Mon 20 Nov 2023
TIME MAGAZINE: Books–Murders of the Month: January 29, 1934.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[21] Comments
For your amusement and edification. (Well, mine, anyway.)
WILFUL AND PREMEDITATED—Freeman Wills Crofts—Dodd, Mead ($2). Poison is the weapon; the motive, gain. The author first shows the victim’s death, then the murderer’s modus operandi. Inspector French is brought forward on the trail. In the ensuing hunt the reader feels himself the quarry. Explanation of detection follows, with Inspector French being raised in rank once again.
BOMBAY MAIL—Lawrence G. Blochman —Little, Brown ($2). Death and fast action take place on the crack Trans-Indian Express. First victim is the Governor of Bengal, second the Maharaja of Zunjore. Inspector Prike, sorting suspects, encounters rubies, secretaries, cobras, priests, spies. Village scenes of India, butterflies, toxicologist and acrobat flit past before the inspector brings conclusion to a crime that beat the book to the Screen.
THE VENNER CRIME—John Rhode— Dodd, Mead ($2). The insatiably curious Dr. Priestley correlates a “death from natural causes,” an “ordinary disappearance” and a bill for electricity into a solution for one of the Yard’s unsolved cases.
THE MANUSCRIPT MURDER—George Limnelius—Crime Club ($2). A lifelong association of four men culminates in the murder of the most despised among them. Reading a detective story with these men as characters brings forth the killer.
THE SECOND BULLET—Lee Thayer— Sears ($2). Peter Clancy, with his incomparable “gentleman’s man” Wiggar, falls into a first-class murder case when they stop for gasoline at the mansion in the New Jersey hills. Concealment of his identity and the dexterity of Wiggar enable Clancy to mingle with the neighbors, to make friends with a half-crazy animal trainer, to see justice done.
MR. DEATH—Carlton Wallace—Crime Club ($2). The extortioner’s slogan is “pay or die,” and so successful is he that Superintendent Bendilow of the Yard leaves job and pension, even simulates death to catch him.
MURDER OF A MISSING MAN—Arthur M. Chase—Dodd, Mead ($2). With a carload of near-witnesses, including a New York detective, it takes a sharp-eyed little spinster to ferret out both the identity and the murderer of the corpse in the end compartment. The voluble Mr. Goldstein helps.
THE DEATH WISH—Elisabeth Sanxay Holding—Dodd, Mead ($2). Long Island society, his neighbors and his rich wife are too much for poor, ponderous Delancey. Had it not been for the calm young guest next door, he might have been convicted of two murders.
TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE—Gelett Burgess—Bobbs-Merrill ($2).
MURDER COULD NOT KILL—Gregory Baxter—Macaulay ($2).
MURDER RUNS IN THE FAMILY—Hulbert Footner—Harper ($2).
And how many of these have you read? (How many would you care to?)
November 20th, 2023 at 6:54 am
Alas, I have rad none of them, although I believe I have the Blochman buried somewhere in Mount TBR. I’d be willing to try the Crofts, the Thayer, and the Holding (though not in that order). I’m curious about the Burgess; he was the man who gave us the purple cow, the Goops, the word “blurb,” and a series of tales about Cosmo, the Master of Mysteries.
November 20th, 2023 at 12:42 pm
The one I’m most familiar with is BOMBAY MAIL, mostly because I’ve owned the Dell mapback edition of it for a long long time. (Doesn’t mean I’ve read it, unfortunately.) The movie version has been reviewed twice on this blog, first by me:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=10278
then by David Vineyard:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=45917
The reviewer for TIME seems to say the movie came out before the book. Am I reading that correctly?
November 20th, 2023 at 8:33 am
I just wish Time had adopted the Steve Lewis patented hardboild scale. If only. Without that knowledge ahead of time and without really knowing much about these authors (except Holding) I just dunno. Based solely on the descriptions, seems like maybe THE MANUSCRIPT MURDER could meet my criteria.
My problem is that I just have almost zero tolerance for excess loquaciousness. If it were up to me, I’d hire William of Occam to give everybody a nice, solid edit.
November 20th, 2023 at 12:52 pm
There are only two female authors in the bunch, but on my patented H/B scale, I’m willing to wager that the Holding book might rank as the highest of them all. This I say based on her reputation only, but if she’s good enough for Stark House Press, she’s good enough for me. The Limnelius sounds promising in that regard, but only by default, compared with the rest of them, all more or less traditional Golden Age mysteries.
November 20th, 2023 at 11:55 pm
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
November 21st, 2023 at 12:00 am
Except for the loquaciousness.
November 21st, 2023 at 8:46 am
Like Jerry House, I regret that I haven’t read any of these tempting books. But I do love the cover on MR. DEATH!
November 21st, 2023 at 4:50 pm
Limnelius (Lewis George Robinson), from what I can see online, sounds like a golden age locked room and inverted mystery writer with a difference. While not necessarily my cup of tea from a hardboiled perspective–still sounds like a GOOD cup of tea. Just not mine.
Holding has a couple on my TBR via Chandler’s endorsement.
November 21st, 2023 at 5:49 pm
I have a copy of The Manuscript Murders and seen the movie versions of bombay Mail and Two O’Clock Courage, so I’m in for those for starters, but honestly I’d give any of ’em a try.
