Thu 6 Jan 2022
Mystery Stories I’m Reading: FREDRIC BROWN “Murder Set to Musicâ€.
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
FREDRIC BROWN. “Murder Set to Music.†Novella. First published in The Saint Detective Magazine, January 1957, as “Murder to Music.” Reprinted in The Saint Mystery Library #3, paperback original, 1959, edited by Leslie Charteris.
Two jazz musicians have been friends and played in the same bands since it seems forever. Not even the fact that one married the girl that both were in love with has affected that friendship. Now that they’re partners in a car dealership, and their days on the road are behind them, they only occasionally think of those days.
Not until the leader of one of the bands comes to town with his new group is either one of them tempted to take their instruments out of their cases. Ralph, the unmarried one, tells the story from there, pretty much starting when Danny, the married one, opens the door to his apartment and is slugged in the face by a short stocky man wearing a mask.
There is a long stretch of the story in which nothing much seems to be happening. The story is lengthy, over 50 pages long in its paperback version, but Fred Brown was such a good writer, the reader is pulled along in the flow of the tale he tells. And you just know that a Fred Brown story is going to have a Fred Brown ending. Or does it? Is the lack of a Fred Brown ending the Fred Brown ending?? I’ll never tell.
January 6th, 2022 at 9:52 pm
Only Fred Brown could pull off a Fred Brown ending by not doing one.
January 6th, 2022 at 10:04 pm
I didn’t say there wasn’t. I was doing my best to suggest that *maybe* there wasn’t.
It’s tough to review a story and include the fact that it has a Fred Brown ending. If I do, then the reader is going to expect it, which to some degree or another spoils the intent.
I once started a Jeff Deaver collection of his stories in which he dared the reader to figure out the endings ahead of time. Thus forewarned, of course I did.
January 7th, 2022 at 12:52 pm
In that latter case, think of the most ridiculously stupid means of ending the story that wouldn’t require H.S. Keeler to be the author, and you’re probably on the right track.
Charteris, given his resentment of how Great American published THE SAINT magazine, probably farmed out the editing/selection of the LIBRARY magazine issues in mm pb format to Santesson, as well, but I don’t have any documentation of that at hand, so much as A Suspicion.
January 7th, 2022 at 11:23 pm
I’m sure that Charteris had as little to do with editing either the magazine or the paperbacks as he could get away with, and still be able to have his name on the covers.
January 9th, 2022 at 7:51 pm
Hans Stefan Santesson, one of the best Mystery editors was responsible for these and for much of the run of the Saint Magazine. Charteris was semi retired and even farming Saint stories out to writers like Harry Harrison (VENDETTA FOR THE SAINT)and E.S. Brooks/Berkley Gray/Victor Gunn who allegedly wrote the short “The Talented Husband.”