Sat 20 Dec 2025
FRANK GRUBER – The Laughing Fox. Johnny Fletcher & Sam Cragg #5. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1940. Serialized earlier (?) in Short Stories magazine, July 10 through August 25, 1940. Penguin, paperback, May 1944. Belmont-Tower, paperback, 1972.
Book salesmen Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg, on the scene at a midwestern cattle convention, are forced to act as detectives when a man is found murdered in their hotel room. The man was a fox breeder, with enemies among the other exhibitors, but he was killed as the consequence of a mystery involving a missing heir who disappeared twenty years before.
With a story meant primarily as fun, Gruber has too casual an attitude toward his plot, Fletcher and Cragg are happy scoundrels who mostly enjoy the scrapes they get into. But on page 49 [of the Penguin edition], Fletcher tells the police the whole story of how they found the body in their room, then on page 99, he is confronted with the story as if the previous episode had never happened.
Not for serious deduction
Rating: **
December 21st, 2025 at 12:16 am
I’m a fan of Gruber’s mysteries though I admit deductive genius takes a back seat to fast wit, screwball comedy, and hectic action. Gruber was writing mostly B movie screenplays by this time and likely thinking more in terms of screenplays than fair play.
Admittedly I am more a fan of his pulp work, Westerns, and later suspense/adventure novels than the Fletcher or Craggg books.
December 21st, 2025 at 7:31 am
Like David, I am a big fan of Gruber’s work. Unlike David, I’d place the Fletcher and Cragg novels at the top of my favorites list, but that’s only because I am a Luddite.
December 21st, 2025 at 1:46 pm
Generally speaking I have always been a bigger fan of Frank Gruber’s work than this review suggests. The two star rating suggests that in spite of the mix-up I talk about in paragraph (as well as what I sense as a negative tone overall) I still liked the book. No, it’s not a book if you’re looking for Ellery Queen type of detective work, but neither was it Gruber’s intent to produce such a book.
Given a chance to read it again, would I take it now? I’d say yes. It sounds like a fun book to read.
December 21st, 2025 at 4:19 pm
Being a big fan of Craig Rice and Norbert Davis, after reading this, I looked around for a suitable Frank Gruber novel to start with. Then I discovered that he did the screenplay for Mask of Dimitrios, which I rate higher than most people, and also that a review of the film has not appeared in this blog.
December 21st, 2025 at 10:13 pm
MASK OF DIMITRIOS is one of my favorite films also, and you’re right. I’ve never reviewed it on this blog. I’ll see if I can’t remedy that. It’s been a while since I’ve watched it.
December 22nd, 2025 at 2:32 pm
Here’s the trailer: