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Tue 15 Oct 2019
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Bill Pronzini
RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Big Sleep. Philip Marlowe #1. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1939. Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #7, digest paperback, 1942; New Avon Library [#38], paperback, 1943. Movie photoplay edition: World, hardcover, 1946. Reprinted many times since. Film: Warner Bros., 1946 (screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman; director Howard Hawks; Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe). Also: United Artists, 1978 (screenwriter-director: Michael Winner; Robert Mitchum as Marlowe).
It is difficult to imagine what the modern private eye story would be like if a forty-five-old ex-oil company executive named Raymond Chandler had not begun writing fiction for Black Mask in 1933. In his short stories and definitely in his novels, Chandler took the hardboiled prototype established by Dashiell Hammett, reshaped it to fit his own particular vision and the exigencies of life in southern California, smoothed off its rough edges, and made of it something more than a tale of realism and violence; he broadened it into a vehicle for social commentary, refined it with prose at once cynical and poetic, and elevated the character of the private eye to a mythical status — “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”
Chandler’s lean, tough, wisecracking style set the tone for all subsequent private-eye fiction, good and bad. He is certainly the most imitated writer in the genre, and next to Hemingway, perhaps the most imitated writer in the English language. (Howard Browne, the creator of PI Paul Pine, once made Chandler laugh at a New York publishing party by introducing himself and saying, “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Chandler. I’ve been making a living off your work for years.”
Even Ross Macdonald, for all his literary intentions, was at the core a Chandler imitator: Lew Archer would not be Lew Archer, indeed might not have been born at all, if Chandler had not created Philip Marlowe.
The Big Sleep , Chandler’s first novel, is a blending and expansion of two of his Black Mask novelettes, “Killer in the Rain” (January 1935) and “The Curtain” (September 1936) — a process Chandler used twice more, in creating Farewell, My Lovely and The Lady in the Lake, and which he candidly referred to as “cannibalizing.”
It is Philip Marlowe’s first bow. Marlowe does not appear in any of Chandler’s pulp stories, at least not by name: the first person narrators of “Killer in the Rain” (unnamed) and “The Curtain” (Carmody) are embryonic Marlowes, with many of his attributes. The Big Sleep is also Chandler’s best-known title, by virtue of the well-made 1944 film version directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Elisha Cook, Jr.
On one level, this is a complex murder mystery with its fair share of clues and corpses. On another level, it is a serious novel concerned (as is much of Chandler’s work) with the corrupting influences of money and power. Marlowe is hired by General Sternwood, an old paralyzed ex-soldier who made a fortune in oil, to find out why a rare-book dealer named Arthur Gwynn Giger is holding his IOU signed by Sternwood’s youngest daughter, the wild and immoral Carmen, and where a blackmailing abler named Joe Brody fits into the picture.
Marlowe’s investigation embroils him with Sternwood’s other daughter, Vivian, and her strangely missing husband, Rusty, a former bootlegger; a thriving pornography racket; a gaggle of gangsters, not the least of which is a nasty piece of work named Eddie Mars; hidden vices and family scandals; and several murders. The novel’s climax is more ambiguous and satisfying than the film’s rather pat one.
The Big Sleep is not Chandler’s best work; its plot is convoluted and tends to be confusing, and there are loose ends that are never explained or tied off. Nevertheless, it is still a powerful and riveting novel, packed with fascinating characters and evocatively told. Just one small sample of Chandler’s marvelous prose:
The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed down on the plants. The light had a unreal greenish color, like light filtered through an aquarium. The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.
That passage is quintessential Chandler; if it doesn’t stir your blood and make you crave more, as it always does for this reviewer, he probably isn’t your cup of bourbon.
———
Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
Mon 14 Jan 2019
Reviewed by MIKE TOONEY:
(Give Me That) OLD-TIME DETECTION. Issue #49. Autumn 2018. Editor: Arthur Vidro. 36 pages. On the cover: Jack Ritchie.
As always, the latest edition of OLD-TIME DETECTION brings to mind fond memories of works of mystery and detection of yesteryear, stories and authors that don’t deserve to be forgotten. Case in point: the few hardboiled private eye novels by Howard Browne that have just seen republication in an omnibus after seventy years, HALO FOR HIRE: THE COMPLETE PAUL PINE MYSTERIES. In his review, Michael Dirda applauds Browne’s style, “quite consciously written in the wise-cracking, tough-guy mode of Chandler’s fiction and 1940s Humphrey Bogart films. Yet even with their faint tongue-in-cheek air (and an astonishing amount of cigarette smoking), they make for heavenly reading.”
When it comes to obscure detective fiction, Charles Shibuk has turned up titles that you’ve probably never encountered: H. C. Branson’s LAST YEAR’S BLOOD, Moray Dalton’s THE LONGBRIDGE MURDERS, and J. F. Hutton’s TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, books published more or less at the same time as Howard Browne’s.
Francis M. Nevins biobibliographically spotlights Jack Ritchie, creator of the unforgettable Detective Sergeant Henry Turnbuckle; Ritchie, says Nevins, “figured out how to have endless fun tweaking the noses of the hoary old whodunit cliches while staying squarely within the great tradition’s confines.” For that reason, Arthur Vidro nominates Ritchie as one of his all-time favorites.
Then Edgar Wallace gets spotlighted by J. Randolph Cox, as he chronicles in detail the ups and downs in the British author’s life and literary career. “He was not a great writer,” writes Cox, “for all of his flashes of genius and inspiration. He never claimed to be, and he did not need to be.”
The fiction piece in this issue is Charles Shibuk’s teleplay version of Cornell Woolrich’s 1941 short story, “The Fingernail.” Memorable line: “Robert, are you sure that was all rabbit?”
Nevins returns with notes on three motion pictures derived from Woolrich’s stories: DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946), which wasn’t received with any great enthusiasm at the time; BLACK ANGEL (1946), which, even though “every frame of this magnificent film noir is permeated with the Woolrich spirit,” the author himself regarded as “a disaster”; and THE CHASE (1946), which, writes Nevins, “is the one most likely to provoke an argument among noir aficionados” of Cornell Woolrich’s movies.
Dr. John Curran, foremost expert on all things Christie, reports on the good and bad things that have been going on in Christiedom, particularly stage, film, and TV plays as well as upcoming books. Regarding the recent John Malkovich-BBC production of THE A.B.C. MURDERS, he writes, “Once again, I fear, the signs are not good.”
Then we have in-depth reviews of three books: Jack Ritchie’s collection, THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY TURNBUCKLE, about which Arthur Vidro says, “If you want to laugh aloud while enjoying true detection, read this book”; Ellery Queen, Jr.’s THE BROWN FOX MYSTERY, “far,” writes Trudi Harrov, “from his best entry”; and S. John Preskett’s satirical MURDERS AT TURBOT TOWERS, which, says Amnon Kabatchnik, “pokes outrageous fun at the holy cows of our beloved genre.”
In “My First Great Detectives,” Jon L. Breen waxes nostalgic about his initial encounters with the world of mystery, crime, and detective fiction; the characters whose exploits he followed from an early age were, not surprisingly, on the radio, but it wasn’t long before he delved into the written word, including Paul French’s Lucky Starr science fiction mysteries. (A trip to Patagonia if you can supply the real name of “Paul French” without looking it up. Of course, you pay for the ticket.)
Charles Shibuk’s 1970 list of crime and mystery authors whose classic books were enjoying paperback reprintings at the time reads like a WHO’s WHO of detective fiction: Marjorie Allingham, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Michael Collins, Dick Francis, Andrew Garve, Adam Hall, Ross Macdonald, Ngaio Marsh, Judson Philips (Hugh Pentecost), Maurice Procter, Ellery Queen, Joel Townsley Rogers, C. P. Snow, Rex Stout, Robert van Gulik, and Cornell Woolrich.
Finally, in addition to a puzzle are the comments from the readers, one of which deals with a much-discussed topic: “What’s wrong with modern mysteries? How about the obvious fact that they contain every aberration known to man . . . and some of the writing is by devout enemies of the English language?”
*** OLD-TIME DETECTION is published three times a year: Spring, Summer, and Autumn. Sample copy: $6.00 in the U.S.; $10.00 anywhere else. For a subscription to Old-Time Detection, contact the editor at: Arthur Vidro, Old-Time Detection, 2 Ellery Street, Claremont, New Hampshire 03743 or oldtimedetection@netzero.net.
Sat 14 Apr 2018
WINDY CITY PULP CONVENTION 2018 REPORT
by Walker Martin
The older I get, the longer this drive gets! Five of us drove from New Jersey to Chicago in the usual 15 seat white rental van. We take out the last two rows of seats to make the cargo area bigger. We need the space for all the books, pulps, and artwork that we will buy during the convention. During the long drive I pondered the age old question of which is worse: to forget your want list or to forget your medication. I know of two collectors who had to deal with these mistakes. I think forgetting your want list is worse. How can you collect without your lists?
First stop was the Thursday pulp brunch at the house of Doug Ellis and Deb Fulton, otherwise known as the Windy City Pulp Art Museum. Doug had recently added an addition to the large house because he needed more wall space for the hundreds of cover paintings and illustrations. After three hours of eating, drinking, and gawking at the art, we drove to the Westin Hotel, home of the convention for the last several years.
