DICK STODGHILL “A Deceitful Way of Dying.” Novelette. Jack Eddy #4. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1989, Collected in The Jack Eddy Stories, Volume 1 (JLT-Charatan Publications, paperback, 2006).

   Between 1979 and his death in 2009, long time newspaper columnist Dick Stodghill was also a prolific writer of short stories, producing several dozen of them over those years. His only series character was a fellow named Jack Eddy, a PI working for the Wellington National Detective Agency back around 1937 or so.

   Eddy was based in Akron OH and lived in the same boarding house as the narrator of his stories, Abraham “Bram” Geary. The latter is the crime reporter for one of the local newspapers, and even though he resents Eddy for going out with their landlady’s daughter, whom he has worshiped from afar, he also does not want to miss the scoops that working with Eddy always produce.

   In this, their fourth case together of maybe 18 or 19 in all, most appearing in AHMM, a man who has been presumed dead for several months, having run his car straight into an oncoming train, turns up dead in another town some 40 miles over. Eddy is hired by the man’s insurance company, who has already paid off once. They don’t want to pay off twice.

   It takes quite a bit of detective work to unravel the complicated plot the killer has set up — and I’m not sure I followed the explanation completely — but the solidly constructed atmosphere of several working class towns in Depression-era Ohio is pitch perfect, in a style strongly reminiscent of Black Mask of that very same era: only semi-hardboiled, with a dash of humor.

   Let’s pretend we’re playing Jeopardy!, shall we? The category is Mystery Writers. Here’s the clue. This well-known crime novelist’s first short story appeared in January 1958, when he was nineteen, and today, more than sixty years later, he’s still active.

   The question, as every reader of this column should know, is: Who is Lawrence Block? In the PI world, which is all we’re concerned with here, his main claim to fame is the New York-based eye-without-a-license Matthew Scudder. Over the decades I reviewed many of the Scudder novels for the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat,but I’ve never covered the first three in the series. Isn’t it about time I did?

   At the beginning of The Sins of the Fathers (Dell pb #7991, 1976), Scudder is in a bar, meeting what, if he were licensed, we could call a potential client, a moneyed entrepreneur from upstate New York whose estranged daughter was recently slashed to death with a razor in the West Village. According to all the evidence the murderer was the young man with whom she shared a Bethune Street apartment, a minister’s son, who came out onto the street covered in her blood and confessed to the crime before hanging himself in his jail cell.

   The dead woman’s father, apparently on some sort of guilt trip, hires Scudder to find out more about the last years of her life. We then follow the unlicensed eye as he methodically gathers information, learning much about various people whose lives touched one or the other of the youthful dead. Finally he connects the dots to form a picture radically at odds with what seems to have happened.

   “The Scudder series was conceived as a series and contracted for as a series,” Block told interviewer Ernie Bulow, adding that the first three novels about the character were written “in ’74 or ’75—or maybe they were all in ’74, I’m not sure.” Ross Macdonald was still alive at the time but near the end of his career, and Dell, the original publisher of the series, promoted Block’s protagonist as “New York’s answer to Lew Archer.”

   The comparison makes some sense. Both Macdonald in his later novels and Block in his first Scudder novel deal centrally with dysfunctional families, and both the early Scudder and the late Archer are in some sense psychiatrists manqués. But as we follow Scudder’s information-gathering we’re also reminded of Hammett, especially of the longer Continental Op stories like “The Girl with the Silver Eyes.”

   There is, however, a huge difference. The Op’s step-by-step investigations tend to morph into violent action scenes whereas, at least in The Sins of the Fathers , there’s no shadowy “player on the other side” determined to prevent the protagonist from learning the truth and therefore no violence, except for the scene in Chapter 12 where Scudder momentarily becomes a Mike Hammer figure, breaking the fingers of a teen-age mugger’s right hand.

   The scene is irrelevant to the plot and may have been inserted simply because Block or the publisher decided there had to be violence somewhere in the book.

   That would explain the violence but wouldn’t account for the pervasive element that makes The Sins of the Fathers all but unique in PI fiction: religion. The title comes from a number of Biblical verses—Deuteronomy 5:9-10, Exodus 20:5-6, Numbers 14:18—on the theme that the fathers’ sins are visited upon the children.

   Then in the book’s first paragraph we find: “[T]he full effect of his face was as a blank stone tablet waiting for someone to scratch commandments on it.” In the same scene Scudder reminds us that “Cain said he wasn’t Abel’s keeper” and proceeds to explain to his potential client why he quit the NYPD after fifteen years.

