I had to read it. Unluckily, my collection is in storage at the moment. Luckily, Google Books has
a preview of the collection, and this story can be read online.
Read it now, thank me later.
I breezed through it. David Vineyard thinks this resembles Hammett’s style. I don’t know. The mistral descriptions reminded me of Chandler’s Red Wind opening lines. In case you forgot:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
And here is Whitfield on the mistral:
He swore. “Hate wind. Gets me. Mistral, eh? What in hell’s that?”
I ordered a whisky sour. “Just wind,” I told him. “If it’s a real mistral it’ll last three days, or six—or nine. The nines are pretty rare.”
He sat up straight and blinked at me. “Like this-for nine days!” he muttered. “Lord—I’d go crazy.”
I nodded. “Some people do,” I said. “There’s a sort of unwritten French law—it applies to men and women living together. If one of them murders the other along about the eighth or ninth day, it doesn’t count.”
Senna stared at me. “No kiddin’?” he muttered.
“That’s what they say—pretty hard to convict in such a case. The wind gets at you after four or five days. I’ve never seen a nine day affair, but I’ve been around for a couple of the six day sessions.”
In both stories, the wind strips the surface off a person and exposes the underlying character. I loved it, and if this wasn’t his best, then i think i must have really missed something. I’ve read a few Jo Gar stories, but this is in a different class. Having said that, I’m not so sure if this is hard-boiled or more noirish. Either way it’s a great story.
(On the personal front, I’m mightily pleased to be able to get my 2c in front of
Walker Martin, who has so far not weighed in on this. But i still couldn’t beat
David Vineyard. Maybe next time).
July 10th, 2020 at 10:51 am
Sai
First of all, thanks for the link. The first time I tried to access it, I was told the story was not accessible, but the second time it worked fine.
But secondly, and maybe even more importantly, thanks for the two long passages from each of the two stories. I think everyone will find them useful in comparing the two stories.
What’s also significant is that Whitfield’s came first, by a matter of seven years.
And one other thing, I think if you read David’s comment again, you’ll find he was comparing Whitfield and this story to Hemingway, not so much Hammett, and therefore you’re each correct. And to this, I agree, 100 percent.
July 10th, 2020 at 10:06 am
I like Whitfield, so I’ll seek this out. What is the title of that Pronzini anthology you reference?
July 10th, 2020 at 10:37 am
Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian (Oxford University Press, 1995).
Highly recommended!
July 10th, 2020 at 12:01 pm
I pulled out my issue of the Dec 15, 1931 ADVENTURE and according to my notes I read this story 35 years ago in 1984. I gave it an outstanding rating and said:
“Nolan in THE BLACK MASK BOYS mentions this as being outstanding. PI in Europe stumbles across a hit man and feels sympathetic towards him.”
Excellent story.
July 10th, 2020 at 12:19 pm
Sai has just sent me a jpeg of the original story illustration, and I’ve added it to the end of he review.
Thanks, Sai!
July 10th, 2020 at 9:44 pm
A note, the unwritten French law Whitfield mentions was part of the Napoleonic Code. He was a Corsican and knew what the mistral winds were like. I can personally attest they can feel like the edge of a sharp blade under your skin when the Sahara picks up and blows across the Med to visit the Continent.
Crimes of passion go up in Marseilles particularly.
I’ve always wondered if Chandler wasn’t thinking of this when he wrote “Red Wind,” paying Whitfield a bit of a compliment.
July 10th, 2020 at 9:59 pm
I think that opening passage Sai quoted from “Red Wind” may be the most famous in all of mystery fiction, As I remember, the rest of the story is rather ordinary — for Chandler, that is — but in those opening few paragraphs, he really outdid himself.
As to whether he’d read the Whitfield story when he wrote it, and was inspired by it, now that is an interesting question.
July 11th, 2020 at 8:27 am
It’s very possible that Chandler did read this story because in his letters he mentions that he read quite a few pulps and was impressed by them. This would be around the early thirties before his first story was published in BLACK MASK.
July 11th, 2020 at 12:07 pm
The timeline works. Almost.
Chandler’s first story was in Black Mask, December 1933. He started writing in 1932, after being fired from his job as an executive in an oil company.
Did he read past issues of Black Mask? Yes, he mentioned that. Adventure? Probably not.
Red Wind was published in Dime Detective, January 1938. Chandler knew Hammett and Whitfield. Did he read their older stories?
July 11th, 2020 at 1:40 pm
Sai
I had my doubts about that point of the timeline as well. ADVENTURE was not a market Chandler was looking to break into, ad far as I’ve ever heard. But if Chandler and Whitfield knew each other, maybe the latter did supply the other with some of his old stories to read.
July 11th, 2020 at 7:34 pm
An extraordinary story.
Definitely Hemingway in there: the plot is “The Killers” in another country and a twist to the ending. I’d like to have read more of Mr. “Benn”.
July 11th, 2020 at 10:17 pm
I’ve been hoping that with all of the comments this review has gathered that someone would have left one saying that Benn was also in another of Whitfield’s stories, but alas, it doesn’t seem as though that that’s the case.
And in which case, I wonder, why not?
July 11th, 2020 at 11:05 pm
Whether or not Chandler read other pulps than those he worked in or not I can’t guess. He seems to have been fairly well read in the detective genre at least and we know he had a classical education.
ADVENTURE wasn’t just tales of adventure, it was also where Gordon Young beat BLACK MASK to the punch with the hardboiled adventures of gambler/gunman Don Everhard, who I am willing to bet at least Daly had read. If Chandler was studying Hammett, Gardner, and Whitfield he might well of looked for their work in other magazines.
He claimed he learned how to write pulp by copying a 10,000 word Gardner story and rewriting it (sadly he could never use it).
Of course there is nothing but the wind and the detective hero similar about the two stories, but it would be cool if Whitfield’s best story inspired one of the most famous stories in the genre.