Tue 11 Jan 2011
Reviewed by J. F. Norris: WALTER TYRER – Such Friends Are Dangerous.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[11] Comments
WALTER TYRER – Such Friends Are Dangerous. Staples Press, UK, hardcover, 1954. 1st US publication: Garland Publishing, hardcover, 1983. Paperback reprint: Perennial, 1984.
Recently while perusing Barzun & Taylor’s Catalogue of Crime I came across quite serendipitously the title of this book. I was tantalized by Barzun’s brief write-up, which promised something along the lines of an early Ruth Rendell or Minette Walters book.
It also happened to be one of the starred titles indicating that Barzun reissued it in one of his two sets of “Top 50 Mystery Novels.” I immediately went looking for the book and was lucky to discover there was a copy at my local branch of the Chicago Public Library.
The story deals with the investigation of the drowning death of Kitty Pinnock, the town tramp, who inveigled her way into the lives of nearly every man in town, taking from them what she wanted and discarding them when she found a new conquest.
There are plenty of secrets uncovered from a multitude of characters and there are several suspects found among the discarded men Kitty left in her wake of seductive destruction. However, lingering in the background of the involved investigation is Helen Luton, a mousy housewife whose husband is one of Kitty’s abandoned projects, and Vera Sylvaine, Helen’s ultra-hip writer friend who constantly reminds Helen that she is undervalued and underappreciated by her husband.
Mrs. Luton is painted as a buffoon by Tyrer, and the reader may wonder (as I did) why several chapters are devoted to her conversations with Vera who seems to be quite a bad influence despite her supposed good intentions. A clever reader may begin to glean the author’s intent, but I challenge anyone to come up with the genuine and fully accurate solution. For me it came as a jaw-dropping surprise.
It’s been a long time since I audibly gasped when the solution was presented. I never saw it coming. That, I think, makes for an excellent writer who knows exactly what he is doing.
Even if the surprise may be a trick used many times by modern writers, in the context of Tyrer’s story it still felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. Up till the final pages the book is a scathing satire on village life, so the reader is paying attention to all the gossip, all the deceit, the facades being ripped away by the police inspector and his accidental Watson, an intrusive reporter looking for his “big break.”
There is quite a bit of legitimate detective work on the part of both the police inspector and the reporter, who at one point seems determined to solve the crime himself and who comes up with some very unusual ideas about how and why the crime was committed.
While all this is going on Tyrer has something hidden up his sleeve which he presents almost on the final page when the murderer is unmasked and a horrifying secret is finally revealed.
This is an excellent book by a man who spent his early career writing school boy adventures, moved on to short stories and novels, with the latter portion of his career split between magazine story writing and contributing several thrillers for the Amalgamated Press “Sexton Blake Library” series.
Barzun in his intro to the reissue of Such Friends Are Dangerous disparagingly refers to Tyrer as a “writer of primarily juvenile adventures” and then goes on to insult that audience by calling the readers of such books “the simple minded.” (I take he didn’t think much of children as readers. Or am I misinterpreting that?)
I find much of what Barzun has to say about the genre to be condescending or arrogant, often extremely shallow. For instance, he often misses obvious humor and modern sarcasm, and he definitely shows a limited spectrum of tastes in detective fiction.
But those two potshots make me think that he was not only a snob but just plain old mean. In any case, I like to think that this book was a personal triumph for Walter Tyrer, as it appears to be his only foray in writing for a truly adult audience.
Editorial Comment: I am somewhat surprised and even more chagrined to discover that I do not own a copy of this book. It can be obtained cheaply enough, but if you were to search it out, in all likelihood you would have to settle for the Perennial Library edition. There are 10 copies of the latter on ABE under $10 at the moment, but none of either hardcover.
January 12th, 2011 at 7:33 am
I missed this one, though I’ve read ACOC pretty closely. Sounds interesting.
I am an admirer of the ACOC and Barzun’s writing, because Barzun defended the merit of detection in the detective story and rejected the idea, popular with PD James and so many others, that the detective novel that apes the straight novel necessarily is the higher form of art within the genre.
I would characterize Barzun’s view as austere. He tends to dislike what he calls the outre–the horror elements of Carr, the oddness of Gladys Mitchell, the breathlessness of Philip Macdonald, the coarse humor of Joyce Porter–so that the British Humdrums and Crime Queens become his ideal. I think he’s too restrictive, though I agree with his assessments to some extent. Sometimes the above authors do go overboard in their narrative style, in my view, though they often are ingenious and first rate.