This year dealers were allowed to set up Thursday evening and I believe everyone was happy with this arrangement. Friday morning the convention officially began and there were approximately 150 dealer tables and somewhere around 400 to 500 attendees. This made for a busy three days of hunting for pulps, paperbacks, books, digests, slicks, DVDs, and artwork.
But if you were not into collecting or short of money, then there were other things to do, such as the enormous art show showing scores of pulp and paperback paintings and the film festival which ran mainly during the day on Friday and Saturday. The evenings consisted mainly of John Locke discussing “The Secret Origins of Weird Tales” and GOH F. Paul Wilson being interviewed.
Then of course there was the auction, which is one of the main attractions of the convention. It was held on Friday and Saturday evening and lasted about 4 hours each night. Friday night consisted of over 250 lots from the estate of Glenn Lord, who was the literary executor for the Robert Howard estate for many decades. Robert Howard collectors had the opportunity to bid on many magazines that contained Howard stories, such as WEIRD TALES, FIGHT STORIES, SPICY ADVENTURE, SPORT STORY, ACTION STORIES, GOLDEN FLEECE, ORIENTAL STORIES, MAGIC CARPET, STRANGE TALES, and ARGOSY.
Many of these pulps went for hundreds of dollars and two of the highest amounts were for the rare fanzine, THE PHANTAGRAPH. $1400 and $1000 for two issues that I noted, but a friend bought down some beer from his room and I had several bottles which resulted it me not noting the prices for the rest of the issues.
Saturday night I avoided the beer for awhile and noted some good prices for pulps from the Ron Killian estate. This auction also had material consigned by the attendees at the show. It’s good to see pulps come up for auction but sad to realize that they are from the estates of collectors that you will never see again. At the break I went up to hospitality room for a beer and somehow never did make it back down to the last of the auction. Is it possible that I’ve reached the stage in my collecting life that I would rather have a cold beer? Could be! I’ve been at this game for a long time now.
I bought my usual amount of books but I don’t need many pulps according to my want lists. However I did manage to find some excellent and bizarre art. I bought as Emsh interior from IF in the fifties, a very large drawing by one of the decadent artists, Beresford Egan, and a stunning Lee Brown Coye interior from FANTASTIC, February 1963. It illustrates the Mythos story “The Titan in the Crypt”. Some of my friends don’t like Lee Brown Coye but I find his art to be perfect for bizarre horror stories. There are presently three books published about his art recently and this indicates that people are realizing his greatness.
Another paperback cover I bought was one of the strange paintings that show two novels. In the early fifties there were a few fat paperbacks that had two novels and the cover shows two paintings, one upper and one lower. I remember buying PRIME SUCKER and THE HUSSY. Looks like the work of Walter Popp. I always wanted one of these strange paintings. Finally after decades of hunting!
But the biggest sale of the show was a copy of ALL STORY for October 1912. That’s right the Tarzan issue! The Holy Grail of pulps! It went for $30,000 and sold right away soon after the doors opened. I’ve never seen a complete copy at a pulp convention. I once was high bidder on a copy at an early Pulpcon but it lacked the covers and the Tarzan novel was excerpted. That’s right, some crazy Breaker had cut out the Tarzan novel reducing a $30,000 to $50,000 magazine to a $400 curiosity piece.
Another high priced item was a sexy cover painting from PRIVATE DETECTIVE by Parkhurst. It was priced at $18,000 but I believe sold for $16,000. One piece of art that did not sell was a Kelly Freas cover painting from ASTOUNDING, February 1955, showing a tough guy dressed as a woman. Price was $30,000 and I guess the owner did not want to sell it but just to exhibit it.
Each year, I swear that I’m not going to buy any more art because I’ve run out of wall space. I have paintings stacked up against bookcases, etc. But being a collector is a hard job and someone has to do it…
The program book, titled WINDY CITY PULP STORIES #18 is the usual excellent book edited by Tom Roberts. 136 pages mainly dealing with the air war pulps and Harold Hersey. I noticed three books making debuts at the show:
1–ART OF THE PULPS. This is a must buy and the title says it all. Several essays by well known collectors discuss all the genres including those often forgotten such as the love and sport pulps.
2–HALO FOR HIRE by Howard Browne. This is the complete Paul Pine mysteries and published by Haffner Press.
3–BLACK MASK, Spring 2018 is the fourth issue of the revived BLACK MASK. Published by Altus Press.
Over the years, after writing one of these convention reports, I’ll hear from fellow collectors who regret not attending the show. Windy City may be over for another year but coming up is the next big pulp convention on July 26 through July 29. It’s in Pittsburgh and the details are at pulpfest.com. I highly recommend this show, and I ought to know what I’m talking about since I’ve been to almost all of them since 1972 when the first Pulpcon was held in St Louis. Almost all my pals who attended are gone now except for a handful such as Caz, Randy Cox, maybe Jack Irwin attended also, I forget. But of the hundred or so who eagerly went in 1972, we are getting down to the last man standing. Or the last Collector standing!
Don’t miss out on Pulpfest. It’s a must for collectors. We have to support Windy City, Pulpfest, Pulpadventurecon and the other one day shows or one day we won’t have any conventions and then we will be like the dime novel collectors.
I know one collector who says the two conventions are the same. No, they are not. Windy City is different and the emphasis is on art, films, and the auction. Pulpfest is also different with the emphasis on the dealer’s room and an evening full of panels and discussions.
The hotel is great and I recommend that you stay there. Sure you can get a cheaper rate down the road somewhere but the convention hotel is where all the action is.
I hope to see you there!
PS. Thanks to Sai Shankar once again for the use of his photos. All of the larger ones are ones he took. To see many more of the photos he took at Windy City, check out his Pulpflakes blog here.
Sat 15 Sep 2012
ROARING LIONS: A Chronological Bibliography of All Crime Fiction Titles in LION BOOKS and LION LIBRARY
by Josef Hoffmann
Lion Books were published by Martin Goodman. This paperback line lasted from 1949 until 1955 and was edited by the legendary Arnold Hano, an author of western and crime novels and of a classic baseball book.
He promoted Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Robert Bloch, David Karp, Richard Matheson and other very good crime writers by publishing their work as paperback originals. He also promoted a rising star novelist named Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) and other important authors – Stanley Ellin and Gerald Kersh, for example – in paperback reprints.
Although not all crime novelists of Lion Books are in this class Lion Books usually stand for a certain level of writing. Most of the Lion Books are collectible paperbacks with good cover art by Rudolph Belarski, Harry Schaare, Robert Maguire, Robert Stanley, Mort Kunstler and others. Some books are now very pricey.
The publisher established a similar paperback line called Lion Library when Hano left in 1954. It lasted from 1954 until 1957 and published in part the same writers. Finally New American Library purchased Lion Books, Inc.
As I do not own many Lion Books I obtained the information about this paperback line from Jon Warren: The Official Price Guide Paperbacks, House of Collectibles, N. Y. 1991; Gary Lovisi: Antique Trader Collectible Paperback Price Guide, Krause Publications, Iola, WI, 2008.
Which of the Lion Books were crime titles and which were reprints of first editions, I learned from Allen J. Hubin: Crime Fiction IV. A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1749-2000, 2010 Revised Edition, Locus Press.
Warning: If you read too many Lion Books in a short time the simplicity and vulgarity of their vernacular will get on your nerves. There are just too many words like hell, swell, kill, hate, lust, sin, skin, sweat, blood, babe, blonde, dope, jungle etc.
And the emotions of the protagonists are too direct and primitive. You will long for the reflected, differentiated and elegant prose of authors like Chandler, Woolrich or Highsmith. So after a typical Lion Book it is better to read something very different like a humorous detective novel or a historical mystery to be able to enjoy another Lion Book once in a while.
LION BOOKS: (PBO = paperback original)
Morgan, Michael (C. E. Carle/Dean M. Dorn): The Blonde Body (LB 11), 1949; cover art Len Oehman. First edition: Nine More Lives, Random House 1947
Jackson, Shirley: The Lottery (LB 14), 1950; cover art Herman Bischoff. First edition: Farrar 1949 (short stories)
Marsh, Peter: The Devil’s Daughter (LB 16), 1949; cover art William Shoyer. First edition: Swift 1942
Ross, Sam: He Ran All the Way (LB 19), 1950; cover art Harry Schaare. First edition: Farrar 1947
Tucker, Wilson: To Keep or Kill (LB 21), 1950; cover art Herman Bischoff. First edition: Rinehart 1947
Lynch, William: The Intimate Stranger (LB 25), 1950; cover art Woodi. PBO.
Balchin, Nigel: The Small Back Room (LB 31), 1950; cover art Wesley Snyder. First edition: Collins 1943
Jackson, Shirley: The Road Through the Wall (LB 36), 1950; cover art Harvey Kidder. First edition: Farrar 1949
Gray, Russell (Bruno Fischer): The Lustful Ape (LB 38), 1950; cover art Julian Paul. PBO.
