Sat 21 Jul 2018
A PI Mystery Review: GEORGE HARMON COXE – The Silent Witness.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[8] Comments
GEORGE HARMON COXE – The Silent Witness. Jack Fenner #11. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1973. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition. Manor, paperback, 1974.
Jack Fenner is a private eye who plies his trade in the same fictional universe as one of George Harmon Coxe’s other leading characters, Boston-based news photographer Kent Murdock. I listed this as this as Fenner’s 11th appearance, but in all truthfulness, that’s a bit of a stretch. Most of his appearances are in supporting roles, if not out-and-out cameos, first showing up (surprisingly to me) in Murder with Pictures, a Murdock novel published way back in 1935. It wasn’t until much later on that Fenner had his own books, such as this one from 1973 (in which Murdock in turn makes the best of a small walk-on part).
Back in his younger days George Harmon Coxe made a steady living writing for the detective pulps, including the most famous one of them all, Black Mask magazine. His tales of Flashgun Casey may have had their rough edges, perhaps even hard-boiled, but by the 1970s Coxe’s prose was smooth and maybe just a bit wordy. It takes the entire first chapter to get the characters introduced and the relationships between them straightened out. Only then does the complicated plot get under way.
Worse, from what I assume most readers’ perspective may be, the first murder does not occur until page 90. Not only that, a final confrontation between Fenner and the killer takes up the last 25 pages. But the detective work is fine — the clues are right there, in plain sight — and the characters are extremely well drawn, and there are quite a few of them.
I don’t think women will be drawn to this book as readers, though. It’s a man’s world that Fenner lived in. There are female characters in it, but they’re only incidental, if not out-and-out eye candy, even if one of them is one of Fenner’s clients, a long lost daughter of a recently deceased businessman, the shares of whose company are being fought over.
In spite of what may have sounded like a long list of complaints, the writing in this novel is solid and the reading is fun. I enjoyed this one. If my name were J. Randolphe Cox, I sure wouldn’t mind having this book dedicated to me, as it was.
July 21st, 2018 at 2:43 pm
There’s a complicated story behind how that dedication came about. I had decided to write an article about George for The Armchair Detective, just a biographical sketch with a checklist of his books and I wrote to him to ask a couple of questions. Somehow I decided it might help my research if I could interview him. My brother and I drove to George’s home in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and I taped an interview with him and then wrote what turned out to be a four part article for TAD. I continued to correspond with George and when he realized I wasn’t getting paid for the article he dedicated his next book to me. The dedication was supposed to read “to the complete bibliographer”, but somehow it came out “to the complete librarian.” George expressed his displeasure to the people a Knopf and made corrections on the dedication page in the copy he sent to me!
July 21st, 2018 at 2:46 pm
And whoever set the dedication up in type spelled my name with an “e”.
July 21st, 2018 at 10:27 pm
No matter the glitches, it’s still quite an honor. I’ve been written into a book as a character (Tuckerized), but unless I’ve forgotten about it, I’ve never been a dedicatee — and who could forget anything like that?
July 21st, 2018 at 8:52 pm
Coxe is one of the most reliable writers of his era, from the hard-boiled exploits of Flash Casey to his long much more mainstream Murdoch and Fenner series and several quite good suspense novels written along adventure or international intrigue lines (MURDER IN HAVANA).
I’ve a;ways ranked Coxe with Brett Halliday and Frank Gruber as above mid list writers who created their own niche just outside of the hard-boiled field not quite on the level of Gardner but in the same general ballpark and the same general readership.
Coxe isn’t always brilliant, but he is generally better and more entertaining than just reliable, and he was still turning out good books later in his long career.
July 21st, 2018 at 10:30 pm
I agree with everything you say about Coxe, David. I’ve read most of the Flashgun Casey’s, and maybe half of the Kent Murdock’s, but this is first of the Fenner books I’ve read in which he had the leading role. A good solid mystery, nothing more, but also nothing less.
July 22nd, 2018 at 2:27 pm
I agree with David’s assessment of GEORGE HARMON COXE. I’ve read about a dozen of his books. From Flashgun Casey to Kent Murdock to Jack Fenner, Coxe keeps the pages turning. He was a reliable writer with good quality control. I wished I’d picked up more of his books when they were cheap and plentiful.
July 22nd, 2018 at 3:54 pm
Like to second David’s and Steve’s endorsements of George Harmon Coxe. Coxe was a writer of genuine mysteries. And like other such writers, his skills and accomplishments are often undervalued.
I’ve been reading Coxe’s works in more-or-less chronological order. So haven’t reached the late books, where Fenner’s solo cases are concentrated. Maybe I should jump ahead!
July 22nd, 2018 at 7:37 pm
Mike Grost brings up a good point, Coxe books tend to be actual mysteries with actual plots and solutions, in that he is mindful of Gardner, another writer who came out of the hard-boiled school but who was more plot than atmosphere and language centered.
In the Post WWII era through the mid sixties a number of writers like Ken Crossen and Hugh Pentecost worked in this general area. Crossen’s Milo March books (as M. E. Chaber) are a good example of the style.