Porter’s Dover, for example, is an amusing creation up to a point, though the shtick tends to get stale for me. Her plots are some of the most ingenious in the post-Golden Age period and I have to wonder how the books would have been with a less outre detective dominating everything. Instead we have brilliant plots with a detective who subverts everything for which the Golden Age Great Detective stood (even Sergeant Beef is an honorable fellow, if “vulgar”)!
January 12th, 2011 at 10:39 am
After learning that Tyrer wrote for Amalgamated Press (a few weeks after I wrote this) I’m beginning to think that Barzun’s insults about “juvenile” writing and a “simple-minded” audience were meant as mudslinging towards that whole school of thriller that he obviously loathes.
For another take on Tyrer’s writing, visit this website:
http://thesextonblakeblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Walter%20Tyrer
It includes a handful of reviews of his “Sexton Blake Library” thrillers.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
This one sounds incredibly good. I’m very impressed that you didn’t see the solution coming. Gonna have to add that to my list of books to find and own.
January 12th, 2011 at 11:22 pm
Barzun doesn’t like Edgar Wallace or Sydney Horler either. But he’s hardly alone in taking a dim view of the “low thriller.” A lot of people would make (and have made) similar comments about Sexton Blake (and Edgar Wallace and Sydney Horler). I don’t know that I’d call this “mudslinging,” which has an association with politics as unscrupulous and malicious activity. I would just call it literary criticism. People aren’t necessarily going to like everything. Look at the dismissive comments about “HIBK” (which I sometimes find misplaced, or carelessly applied).
Anyway, your comments about the book make it sound interesting indeed!
January 13th, 2011 at 1:15 am
Of course I’m handicapped by not actually having seen the Barzun comments in the Garland reprint (we certainly owe Barzun for praising this one book by the author, for without him it never would have been reprinted and thus be available to us — also kudos to John Norris for reviewing it), but “simple-minded” does sound strong (juvenile may be accurate, as a lot of Sexton Blake readers would have been, literally, juveniles).
Traditionally, the Edgar Wallace thriller was viewed as reading for the less intelligent, in contrast with the “intellectual” detective novel. R. Austin Freeman characterized the thriller as something for clerk and shop assistants, while the detective novel in his view was read by doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs — er, I mean ministers. There is a class element to this kind of critique too, obviously!
No doubt there is some accuracy in this view. The Edgar Wallace style thriller was so popular, is was bound to include more readers of a less sophisticated nature. Yet it’s also true that the thriller was read by middle and upper class professionals as well (and women). Sydney Horler, whose books really are terrible, boasted that his books were read by many professionals, and there is some documentary evidence to back up this claim.
So whether Barzun meant to mudsling or not, one could argue that his statements about the thriller audience are overly sweeping and ironically recall overly sweeping comments about the detective fiction genre made by critics like Edmund Wilson and Graham Greene.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Curt –
Oops. Mudslinging. Very poor word choice in this context.
I guess I am too passionate in my overall dislike for Barzun. My vocabulary kicks into harsh thesaurus mode and I lay it on a bit thick when talking about him. Not that I find Catalogue of Crime utterly useless. Far from it – witness this review. But for every entry in COC that arouses my curiosity and sends me to the library or internet in search of a title, there are about four or five entries in COC that I find unfair and extremely prejudiced. And you have to admit that he can be quite a pedantic prig at times.
I think I’m a far more open minded reader when it comes to the genre. I will try everything. I do have my favorites, and will go a bit overboard in praising something that surprises me, that entertained me to no end, that was innovative or even ingenious. But I also recognize that each subgenre should be treated individually that there are different criteria for the fair play novel as opposed to the psychological thriller, for example. If I happen to be reading a private eye novel from the 1940s I’m not going to treat it the same as I would a book by a pulp writer from the early 20th century. Or for a more specific example, if I’m reading a Charlotte Armstrong novel I can find similarities to Rinehart, Eberhart and even Woolrich but I’m certainly not going to treat it the same way I would if I were reading R Austin Freeman or Ellery Queen. My experience in reading the COC entries reveals Barzun to be far more dismissive of certain subgenres outright and unforgiving for certain styles like “feminine writing” – a favorite insult of his – and excesses of elements that (in his opinion) detract from or don’t belong in a detective novel. He does recognize the difference between the subgenres but I find that often he is quick to dismiss a crime novel lacking in detection or if a book has been labeled as suspense and he finds none then he will also discount it as worthwhile reading.
As usual I find your observations right on target. Horler is terrible but I like to read him every now and then just for a laugh. The thriller of the Golden Age, to be sure, definitely appealed to a mass market. Even today’s thriller bestsellers (Patterson, Grisham, Roberts, and the rest of them) rake in the cash from a wide spectrum of readers. Are the books necessarily bad simply because they are labeled thrillers and lots of people buy them? To paraphrase you – not everything is for everyone. But there is fair criticism and biased criticism. I think Barzun is more than just oversweeping. He is biased.
John
January 13th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
John, yeah, I love how “feminine” is always bad for Barzun. I think what he really means is what we now call “girly.” Because arguably the Crime Queens are “feminine” writers as well. But they have hard clueing and thinking, which apparently Barzun thinks of as masculine traits.
But Barzun’s hardly alone in his view. I think it was kind of a generational thing, back when most critics were men and “male” was the accepted norm in literature. Boucher often sounds the same when throwing around the term HIBK so much and is it any coincidence that Patricia Highsmith–most masculine of women writers–seems by far Julian Symons’ favorite woman crime writer?
Anyway, I got a copy of the reviewed book too, to add to my seemingly endless to read list!
January 13th, 2011 at 9:45 pm
I don’t mind a reviewer’s personal biases, as long as I’m aware of them. In the case of CoC, it’s fairly clear upfront, isn’t it, that the pair of them, Barzun and Taylor are interested in detective novels, not much else, and are awfully finicky even about those.
John, you and I are very similar in how far wide a range of crime, mystery or detective fiction we will read (and have read). And I’ve never made an attempt to compare books in one subgenre with one in another. Can’t be done, not if you wish to be fair to the author and to the reader whose favorite subgenre it might be.
— Steve
January 13th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
I meant to include this in my previous comment, but since it isn’t connected to my earlier train of thought, I’ll just add another.
As I said earlier, I don’t have this book, but I’ve seen it and have known about it. I just don’t happen to have purchased and kept a copy for myself.
I do have a sizable stack of Sexton Blake paperbacks, going back to the 1930s, and some of them are by Walter Tyrer. So I’ve also known his name for quite a while, but I never connected it up with the Walter Tyrer who wrote SUCH FRIENDS ARE DANGEROUS.
And speaking of Sexton Blake, I know there’s a long history behind the character, but none of the novels I have would I consider juvenile. (I don’t have any SB’s published in British story papers.) They’re written at a level where kids might be able to enjoy them, but overall I’d have to say they were written for adults.
Less sophisticated, tis true!
January 14th, 2011 at 12:57 am
There were Sexton Blake comic strips and Sexton Blake stories in “The Boys’ Friend”–I’m assuming children were a fair element of the readership for those venues. Though Dorothy L. Sayers was a Sexton Blake Library reader in her twenties (don’t know what her hoitier-toitier fans would make of that).
I suspect a lot of younger readers read Wallace and Horler and Sapper. Sapper must have been simply ripping stuff to reading-oriented boys in the 1920s.
I was able to get my fifteen-year old nephew interested in the Ronald Standish short stories by Sapper, knock-offs of Holmes. Not Holmes or Christie, but Sapper, yes.
March 7th, 2011 at 9:03 am
I`m grateful to J F Norris for this very interesting review, and for recommending my reviews of some of Tyrer`s work on The Sexton Blake Blog.
I have been fortunate enough to be contacted by a couple of individuals with more information on Tyrer, including Keith Chapman, a former editor of the Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine and before that an employee of Fleetway/Amalgamated who was employed on the Sexton Blake library series. Mr C now lives in New Zealand and is a writer connected with Hale`s Black Horse series of westerns.
Anyone wanting to know more about Tyrer might like to see my article `The Cowboy and the Detective` (14 Jan 2011 at http://bookshelvesandbrownale.blogspot.com ).
I woud not describe Tyrer`s work for the Sexton Blake Library as juvenile, `quirky` would be the word that springs to mind. Is it possible Barzun is referring to the public school stories which Tyrer wrote in the `20s and `30s ? From what I`ve read it seems likely that Tyrer himself, raised in a poor area of Liverpool, regarded these with little affection and probably welcomed the chance to diversify.