   As he explains a few pages later, his quitting had nothing to do with religion:

   Why then did Block throw in that religious reference? Obviously because it was meaningful to him.

   At the end of the chapter Scudder shares with us one of the habits he picked up since leaving the force: ;

   Later, when he interviews the minister who was the dead boy’s father, their dialogue is filled with religious allusions:

   In Chapter 14, near the end of the novel, Scudder picks up a Lives of the Saints book he keeps in his hotel room—name one other PI in fiction who’d be likely to have that sort of volume handy!—and recounts for us the story of St. Maria Goretti, who chose to be stabbed to death rather than submit to rape, and of her killer who after 27 years in prison knelt beside the girl’s mother to receive Communion. “I always find something interesting in that book,” he says, although its relevance to the plot remains, dare I say it, a mystery.

    Just one page later, sipping bourbon-laced coffee in a bar, he reflects on the start of the chain of events he’s become involved in. “Maybe it was Eve’s fault, messing around with apples. Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil….” In Chapter 15, just before exposing the murderer, he tells the story of the akedah, Abraham’s obedience to God’s demand that he offer his only son Isaac as a human sacrifice, an allusion that is definitely relevant. And, just before the end of the novel, Scudder tells his adversary, whose suicide he’s about to enable, that he regards suicide as a sin:

   For one who has no religion, Scudder certainly has a lot to say about the subject. The religious dimension is less important in the later novels about him, although he continues his tithing habit and also makes a practice of attending the so-called Butchers’ Mass with his friend the stone killer Mick Ballou.

   But religion is only one fascinating aspect of The Sins of the Fathers . Another is alcohol. Clearly Scudder has a drinking problem, precipitated by the same incident that caused him to leave the NYPD and his wife and young sons and burrow into a shell. But he’s not an alcoholic. We have his word for it:

   Eventually he’ll identify as an alcoholic and join AA, which figures as prominently in some later Scudders as religion does in this one.

   And there’s yet a third recurring theme: vigilantism. In Chapter 14, right after telling us about Maria Goretti, Scudder is discussing his present case with Trina, his barmaid buddy and casual sex partner, when he suddenly changes the subject to a crime he’d investigated back in his days as a cop, the rape and brutal murder of a 20-year-old woman.

   Scudder and his partner knew instinctively who was guilty but he’d covered himself too well. “…[W]e knew he did it, see, and it was driving us crazy.” Scudder’s partner wanted to “kill him and set him in cement and drop him somewhere in the Hudson.” Scudder, however, “thought of something better.” He framed the murderer as a major heroin dealer and had him put away for 10 to 20 years. In the third year of his sentence “he got in a grudge fight with another inmate and got stabbed to death.”

   Instantly, if we know our Cornell Woolrich, we’re reminded of one of his darkest Noir Cop stories, “Three Kills for One” (Black Mask, July 1942; collected in Night and Fear, 2004). Whether Block was familiar with this story remains unknown but, if he wasn’t, he reinvented it, especially in his Edgar-winning story “By the Dawn’s Early Light” (Playboy, August 1984; collected in Some Days You Get the Bear, 1993), which he later expanded into the Scudder novel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (1986).

   Far more often than most other private eyes, except of course for Mike Hammer and his pedissequi (which means followers in another’s footsteps. God how I love that word!), Scudder goes outside the law to obtain justice or revenge or closure or whatever you want to call it. In some of the later Scudder novels we find Block turning handsprings as he works out new ways for his protagonist to exact private vengeance. William Ruehlmann’s Saint with a Gun came out in 1974, two years or so before Scudder’s debut, but if the book had been published in the late Seventies or the Eighties it would certainly have taken account of Block’s protagonist as one of the more serious specimens of what Ruehlmann called “the unlawful American private eye.”

   I was planning to cover all three of the earliest Scudders in a single column but, having gotten carried away by the first, I’ll need to reserve the other two for next month. Please join me then. And if you’re going to the Bouchercon in Dallas, feel free to say hello to me. I’ll be the old bum with the cane.

NICHOLAS FREELING – Lady Macbeth. Henri Castang #10. Andre Deutsch Ltd, UK, hardcover, 1988. No US edition.