Appel, Benjamin: Brain Guy (LB 39), 1950. First edition: Knopf 1934
Ellin, Stanley: The Big Night (LB 41), 1950. First edition: Dreadful Summit, Simon 1948
Eastman, Elizabeth: His Dead Wife (LB 44), 1950. First edition: The Mouse with Red Eyes, Farrar 1948
Tracy, Don: How Sleeps the Beast (LB 45), 1950. First edition: Constable 1937
Millar, Kenneth: Trouble Follows Me (LB 47), 1950. First edition: Dodd 1946
Millar, Kenneth: The Dark Tunnel (LB 48), 1950. First edition: Dodd 1944
Jaediker, Kermit: Tall, Dark and Dead (LB 51), 1951. First edition: Mystery House 1947
Wilhelm, Gale: No Letters for the Dead (LB 52), 1951; cover art Pease. First edition: Random House 1936; reprint: No Nice Girl, Pyramid G-440, 1959
Bordages, Asa: The Glass Lady (LB 56), 1951. First edition: Godwin 1932
Teagle, Mike: Murders in Silk (LB 60), 1951. First edition: Hillman-Curl 1938
Trimble, Louis: Blondes Are Skin Deep (LB 62), 1951. PBO
Keene, Day: My Flesh Is Sweet (LB 68), 1951. PBO
Tracy, Don: The Cheat (LB 69), 1951; cover art Harry Schaare. First edition: Criss-Cross, Vanguard 1934
Bogar, Jeff (Ronald Wills Thomas): The Tigress (LB 72), 1951. First edition: Payoff for Paula, Hamilton & Co. 1951
Durst, Paul: Die, Damn You! (LB 75), 1952. PBO. (Classified as a western by Lovisi.)
Gordon, James: The Lust of Private Cooper (LB 77), 1952. First edition: Of Our Time, Dobson 1946; reprint: Collision, Farrar 1947
Bogar, Jeff (Ronald Wills Thomas): My Gun, Her Body (LB 79), 1952. First edition: Dinah for Danger, Hamilton & Co. 1952
Butler, Gerald: The Lurking Man (LB 81), 1952. First edition: Mad with Much Heart, Jarrolds 1945
Wolfson, P. J.: Bodies Are Dust (LB 83), 1952. First edition: Vanguard 1931
Prather, Richard S.: Lie Down, Killer (LB 85), 1952. PBO
Wills, Thomas (William Ard): You’ll Get Yours (LB 87), 1952. PBO
Lucas, Curtis (William Francis Urell): So Low, So Lonely (LB 91), 1952. PBO
Karp, David: The Big Feeling (LB 93), 1952. PBO
Evans, John (Howard Browne): Lona (LB 94), 1952; cover art Earle Bergey. First edition: If You Have Tears, Mystery House 1947; reprint: The Blonde Dies First, Horwitz 1956
Appel, Benjamin: Hell’s Kitchen (LB 95), 1952. PBO
Kersh, Gerald: Prelude to a Certain Midnight (LB 98), 1952; cover art Rudolph Belarski. First edition: Heinemann 1947
Thompson, Jim: The Killer Inside Me (LB 99), 1952. PBO
Elliott, Bruce: One Is a Lonely Number (LB 100), 1952; cover art Earle Bergey. PBO
Paul, Gene (Paul Conant): Little Killer (LB 104), 1952; cover art Prezio. PBO
Karp, David: The Brotherhood of Velvet (LB 105), 1952. pBO
Thompson, Jim: Cropper’s Cabin (LB 108), 1952. PBO
Eisner, Simon (Cyril M. Kornbluth): The Naked Storm (LB 109), 1952; cover art Robert Skemp. PBO
Ring, Douglas (Richard S. Prather): The Peddler (LB 110), 1952. PBO
Walker, Shel (Walter J. Sheldon): The Man I Killed (LB 112), 1952. PBO
Karp, David: Hardman (LB 119), 1953; cover art Prezio. PBO
Thompson, Jim: Recoil (LB 120), 1953. PBO
Francis, William (William Francis Urell): Don’t Dig Deeper (LB 123), 1953. PBO
Goodis, David: The Burglar (LB 124), 1953. PBO
Thompson, Jim: The Alcoholics (LB 127), 1953. PBO
Otis, G. H.: Bourbon Street (LB 131), 1953. PBO
Karp, David: Cry, Flesh (LB 132), 1953. PBO
Goodis, David: The Dark Chase (LB 133), 1953; cover art Julian Paul. First edition: Nightfall, Messner 1947
Matheson, Richard: Someone Is Bleeding (LB 137), 1953. PBO
Untermeyer, Jr., Walter: Dark the Summer Dies (LB 138), 1953. PBO
Scott, Warwick (Elleston Trevor): Cockpit (LB 140), 1953. First edition: Image in the Dust, Davies 1951
Roueche, Berton: Rooming House (LB 141), 1953. First edition: Black Weather, Reynal 1945
Scott, Warwick (Elleston Trevor): Doomsday (LB 148), 1953. First edition: The Domesday Story, Davies 1952
Thompson, Jim: Bad Boy (LB 149), 1953; cover art Mort Kunstler. PBO
Falstein, Louis: Slaughter Street (LB 151), 1953; cover art Lou Marchetti. PBO
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): A Rage at Sea (LB 152), 1953; cover art Maguire. PBO
Bezzerides, A. I.: Tough Guy (LB 153), 1953. First edition: Long Haul, Carrick 1938; reprint: They Drive by Night, Dell Book 416, 1950
Paul, Gene (Paul Conant): Naked in the Dark (LB 154), 1953. PBO
Thompson, Jim: Savage Night (LB 155), 1953. PBO
Jaediker, Kermit: Hero’s Lust (LB 156), 1953; cover art Lou Marchetti. PBO
Lipsky, Eleazar: The Hoodlum (LB 161), 1953. First edition: The Kiss of Death, Penguin 1947
Curtis, Lucas (William Francis Urell): Angel (LB 162), 1953. PBO
Manners, William: The Big Lure (LB 165), 1953. PBO
Appel, Benjamin: Dock Walloper (LB 166), 1953. PBO
Heatter, Basil: Sailor’s Luck (LB 170), 1953. PBO
Otis, G. H.: Hot Cargo (LB 171), 1953. PBO
Francis, William (William Francis Urell): The Corrupters (LB 174), 1953. PBO
Leiber, Fritz: Conjure Wife (LB 179), 1953; cover art Robert Maguire. First edition: Twayne 1953. (Classified as SF by Lovisi.)
Matheson, Richard: Fury on Sunday (LB 180), 1953. PBO
Thompson, Jim: The Criminal (LB 184), 1953. PBO
Bloch, Robert: The Kidnaper (LB 185), 1954. PBO
Goodis, David: The Blonde on the Street Corner (LB 186), 1954. PBO
Fairman, Paul W.: The Joy Wheel (LB 190), 1954. PBO
Thompson, Jim: The Golden Gizmo (LB 192), 1954. PBO
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): Night Never Ends (LB 193), 1954; cover art Clark Hulings. PBO
Meskil, Paul S.: Sin Pit (LB 198), 1954; PBO
Rosmanith, Olga (Ferney Wood): The Long Thrill (LB 200), 1954. PBO
Thompson, Jim: Roughneck (LB 201), 1954. PBO
Keene, Day: Sleep with the Devil (LB 204), 1954. PBO
Craig, Jonathan: Alley Girl (LB 206), 1954. PBO. Reprint: Renegade Cop, Berkley 1959
Trevor, Elleston: Tiger Street (LB 207), 1954. First edition: Boardman 1951
Keene, Day: Joy House (LB 210), 1954. PBO
Sparkia, Roy Benard: Boss Man (LB 211), 1954. PBO
Thompson, Jim: A Swell-Looking Babe (LB 212), 1954. PBO
Fessier, Michael: Fully Dressed and in His Right Mind (LB 214), 1954. First edition: Knopf 1935
Flora, Fletcher: Strange Sisters (LB 215), 1954. PBO
Cassill, R. V.: Dormitory Women (LB 216), 1954. PBO
Thompson, Jim: A Hell of a Woman (LB 218), 1954. PBO
Manners, William: Wharf Girl (LB 219), 1954. PBO
Davis, Jr., Franklin M., The Naked and the Lost (LB 221), 1954. PBO
Untermeyer, Jr., Walter: Evil Roots (LB 222), 1954. PBO
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): The Savage Chase (LB 223), 1954; cover art Al Rossi. PBO
Goodis, David: Black Friday (LB 224), 1954. PBO
Baldwin, Linton: Sinners’ Game (LB 227), 1954. PBO
Heatter, Basil: Act of Violence (LB 228), 1954; cover art John Leone. PBO
Lipman, Clayre & Michel: House of Evil (LB 231), 1954. PBO
LION LIBRARY:
Frazee, Steve: The Sky Block (LL-3), 1954; cover art Robert Maguire. First edition: Rinehart 1953
Wolfson, P. J.: The Flesh Baron (LL-4), 1955. First edition: Is My Flesh of Brass?, Vanguard 1934
Kennedy, Stetson: Passage to Violence (LL-9), 1954; cover art Al Rossi. PBO
Karp, David: Escape to Nowhere (LL-10), 1955. First edition: One, Vanguard 1953
Rosen, Victor: Dark Plunder (LL-11), 1955; cover art Al Rossi. PBO
Clark, Christopher: The Unleashed Will (LL-15), 1955. First edition: Little 1947
Greene, Graham: Nineteen Stories (LL-31), 1955; cover art Arthur Shilstone. First edition: Heinemann 1947
Walker, David: The Storm and the Silence (LL-33), 1955; cover art George Erickson. First edition: Houghton 1949
Millar, Kenneth: Night Train (LL-40), 1955; cover art Samson Pollen. Reprints LB 47 with new title.
Gordon, James: Collision (LL-41), 1955; cover art Gilbert Fullington. Reprints LB 77 with new title.
Coates, Robert M.: The Night Before Dying (LL-45), 1955; cover art Al Brule. First edition: Wisteria Cottage, Harcourt 1948
Millar, Kenneth: I Die Slowly (LL-52), 1955. Reprints LB 48 with new title
Ross, Sam: He Ran All the Way (LL-59), 1955; cover art George Gross. Reprints LB 19.
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): A Party Every Night (LL-63), 1956; cover art Robert Schultz. PBO
Kauffman, Lane: Kill the Beloved (LL-64), 1956; cover art Charles Copeland. First edition: The Perfectionist, Lippincott 1954
Garland, Rodney (Adam Hegedus): The Heart in Exile (LL-76), 1956; cover art Arthur Shilstone. First edition: Allen 1953
Tucker, Wilson: To Keep or Kill (LL-84), 1956; cover art Robert Maguire. Reprints LB 21.
Karp, David: The Girl on Crown Street (LL-86), 1956. Reprints LB 132 with new title.
Flora, Fletcher: The Brass Bed (LL-87), 1956. PBO
Kent, David: A Knife Is Silent (LL-91), 1956; cover art Mort Kunstler. First edition: Random House 1947
Miller, Wade: Kiss Her Goodbye (LL-96), 1956; cover art Charles Copeland. PBO
Park, Jordan (Cyril M. Kornbluth): Sorority House (LL-97), 1956; cover art Clark Hulings. PBO
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): Ruby (LL-104), 1956; cover art Samson Pollen. PBO
Wilhelm, Gale: Paula (LL-115), 1956; cover art Morgan Kane. Reprints LB 52 with new title.
Appel, Benjamin: Alley Kids (LL-116), 1956; cover art Samson Pollen/Carlos De Mema. Reprints LB 95 with new title.
Tracy, Don: The Cheat (LL-118), 1956; cover art Charles Copeland. Reprints LB 69.
Thompson, Jim: Recoil (LL-124), 1956; cover art Robert Maguire. Reprints LB 120.
Eisner, Simon (Cyril M. Kornbluth): The Naked Storm (LL-125), 1956; cover art Robert Stanley. Reprints LB 109.
Garland, Rodney (Adam Hegedus): The Troubled Midnight (LL-128), 1956; cover art Charles Copeland. First edition: Allen 1954
Wills, Thomas (William Ard): You’ll Get Yours (LL-129), 1956; cover art Harry Schaare. Reprints LB 87.
Goodis, David: Nightfall (LL-131), 1956. Reprints LB 133 with new title.
Roueche, Berton: Rooming House (LL-133), 1957; cover art Arthur Sarnoff. Reprints LB 141.
Williams, Ben Ames: Leave Her to Heaven (LL-136), 1956; cover art Clark Hulings. First edition: Houghton 1944
Hudiburg, Edward: Killer’s Game (LL-137), 1956; cover art Harry Schaare. PBO
Thompson, Jim: A Hell of a Woman (LL-138), 1956; cover art Morgan Kane. Reprints LB 215.
Thompson, Jim: The Kill-Off (LL-142), 1957; cover art William Rose. PBO
Jackson, Charles: Thread of Evil (LL-143), 1957; cover art Lou Marchetti. First edition: The Outer Edges, Rinehart 1948
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): Hot (LL-144), 1956; cover art Rudy Nappi. PBO
Friedman, Stuart: The Bedside Corpse (LL-148), 1957; cover art Robert Stanley. First edition: The Gray Eyes, Abelard 1955
Williams, Ben Ames: A Killer Among Us (LL-149), 1957; cover art Harry Schaare. First edition: The Silver Forest, Dutton 1926
Appel, Benjamin: Brain Guy (LL-151), 1957; cover art Mort Kunstler. Reprints LB 39.
Masur, Harold (ed.): Dolls Are Murder (LL-152), 1957; cover art Mort Kunstler. PBO
Paul, Gene: The Big Make (LL-158), 1957; cover art Robert Maguire. Reprints LB 104 with new title.
Lorenz, Frederick (Lorenz Heller): A Rage at Sea (LL-165), 1957; cover art James Bama. Reprints LB 152.
Roth, Holly: The Sleeper (LL-171), 1957; cover art Rudy Nappi. First edition: Simon 1955
Falstein, Louis: Slaughter Street (LL-172), 1957; cover art Robert Maguire. Reprints LB-151.
Editorial Comment: I wish I had the space to show more of the covers here, but there are many, many more where these came from. Check out Bruce Black’s BookScans website, starting here.
Wed 25 Jul 2012
IT’S ABOUT CRIME, by Marvin Lachman
Black Lizard’s first mystery anthology included the [Harlan] Ellison Edgar winner, “Soft Monkey.” The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, edited by Ed Gorman (trade paperback, 1988), is 664 pages long with thirty-eight short stories and a full-length novel, Murder Me for Nickels, by Peter Rabe.
Most of the stories are reprints, but the list of authors reads like a Who’s Who of hardboiled detective fiction for the last thirty-five years, including Avallone, Max Allan Cdllins, Estleman, Gault, Hensley, Lutz, McBain, Pronzini, Spillane, Willeford, et al.
Of the book’s three new stories, I especially liked Jon Breen’s baseball mystery about a streaker (remember them?).
There is also a Hall of Fame quality to The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg (Carroll & Graf, trade paperback, 1988), which in its 592 pages offers stories about almost every important private eye, including Philip Marlowe in “Wrong Pigeon,” the last story Chandler wrote.
Only Hammett (readily available elsewhere) seems to be missing among the authors who include current masters like Hansen, both Collinses (Michael and Max Allan), Lutz, Pronzini, Muller, Estleman, and Grafton. The editors also dug out early work by Carroll John Daly, Robert Leslie Bellem, Fredrick Brown, Gault, McBain, and Prather, as well as rarities: a Paul Pine story by Howard Browne and a private eye story by Ed Hoch, who doesn’t usually write in that genre.
— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 1989.
Editorial Notes: A complete list of authors for the Black Lizard anthology is as follows: Stories by Michael Avallone, Timothy Banse, Robert Bloch, Lawrence Block, Ray Bradbury, Jon Breen, Max Allan Collins, William R. Cox, John Coyne, Wayne D. Dundee, Harlan Ellison, Loren D. Estleman, Fletcher Flora, Brian Garfield, William C. Gault, Barry Gifford, Joe Gores, Ed Gorman, Joe L. Hensley, Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Laymon, John Lutz, Ed McBain, Steve Mertz, Arthur Moore, Marcia Muller, William F. Nolan, Bill Pronzini, Ray Puechner, Peter Rabe, Robert Randisi, Daniel Ransom, Mickey Spillane, Donald Westlake, Harry Willeford, Will Wyckoff, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.
Contents for the “Mammoth” collection:
Raymond Chandler, ‘Wrong Pigeon’ [aka ‘The Pencil’] (1971: Philip Marlowe)
Carrol John Daly, ‘Not My Corpse’ (Race Williams)
Robert Leslie Bellem, ‘Diamonds of Death’ (Dan Turner)
Fredric Brown, ‘Before She Kills’ (1961: Ed and Am Hunter)
Howard Browne, ‘So Dark For April’ (1953: Paul Pine)
William Campbell Gault, ‘Stolen Star’ (1957: Joe Puma)
Ross Macdonald, ‘Guilt-Edged Blonde’ (1953: Lew Archer)
Henry Kane, ‘Suicide is Scandalous’ (1947: Peter Chambers)
Richard S. Prather, ‘Dead Giveaway’ (1957: Shell Scott)
Joseph Hansen, ‘Surf’ (1976: Dave Brandsetter)
Michael Collins, ‘A Reason To Die’ (1985: Dan Fortune)
Ed McBain, ‘Death Flight’ (1954: Milt Davis)
Stephen Marlowe, ‘Wanted — Dead and Alive’ (1963: Chester Drum)
Edward D. Hoch, ‘The Other Eye’ (1981: Al Darlan)
Stuart M. Kaminsky, ‘Busted Blossoms’ (1986: Toby Peters)
Lawrence Block, ‘Out of the Window’ (1977: Matt Scudder)
John Lutz, ‘Ride The Lightning’ (1985: Alo Nudger)
Sue Grafton, ‘She Didn’t Come Home’ (1986: Kinsey Millhone)
Edward Gorman, ‘The Reason Why’ (1988: Jack Dwyer)
Stephen Greenleaf, ‘Iris’ (1984: John Marshall Tanner)
Bill Pronzini, ‘Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg’ (1985: Nameless Detective)
Marcia Muller, ‘The Broken Men’ (1985: Sharon McCone)
Arthur Lyons, ‘Trouble in Paradise’ (1985: Jacob Asch)
Max Allan Collins, ‘The Strawberry Teardrop’ (1984: Nate Heller)
Robert J. Randisi, ‘The Nickel Derby’ (1987: Henry Po)
Loren D. Estleman Greektown’ (1983: Amos Walker)
Thu 9 Jun 2011
WE ARE ALL SENTIMENTALISTS NOW:
Leonard Cassuto’s Hard-Boiled Sentimentality:
The Secret History of American Crime Stories
by Curt J. Evans
Over the last twenty years feminist literary scholars have leaped into the field of mystery criticism with great energy and enthusiasm; and they have had a remarkable impact on it. In Great Britain, such academic authorities as Gill Plain, Susan Rowland and Merja Makinen have written perceptive revisionist studies on British Golden Age “Crime Queens†(Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh), defending them from the traditional (usually male) criticism, dating back to Raymond Chandler and Edmund Wilson in the 1940s and prevalent through the early Marxist-influenced academic monographs of the 1970s, that their work is insipid, reactionary drivel, in contrast with the admirable, socially progressive and genre transcending American hard-boiled fiction most famously associated with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler himself.
This scholarly feminist emphasis on the Crime Queens, while important in revising earlier masculinist views of these authors, has led to the elevation of an increasingly commonplace view within academia, namely that the mystery genre in Britain during the Golden Age was essentially feminine, representing a purportedly distinct and uniquely female set of values, such as the privileging of feelings and intuitions over material detail (i.e., psychology over footprints and timetables), a preference for cerebration over fisticuffs as the way of reaching solutions to problems and an emphasis on domestic detail and the inter-connectedness of individuals. “All in all,†emphatically concludes Susan Rowland in a representative statement from a recent essay, “the golden age form is a feminized one.â€
[Susan Rowland, “The ‘Classical’ Model of the Golden Age,†in Lee Horsley and Charles A. Rzepka, eds.,
A Companion to Crime Fiction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 122.]
Thus portrayed, “feminine†English Golden Age detective fiction starkly contrasts with the “masculine†hardboiled form that frequently has been taken to represent American detective fiction during this period (roughly 1920 to 1939) — though the critical estimation of English Golden Age detective fiction (or, to be more precise, the four women authors often portrayed as nearly entirely representing it) has been considerably raised.
However, another feminist literary scholar — this time an American, Catherine Ross Nickerson — has pointed out in an important 1998 study, The Web of Iniquity: Early Detective Fiction by American Women, that detective fiction in the United States was not actually a strictly masculine preserve, a playground for the tough guys. Rather, Nickerson has shown, an indigenous American tradition of female-authored crime fiction existed well back into the nineteenth century.
One of the writers she discusses, Mary Roberts Rinehart, was active and extremely popular in the United States all though the Golden Age (indeed, she was much more significant at this time than Raymond Chandler, who only published his first novel in 1939, at the very tail-end of the Golden Age, confining himself before that to pulp short stories).
But although Professor Nickerson helped remind her academic colleagues that women mystery writers with their own narrative style and literary concerns not only existed but were much read in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, it remained for Professor Leonard Cassuto to do something that no other academic had yet done: perceive the American hardboiled detective novel itself as feminized.
[Academic scholars continue to mostly overlook detective novelists in both the United States and Great Britain who did not write in the hardboiled style and were not women, but that is the subject for another essay!]
Leonard Cassuto’s Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (Columbia University Press, 2008) is one of the most highly praised academic crime literature monographs of the last decade. “Superb…fresh insights on every page,†declares Alan Trachtenberg of Yale University.
Not to be outdone is crime writer Julia Spencer-Fleming, who provides a blurb that is surely one to die for: “Hard-Boiled Sentimentality is a nonfiction epic that reads like the best genre fiction, tracing the bloodlines of crime fiction from Sam Spade to Hannibal Lecter. Cassuto’s scholarship is impeccable; his narrative voice magnetic. A must-read for every student of genre fiction and the go-to source for the evolutionary history of the genre.â€
Whew! Is it really as good as all that? In my view, not quite; though Cassuto makes an interesting (if not invariably persuasive) argument and his writing is comprehensible and refreshingly jargon-light, not something that can be said for many of the academic monographs in this field. Hard-Boiled Sentimentality often is quite insightful and for those interested in hardboiled fiction it should make rewarding reading.
[Despite the zealous claim that
Hard-Boiled Sentimentality reads as grippingly as the best crime novels, sentences like “this refusal to speculate aligns Spade with some of the reformist political positions of the Progressive era†do not trip off the tongue. To be fair to Cassuto, however, I cannot recall any academic monograph that reads just like a crime novel.]
Leonard Cassuto contends that rather than being “masculinist†tales of unfeeling lone tigers prowling in the asphalt jungle, hard-boiled novels in reality are closely related to women’s sentimental domestic fiction of the nineteenth century, which “celebrates the reliable and nourishing social ties that result when people extend their sympathy to others around them.â€
In Cassuto’s view, hard-boiled tales “engage with a domestic sentimentalism born of a specific historical period†and it is this “engagement with the nineteenth-century sentimental†that “shapes the history and evolution of the hard-boiled from its inception to the present day.†“Inside every crime story is a sentimental narrative that’s trying to come out,†declares Cassuto provocatively. “Sentimentalism invented the American crime novel.â€
Over the course of his study, which extends from the 1920s to the present day, Cassuto explicates the key role he sees sentimentalism as having played in the shaping of the American crime tale. Chapter One deals with the influence exercised on the hard-boiled school of crime writing by mainstream novelists Theodore Dreiser and Ernest Hemingway.
Chapter Two looks at Dashiell Hammett. Relying on his reading of The Maltese Falcon (and to a lesser extent Red Harvest and The Dain Curse), Cassuto argues that Hammett portrays “sentimentalism in ruins: a world of self-interested individuals cut loose from family ties and family obligations, who have abandoned sympathy to chase the dollar.â€
However he emphasizes that in The Maltese Falcon tough-as-nails detective Sam Spade struggles between “self-interest and sympathy†and that in The Dain Curse the Continental Op “shows genuine concern for his young charge [Gabrielle Leggett].â€
Chapter Three sees Cassuto taking on “Depression Domesticity,†primarily through James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and The High Window.
With its family saga of a deluded mother and her deceiving daughter, writes Cassuto, Mildred Pierce allows James M. Cain to bring “the sentimental and the hard-boiled into the same house.†It offers readers “the key to the hard-boiled engine-room.â€
Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe, for his part, is in Cassuto’s view driven primarily by a need to put broken houses back together, restoring families to that portion of harmony still possible in 1930s America. As an author, asserts Cassuto, Chandler was “in quixotic pursuit of a family ideal that was being threatened during the Depression, when financial hardship broke many families apart.â€
Chapter Four, which takes us past World War Two and into the 1950s and the Cold War, sees Cassuto considerably expanding his analytical net, taking in a wider range of novels, including those by Chandler, Mickey Spillane, David Goodis, John D. MacDonald, William P. McGivern, Wade Miller, “John Evans†(Howard Browne), Gil Brewer and Cornell Woolrich.
“Working from the model provided by Raymond Chandler,†explains Cassuto, “postwar crimefighters become passionate and involved defenders of home and hearth.†Cold War paranoia and the desire to restore traditional gender roles after global conflagration had menaced world order combined to create the fetching but fearsome femme fatale, a creature in Cassuto’s view that is most notable for her refusal to accept what was seen as her natural role in the social order, that of domesticated wife and mother.
“A veritable army of unpredictable femmes fatales, armed and dangerous and set to destroy home and community, swarms out of the crime stories of the 1950s,†Cassuto writes colorfully. He is especially interesting here on the hard-boiled novel’s treatment of lesbians and transsexuals, who represented the ultimate in “female†transgression.
Even Cassuto’s creativity at finding sentimentality in every hard-boiled cavity he searches is stymied by those deviant and demented darlings of modern critics, Patricia Highsmith and Jim Thompson, however; and in Chapter Five, “Sentimental Perversion,†he shows how these compellingly idiosyncratic authors subversively undermined sentimentalism at every opportunity.
To be sure, sentimentality makes a considerable comeback in Chapter Six, where Cassuto looks at the work of Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald and (to a much lesser extent) Robert B. Parker. Anyone familiar with Ross Macdonald’s novels knows they changed over time, as Macdonald shook off the influence of Chandler (who was quite cutting in his appraisal of the younger man’s work) and allowed his own personal preoccupations to take hold of his narratives.
Making use of Tom Nolan’s fine biography of Macdonald, Cassuto is able to show how the author’s family problems meshed with the therapeutic culture of the 1960s to lead Macdonald to produce book after book on household dysfunction and the generation gap, with Macdonald’s series detective, Lew Archer, acting as a sort of family therapist (or as Cassuto writes, “a kind of walking vessel for collective guilt†and “an everyman of sympathyâ€).
For Cassuto Ross Macdonald “stands as perhaps the most sentimental of all hard-boiled novelists because he understands family ties in the same way the sentimental writers did a century before him.†Similarly, Cassuto believes the robust if offbeat home life (aboard a Fort Lauderdale houseboat called the Busted Flush) of John D. MacDonald’s detective Travis McGee firmly affiliates this author’s work with the sentimental side of life, since his detective is not office-centered like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.
Dealing with, respectively, female private eyes and race in the hard-boiled novel, Chapter Seven and Eight feel somewhat tacked on, but Cassuto returns in full force with a discussion of the serial killer and the crime novel in his monograph’s final chapter. Contrary to what we might think, serial killer novels also reflect sentimentalist hegemony, according to Cassuto. The serial killer should be understood as “an anti-family man,†Cassuto declares. “He is purely anti-sympathy, anti-domesticity, anti-sentimentality.†And opposing him is the increasingly sensitive and domesticated detective.
At one point in his book, Cassuto forcefully criticizes scholars’ “static and stereotyped conception of hard-boiled masculinity.†He rightly notes that this conception has arisen to a great extent from ingenuous readings of Raymond Chandler’s polemical 1946 essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,†which stridently emphasizes the tough masculinity of hard-boiled heroes by “feminizing the genteel detective story tradition.â€
To be sure, other critics before Cassuto have discerned a certain amount of hollow chest-beating bravado in Chandler’s essay. The great centenarian scholar Jacques Barzun, for example, noted forty years ago in the introduction to his and Wendell Hertig Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime (Harper & Row, 1971) that Chandler in notable ways was himself a “sentimental [emphasis added] tale spinner†(p.11), whatever claims he made to the contrary in “The Simple Art of Murder.â€
Still, in forcefully challenging the “static and stereotyped conception of hard-boiled masculinity†with his lengthy study Cassuto deserves our praise. Nevertheless, I think that his admirable zeal to revise error sometimes pushes Cassuto to overstate his case, rendering an over-sentimentalized (or overly-feminized) interpretation of the hard-boiled crime novel.
Cassuto’s coverage of hard-boiled fiction in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s is sparser than I would have expected from an author advancing such an ambitious, overarching thesis. A number of significant tough crime writers of the period are short-shrifted (Raoul Whitfield) or ignored entirely (Jonathan Latimer).
Despite his fine discussion of Mildred Pierce, never does Cassuto convince me that James M. Cain’s admired novel truly is “the key to the hard-boiled engine room†(on the other hand, it is the work that most strongly supports his thesis). Does Mildred Pierce unlock Jonathan’s Latimer scabrously humorous The Lady in the Morgue (its repertoire includes necrophilia jokes about the lady missing from the morgue), for example?
While Cassuto provides some analysis of how James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity (as well as Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) fit into his thematic structure, he largely omits consideration of the short stories of Hammett and Chandler, as well as Hammett’s novels The Glass Key and The Thin Man and Chandler’s novels Farewell, My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake and The Little Sister. (Playback is not here either, but who can really complain about that.)
These are significant omissions when one considers the small output of novels from the hard-boiled twin titans. In his entry on the novel in 1001 Midnights, Francis M. Nevins has written of The Glass Key that “its third-person narrative voice … is so objectively realistic and passionlessly impersonal that it seems to draw an impenetrable shield between character and reader.â€
Does Cassuto find sympathy in The Glass Key? In regard to Chandler, are his novels Farewell, My Lovely and The Lake in the Lake, published about the same time as The Big Sleep and The High Window, about Marlowe as a fixer of broken families? It would have been nice to see Cassuto’s thoughts on how these particular novels develop his themes.
[Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, eds.,
1001 Midnights: The Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (Arbor House, 1986), 335.
In
Hard-Boiled Sentimentality, Chandler’s
The Big Sleep is discussed on a dozen pages,
The High Window on a half-dozen and
The Long Goodbye on three, while
Farewell, My Lovely is mentioned once (and this only in reference to its 1940s sales) and
The Lady in the Lake and
The Little Sister no times at all.
While doubtlessly
The High Window better illustrates Cassuto’s sentimental domesticity thesis than, say,
Farewell, My Lovely (where in my reading the strongest sentimental feelings are directed at single men),
The High Window certainly is not inherently a more “important†book in the Chandler canon than
Farewell, My Lovely. (Indeed, most critics clearly deem
Farewell, My Lovely to be markedly superior to
The High Window as a piece of literature.)
Similarly, Cassuto discusses Hammett’s
The Maltese Falcon on nearly thirty pages,
Red Harvest on seven and
The Dain Curse on six, while failing to mention the highly-praised
The Glass Key. Certainly
The Glass Key is considered a richer work than
The Dain Curse, which is almost universally regarded as Hammett’s poorest novel.]
Further, Cassuto’s attribution of causality for the way the narratives develop in the Hammett and Chandler novels he does write about sometimes is debatable. For example, Hammett’s vivid fictional world of grasping, self-interested and self-regarding individuals may owe more to the author’s engagement with Karl Marx than with Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Similarly, it seems to me that much of the thematic content in Chandler’s novels is derived from his marked resentment (personal, not ideological) of the idly wealthy and his deep sense of masculine honor. In my view, Marlowe’s sympathy in The Big Sleep is reserved for old General Sternwood, not his corrupted daughters.
Any repairing of the General’s home necessarily involves driving the insanely murderous and nymphomaniacal Carmen Sternwood from its precincts. (It is important to recall here the famous image of the stained-glass window in the Sternwood home depicting the knight battling the dragon, i.e., serpent — the serpent in the Sternwood home is Carmen, who even hisses at one point.)
As the critic Clive James has perceptively noted, “Carmen is the first in a long line of little witches that runs right through the [Chandler] novels, just as her big sister, Vivian, is the first in a long line of rich bitches who find that Marlowe is the only thing money can’t buy.â€
[Clive James, “Raymond Chandler,†in
As of this Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002 (W. W. Norton, 2003), 204.]
Marlowe (who assuredly represents his creator) does not expend a lot of sentiment or sympathy either on the little witches or the rich bitches, those fallen temptresses and potential destroyers of men.
Certainly Chandler’s little witches are those les belle dames sans merci of hardboiled mystery, the femmes fatales (they appear — quite memorably — in Farewell, My Lovely and The Lady in the Lake as well, novels Cassuto does not discuss).
This fact alone leads me to question Cassuto’s assessment of the femme fatale primarily as a 1950s phenomenon. Cassuto himself admits that The Maltese Falcon offers a prominent example of the femme fatale, but the willful creature also rears her lovely head, as indicated above, numerous times in the works of Raymond Chandler, not to mention forties film noir, as well as other hard-boiled tales by the many 1940s writers not discussed by Cassuto.
Surely the explosion of the femme fatale phenomenon in this period was set off in part simply by the paperback revolution and the dramatic discovery that more explicit sexualization of women helped sell hardboiled books to male readers. In his book Hard-Boiled America, Geoffrey O’Brien perceptively highlights the impact of World War 2 in this context:
Wars in America have generally led to a relaxation of sexual censorship; for instance, the public acceptance of
Penthouse and
Hustler can probably be traced to the Vietnam War. Likewise the returning GIs of the 1940s craved stronger stuff than Betty Grable pinups…. With all the energy of an industry undergoing rapid development, the paperbacks — free of the constraints that hampered movies and radio — resolutely pushed the limits…. Encouraged by rising sales figures, [paperbacks] were no longer playing by the same rules (An illustrator whose career began in the postwar period recalls, “The word went out — get sex into it somehow.â€)
[Geoffrey O’Brien,
Hard-Boiled America (Da Capo Press, 1997) (expanded edition; originally published 1981).]
In short, sometimes hardboiled fiction surely engaged more directly with sexuality than sentimentality. (Certainly the lurid paperback covers did.) In Chandler’s case, the continual resort to the device of the femme fatale appears to have arisen more out of personal issues than national social and economic concerns (as does the distaste for homosexuals Chandler expresses though Marlowe in The Big Sleep), so once again Cassuto’s approach (e.g., traditional family rhetoric and the Cold War made them do it) seems overly mechanistic.
It should be noted that where it supports his thesis that a given hardboiled author is sentimental (Ross Macdonald in this case), Cassuto does resort in part to personal biography for answers as to why the author wrote as he did. Doing so makes his argument more persuasive (indeed, the Ross Macdonald section is one of the strongest in the book).
Sometimes Cassuto can be heavy-handed in his approach to causal factors. Could The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep have come into existence without Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which observed the role self-interest played in guiding human endeavor, or his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which analyzed sympathy?
Apparently they could not have, according to Cassuto. “Adam Smith may be considered the founding father of both sympathy and the hard-boiled attitude at the same time,†Cassuto rather breezily pronounces. “Smith published perhaps the foundational hard-boiled text, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776…. But Smith was already an expert on sympathy at the time he wrote his anatomy of capitalistic individualism; in 1759 he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments.â€
Such speculation led me idly to wonder how it is that Adam Smith never wrote a hardboiled crime novel. Had he done so, it inevitably would have been called, one imagines, The Invisible Hand.
[If Adam Smith is the “founding father†of sympathy, where does Jesus Christ fit into the picture?]
Despite these criticisms on my part, I think Cassuto has a valuable thesis overall. Academic analysts have tended to overly polarize male hard-boiled authors and female crime fiction writers (as well as traditional male detective novelists).
Thus I would recommend the perusal of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality by those interested in better understanding crime fiction. Yet I must also add a few more criticisms of the book that are of a different nature, stemming from Professor Cassuto’s evident lack of familiarity with the history of the mystery genre on certain points. (He is by no means alone among academic scholars in this regard.)
