Fri 10 Feb 2012
Archived Review: THOMAS BLACK – Four Dead Mice
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[4] Comments
THOMAS BLACK – Four Dead Mice. Rinehart & Company, hardcover, 1954. Bantam #1448, paperback, 1956, as Million Dollar Murder.
I’m going to change things around from the way they usually occur here, not just a little, but from top to bottom. Instead of a complete list of Thomas [B.] Black’s private eye Al Delany character at the end of this review, here they are at the beginning:
The 3-13 Murders. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946.
The Whitebird Murders. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946.
The Pinball Murders. Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947.
Four Dead Mice. Rinehart & Co., 1954.
There are are only the four of them, and why the gap, and why the abrupt end to the series, I do not know. I’d welcome any information that you might have. According to Al Hubin, Thomas Black was born in Kansas in 1910, with a possible death date of 1993, not confirmed. (Information on hand as of the current Revised Crime Fiction IV.)
I’m sure I’ve read at least one of the first three, but it was so long ago, I’ll not rely on memory, and I’ll report on only this one. It takes place in Chancellor City, an small metropolis with more than its share of alleys, back streets, rundown housing and a wide-open red light district. I had the feeling that it might be St. Louis, in disguise, or Kansas City, perhaps, but that’s only a guess, and it’s probably not relevant anyway.
Delany is asked by a bakery to find out who might have dropped some dead mice into a vat of bread dough, and the case escalates from there to include the death of a job applicant who flunked an employment check, and more.
The dialogue is bright and chipper and slangy, and maybe some of the slang makes the book unreprintable today. For example, S.Q.Q. stands for? San Quentin Quail, if that helps any, and that’s what Delaney knows what Honey Ward is, a precocious young girl (in ways also probably unreprintable today) who grabs his attention early on and doesn’t let go.
Here’s an early scene that doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, and Cora Collins doesn’t appear again, but I liked the flavor it provided:
From a little later on, from page 37, this excerpt is getting closer to the plot:
With other characters involved named Delight (a big nut-brown colored hairpin, handsome as sin and better proportioned), “Baggy Pants” Vance, Bam Carson, George Washington Hite, Little Phil Murio, and a hophead named Sleepy-Sleep, this reads like a cross between Damon Runyon and Harry Stephen Keeler, with triple the coherency of the latter, thanks to numerous recaps and timetables and lists of questions that haven’t have been answered yet.
I’m not so sure about the ending. I wish Black had pumped up the descriptions of some of the characters earlier on, to give them the presence they needed to fit the roles they were designed to play — and I’m not (necessarily) referring to the killer(s). As it is, it’s solid detection on the run, winging it as it goes, and cramming it all in to fit (for the most part) until the number of pages runs out.
[UPDATE] 02-10-12. I’m sorry to say that this is all I remember of this book. If I hadn’t written the review, I wouldn’t even be able to tell you where the four dead mice came in. I think this is a positive review, however. I’ve convinced myself I ought to read the book again, next time I get the chance.
February 10th, 2012 at 11:41 am
Anthony Boucher was an enthusiast for Thomas B. Black.
In THE ANTHONY BOUCHER CHRONICLES, the review for The Whitebird Murders comes first. It seems to be published before The 3-13 Murders.
Circa 2003, I read The Pinball Murders – and found it quite disappointing. Can’t remember anything else… It’s a great title, though.
February 10th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Thanks for the info on the order of Black’s first two books. I’m sure you’re right. I was following Hubin on this, but when two books come out from an author in one year, with the months unknown, the convention is to list the two books alphabetically.
Even though Delany was doing a lot of thinking in that second excerpt I provided, I don’t think anyone would read this book primarily for the puzzle involved. Rather for the quick snappy style and the general PI ambiance.
April 30th, 2019 at 4:36 am
Thomas B. Black was my father. He was born in 1910 in Kansas and died in 1993 on Treasure Island, Florida, three years after his beloved wife of 57 years died in the same location. In retrospect, decades later, I can say that I was fortunate in my choice of parents. My brother and I grew up in a world of sport, with Dad coaching and Mom keeping score for which she deserved hasardess duty pay. We grew up in a world of words, rather surrounded by the many classics for boys of our age, read by my Aunt Margaret on every rainy or snowy afternoon. We devoured large bowls of popcorn covered with real melted butter. MY father struggled as an author and stopped only when hard boiled dectective novels no longer had a market, replaced as it were by sex an violence in the place of the adVentures of Al Delany.
November 15th, 2022 at 5:35 pm
[…] Thomas Black (not to be confused with PI novelist Thomas Black (see here ) is a Seattle-based private detective working in the contemporary […]