   I’ll be honest, I am now, and have been since his first book, a Nicholas Freeling fan. I devoured the Van der Valk novels, one of my favorite modern mystery novels is King of the Rainy Country, mourned when he killed off Van der Valk, took solace in the two books about Arlette, Van der Valk’s French widow, and was doubtful when he returned with French cop Henri Castang (“A cop, you know, shouldn’t allow himself to think much.”) of the national Police Judiciaire.

   After all, Castang’s artist wife Vera was a Czech, just as Dutch Van der Valk’s wife had been a fish out of water Frenchwoman in the Netherlands. Castang was another good cop of a certain age, and perhaps only the presence of his mentor Richards really differentiated that much from Van der Valk. Why had he bothered to kill off Van der Valk for a slightly younger clone?

   It took about three books before I began to see why. Castang freed Freeling in the same ways Van der Valk had begun to limit him. Even late in the series, with Europe changing and Castang and the PJ now part of the European Union it was obvious he was a better and deeper character, if he never quite got the credit for it.

   Lady MacBeth not only gives us another fine mystery, it also gives us Castang as part time narrator of the novel, not just the focal point, a welcome chance to hear his voice directly for long time fans. And it adds a bonus.

   The plot begins with the most ordinary of events. Friends of Castang ask his help when the female member of a seemingly perfect couple goes missing, and the friends in question are Arthur and Arlette Davidson (He’s nice; like his wife; I like them both. They’re both a pest. She, particularly.), yes, that Arlette, whose taste for solving mysteries hasn’t faded. She and Arthur are among the other narrators.

   Castang sort of meets Van der Valk. (*)

   Forgive a brief geek out.

   Back to our story, Guy and Sibillle are neighbors and friends of the Davidsons. They seemed a perfect couple, he extremely nice, she strong and smart (Sibille was a fiercely proud woman. Also ambitious, tenacious, hard if you like and self-willed.). On vacation to the Voges, a mountainous district where the impoverished castle Sibille grew up in was, the two argued and Sibillle, according to Guy, demanded he stop, got out of the car, walked into the trees, and has not been seen since. He returned home expecting her return. Time has passed and she has not shown up. Arlette suspects murder.

   Castang, now Commissaire Castang, suspects a domestic quarrel and a stubborn wife, but agrees to pacify Arthur and Arlette (Arthur is certainly meant to be Freeling himself) by making a few inquiries. After all it could be murder.

   Or something much much worse.

   Mysteries often begin with small seemingly unimportant matters. Not with murders of great import, but some small matter like an unresolved quarrel and haughty wife who may just have walked out despite of all the outward appearances. Castang, Arlette, neither of them can imagine where this simple domestic drama is going to lead.

   Granted Freeling does not write direct simple to the point prose. He ambles around the point a bit, takes seemingly unrelated tangents, indulges in stream of consciousness styling here and there, notes small details of life, and somehow manages to make all that painfully suspenseful always steering you back on course to revelations you never expected, to violence that comes from human frailty, but is no less shocking for it when it involves someone caught up in what one Freeling character calls “awful moral righteousness.”

      Subtly, and with great skill as a writer, and as a master at misdirection, he carries you along in the narrative to the shocking ending, to something much more than domestic violence, and much darker and closer to today’s headlines, always in the capable human and humanistic hands of the likes of Castang and Arlette, not triumphant in unraveling the mystery, merely lost in the complexity of human needs.

      —

(*)   Van der Valk and Patricia Moyes’ Henry and Emily Tibbet exchanged crossovers back in their series.

C. FRASER-SIMSON – Footsteps in the Night. Methuen, UK, hardcover. 1926,. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1927. Film: ATP, 1931; released in the UK as A Honeymoon Adventure (with Benita Hume and Peter Hannen, co-screenwriter: John Paddy Carstairs).

   My first thought when I picked this off the shelf to read was that that the title sounded familiar. The same as one of the early Hardy Boys adventures I read when I was young, maybe? I also did not recognize the name of the author, nor do I imagine that many of you reading this do either. (But I’ve been wrong in making statements such as this before, and to my regret, and I should stop making them.)

   It turns out that the author was the second wife (nee Cicely Devenish) of English composer Harold Fraser-Simson, noted for his many works of light music, including musical comedies, and setting children poems to music, especially those of A. A. Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame).

   There is not a lot of mystery involved in this book. It is an out-and-out thriller from beginning to end, one in which the villain is known to Peter Martin, one of the book’s two young married protagonists, almost as soon as his villainy begins.

   When a book begins with a husband being chided by his wife, in this case, the boyishly beautiful Eve Martin, for shutting her completely out of his professional affairs, you just know that something is going to happen to prove how right she is, and how wrong he was.

   They are vacationing in Scotland before Peter has to present some essential papers to a conference in London, when he is unexpectedly called away, leaving her alone is their rather large manor home. Due to a mixup, he does not have the papers with him, and when his abductors discover that he does not have them, they realize that it is Eve who is their real target.

   Hence the tale, told alternately between the predicaments and perils our intrepid married couple fall into, all of which constitute the entirety of the book. I enjoy these kind of stories, maybe more than I really ought to, but even I had to cringe a bit when one especially narrow escape for Peter occurs when the carriage is riding in with his captors crashes and overturns, allowing him, as the only one conscious, to make his way to a final reunion with Eve,

   I apologize if I’ve given too much away. I hope it won’t spoil too much of your pleasure in reading this, if indeed it is your cup of tea and if it ever finds its way into your hands.

From Wikipedia:

    “Anneke van Giersbergen, is a Dutch singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist who became known worldwide as the lead singer and songwriter for the Dutch band The Gathering.” She has since gone on to a very successful solo career.

INTRUDER IN THE DUST . MGM, 1949. David Brian, Claude Jarman Jr, Juano Hernandez,. Porter Hall, Charles Kemper, Will Geer, and Elizabeth Patterson. Screenplay by Ben Maddow, from the novel by William Faulkner. Directed by Clarence Brown.

   As much a mystery/suspense movie as a social-problem film, and excellent on both counts.

   Intruder opens with Lucas Beauchamp (Juano Hernandez) arrested for the murder of Vinson Gowrie — he was found standing over Gowrie’s body with a recently-fired pistol in his pocket—and the locals, egged on by Gowrie’s brother Crawford (Charles Kemper) feel it their civic duty to skip the formality of a trial, stalled only by the absence of Gowrie’s father (Porter Hall.)

   Enter Chick Mallison (Claude Jarman Jr) a spectator in the crowd who knows something of the aloof “uppity” Beauchamp, believes him innocent, and enlists his older-and-wiser attorney uncle (David Brian) to defend him in Court. If he ever gets there.

   Sounds like To Kill a Mockingbird before its time, but the characters surprised me: Juano Hernandez’ Beauchamp is remote and uncooperative. Porter Hall , who at various times in his career murdered The Thin Man, shot Will Bill Hickok, locked up Kris Kringle, and marooned Tab Hunter, is quite sympathetic here, while David Brian’s wise-looking lawyer is only slightly less benighted than the noose-swinging locals — he doesn’t wait to hear Beauchamp’s story, just wants to plead him Guilty, and has no intention of getting in the way of any lynch mob.

   BUT THEN….There’s a marvelous moment in Brian’s office, where Jarman interrupts his conference with a meek little old lady (Elizabeth Patterson, being sued for running over a chicken) and Brian rails about the impossibility of Beauchamp’s case. “Why did he have to murder a Gowrie? And if he did, why did he have to shoot him in the back?” Whereupon Patterson pipes up softly but firmly “Maybe he didn’t.”

   At which point the whole tone of the piece shifts. Patterson (who was also in The Story of Temple Drake) takes over the investigation, blockades the Jail and… and other stuff I won’t spoil for you. Suffice it to way she’s a tough and smart in her own way as Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple.

   I think this character was deliberately brought on quietly and allowed to grow, as do some others, making this a film that reminded me of Chandler’s dictum: The crime itself is less important than its effect on the characters. Or in this case, the effect of the characters upon the crime.

   Make no mistake. This is a Mystery Movie, albeit a fairly obvious one. Bodies get buried, moved, and dug up again, clues get gathered, and toward the end, Will Geer’s canny sheriff has a tense stand-off with a hidden killer.

   We also get some quietly pungent displays of passive racism, as when Jarman’s dad shrugs off a lynching with, “These things happen. And people like us do not get involved.” but scenarist Ben Maddow (The Asphalt Jungle, God’s Little Acre, etc) keeps the lesson implicit, and never preaches what he can show.

   So we get a good mystery here, and a thoughtful one. Mostly though we get to see human beings acting like people we know. And this is what makes Intruder in the Dust a film to treasure.

LOUISE PENNY – A Better Man. Armand Gamache #15. Minotaur Books, hardcover, August 2019; trade paperback, June 2020. St. Martin’s, mass market paperback, June 2020.

First Sentence: “Merde.”

