P. G. WODEHOUSE – Psmith, Journalist. Adam & Charles Black, UK. hardcover, 1915. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1915. Reprinted several times, in both hardcover and paperback.

   Wodehouse is generally praised, and rightly so, for raising Light Fiction to the plane of High Art. The problem with analyzing his work is that there is nothing — or almost nothing — to seriously compare it to. As one critic put it, Authors who write the stuff that Wodehouse does don’t write it as well, and those who write as well as he don’t write the stuff that Wodehouse does.

   Stylistically, he is very much on a level with Henry James or James Joyce. Thematically, he seems at first much closer to Barbara Cartland and/or the Marx Brothers. If there is a philosophic underpinning to his work (and I think there is) it is simply a profound sense of laissez-faire. His characters go about trying to enjoy life with an almost Zen-like devotion, and even the most dull and stupid of them have a charming tale to tell, no less than the trees and the stars.

   In much the same way, the airy, almost superficial, lightness of Wodehouse’s prose masks a Proustian depth, dropping literary allusions with an ease that never seems the least bit affected (Van Dine could have picked up a tip here) and working in even the farthest-flung reference with seamless grace. Look up the passage in Service with a Smile where Gally compares the sabotage of a Boy-Scout tent with the murder of Becket, and you’ll see what I mean.

   All this would be quite enough in a mere novelist, but Wodehouse was a humorist as well. While analyses of Humor are generally as flat as Stop Signs and much less colorful, some mention should be made here as to the Wodehouse Technique, which is to play against his own style. He loves to set up a staid rhythm, smooth as an ornamental pond, then drop the Cosmic Clanger into it with a burst of hyperbole or some off-the-wall metaphor.

   Thus, a character abruptly jilted by his fiancée, “looked rather as if he had been smacked across the bridge of the nose with a wet fish,” or “was reminded of the moment when, boxing in college, he had inadvertently placed his chin in the exact spot occupied by his opponent’s right fist,” or “made a noise somewhat like an elephant pulling his foot from a mud-hole in a Burmese teak forest.”

   Of course, such situations always form the mainsprings of Wodehouse’s plots, since, as Bertie Wooster puts it, “A sensitive chap always feels a pang of distress at seeing the ship of love come a stinker on the rocks,” but there is invariably a helpful soul or two around to help straighten things out with such good advice as the following formula to win back a lost love: “Simply clasp her in your arms, waggle her about a bit, and cry ‘My woman! My woman!'”

   Well, five paragraphs into the article now, and the thoughtful reader is probably asking himself “What the Hell has all this got to do with Mystery Fiction?” Well, keep your pants on. Now at last we wend our way towards Wodehouse’s crime novel, Psmith, Journalist.

   Most people know Wodehouse for his humorous romances, set in a tirelessly timeless England. He started out, however as a writer for children and young adults, primarily of mild and fanciful adventure stories. Psmith, Journalist is a transitional novel, written just as Wodehouse was beginning to humorize his style and gear his plots more towards adults. As such, it is quite interesting, but Penguin, who keep it in print, should be publicly reprimanded for reprinting it in a series with more traditional Wodehouse works, with never a word of warning to the unwary laugh-seeker.

   For Psmith, Journalist is very much a novel of its time, set in a corrupt, squalid, and often violent New York City. The story is of one Billy Windsor, the assistant editor of Cosy Moments, a kiddie-oriented weekly magazine who, finding himself placed temporarily in charge, decides to turn it into a muckraking scandal sheet along the lines of The National Enquirer. (An idea Wodehouse would later use to great humorous effect for the opening paragraphs of Heavy Weather.)

   Aided by the urbane and ubiquitous Psmith (the P is silent), Billy is soon promoting up-and-coming prizefighters, running afoul of venal slumlords, and dodging ruffians’ bullets in the darkened alleyways of the City of Night.

