Mon 22 Apr 2024
Reviewed by David Vineyard: PAUL GALLICO – Too Many Ghosts.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
PAUL GALLICO – Too Many Ghosts. Doubleday, hardcover, 1959. Pocket/Cardinal #C-426, paperback, 1961. Intl Polygonics Ltd, softcover, 1988.
Lord Paradine was running short of funds to keep Paradine Hall open in the Post War economic slump in the United Kingdom so it seemed like a good idea to open up part of the place as a sort of residential country club to invited guests and residents, but some uninvited guests of the kind that play strange harp music, blow out candles, make weird noises in the night — including a nebulous nun — are now sharing the digs and something has to be done.
That’s when Sir Richard Lockerie, who went to Cambridge with a curious fellow, recalls his old friend Alexander Hero. Hero is a sort of private detective of the supernatural, doing psychical research with the aid of science; in short, ghost-busting and doing quite well at it in Post War England.
Alexander Hero featured in two novels by Paul Gallico, this and The Hand of Mary Constable, in which Hero investigates Professor Constable’s haunting by his dead daughter, plus suspiciously competent mediums, and a Russian plot to convince him to defect. When filmed in the US as a made-for-television movie titled Daughter of the Mind, the venue moved to this country. Don Murray played Hero and was hired by Fed Ed Asner to prove what Ray Milland was seeing wasn’t his daughter’s spirit.
Even if you are largely unaware of Alexander Hero, you likely have heard of his housekeeper, Mrs. Harris, or as she says in her Cockney accent, ’Arris, who you might have recently followed on her trip to Paris, and in other adventures to New York, Rome, and even Parliament. It is a rare occasion of Mrs. Hudson outshining (and selling) Mr. Holmes.
Paul Gallico’s rather remarkable career began as a noted sports writer, his book on Lou Gehrig filmed as Pride of the Yankees with Gary Cooper. In fiction he started out pretty strong with the elegiac haunting wartime tale, The Snow Goose, moved on to the popular Adventures of Hiram Holliday in the slicks and an early television series with Wally Cox, The Small Miracle, Ludmilla, Coronation, the basis for the film Lily, Thomasina, The Abandoned, the Cold War thriller Trial by Terror (filmed as Assignment Paris), the best-selling The Boy with the Bubble Gun, The Zoo Gang (which became a television series), and among others something called The Poseidon Adventure and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Ten of those were either filmed or made into television series, not counting short stories adapted on screen.
Brilliant, high handed, and with an eye for the ladies, Alexander Hero is pretty much a Great Detective, and while the books flirt with the supernatural they tend to come down hard on rational explanations of supposed miracles, quite human villainy, and for all the chills and suspense, logical solutions to impossible mysteries.
Too Many Ghosts is a classic manor house mystery of the Golden Age variety where haunting and not murder is the game afoot, though Gallico makes the stakes just as high, and those not fond of the supernatural in mystery fiction may enjoy it in that Gallico has it both ways in terms of detection and thrills while still keeping both feet on the ground.
April 22nd, 2024 at 11:00 pm
Says Kirkus:
“This reads like a suspense story, with “”too many ghosts”” providing the inexplicable action, in practically every phase that ghosts provide. There’s the nun that portends dire disaster to the Paradines; there’s the harp that plays in an empty, locked room; there are mischievous evidences in the way of moving furniture, falling pictures, broken ornaments and flying bricks that indicate a poltergeist with a turn for humor. But there is danger as well, and threat to the happiness and safety of some of the guests- paying and otherwise- and to some of the family. Alexander Hero was summoned from London to lay the ghosts once and for all. An informed and experienced sceptic, he longed for one real ghost. But- with the help of his step-sister, Lady Meg, and her battery of tiny cameras- all these ghosts turned out to have more than evident help from human sources. Let’s say this is a spoof on spooks, but it makes very entertaining reading.”
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/paul-gallico-16/too-many-ghosts-2/
And here’s a link to the TV film DAUGHTER OF THE MIND:
https://youtu.be/PFZZ6-UqK5U
Surprisingly enough, the work of Paul Gallico that I remember most fondly is the TV series chronicling the adventures of Hiram Holliday. That was a long time ago!
April 27th, 2024 at 3:03 am
In the few Holliday storys I’ve been able to find he is a bit more of the standard hero than Wally Cox, but pretty much equally Quixotic, his Seven League Boots inevitably leading him to romance, adventure, and comedic misunderstanding.
I know quite a few readers who consider Holliday their favorite of Gallico’s works and either recall the literary or the small screen incarnation among their favorites.
I think the series can be found on the Internet to be watched, though as with much early television I can’t swear to the quality.
Gallico was as well-known for the whimsey of Holliday and Mrs.’Aris as for his award-winning books for children (THE ABANDONED, THOMISINA (Disney’s THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA), CORONATION (also filmed), his more spiritual (with a small s) works like SNOW GOOSE {dramatized for Hallmark with Richard Harris) and THE SMALL MIRACLE (also a film), his romantic novels, mystery, and adventure.
Like Philip Wylie he seemed to be all over the literary map and successful at them all. He even wrote poetry and a pictorial book on how cats domesticate humans called THE MIAOW BOOK.
Ian Fleming fans will remember him for his introduction to the omnibus GILT EDGED BONDS and because he seems to be the source of the quote James Bond was Mickey Spillane from the waist down and Sapper from the waist up. He also described Bond as Bulldog Drummond with a brain and a sex drive.