November 22nd, 2023 at 6:28 am
I’ve read two of these. The Crofts under the UK title of The 12.30 from Croydon, an inverted mystery and, as usual from Crofts, an enjoyable read. I have enjoyed many of the John Rhode books I have read. The Venner Crime is OK but the ending isn’t that great so it would not be one I would recommend.
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:02 am
Read the Blochman, Rhodes, and Crofts and I’ve read by a few of the others. The Blochman of course was a film with Edmund Lowe and remade with Jon Hall. That and the Crofts would be the picks of the litter though I would like to read the Burgess just based on seeing the film.
Hard to believe anyone ever wrote a positive review of Lee Thayer and Peter Clancy and Wiggar. My how tastes change.
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:15 am
I noticed that too, the Lee Thayer book, I mean. I was thinking of buying a copy, just to see if it’s really as good as the review says. Problem: There’s only one copy available for sale online, in Good condition, but I really don’t want to spend $35 just for an experiment.
Anyone else willing to try? Feel free.
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:08 am
Steve,
Re BOMBAY MAIL it first appeared in the pulps in serialization. Not sure where, but Blochman was a regular in ADVENTURE, ARGOSY, and BLUE BOOK. The film might well have been based on the serialized version before the hardcover was published.
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:13 am
I think you nailed it:
BOMBAY MAIL Street & Smith’s Complete Stories August 15 1933 (not serialized)
Film premiere: 06 Jan 1934 (USA) From IMDb.
Book published: Week of Jan 29th…
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:23 am
Looking for some info on the Burgess book, not covered by TIME except for the mention:
Basis for the 1945 film noir. Anthony Mann’s directorial debut: An amnesiac who fears he’s the mystery man in a high-profile murder case searches for the truth with the help of a female cabdriver. Previously filmed by RKO in 1936 as Two in the Dark.
Also. describing the book: This 1934 thriller is the third book under Richard A. Lupoff’s Surinam Turtle imprint. A man wakes up in a park and can’t remember who he is. But thanks to the help of a couple of intriguing women, he manages to remain free from arrest for a murder he MAY have committed. But he simply must figure out his identity before the cops — or the murderer — catch up with him.
From Goodreads: An unusual mystery tale in which the chief suspect tries to discover whether or not he really committed the murder.”I must have been unconscious for some time… The first thing I remember distinctly is being out-of-doors somewhere. it was night and warm… I was rubbing my hands on my trousers, I don’t know why. What I was most keenly aware of, though was a horrible, throbbing pain in my head.”The man, known to himself and the police as “J. Steever,” was an amnesia victim. He had suffered a blow on the head, and he didn’t know who he was, nor where he came from, nor what he was doing in Boston. Most importantly of all, he didn’t know whether or not he had murdered John Saxon, the eminent theatrical producer who death brought to light so many men and women with a strong motive for murdering him.That is the beginning of one of the most unusual of all murder mysteries, a story told from the inside. For “J. Steever” faced not only faced the likelihood that he had committed murder. He also had to find out who he was, where he came from, what he was doing near the house of the murdered man so late that night, why he had five brand-new hundred dollar bills on his person, why he had an automatic pistol in his hip pocket, why his hands were stained in blood.First published in 1934, TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE is an unusual 1930s mystery that was filmed twice as noir mysteries. First as TWO IN THE DARK (1936) and second as TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE (1945). It also inspired several other films and novels.Boston-born Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) was a multi-talented artist, poet and author.
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:27 am
Add a well-written review of the film:
https://www.popmatters.com/two-oclock-courage-anthony-mann-is-only-a-quarter-to-noir-2495398465.html
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:29 am
And the movie is here:
https://archive.org/details/two-o-clock-courage-1945
November 23rd, 2023 at 1:53 am
More on Lee Thayer:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=7756
http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7931625/Thayer%2C%20Lee
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=7619
http://mikegrost.com/green.htm#LeeThayer
The NYPL has a copy of the second bullet…. https://www.nypl.org/research/research-catalog/bib/b13120284
November 23rd, 2023 at 6:58 pm
Thanks, Tony. From the first link, a column by Mike Nevins devoted to Ms Thayer:
“As a mystery writer she’s almost completely forgotten, and perhaps that’s the way it should be, because by ordinary standards there’s very little to recommend her. Feeble plots, clumsy writing, laughable characterizations, elephantine pace, zero fairness to the reader: you name the fault and Thayer’s books have it in spades.”
November 24th, 2023 at 11:11 am
Do we have room for one more comment? I think so. From the Amazon description of GREGORY BAXTER Murder Could Not Kill:
Murder Could Not Kill, first published in 1934, is a classic British ‘golden age’ murder mystery. From the dustjacket: “Reuben Foster, a young artist, while taking a walk, witnesses a murder committed in an automobile. He is too late to reach the murderer. In the car he finds a terrified girl bent over the dead body of her father. He drives the girl to her fiancé, and though he wishes to get clear of the case, his strong attraction to the girl involves him in it. What follows is a thrilling succession of climaxes that will leave the reader breathless. An enthralling romance adds the piquancy of passion to the thrills of murder.†Gregory Baxter was a pen-name of John Ressich (1877-1937), author of several detective mysteries.
November 24th, 2023 at 11:14 am
And while we’re at it, I have discovered that there is Kindle version of the Footner book, described thusly:
“Lance McCrea was down on his luck, looking for a job and living in a boarding house. His heart was instantly won by a young woman, Freda, who also lived at the boarding house. But a powerful man stood between them. What power did this man have over this young lady? Lance went to find out and stumbled right into a double murder.”