   The wonder is not that Wodehouse does this at all, but that he does it so well. Although some of the set-pieces have a rather contrived feel about them (see the cover illustration of Psmith holding off small-time thug on a rooftop) and although his dialogue at this time was still a bit primitive, the descriptions have a sardonic economy to them that recalls — and anticipates — Hammett and Chandler. Chandler, in fact, went to the same college in England as Wodehouse, but a few years later. One wonders who taught Elements of Composition there. Compare out this moment from Farewell My Lovely:

   With this from Psmith, Journalist

   Finally, a bit of Wodehousian philosophy, this from the letters reprinted in Author! Author! As the master humorist neared Ninety, he reflected:

BLANDINGS. “Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey.” BBC One, 30 minutes, 13 January 2013. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Timothy Spall (Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth), Jennifer Saunders (Lady Constance Keeble), Jack Farthing (The Hon. Frederick Threepwood), Mark Williams (Sebastian Beach). Guest Cast: Alice Orr-Ewing, Brendan Patricks, James Norton. Screenplay by Guy Andrews, based on the story of the same title by P. G. Wodehouse, which first appeared in the US in the 09 July 1927 issue of Liberty, and in the United Kingdom in the August 1927 Strand.; included the collection Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935) Director: Paul Seed.

   Even in the short running time of only 30 minutes there are two subplots pulled off to perfection in this, the opening episode of a two season run of this recent British TV series. In print, Blandings Castle was the setting for eleven novels and nine short stories. Although in my younger years I was an avid reader of P. G. Wodehouse, I don’t remember specifics of many of them. Jeeves, yes, but Blandings, no.

   So I came to the TV version with the equivalent of a blank slate, with neither preconceptions to be dashed, nor with hopes to be wished for, but oh so seldom confirmed. Let me state from the start, though, so as to not keep you in any kind of doubt, that I enjoyed this one immensely.

   In this opening salvo the most appropriately potty Lord Emsworth has two problems on his hands. First, his prize pig Empress of Blandings, has stopping eating. By no coincidence, Emsworth’s pigman, Wellbeloved, is confined for the next two weeks in prison. And this just before the 87th annual Shropshire Agricultural Show.

   This small problem may be solvable, when Jimmy Belford, fresh from the American West and Emsworth’s niece’s choice of wedding material, against Emsworth’s sister Constance’s express wishes, demonstrates an universal pig call that will save the day.

   Complicated? Yes. Funny? Another definite yes. And beautifully photographed as well, filmed on location at Crom Castle in Northern Ireland. I made it through only two episodes of Downton Abbey, at which point I decided that this oh-so elegant soap opera (but still soap opera) was not for me. With my sense of humor obviously showing, my antidote of choice, as I’ve just discovered, is Blandings, and by a huge margin. The thirty minutes simply flew by.

THE INNER CIRCLE. Republic Pictures, 1946. Adele Mara, Warren Douglas (as PI Johnny Strange), William Frawley, Ricardo Cortez, Virginia Christine, Will Wright. Screenplay by Dorrell McGowan & Stuart E. McGowan, based on a radio script by Leonard St. Clair & Lawrence Taylor. Director: Phil Ford.

   When the story begins, private eye Johnny Strange (whose one-man firm is called Action Incorporated) is darning the toe of his sock while at the same time calling a local newspaper to place an ad: “Wanted: secretary to human dynamo. Exclamation point. Must be blonde, beautiful, between 22 and 28, unmarried, with a skin you love to touch and a heart you can’t.”

   In walks Adela Mara as a beautiful bombshell named Gerry Smith, and takes the job, hanging up the phone and telling Johnny she has all of the qualifications. She does indeed qualify, except for perhaps that last requirement, however, the one about the skin and the heart: “Try both, brother, just try.” While she is finishing up the knitting job for him, a call from a client comes in.

   When Johnny meets her, without even a hint of what he’s being hired for, she’s dressed mysteriously all in black with a veil concealing her face. She leads him to a home where they find a dead man’s body, whereupon she knocks him on the head and leaves.

   Obviously she’s trying to frame him for the murder, but why? It isn’t as if the dead man, whose has his own radio gossip show, didn’t have plenty of real enemies who wouldn’t mind seeing him no longer around.

   Pure pulp fiction, in other words, and I haven’t even begun going into all pf the details I could to to reinforce that statement. (The screenplay was based on a radio script, but for what program, I have no idea.) There a lot of friendly banter between strange Strange and his new secretary, who comes along just in time to provide him an “self-defense” reason for killing the man.

   Johnny Strange — a rather naive individual, especially for one alleged to be a brash dynamo of a PI — is confused, and who could blame him? Much pleasurable silliness ensues, including a live reenactment of the crime over the radio, with all of the possible suspects playing their own roles. Whatever it takes to solve a crime, that’s what you have to do. (But this ending really is quite unique.)

NOTE:   The original running time was 65 minutes. The only print that seems to have survived is less than an hour long. There is an obvious break in the action about half way through, but it’s easy enough to fill in what’s missing.

STANLEY ELLIN – The Luxembourg Run. Random House, hardcover, 1977. Ballantine, paperback, 1979.

   When a mystery writer takes the extra time to fill in the background of his characters, the result is too often uninteresting or turns out to be of little or no use to the plot. Not so when a storyteller like Stanley Ellin. The life of of David Hanna Shaw, a college dropout who becomes Amsterdam’s :King of the Hippies: before tuning to a trans-European career of currency smuggling, is fascinating from beginning to end.

   In The Luxembourg Run his turnabout task of avenging the death of his girl friend Anneke at the hands of hijackers who forcefully relieve him of a million dollar consignment is nearly a foregone conclusion — how could it be otherwise after he inherits ten million dollars of his own from a wealthy grandfather? Still it’s not all roses, not at all, and just as Ellin obviously believes in his characters, so will the reader.

Definitely not to be confused with Linda Hamilton’s character in the Terminator movie series:

CARTER DICKSON “Blind Man’s Hood.” Short story. First published in The Sketch, UK, Christmas 1937. Collected in The Department of Queer Complaints (Morrow, 1940). Reprinted in Best Ghost Stories (edited by Anne Ridler, Faber and Faber, 1945), The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries (edited by Otto Penzler, Black Lizard, 2014) and The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (edited by Martin Edwards, British Library, 2018). Also reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1966, as “To Wake the Dead,” as by John Dickson Carr.

   And with all of those credentials on this story’s résumé, I’m sure I missed some, but this is one story that deserves all of them. Personally, I usually feel that tales in which the real story is told to listeners in the present as already having taken place in the place are awkward and forced, but not this time.

   A young married couple visiting a manor home on Christmas Eve find the front door open, all the lights on, a fire igoing, but otherwise the house is empty. Finally a young girl appears, perhaps a governess or a secretary, who then explains why the family themselves are not at home. They are, in fact, deliberately staying away. It seems that a murder had once taken place in the house, one that had never been solved.

   The woman who had died was found alone in the house, with all of the doors and windows locked. There were also no footprints in the snow surrounding the house, other than those made by the man who had walked up to it while under full observation.

   The house is spooky, and the story the girl tells is spookier still. This also a ghost story, but the the solution to the crime has nothing to do with the supernatural. I do not think that anyone but John Dickson Carr could have conjured up a story such as this one, a tale that combines the two so well — a logical puzzle and a more than a wisp of the eerie — and yet keeps the two parts completely separated.

   This one was an absolute pleasure to read. (I read the story in EQMM. I wish I owned the original Morrow hardcover edition!)

Coming to Netflix in March:

ALLEN ESKENS – Nothing More Dangerous. Mulholland Books, hardcover, November 2019. Setting: Missouri, 1976-Present.

First Sentence: I was fifteen the day I learned that Ms. Lida Poe had gone missing.

   Set in the 1970s, Eskens gifts his readers with a story that deals with a mystery, bigotry, and a young man named Boady Sandem growing up in an environment that makes him decide who and what he believes and for what he stands.

   It is so nice to read a book whose story starts on the first page and continues straight on through; no prologue and a single Point of View. Beginning with relating a memory, Eskins’ voice as a true storyteller is apparent— “I knew that President Ford has his hands full trying to beat out an actor named Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but what any of that had to do with the price of a turnip down at the IGA — I couldn’t tell you.”

   Eskens creates a sense of time without giving you a specific date, and he creates a sense of place through some of the most evocative descriptions one will find— “…Soon I found myself sitting in the crux of my favorite oak tree, watching the afternoon sun ripple across the surface of Dixon’s pond, the smell of mud and water in my nose, the feel of tree bark under my bare feet.” His humor is subtle; it slides in without one really noticing— “Personally, I didn’t find it hard to believe that someone had up and left Jessup; what baffled me was why more people didn’t do it.

   The characters, both good and bad, are real and recognizable— “Hoke wore his sixty plus years like an old book. … Sitting close to him, you could see the loose ends of a past that Hoke never talked about.”

   The descriptions of Boadie’s life as a teen are wonderfully representative of life in a rural area have a timelessness about them, yet we are also reminded of the bigotry that is pervasive in many such areas– “I mean, there’s no reason there ain’t no black quarterbacks playing pro football. They can run as fast and block and stuff, but they ain’t as smart as whites. That don’t make ’em bad people. They’re just different. … I think that if a black man sets his mind to it, he can be just as good as a white man.” There is also the pressure to conform and the way hatred and racism spreads– “You put enough like-minded idiots in a room, and pretty soon their backward way of thinking starts to take on an air of legitimacy.”

   One wants the book to be perfect, and it nearly is. But not quite. There are a couple of unfortunate and completely unnecessary portents. There are coincidences which make one shake one’s head believing the author could have done better. There is a rather predictable wounding of our hero that feels as though the author watched one too many detective shows. Fortunately, one can forgive those weaknesses in contrast to the story of Hoke, his pain, and how he met Boadie, and how impactful is the story overall.

   Nothing More Dangerous is a story of friendship, bigotry, violence, fate, and redemption. It is also a beautiful story that touches one’s heart.

Rating: VG Plus.

LILLIAN BERGQUIST & IRVING MOORE – Your Shot, Darling! Morrow, hardcover, 1948. Graphic #84, paperback, 1954.

   I read Your Shot, Darling! just a few years ago; the same year, I think, when I joined DAPA-EM. Practically last week in the Scheme of Things. But when I noticed it on my shelf the other day, I couldn’t remember much about it: something about a gun-nut hero, murder, and denouement on a shooting range. Or was I recalling correctly? So I pulled it off the shelf and had another look.

   Well for starters, it’s heavy-duty stoopid: dumb cops, obvious killer, knuckle-head hero and dense heroine, abetted by a supporting cast that…

   These particular lousy bums keep coming on to the hero in true pulp fashion, dropping veiled hints of danger and promises to spill everything, then turning up dead in tried-and-tiresome fashion a few pages later, leaving our none-too-brilliant protagonist to puzzle things out, which he manages only after the authors have reached some predestined number of pages.

   But there comes a point where idiocy acquires a certain charm, and Your Shot, Darling! gets us there. Like a Keeler novel, this book reads relentlessly dumb and unpretentious, so much so that it gets to be fun after a while. I may not get back to it for another thirty years – or ever, for that matter. But I’m glad I rediscovered it.

        —

Editor’s Note: This was the only mystery novel that either author wrote, either solo or tandem.

MR. ADAMS AND EVE “The Mothers.” CBS, 15 March 1957 ( Season 1 Episode 6). 30 min. Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, Olive Carey. Guest Cast: Lee Patrick, Olive Blakeney, Walter Woolf King. Written by Sol Saks, Bernard Ederer & Robert White, based on characters created by Collier Young. Director: Richard Kinon.

   The premise of this 30 minute comedy show was that Ida Lupino and Howard Duff, movie stars in real life, would play a married couple who were also movie stars, but concentrating on their life at home (which of course often overlaps their professional lives as well).

   I don’t know how I happened to be thinking about this series, but it somehow came to mind as a very funny show that was on while I was in high school. I didn’t think anyone else would remember it, but I went looking and of all things, I found several episodes to see for free on YouTube.

   I may have picked the wrong one to watch In this one, it accidentally happens that both Howard’s ad Eve’s mothers end up staying with them at the same time. As they are quite opposites in nature (Eve’s mother has been in show business for quite some time, Howard’s mother from Washington state and is rather naive about big city ways), they expect the worst.

   As it turns out the two mothers find themselves fighting over the same man. Pot roast comes into it as well, and it is up to the maid of the house (Olive Carey) to finally straighten things out.

   I may have had a crush on Ida Lupino at the time, or why else would I have remembered this show so well for all these years? This is the least funny comedy episode I can ever recall watching. The script is so lame the actors have to resort to exaggerated facial expressions and other gestures of the head to to give their lines any oomph. Not even the laugh track can find anything funny in this one, not even to giggle at. This was, to say the least, disappointing. There are times when you really can’t go home again.