First, although he references Catherine Ross Nickerson’s The Web of Iniquity, rarely does Cassuto mention women crime writers before 1970 (Patricia Highsmith is the notable exception). In her review of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality, Sarah Weinman criticized Cassuto’s omission of Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place (1947) as “particularly startling†because “this novel seems to prove Cassuto’s thesis conclusively.â€
[Sarah Weinman, “Sentimental Tough Guys,â€
Los Angeles Times, 17 October 2008. Since in a footnote Cassuto briefly refers to the author’s handling of a serial killer in
In a Lonely Place, his failure to integrate the novel into the main body of his study clearly is deliberate, not inadvertent.]
I understand that Cassuto presumably wanted to focus on male hard-boiled writers rather than female ones, because the response to the inclusion of such a writer as Dorothy B. Hughes might well have provoked the response, “of course she wrote with sympathy, she was a woman!â€
Yet the omission of so many women writers does leave a sort of vacuum on those occasions when the author makes rather sweeping statements. When Cassuto writes that the “male heroes of most fifties crime novels … assume the protective role that women played in sentimental fiction of the previous century,†I could not help wondering what was going on in the fifties crime novels written by women. (In the works of women writers of 1950s “psychological suspense,†for example, one cannot always be sure of those “male heroes.â€)
Second, Cassuto, like most academic literary scholars, perpetuates the myth that Raymond Chandler cared nothing for plotting. In doing so he ironically relies mostly on Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder†essay, though elsewhere, as noted above, he chastises other scholars for unquestioningly accepting it. (He also digs up the old chestnut about Chandler not knowing who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep when questioned by Howard Hawks and William Faulkner, who were adapting the book to film).
Chandler “rejects the puzzle-whodunit because it’s unrealistic†and “turned away from the intricate plots of the likes of Ellery Queen and S. S. Van Dine because they’re too intellectual to activate the power of sympathy,†asserts Cassuto.
In a 2006 article in the Wall Street Journal, Cassuto is even blunter on this matter. “Raymond Chandler was the rare mystery writer who didn’t care whodunit,†Cassuto peremptorily pronounces in the first sentence of the article. Near the end of it, he asserts that “Chandler’s artistic impulse turns on his rejection of the puzzle mystery.â€
Though Cassuto is hardly alone in diminishing Chandler’s interest in the puzzle mystery (indeed, both Chandler’s biographers do it), he is wrong in doing so. Chandler read and enjoyed the traditionalist British detective novelists R. Austin Freeman and Freeman Wills Crofts (though he hated the debonair gentleman sleuths of the British Crime Queens and thought Agatha Christie was unfair to the reader), envied the plotting skill of Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner and composed, in the same decade as he wrote “The Simple Art of Murder,†a set of rules for writing mystery fiction that in many respects is as orthodox as those famously devised by Englishman Ronald Knox.
Further, for someone who purportedly “didn’t care whodunit†and rejected the puzzle mystery, Chandler perversely composed several well-plotted detective novels — praised by the orthodox critic Jacques Barzun — including Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window and The Lady in the Lake.
To be sure, The Big Sleep, his first mystery novel, does have, as scholars so often note, its share of plotting problems (I have never been too sure about that pesky chauffeur’s demise either); but that does not take away from the fact that several of his other novels are impeccably plotted. Chandler found plotting hard to do and groused about doing it, but he never rejected it and he often performed it admirably.
[Leonard Cassuto, “The Hero is Hard-Boiled,â€
Wall Street Journal, 26 August 2006. In his critical study
Raymond Chandler (Twyane, 1986), William Marling observes that Chandler’s novels after
The Big Sleep reveal the author’s “increased attention to plot.â€
He notes that Chandler “often came close to the ‘whodunit’ style of English mystery….than he cared to admit†(p. 104). For more on this subject see my forthcoming essay, “‘The Amateur Detective Just Won’t Do’: The Straight Dope on Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction.â€]
Third, Cassuto misunderstands the economics of book publishing in the years before the consummation of the paperback revolution. In Hard-Boiled Sentimentality, Cassuto describes The Big Sleep‘s selling of 12,500 copies as a “rocky debut.†(In his Wall Street Journal article, he earlier characterized such a sale as “meager.â€)
Riffing off this point, he concludes that the novel did not “find an audience†until 1943, when it was published in paperback and sold nearly a half-million copies. But in actuality, hardcover sales of a mystery novel title totaling to 12,500 copies was quite impressive in that era, a time when frugal people mostly borrowed mystery fiction (as opposed to “serious literatureâ€) from rental libraries.
Since presumably libraries purchased a great many of those 12,500 books sold, many thousands more than that number would have read the book in the four years that elapsed before The Big Sleep was published in paperback.
Finally, Cassuto’s references to the classical, puzzle-oriented detective novels of the Golden Age tend to be slighting and misinformed. Cassuto, who so forcefully critiques stereotype in the portrayal of hard-boiled fiction, tends himself to reach for stereotypes when using traditional detective fiction as a foil for the tough (yet tender) stuff.
“Hammett’s detective novels departed from genre tradition by presenting a story — and a set of social problems — unenclosed by a drawing room, a country estate, or any other discrete space,†writes Cassuto, relying on the well-worn but overstated notion that the narratives in traditional detective novels of the Golden Age are invariably confined within what are essentially enclosed stable spaces, usually country houses or villages.
Elsewhere, Cassuto passingly declares that hard-boiled novels “supplanted†puzzle-oriented Golden Age mysteries. While admittedly it is true that the rise of the hard-boiled school was one of the factors that helped break the puzzle’s hegemony over Golden Age crime literature, when (or even whether) hard-boiled tales “supplanted†puzzle mysteries is another question.
To state the most obvious example, the puzzle mysteries of Agatha Christie retain immense global popularity even today. Further, as stated above, the plots of many hardboiled novels in fact feature complicated puzzles. Novels like Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake or Jonathan Latimer’s The Dead Don’t Care have at their hard-boiled hearts fiendishly clever puzzle plots that would have graced even the diabolically ingenious tales of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen.
All these matters aside, Cassuto has produced a worthwhile and interesting book. The splendid cover illustration of a steely gun and a beribboned red heart tells it all: the tough and the tender often manage to co-exist in the hardboiled novel.
Although Cassuto at times over-tenderizes the tough crime tale and I am not convinced that his engagement-with-domestic-sentimentalism thesis is the master-key that unlocks the hardboiled engine room (however much it helps reveal to us Mildred Pierce), I personally found in Hard-Boiled Sentimentality many fascinating points to engage me.
Tue 16 Nov 2010
“Sleight of Hand.” An episode of The Rockford Files (Season 1, Episode 15). First air date: 17 January 1975. James Garner, Noah Beery, Joe Santos, Tom Atkins, Lara Parker, Pat Delany, Allan Miller. Teleplay by Stephen J. Cannell & Jo Swerling Jr., based on the novel Thin Air by Howard Browne.
Stop me if you’ve heard (or seen) this one before.
Private eye Jim Rockford is coming back to LA after a vacation trip with Karen Mills, his current girl friend, a vivacious young divorcee with a three year old daughter. He stops at her house, she leaves to open the front door, he carries the girl up to her bedroom and tucks her in, and goes downstairs to find Karen’s open purse on a counter — and no Karen. He was only a few feet behind her when he went in — and she has disappeared.
When the police are called (Joe Santos as Sgt. Becker), they find the body of Karen’s next door neighbor lying on the ground next to her house. Do the police (Tom Atkins as Lt. Diel) believe Rockford’s story? Well, what do you think? (Would you believe such a story?)
Or in other words, Rockford’s on his own in solving this one, except for his dad, Rocky, who catches the one clue Rockford misses.
The novel has been reviewed earlier on this blog, and from Gloria Maxwell’s description, the story line of the TV show is almost exactly the same, at least the beginning. While I’ve read the book, I couldn’t tell you now if the ending is the same, nor how closely they followed the plot when the story was used again as the basis for an episode of Simon & Simon in 1982.
I have to tell you, though, as entertaining as the story is on this mid-season episode of The Rockford Files, if you allow yourself the time to think it about carefully, and maybe only casually and not even that carefully, the whole thing is adroitly administered hogwash, a heap of impossibilities disguised as a stack of highly unlikelies.
It may be that 50 minutes or so just isn’t enough running time to make the parts fit together so they make sense, but in all honesty, they don’t.
But did I say that this was one of the most entertaining episodes so far this first season? I did and I didn’t, but it was. It also comes the closest to true noir, albeit in a slightly ham-fisted way. As private eye Jim Rockford, James Garner lets his feelings show more than usual on this one.
Tue 5 Oct 2010
A LIST OF FAVOURITES
by Geoff Bradley
This is a list of books that appealed to me as I read them. I have simply gone on my fond memories of reading them, some many years ago, in a few cases when I was just a boy. I haven’t re-assessed and no doubt a stint of re-reading would lead to a change of mind for several of them.
No doubt there are many books on the list that you can’t imagine why they are there. No doubt, also, there are some that you can’t imagine why they are not there but many are probably absent because I haven’t read them as I would make no claims to be widely read.
I have restricted myself to one title per author, pseudonyms included.
I haven’t counted as I compiled the list but I think there are 81 titles there. I’m sure there are other I should add if they came to mind. In the meantime this listing should be regarded as a work in progress rather than the finished thing.
Eric Ambler: Passage of Arms (1959)
I read a lot of Ambler back in the ’60s but this was the one that gripped me more than the others.
H.C. Bailey: Call Mr Fortune (1920)
I bought an omnibus of the first four Mr Fortune short story collections. I started reading intending to just read this first book but ended reading all four straight off.
Francis Beeding: Death Walks in Eastrepps (1931)
I can’t remember the details but I remember enjoying it.
Nicholas Blake: The Beast Must Die (1938)
An author sets out to find the hit-and-run driver who killed his son.
Lawrence Block: A Stab In The Dark (1981)
The best of the earlyish Scudders.
Edward Boyd and Bill Knox: The View From Daniel Pike (1974)
Short stories about a Glasgow private eye. Boyd wrote the tv scripts Knox turned them into stories.
Ernest Bramah: Max Carrados (1914)
Classic short stories about a blind detective.
Howard Browne: The Taste Of Ashes (1957)
The best of Paul Pine, private detective.
Curt Cannon [1]: I’m Cannon — For Hire (1958)
I enjoyed this story of the down-and-out detective.
Sarah Caudwell: Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981)
Witty badinage in the legal chambers and in Greece.
Raymond Chandler: Farewell My Lovely (1940)
My favourite of the Chandlers.
G. K. Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)
Another classic short story collection.
Erskine Childers: The Riddle of the Sands (1903)
Immaculate adventure/spy story
Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile (1938)
An intricately contrived crime that ties up the loose ends.
Tucker Coe: Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death (1966)
I enjoyed the whole Mitch Tobin sequence and this first one set the tone nicely.
John Collee: Paper Mask (1987)
The tale of a doomed hospital porter who steps out of his station.
J. J. Connington: Nemesis at Raynham Parva (1929)
Domestic crime set in the country, with a cunning twist. [2]
Freeman Wills Crofts: The Groote Park Murder (1925)
A pre-French Crofts but the intricate plot works.
Len Deighton: The Ipcress File (1962)
The spy novel becomes working class.
Carter Dickson [3]: The Judas Window (1938)
One of Carr’s intricate impossible crimes.
Warwick Downing: The Player (1974)
I’ve forgotten the details but I know I enjoyed it.
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
Probably Doyle’s best set of short stories. (I’m not chickening out by selecting The Complete SH.)
Friedrich Dürrenmatt: The Pledge (1959)
Short tale of a detective’s mental deterioration as he seeks a child killer.
Stanley Ellin: Mystery Stories (1956)
Excellent and varied set of short stories.
G. J. Feakes: Moonrakers and Mischief (1961)
A little weak in the plot but hilariously funny.
Dick Francis: Enquiry (1970)
My favourite among many excellent racing thrillers.
R. Austin Freeman: The Red Thumb Mark (1907)
The meticulous Thorndyke at his intricate best.
Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame (1986)
My favourite of the Tanner books. The ending stood up which it often didn’t in Greenleaf’s other books, good as they were to read.
Michael Gilbert: Death in Captivity (1952)
Whodunit and PoW escape novel all in one book.
Donald Hamilton: Death of a Citizen (1960)
First in an excellent series.
Dashiell Hammet: Red Harvest (1928)
My favourite of his novels, otherwise I might have gone for a short story collection.
Cyril Hare: Tragedy at Law (1942)
Pettigrew and the murder of a judge on the circuit that the author knew so well.
Thomas Harris: Red Dragon (1981)
Excellent story with a captivating villain.
Jeremiah Healy: So Like Sleep (1987)
My favourite of the early Cuddy’s.
Patricia Highsmith: Deep Water (1957)
I enjoyed this murderous tale better than her more famous works.
Edward D. Hoch: Diagnosis Impossible (1996)
Excellent collection of ‘impossible’ crimes concerning Dr Sam Hawthorne.
E. W. Hornung: The Amateur Cracksman (1899)
First of the tales of Raffles. gentleman-thief.
Geoffrey Household: Rogue Male (1939)
The best thriller I have read.
Richard Hull: The Murder of My Aunt (1934)
Excellently humorous ‘inverted’ tale.
Stanley Hyland: Who Goes Hang? (1958)
The details have gone but I know I enjoyed this tales set in the House of Commons.
Francis Iles [4]: Malice Aforethought (1931)
Excellent inverted novel.
Dan Kavanagh: Putting the Boot In (1985)
The best book I have read set around football.
Harry Stephen Keeler: The Amazing Web (1929)
Typically intricate Keeler tale that all ties together neatly at the end.
Maurice Leblanc: The Confessions of Arsène Lupin (1912)
Amusing and intricate tales of the French rogue.
John le Carré: Call For the Dead (1961)
Excellent detective story set in the world of espionage.
Ira Levin: A Kiss Before Dying (1953)
Has the best single moment I can recall reading.
Dick Lochte: Sleeping Dog (1985)
Funny and yet enthralling p.i. tale.
Peter Lovesey: A Case of Spirits (1975)
Excellent impossible crime about the excellent Sergeant Cribb.
Arthur Lyons: All God’s Children (1975)
A very enjoyable p.i. tale with Jacob Asch.
John D. MacDonald: A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
I read, and enjoyed, the McGee’s a long while ago but this is the one I seem to remember enjoying most.
Philip MacDonald: The Nursemaid Who Disappeared (1938)
Colonel Gethryn on a case with very little to work on.
Ross Macdonald: The Underground Man (1971)
My favourite of the Lew Archer books.
Raymond Marshall [5]: Hit and Run (1958)
Outstanding first person tale of a man who is enticed and becomes wanted for murder.
L.A. Morse: The Old Dick
I enjoyed this tale of an elderly detective.
John Mortimer: Rumpole of the Bailey (1978)
The first collection of stories about the Old Bailey hack.
Sara Paretsky: Bitter Medicine (1987)
My favourite of the Warshawski’s.
Robert B. Parker: Paper Doll (1993)
Spenser finds the murderer of a businessman’s wife without Hawk’s help.
David Pierce: Down in the Valley (1989)
The first about private eye Vic Daniel.
Jeremy Pikser: Junk on the Hill (1984)
I’ve forgotten the details of this but I remember I enjoyed it.
Joyce Porter: Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All (1967)
Dover investigates forcible castrations.
Talmage Powell: The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer (1960)
The strongest of the five books about Tampa p.i. Ed Rivers
Bill Pronzini: Shackles (1988)
Nameless is imprisoned and left to die, while working out who his captor is.
Ellery Queen: The Glass Village (1954)
My favourite Queen though Ellery is not in it.
Patrick Quentin: Puzzle for Fiends (1946)
Intriguing tale of Peter Duluth institutionalised with amnesia.
Ruth Rendell: A Demon in my View (1976)
Excellent plot and beguiling story.
Sax Rohmer: The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu (1913)
I loved this as a youngster; Fu-Manchu dominates every page he is on.
James Sallis: The Long-Legged Fly (1992)
I enjoyed this first in the Lew Griffin series and the second, too, though they started to pall after that.
Sapper: The Female of the Species (1928)
Bulldog Drummond was racist and objectionable but as a boy I raced through his exploits. This was my favourite as he had to decipher a message to rescue his wife.
Gunnar Staalesen: At Night All Wolves Are Grey (1986)
Excellent, if bleak, p.i. tale set in Norway.
Rex Stout: In the Best Families (1950) [6]
Wolfe’s routine is disrupted in this tale.
Josephine Tey: The Franchise Affair (1948)
A slow build up to a revealing climax as a country solicitor defends two women accused of kidnapping.
Jim Thompson: Pop. 1280 (1964)
One of Thompson’s riveting tales of a descent into madness.
June Thomson: The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes (1990)
Excellent Holmes short story pastiches.
Masako Togawa: The Lady Killer (1985)
A serial killer in Tokyo.
Peter Tremayne: The Return of Raffles (1981)
Excellent tale following Raffles’s return from the Boer War.
S. S. Van Dine: The Bishop Murder Case (1929)
Van Dine is out of favour nowadays but this is one I really enjoyed.
Roy Vickers: The Department of Dead Ends (1947)
Classic tales of cold cases revived from a single clue.
Henry Wade: Mist on the Saltings (1933)
A nicely turned out story in which things are as they seemed.
Edgar Wallace: The Fellowship of the Frog
Another author I read extensively as a boy. This is one of my favourites that I suspect might not stand up to a second reading.
Colin Watson: Hopjoy Was Here (1962)
A funny, yet involving detective story.
Charles Williams: Dead Calm (1963)
A riveting tale of skulduggery on the high seas.
FOOTNOTES:
1. aka Evan Hunter or Ed McBain
2. This is a title that should be read after sampling several of the earlier Connington’s
3. aka John Dickson Carr
4. aka Anthony Berkeley
5. aka James Hadley Chase
6. This is a title that should be read after sampling several of the earlier Nero Wolfe tales, especially And Be a Villain and The Second Confession.
Editorial Comment: I have one more list of favorite or “best” mysteries to go. I’ll post one from Curt Evans tomorrow. If you’ve been following his reviews on this blog, you won’t be surprised to know that his list consists solely of Golden Age British Detective Novels. Even with that restriction, his list is the longest: 120 books in all. So far.