   Inspector Armand Gamache may be bruised by the events of the past, but he is not beaten. He may no longer have the authority he once did, as evidenced by those in charge ignoring his recommendation to keep citizens safe from the rising river waters due to torrential rains, but he still has the respect of the team who once reported to him, and of his son-in-law and temporary superior, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. A fellow officer is concerned about the disappearance of her close friend’s daughter who, she suspects, is in an abusive relationship. Being assigned to lead the investigation brings Armand into the triple dangers of an angry man, his father-in-law, and nature.

   Let’s get this out of the way; the book begins with profanity. However, considering the situation for both artist Clara, whose career is at a crossroads, and the team in the Serious Crimes Unit, it is well justified and nothing more than most of us have said.

   Whether it’s a bistro in Three Pines, a conference room in the Sûreté du Québec, or standing by a raging river, Penny draws one in and makes one feel present in the environment and in the community of people associated with each. Even for those who may be discovering Penny with this book, her writing, and inclusion of just enough back story, makes one feel welcome and up to date with the people and situations.

   Penny’s descriptions aren’t merely visual, they are emotional and anthropomorphic— “The waters were rising up, not in protest but in revenge.” Yet in the midst of danger, there is humor such as that inspired by an old dog— “‘Your dog shook,’ explained Beauvoir. ‘Oh, dear.’ ‘Yes. That’s pretty much what I said as I washed myself off and scraped down my desk. Gosh, I said, Bit of a mess.’ His eyes widened in a crazed look, and Lacoste laughed.” –and Gamache’s complete inability to understand anything said by Billy Williams with his thick, regional accent. For those who live in areas affected by natural disasters, it is poignant to see the characters contemplate what things they’d take were they being evacuated and faced with the loss of everything else they own.

   While the plot is strong, compelling and deals with difficult issues, it is the characters which keep readers engaged. None of Penny’s characters are stereotypical or unimportant. Each is fully developed and complex. Each has a purpose in the story. Gamache is the depiction of a person one should aspire to be. Through him, Penny gifts the reader with the four statements that lead one to wisdom— “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t know. I need help.” –and the admonition of poet Seamus Heaney: Noli timere, “Be not afraid.” However, it is somewhat reassuring that even the best people have weaknesses.

   Circumstances, pain, grace and self-awareness have matured Jean-Guy. His relationship with Gamache is complex, deep and abiding, one which has survived many conflicts and internal struggles. What is interesting is that Penny uses the character of Billy as the eyes to see the true strength of the relationship, understanding, and love that Gamache has for Jean-Guy. It is also the communities of Three Pines and of the team at the Sûreté which demonstrate the solidity of the wider circle.

   There is wisdom to be found within the story— “Before speaking…you might want to ask yourself three questions…Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said?” –followed by a very human reaction to fear— “Don’t pee, don’t pee, don’t pee.” There is also well-done forensic information which is interesting and informative. However, there is also a very good plot twist and a very dramatic climax.

   he book is a mystery and a very good one. One may not figure out what had happened until the reveal. And there’s suspense and twists which cause one to catch one’s breath. But as always with Penny’s books, it is about the characters; about relationships; strong, toxic, messy, or just forming. It is about compassion and conscience, growth and change. It is about us; we complicated humans. Penny’s ability to describe emotions is unmatched.

   A Better Man is an excellent book in an outstanding series. It presents one with a lot of here, here. There is suspense, humor, and things which make one think— “Things are strongest where they are broken.” The ending touches the heart and may bring tears to one’s eyes. Most of all, it leaves one wanting to re-read the series from the beginning while wanting the next book right now.

Rating: Excellent.

Back home again and with a new hip. 27 hours between getting to the hospital and leaving just two hours ago. Amazing!

Thanks for all of the good wishes and the good advice, all very much appreciated!

   I have several posts that I could have chosen from to upload today, but there’s been too much to plan ahead for, and I’ve simply run out of time. I have to be at the hospital tomorrow morning at nine. I’m not looking forward to rehab, but as I’ve told some of you already, I’ve gone as far with this hip as I possibly could.

   I don’t know when I’ll be back at full blogging strength again, but look for short updates here every once in a while. As soon as I can!

From Wikipedia: “British actor and singer Murray Head raps the verses, while the chorus is sung by Anders Glenmark, a Swedish singer, songwriter and producer.”

I’d forgotten this song until my daughter Sarah reminded me of it recently. Now I can’t get it out of my head: