Pretty Sinister Books

It was bound to happen. I have been disappointed by the latest Jonathan Craig novel I’ve read. This is number eight in the series and there are only two more left. With the best of the lot already behind me I figured the final three might perhaps deliver a clunker among the trio. Case of the Laughing Virgin (1960) is the first letdown in what previously had been a crisply written, offbeat series set in Greenwich Village of the 1950s. In this novel we enter the a new decade and already a deeper cynicism has sunk into both the characters and the overall writing.

Craig’s police procedurals are characterized by detail in the bureaucracy of police work and characters consisting of colorful oddballs among what might be called the lowlife of Lower Manhattan. The books nearly always include some unheard of kinky sex practice or fetish as the murder investigation almost always involves sex in any number of practices and preferences. But in this story the situation is seedier than usual, most of the characters are unrelentingly loathsome, and the overall tone is bitter and caustic.

Pete Selby and his partner Stan Rayder trade sarcastic quips more often than usual but the humor is forced and tone is flippant. The usual crackerjack dialogue is not enhanced with lines like these:

"I was beginning to wonder where everyone was. They must have come by way of Bluefield, West Virginia." (Says Rayder when his police colleagues finally show up at the murder scene)

"Once upon a time...there were little seven thespians, all in a row. But the brave and brilliant detective team of Selby and Rayder went to work on them -- and now there are three."

Was Craig getting tired of these guys? Was he in a bad period in his life? Or was he just fed up with sex and crime books?

The story centers around the shooting death of Larry Yeager, a no talent actor who blackmails his way into a role in a grade Z play called Grade A about the life of milkmen and the strange notes they find in milk bottles on their delivery route. I can only guess this is Craig’s attempt at humor but it bombs as badly as those lame lines above. Yeager we soon learn managed to purchase a movie featuring a group of six individuals unknowingly caught on film displaying their talent for bedroom acrobatics in a round robin of sexcapades. With the use of clever lighting, a two way mirror, and a hidden camera the evening's activities were filmed without their knowledge and the movie was then shown at a variety of underground stag shows. When Yeager saw the film he recognized several of the unwilling participants in the movie and persuaded the stag show producer and owner of the film to sell him the movie for $1000. Selby and Rayder deduce that he wanted the movie for blackmail purposes. The murder investigation focuses on the search for the missing movie and uncovering the identity of the sex addicted participants all of whom had reason to kill the blackmailing Yeager.

Normally Craig writes about these people with a kind of aloof hipness and tends to make light of the sex underground and its obsession with all things carnal. In previous books these seedy escapades were dealt with almost farcically which took the edge off the freaky. Craig made it interesting, sometimes fascinating, and often amusing to read about. However, the emphasis on pornography and hedonistic sex parties this time is not played for laughs. The writing highlights the squalor of these dens of iniquity, the slobs involved in promoting sex and profiting from it, and the crassness and vulgarity of the people who are their customers and victims. Few characters are presented in a favorable light. Ironically, the only murder suspect who appears to have any decency turns out to be the killer.

Case of the Laughing Virgin has an extremely cynical viewpoint and is unfulfilling as a mystery novel. Craig’s usual offbeat humor which often can elicit a laugh or a smile is all out nasty this time around. Selby and Rayder come off as jaded cops, utterly fed up with the losers and downtrodden types they are forced to deal with day in and day out. Each suspect they question turns out to be selfish, haughty, mean-spirited, brash or unfeeling. The blackmail plot is hackneyed, the detection is at a minimum, and there is not a single twist to enliven the proceedings. (Well, to be truthful there is an attempt at an eleventh hour surprise but it was obvious to me.) I’m moving on to the ninth and tenth books and I’m hopeful for a return to the spark and life of the earlier books.

US 1st edition (William Morrow & Co., 1931)

Mystery writer Ned Hope is excited to have purchased Fen Court for the unheard of sum of £750 when at face value the property is worth several times more. Imagine his surprise when in making a tour of the grounds he comes across three corpses in the ornamental pond. His bargain basement purchase is sure to hit the sub-basement level in property values. Not to mention inviting visits from morbid scene of the crime tourists. What’s a mystery writer to do but solve the mystery of the three bodies.

Hope is “hired” by Bell, his reporter friend, to do a series of articles on the mysterious drowning deaths. Bell tells Ned that his assignment is to be a sort of experiment in feature writing. Ned, primarily a fiction writer, will report on the facts of the crime and as those facts are presented he will work out his own solution. Ned is joined in his combination investigative reporting and amateur detective work by his fiancée Nancy Johnson.

The victims of The Death Pool (1930) are Mr. Habershon, his ward Maysie Rowe and her lover Ivor Rainy. The two young people were thought to have eloped and left the area. In uncovering the multiple layers of a very strange relationship between the three victims Ned and Nancy begin to think that Mr. Habershon killed the other two and then did either did himself in or through negligence accidentally drowned. Most impressive is how Loder manages to invent the different combinations of victims and killer and how each died. Accidents made to look like murder and murders made to appear suicide are only two of the multiple solutions the duo dream up. Amazingly, the final reveal is even more complicated than Ned or Nancy could have imagined.

Inspector Brews makes his debut here doing his best to appear low-key and officious. “As a matter of routine--” is his favorite phrase and becomes something of a running gag throughout the novel. He often frustrates Ned who, after delivering what he thinks is a scoop on the case, learns that Brews knew of it already. As in other Vernon Loder mysteries Ned as amateur detective takes center stage, does most of the legwork and theorizing while Brews, the official detective, retreats into the background then delivers up the correct solution in the final chapters.

UK edition is known as The Essex Murders

Loder’s skill in creating quirky supporting characters is exemplified in the person of Cornelius Hatch. An avid ornithologist Hatch provides for some great scenes and a very different sort of local color. He wants to publish a book of spectacular photographs of birds and their nesting behaviors. The photographs will play a large part in the plot and will add to the mystery when Brews begins to suspect that Hatch is an impostor.

The unusual clues include a discussion of Brazilian coffee, the discovery of a thermos with no fingerprints, a car wiped clean of fingerprints that should show signs of one of the victims having driven it, and a mysterious light seen in the window of a cottage on the grounds of Fen Court. Loder does his best to lay out all the evidence to the reader, but in the denouement presents one crucial bit of information completely out of left field. It is something Brews digs up on his own but the reader is never made aware of until a few pages from the end. Occasionally, Loder cheats and it’s the only flaw that keeps him from being one of the top tier of detective novelists from this era.

Harold Morton Prince, popular jazz composer and musician is shot dead in his home at the start of Blues for the Prince (1950). His collaborator, a song arranger named "Stuff" Magee, is seen fleeing the crime scene and is expertly knocked down by a cop who uses his billy club as a boomerang. Now Magee is hospitalized with a coma. Found on Magee is a briefcase with documents proving that the Prince was a fraud. His one time collaborator claims he wrote all of the Prince's music. He wanted the Prince to admit it and split his fortune or Magee would go public and ruin Prince's reputation and essentially end his career.

Carney Wilde is hired by Larry Owens, ex-fiance of the Prince's daughter. He wants closure and he wants the truth. Owens hopes learning the truth might help repair his relationship with Martha Prince. Wilde takes the case because he's a jazz enthusiast himself and is a great admirer of the Prince's music. He thinks the whole scheme of Magee's is nothing more than lies and the work of a desperate blackmailer. He wants to prove the Prince was a true musician and that his music is his own. But soon he learns his jazz idol is not the folk hero that newspapers and the fans have made him out to be.

From Martha he learns that her father was "a cheap loud man with bad taste...primitive in his music just as he was in life." From Lt. Grodnik he uncovers the Prince's a "foot long" police record of drunk and disorderly charges. The Prince was also addicted to drugs and at this late stage in his career apparently needed the junk to calm him down so he could perform civilly in front of an audience. Carney is none too happy to have taken up the case. The digging up of dirt gets messier and uglier the more questions he asks.

Eventually the case turns to the hunt for Arabella Joslin (aka Bella Joe), a singer in cahoots with Stuff Magee to defraud the Prince out of royalties and discredit him as an original songwriter. When we finally meet the singer she turns out to be a hardass of a pistol packin' Mama. She hates cops and loathes private eyes. Carney barely escapes with his life when she pulls out her double barrelled Derringer.

Spicer knows his jazz music and the story is as much an exploration of the jazz scene as it is another early version of the corrupt family crime dramas like those of Ross Macdonald. Notable too is Spicer's handling of race issues that are rather advanced for a book published in 1950. Carney Wilde manages to clear the Prince's name, repair a bit of the musician's scarred reputation, and heal a very wounded family when he finally discovers how and why the blues man died. Though purists may object to one of the last twists in the finale the novel still has Spicer's trademark realism, honesty in emotion, and an unexpected poignancy in the story's resolution.

Previously on PSB is this review of The Dark Light, Bart Spicer's debut mystery novel and the first of seven books featuring Carney Wilde.

It's summer time and that means less blogging, more travel, more bike trail explorations, and lots of tending to the several gardens we have. I was watering the plants up on our newly stained roof top deck -- forgot to mention agonizing home improvement chores as well -- and discovered a flying visitor who had paused for a rest on the very top of a barren twig on one of our red maple trees.

I ran down to get my camera hoping the dragonfly would be there when I returned. Luckily it was. Quickly I took as many photos as I could. In my haste I forgot to adjust the autofocus to allow for a wider range and some of these images are blurry at the outer edges. Still, the zoom lens captured the eerie science fiction quality of this alien visitor. Click to enlarge each image for all the detail.

We also recently returned from a biking trip to the High Trestle Trail just outside of Des Moines, Iowa. The trail is 25 miles long stretching between the towns of Ankeny at the southern end and Woodard at the northern end. Only the last 3.8 miles (Madrid to Woodard - total of 7.6 round trip) were planned since it was exceedingly hot and oppressively humid. We didn't want to kill ourselves biking a total of 50 miles in near 90 degree heat. The highlight of the High Trestle Trail is a 130 feet high converted trestle bridge originally used for a railroad back in 1912. The photos below will show what makes it so unique for both bicycles and pedestrians.

View from north end closer to Woodard looking in the direction of Madrid, Iowa.
Your mystery addicted host can be seen hiding in the shadows

Opposite side of the same entrance/exit. (Me again on the right)

Many walkers -- none of whom had flashlights! -- make for a hazard for bikers.

Decades ago this was Iowa mining country.
The lights were arranged to give the illusion of traveling through a mine.

Long shot showing the illuminated portion
in relation to the entire length of the bridge.

A few people have made videos while riding the bridge at night. The one below led to our decision to travel all the way to Iowa and ride it for ourselves.

One of the few examples of true noir that show up on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour "Water's Edge" (season 3, episode 3 - 1964) is adapted from the short story by Robert Bloch. The story originally appeared in Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine in 1956. Interestingly, the story was rejected by Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and ironically appeared in an anthology of short stories called Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV published in 1957. Apparently several of those prohibited stories did eventually make their way to the anthology series.

Rusty Connors (John Cassavetes) is about to be released from prison. For months he has listened to the stories of his cellmate Mike Krause, bank robber and killer, who has been obsessed with his bombshell of a wife Helen. Now as Mike is dying of pneumonia he makes a deathbed confession. The money he stole years ago is still with his partner Pete. As soon as Rusty is out he plans to find the sexy Helen who he hopes to charm and seduce and that she will lead him to Pete and the money. When Helen turns out to be played by Ann Sothern Rusty immediately sees she has not kept her ravishing figure over time. He nearly scraps his plan. After an exchange of less than flattering remarks she agrees to meet Rusty. Later, the two team up to locate Pete and the stolen money. You can be sure things do not work out as planned.

The script almost exclusively is a two character piece with a fascinating reversal on the noir trope of the sexy femme fatale and her gullible mark. This time we get an overweight frump and a slick and greedy Romeo. Cassavetes does a fine job, but it is Ann Sothern's interpretation of a character so completely against her usual type that makes this episode one of the highlights of the series. When Rusty first meets Helen in the diner she eats scraps off a customer's plate and licks her fingers; a perfect touch. Rusty is disgusted that he may have to seduce this slobby, porcine ex-sexpot. As the story progresses Sothern's subtle facial expressions hinting at her hidden motives are a nice contrast to Cassavetes' more overt emotional displays. You just know that this Mutt and Jeff team are out for themselves and not each other. The violent finale set in a rat infested, waterfront shack is one of the most gruesome and brilliantly filmed among the Hitchcock TV shows.

Albert Hayes wrote the teleplay adaptation that sizzles with sarcasm and irony. Bernard Girard, who began his career as a screenwriter back in 1948 and later became a prolific director for TV, brings top notch cinematic techniques to this above average entry in the series.

Highly recommended. The entire episode can be watched below.

I have this idea that Richard Wilson Webb still hadn't recovered from his intensely lurid thrill ride with his writing partner Mary Aswell when the two of them concocted the brutal and savage crimes depicted in The Grindle Nightmare. One year later in what appears to be his first collaboration with his partner (in more ways than one) Hugh Wheeler he once more delved into noir territory in creating the murders in The Dogs Do Bark (1936). Oddly enough the book first appeared in England under the title Murder Gone to Earth before it was published by the estimable Doubleday Doran Crime Club under the title reviewed here. Although the level of violence never reaches the heights (depths?) of the butchery in The Grindle Nightmarethis is definitely a book anyone would describe as grisly.

A nude woman's dismembered corpse is uncovered in a fox burrow at the tail end of a hunting expedition in the Massachusetts town of Kenmore. The body has been decapitated and is missing both arms. While the head does not turn up until the penultimate chapter the arm bones are soon found in the kennel that houses the bloodhounds for a hunt club. The flesh had been completely devoured by the ravenous dogs the night before. All this happens in the first two chapters. Grisly enough for you? But there's more.

Dr. Hugh Westlake, in his debut as Stagge's series detective, is promptly deputized by the local policeman giving him the chance to turn amateur detective with some authority. Prior to the discovery of the murdered woman Westlake had been consulted by Louella (Aunt Lulu) Howell, one of those garrulous fearful invalids that turns up in mysteries of this era. She is fearful of the baying hounds a sure omen of horrible things to come. Nurse Leonard who had been caring for the Aunt Lulu has recently been fired for indiscretions observed on the job. She was convinced the nurse was dallying with her husband, an unattractive dumpy man who Westlake has hard time envisioning as an object of desire. But could the nude corpse be Nurse Leonard?

Then there's Elias Grimshawe. A Bible thumping fundamentalist of the worst kind (yes, they had them back in the 30s, too) he has been battling with the horsey crowd and their obsession with fox hunting for a long time. That the body is found on his property during another of their bloody hunts angers him beyond reason. His daughter Anne who is rumored to have been carrying on with several men, some of them married, has also gone missing. Grimshawe startles Westlake and Inspector Cobb when in referring to the murder victim he quotes an Old Testament passage about Jezebel being fed to the dogs. No one but the the detective duo knew about the dog kennel business. They ask Grimshawe to go to the morgue to identity the body. Grimshawe is adamant that the victim is Anne.

The atmosphere builds to one of Gothic dread set up perfectly with the opening paragraph in which Dawn, Westlake's ten year-old daughter, is seen chanting an old nursery rhyme ("Hark, hark, the dogs to bark/The beggars are coming to town...") while standing at an open window and listening to the howling bloodhounds. Little does she know exactly why they are howling, but her precocious allusion is just as chilling as Aunt Lulu's prediction of horrible events to come. Once again as in The Grindle Nightmare animals are at the mercy of the murderous fiend on the loose and soon a horse is killed by an unusual method nearly killing its owner in the process.

Horses and hunting will play a prominent role throughout the story. So too will the Grimshawe property which Westlake and Cobb learn Anne would have received on her twenty-fifth birthday. The property is of interest to several characters in the book and provides an obvious motive, especially for Walter, Anne's handsome and athletic brother.

Handsome men with athletic builds are another recurring motif in the book and in others in the series. The descriptions of male physique stand out like posing gym boys in comparison to how the women are described and signal to me another kind of fascination of the authors. At times the rhapsodic physical accounts approach the kind of recitals of male beauty you would expect to find in the pages of a bodice ripper. I wouldn't exactly call these passages homoerotic, but they are very noticeable and perhaps revealing of the two men who wrote the book.

Dawn, who will later become more active in the series, is depicted here as a cute little prop used mostly for comic effect. For the most part she behaves like a kid but often she has an oddly precocious and inconsistent vocabulary. In one scene Webb and Wheeler have her confuse the word distinguished for extinguished. Then later she will correctly use the word ominous in sentence. She has a kind of schizoid role -- at times a mysterious oracle as in the opening paragraph and later when she helps her father with offhand comments, at other times a goofy awkward kid obsessed with rabbits. Dawn has always a problem for me in these books. It doesn't help matters much that Westlake refers to her by the ironic endearment "brat" and rarely calls her by name. Still in this first appearance the relationship between father and a daughter is honest and affectionate. Dawn didn't annoy as much as she does in other books.

The Dr. Westlake books would go on to feature equally bizarre and unusual crimes with a tendency towards the Gothic. Turn of the Table has a murderer who might be a vampire. The Stars Spell Death uses astrology and superstition as a springboard for the plot. In The Yellow Taxi the writers recycled the equestrian themes found in the first book as well as lifting the climactic barn fire towards the end of The Dogs Do Bark and duplicating it even to the point of Westlake's escape through an upper level window. Perhaps the most haunting and chilling entry is The Scarlet Circle with its unearthed graves, corpses daubed with lipsticked circles, and the creepy Talisman Inn.

As a beginning to a short-lived series The Dogs Do Bark shows great promise. Veteran detective novel readers may catch on early to the surprise twist in the tale, but that won't ruin what is essentially a fine example of a traditional detective novel with an ample amount of puzzling plot points, intriguing characters and evocative atmosphere.

Not really left inside, but found inside a 1915 magazine while I was doing some research for an article. Thought it a timely example of how some things haven't changed in over a century.

1st UK edition (Collins, 1966)

I love reading ghost stories just before I go to sleep. Crazy, isn't it? While most people headed for slumberland will reach for soothing poetry, inspirational passages from the Bible, or any soporific reading material (I recommend 19th century textbooks) I keep a small stockpile of spooky story volumes on my nightstand. Nothing like a little chill or thrill before I turn out the lights and wrap myself in percale cotton. And ironically I never suffer from nightmares. Well, almost never.

Robert Aickman didn't like to call his fiction ghost stories or even supernatural tales. He preferred to call them strange stories. That they are. Powers of Darkness (1966) is a cherished book I found a few years ago at the Newberry Library Book Sale for two bucks. It's Aickman's second collection of tales and has no US counterpart. Only two of the stories that appear in this very scarce volume have been collected in a US Aickman collection. The rest exist only in this book. It's a thrilling mix of the eerie, the creepy, the spine-tingling and -- oh, yes -- the strange.

One of Aickman's more remarkable qualities is his ability to lead you down a familiar path only to watch it veer off into a dangerous detour. For example, you will be reading and come across a character who seems to be yet another female vampire. Before you can grow comfortable with this conceit, before you can manage to outguess the conclusion Aickman grabs you by the wrist and drags you through a fiendish passageway drenched in shadows and sodden with dampness completely disorienting you; you're unsettled, disturbed and yet fascinated.

Among my favorites is "The Visiting Star," probably because it is a theater story. It tells of Arabella Rokeby, an actress, and her return to the stage in a play that was a starring vehicle for her decades ago. The narrator expects Miss Rokeby to be an aging matron, but when she turns up he is shocked to see a beauty of no more than thirty-five. Accompanying her are Myrrha, a mysterious female companion, and Miss Rokeby's sinister manager Mr. Superbus. It's a story of possession, bitter envy, spiritual imprisonment, and power hungry control. The striking climax takes place in a visit to an abandoned lead mine of all places. At times chilling, later puzzling and, in the end, ethereally beautiful. The usual allusions to mythology once again are seen in Aickman's choice of odd character names.

Aickman is a master at reshaping the traditional weird fiction motifs and fashioning them into scenes that look startlingly fresh. Then he inserts those scenes into his world of skewed perceptions and ambiguous mysteries. Reading one of his tales is akin to watching those grotesque contortionists in new age circuses. Such cute little girls who amaze you with their pretzel-like bodies creating human sculptures that simultaneously marvel and repel. The experience of reading Aickman is just as paradoxical. You're smiling at a witty remark uttered by a character on one page and shuddering at what happens to that same character on the next.

Powers of Darkness also contains these stories:

"Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen" -- The familiar horror movie trope of incessant nuisance telephone calls gets the wicked Aickman treatment. Closest to a true ghost story in this collection. Less said the better. A cult favorite among the Aickman fans you can find lot of blog posts and essays about this particular story all over the 'net.

"My Poor Friend" -- An employee in a hydroelectric advocacy group befriends Walter Enright, an unconventional M.P., to help him get a bill passed in Parliament. As their relationship develops it is revealed that Enright is burdened with monstrous children, haunted by a spectral ex-wife, and tormented by vindictive bird-like creatures...or are they something else? One of the more deeply moving stories in the collection. Much of the story is political satire and draws on Aickmans' personal experience with the Inland Waterways Association, an organization he helped found.

UK paperback edition (Fontana, 1968)

"Larger Than Oneself" -- Mrs. Iblis visits a New Age spiritual retreat and meets a unusual assortment of seekers of truth looking for something larger than oneself. All of them ultimately experience more than they ever dreamed of. There is an arcane reference in the main character's name. Iblis is the name given to the Devil in the Muslim faith, or to be more specific a jinn (a spirit creature) that refused to bow down to the first prophet of Islam. Lots of religious satire here and an almost out of place Lovecraftian climax.

"A Roman Question" -- The Wakefields while travelling to an academic conference are beset with more than a fair share of troubles. The story begins more humorously than creepy but with the usual disturbing detour into the Land of Uneasy when a young woman named Deirdre using folklore rituals tries to contact the missing son of Major and Mrs. Peevers, also attending the conference. The turn from light to dark occurs when Mr. Wakefield, the narrator, makes this observation: "But before the session ended, there was a moment, more than just one moment, when I felt that Deirdre was totally and wonderfully different from what I had supposed. It was as if I saw into, or had even momentarily entered into, her soul."

"The Wine Dark Sea" -- While on a vacation somewhere in the vicinity of Greece a man wants to travel to a forbidden isle but no local will help him. He ventures forth on his own in a stolen boat and finds a private paradise where he falls under the spell of three women who call themselves sorceresses. More mythological allusions, some sex, and intoxicating descriptive passages.

Several of Aickman's stories appear in the eight volumes of Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories which he edited between 1964 and 1972. Two of the tales in Powers of Darkness are also in the US collection Painted Devils, usually easy to find and affordable in the ubiquitous book club edition. An excellent radio program hosted by Jeremy Dyson, writer for the UK TV show The League of Gentlemen, offers proof that Aickman is "the best writer you never heard of." It can be heard by clicking here.

"Spirit is indefinable, as everything that matters is indefinable, but one can tell the person who has it from the person who has it not."

-- Robert Aickman, acceptance speech for the World Fantasy Award

Pyramid Books (R-1140), 1965
1st paperback edition

Like most people who might see Space Opera on a shelf I figured the title was a nod to that denigrating phrase used to describe science fiction books filled with epic battles in outer space, populated with a variety of bizarre aliens and extraterrestrial creatures and larger than life heroes and heroines. The publishers of the first paperback edition commissioned Jack Vance to write a book using the phrase as his title thinking the same thing I bet. Vance fooled them. He decided to use the term literally. Space Opera (1965) is a about an opera company that tours the galaxies as "musical missionaries" and cultural ambassadors of Earth with the hope of enlightening and teaching the numerous alien life forms just how artistically rich is life on Earth. I think Vance meant it to be a comedy but it leans towards the melodramatic in the final chapters.

In only a few days Dame Isabel Grayce, the tenacious former Secretary-Treasurer of a little opera company, contacts the world's greatest opera singers, gets them to commit to space travel for several months, and expects them to perform the world's most famous operas with little rehearsal. Dame Isabel has the kind of bravado and persuasive skills needed to pull this off and succeeds impressively. Yet by the midpoint in the story Vance shows he knows very little about opera singers and how a performing group on tour operates.

In one chapter Dame Isabel demands her company to perform no less than three operas -- one each by Rossini, Wagner and Alban Berg -- back to back with only twenty minutes rest period in between the three works. Three operas (two with huge casts), completely different sets and costumes, and radically different musical styles all performed in one evening. Will any reader, regardless of his or her opera knowledge, swallow such a concept? That the same performers can sing Italian bel canto, German Romantic and a modern atonal opera like Wozzeck? Never. And only twenty minutes rest between the two? Ridiculous! Never mind that Vance tries to point out the absurdity of such a Herculean marathon of singing and musicianship by pointing out that one violinist is in pain and has to bandage his fingers and one diva so exhausted refuses to go on. The truth would be that everyone would be exhausted. Talk about science fiction! These musicians would be superhumans -- aliens even -- who could perform three operas like those one right after other.

Underwood-Miller, 1984
1st hardcover (limited edition)

The book is really not a novel at all. It comes across as a series of short stories slapped together with the unifying framework of a space journey to the mysterious planet Rlaru from which a company of performers travelled to Earth, did their thing, and then apparently vanished. Seemed like a good premise for an additional mystery novel element but it's almost immediately forgotten about as Dame Isabel and her company of singers and musicians travel the universe spreading the gospel of highbrow art.

Vance does a good job of showing how snobbish and intolerant Dame Isabel is when she encounters indifferent alien cultures who cannot grasp the magic of classical Earth opera. In one case she is convinced that Fidelio needs to be presented in an expurgated, re-written format so it won't offend the race of cavern dwelling rock-like beings that are the company's intended audience. In another scene one group of aliens believed that the company was actually a sort of travelling infomercial. At the conclusion of the opera a representative of the planet's denizens approaches Dame Isabel and says that they would like to purchase a few oboes and one coloratura soprano if they have any in stock. That was the first sign I thought the book was meant to be a satire.

Captain Adolph Gondar is the only person who has travelled to Rlaru and is very evasive about talking about the planet. He keeps wanting to take detours which continually delay arriving at the tour's intended destination. Gondar's behavior is so strange and secretive many of the crew suspect their captain is losing his mind. Dame Isabel won't stand for it; she insists they stick to their plan and make Rlaru their final destination. A romantic subplot involving a stowaway woman named Madoc Roswyn who is bewitching the male crew members and Dame Isabel's nephew Roger Wool with her charm and sex appeal in order to achieve her own secret plan is yet another incident that derails the book's main plotline.

When the story finally gets back on track and the spaceship lands on Rlaru I was ready for a kind of Rod Serlingesque surprise. Something like the twist in the "To Serve Man" episode of The Twilight Zone or a shocker like the one in Planet of the Apes. But it's an anticlimactic ending. I wanted to gasp and I merely shrugged. The secret of Rlaru is not at all shocking nor eye opening or even very interesting. I noticed that the planet's name is an anagram for rural and thought "Aha!" but even that didn't play out.

Vance has won a few awards for his science fiction. I'm sure he does better in his later work. This commissioned paperback original seemed like nothing more than a way to earn another paycheck with a lot of private jokes thrown in to entertain the writer. This reader found it to be like eating Crackerjacks and being disappointed when the toy prize promised inside never made it to this particular box.

Getting lost in the woods. Anyone who has experienced that sensation -- no matter if for a few minutes or a couple of hours -- knows that it can unleash some of your repressed fears. From Hansel and Gretel realizing the folly of leaving bread crumbs as a trail to find their way back home to the videotaped confessions of the terrified campers in The Blair Witch Project being lost in the woods is a motif repeatedly exploited to elicit thrills in fiction and movies. The Eighth Square (1973), Herbert Lieberman's fourth novel, is a story of getting lost in the woods, too. It's also subtitled on the dust jacket as "A Diabolical Novel" which leads one to believe that the Devil has a role in the plot. Lieberman spins a tale of facing one's fears, revisiting past traumas, testing the bonds of friendship and marriage, finding courage and hope and eventually surrendering to Fate. Where is the Devil in all this? Hidden deep within nearly every character.

The plot is relatively simple. A group of adults led by a surveyor with near supernatural powers are walking the boundaries of an estate in the countryside of a small New England town. While en route their leader suffers a stroke and is rendered speechless. Now left to their own devices -- and none of them are very good at reading a compass let alone the lay of the land -- they try to find their way out of the forest and back home. But as the story unfolds the novel departs from a tale of survival to become a complex multi-layered phantasmagoria. It blends realistic drama (sometimes stepping over into soap opera melodramatics) with scenes of the surreal and hallucinatory as we get to know each character through both spoken monologue and interior monologue. Eventually it is revealed that all of the characters have known each other since childhood and they find themselves reverting to their relationships from days long past.

Lieberman's language is an example of what I like to call simile madness. Sometimes they are uninspired ("they were all silent, like shipwrecks on a spit of beach in the midst of a vast, unending sea") but often they are clever and offbeat ("as they wound their way like a weary snail in fits and starts up a gentle acclivity"). As their panic increases and tempers and fists fly Lieberman finds himself drawn to animal metaphors in describing his forest castaways. One character is described as a "slumberous bull", another as a heron making its way gracefully through the forest. Here are some other examples:

She darted like a bat swooping through the narrow circle of light.

...he swiped at her with the huge, ponderous, impatient motion of a bear agitated by a field mouse.

...the others swarmed all around the surveyor in deadly earnest, like wolves pouncing on a wounded stag.

Even the forest itself begins to take on a life of its own when Gladys, the one person who from the start never wanted to take part in the grueling hike, refers to the landscape that has swallowed them up into a threatening menacing beast. "[D]on't you feel it breathing? Growing" she says. "It doesn't care we're here." When John Bayles, the cynic of the crowd, says "Well, now it appears the forest owns us" the novel begins its journey into the land of nightmares. No matter how much existential talk and positive thoughts the hikers indulge in there is a lurking menace among them. In an eerie and brilliant touch their stroke suffering surveyor begins babbling quotations from the Book of Revelation confounding and spooking the lost hikers. Soon there is mutiny among the crew as they choose sides. Fights erupt, violence intrudes. The day passes into night and then another day passes, and another night. Will they ever get home? Are they trapped in a Sartre-like purgatory with menacing elements and a labyrinth of trees and rocks replacing a room with no exit? Is it truly the end of the world? Or only the end of this period of their lives?

Herbert Lieberman is probably best known as the author of Crawlspace (1971), a creepy tale of a retired man and his wife and the young man they want to make their son. In his time he received plenty of rave reviews for his unusual books but never found the long lasting fame he deserved. He also seems to have been prophetic in pointing publishers to popular trends in crime fiction.

City of the Dead (1976), one of his most compelling novels, followed then the popular formula of a police procedural but substituted the usual cop character in the lead role with a medical examiner. Quincy M.E. was just about to debut on television at the time the novel appeared and fourteen years later Patricia Cornwell would publish Postmortem that essentially gave birth to the forensic pathology subgenre. He also dabbled in the serial killer subgenre in his gruesome thriller Nightbloom (1984) a few years before Thomas Harris gave us Hannibal Lecter.

Several of Lieberman's books have been reissued as eBooks by Open Media. All of his books can be found in the used book market for relatively cheap prices. I urge you to discover this neglected, talented writer. He had a unique vision and an uncanny gift for predicting popular trends in the future of crime fiction.

“Merape is a charming woman and distinguished poet. […] She is also a beautiful ruin. Ruins have gaping cracks in their battlements, rats in their armouries, jackdaws in their bell towers. And this, too, is true of Merape. You must beware, my dear sir…”

-- Professor Fishbourne-Grant in The Crippled Muse

Merape Sloane is a mysterious reclusive poet with a mystical aura and a coterie of protective sycophants. Horace Beddoes has traveled to the Isle of Capri where Merape lives in a sort of exile of retirement where he hopes to meet her, gain an interview and propose that he write her definitive biography. He happens to be an expert on Merape’s poetry having completed his Ph.D. thesis on her work which he titled "The Last Flowering of the Romantic Age". But when he meets Mike McDermott, a hack writer of sleazy potboilers, Horace is appalled to learn that McDermott has beaten him to the punch. Somehow McDermott managed to convince Merape Sloane that he would be the perfect man to write her biography and he has already a collection of notebooks with spicy gossip.

McDermott has also decided to title his book The Crippled Muse, alluding to Merape Sloane’s lifelong battle with illness that left her lame. This further upsets Horace because not only is it a near duplicate of his own planned title (The Crippled Corinna), the change of single word makes it a much better title in his estimation. Horace finds himself festering in jealousy and anger, struggling to keep from exploding with rage. A sex writer in charge of the life story of the genius Merape Sloane! What a cruel irony it all is.

Horace proceeds to drown his sorrows and sublimate his furor by getting blissfully drunk at a party where Merape is the guest of honor. In his besotted state he makes a fool of himself by introducing himself to Merape and groveling in her presence while slurring his drunken praise and admiration for her work. Shortly thereafter while stumbling home he comes across a bloody champagne bottle. Simultaneously he learns that Mike McDermott has disappeared from the party and not returned to his lodging. The next morning McDermott’s battered body is found at the foot of a cliff. It is thought that he too got carried with away with drinking, slipped and fell to his death. But the bloody bottle leads Horace to suspect foul play.

Soon Horace finds himself inextricably implicated in McDermott's death. He was seen holding the bottle by at least one person the previous night who then witnessed him throwing the bottle into the ocean. How will he prevent himself from being named McDermott’s murderer? But the novel is not simply another riff on the oft used wrong man theme. The crime plot serves only as background to Hugh Wheeler’s highly literate, allusion filled, languorous novel which touches on so many themes: love vs. desire, the importance of art in one’s life, the transcendent nature of lyrical poetry, the need to belong, the importance of finding home. The story defies categorization. It's a mixture of a literary detective novel, murder mystery and metaphysical exploration of attraction between all the sexes; a triple play mystery novel incorporating all connotations of the word mystery.

It's difficult not to find similarities in this book with some of Tennessee Williams' more recognizable plays about the sexual tension between a virile young Adonis and an artistic grand dame (Sweet Bird of Youth, Orpheus Descending, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore) until you realize that Wheeler's novel predates all of those plays by almost ten years. Did Williams perhaps read this book and pick up on its theme either consciously or subconsciously? The similarities in this one book to Williams favorite motifs are amazing -- the erotic temptations of Girlie and Loretta, the Duchessa who has a keen insight into the closeted homosexuality of McDermott and her sad resignation to being attracted to men who prefer men, Horace's repellent attitude towards the menacing pansexual Latvian gigolo Askold who attempts to blackmail Horace with sexual favors contrasted with Horace's admiration (attraction?) and envy for the brawny physiques of the Swedish masseurs who remind me of the athletic German couple and their overt sexuality in Williams' Night of the Iguana. The book is drowning with Williamsian desires whether they are forbidden, fantasized, or unrequited. Horace not only has the mystery of Merape's life to solve and clear his name of McDermott's murder he must confront the mystery of human sexuality in all its varied and nuanced guises. Horace's feverish confusion of sexual desire and love culminate in this lament:

Was this the way love operated--like a staphylococcus, one moment drowsing latent in the bloodstream, the next moment flaring up with renewed violence? [...] I'm a man and I don't know whether or not I'm in love--or with whom.

Isle of Capri by Jasper Francis Crospey (1893)

More than any of the Patrick Quentin or Jonathan Stagge books The Crippled Muse shows off Wheeler's gift for dramatic monologue. The sections with Clara Pott, Horace's landlady with a closetful of secrets, in particular foreshadow Wheeler's later success as an award winning playwright. There is a classic moment when Clara delivers a lengthy monologue detailing how Merape robbed her of her husband and her comfortable her life in Ohio. Her words are polite and contradictory to her actions. As she speaks Horace notices a flower in her hand that she continues to twist and crumple. "No, I didn't dislike Merape," she says tossing the utterly destroyed flower to the ground. The book is replete with dazzling moments like that.

The Crippled Muse (1952) is Wheeler’s only novel published under his real name and it appears to have been a very personal work for him. He dedicates the book to Rickie – no doubt Richard Webb, his collaborator on dozens of detective novels using their pseudonyms Q. Patrick, Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge. Webb had retired from writing in 1951 and Wheeler continued writing the mystery novels under those pen names alone. Unlike his mystery novels, as good as they are, in The Crippled Muse we discover another side of Hugh Wheeler. He gives us another gripping and suspenseful crime plot, but there is also a greater display of Wheeler's love of literature, his love/hate affair with American culture and Americans, his fascination with exotic locales and even more exotic people. Perhaps, too, if we read a little deeper into the story of Horace's self-discovery we find a revelation of the enigmatic writer himself.

"There comes a time," the Walrus said...

To be frank, I'm sort of tired of talking of -- or writing about -- shoes and ship and sealing wax, so to speak. Essays about fictional events and the history of detective fiction and tidbits about long gone publishing houses can't compare with the kinds of eyebrow raising, life changing events that have recently occurred over here in the book-crammed Rogers Park condo in Chicago.

Some of you may have noticed a marked decrease in the number of posts last month. Life is rather chaotic and some very pronounced changes are occurring in what used to be my rather uneventful routine. This has forced me to reassess what I find truly important in my life. People, my family and my partner especially, are a lot more important than books and blogging these days.

For now I'll try to keep participating in Friday's Forgotten Books meme and I will contribute to Patti Abbott's Flash Fiction Challenge on September 26, but don't expect too much over here until around mid-October

Be well. Enjoy your books and the other blogs while I'm gone.

James Ronald received quite a bit of praise with his first few detective novels from writer August Derleth to novelist and book reviewer Harriette Ashbrook all pointing out his ingenuity and freshness. Of course you have to take this kind of enthusiastic praise with a grain of salt and maybe a dash of sugar, too. Book hype has been with us for decades though it has skyrocketed in the past 15 years or so with the kind of gimmicky stunts some P.R. people are pulling. When I learned that Ronald started out as a bargain basement pulp writer for the British digest publisher Garmol who published his early novels sporting such lurid titles as The Green Ghost Murder, The Man Who Made Monsters, and The Sundial Drug Mystery I was very wary of the blurbs Ronald received for his books. Was it just a fluke or did he really rival the kind of clever plots of a John Rhode or Carr?

They Can’t Hang Me (1938), listed in Adey’s Locked Room Murders, also offers the added bonus of an impossible crime. Actually, two impossible crimes. Ronald had a lot to live up to. I’m glad to report that despite his background in pulp digests James Ronald does indeed merit all the praise lavished upon him. They Can’t Hang Me is a corker of a mystery novel. Ingenious murder methods call to mind the brilliant John Rhode; two impossible crimes, one of which is worthy of Carr; and witty dialogue reminiscent of Clifford Witting. All are on colorful display in this page-turner of a story.

The plot is familiar to any crime fiction fan and seems lifted from the cliffhanger serials of the 1930s. Lucius Marplay, an inmate from a mental institution, escapes with the intent of carrying out a plan of murderous revenge, threats of which sent him to the asylum in the first place. Each murder is announced in the obituary section of The Echo, the newspaper where the victims work, on the very day of the death leading the police to believe the killer is hiding out in the building. A thorough search of The Echo building and its environs turns up no one who shouldn’t already be there. Though the police are fairly certain the escaped lunatic is the culprit somehow he manages to elude capture with each baffling crime. The title comes from Marplay's claim that his plan is as close to a perfect crime as one can dream up for even if he is caught he can't be hanged as he has already been declared insane. He will just be thrown back into the asylum.

Perhaps what makes the book work so well is Ronald’s sharp sense of humor. Even amidst the terror Ronald still finds ample opportunity to lighten the tone. The book is very funny with handful of well drawn colorful characters who serve as the author’s comic voice. Some of the best wisecracks come from a scene between Agatha Trimm, the guardian of Joan Marplay, daughter to the escaped lunatic and the offbeat private investigator Alastair McNab. Some of my favorites are:

Agatha Trimm: "Cocoa is a perverted taste for a man. I'd be careful of him, Joan."

Alastair McNab: "There's two things I like naked and whiskey's one of them."

Sir John Digby (a psychiatrist fed up with the Freudian imaginings of his female clients): What he longed to say to them was "What you need is more fat here"--slapping them where a woman should be comfortably rounded-- "and then you'd have less fat here" --smacking them on the head.

Later UK edition, circa 1940s

The characters, too, are a lively bunch who hold the reader's interest and keep the story moving at brisk pace:

Mark Peters -- managing editor ready to fire anyone whose actions threaten to ruin the already tarnished reputation of his dying newspaper.

The aptly named Ambrose Craven -- an overweight skirt chaser whose cowardice and fear has him fainting in every other chapter.

Flinders -- an ex-reporter gone to seed and drink, who’ll risk his life when he turns to blackmail in order to feed his alcoholic cravings.

Alastair McNab -- the odd and rambunctious private investigator determined to unmask the murderer and sell his story to a rival newspaper.

Agatha Trimm -- guardian to the plucky heroine Joan Marplay. Agatha is a tough as nails, no nonsense woman distrusting of nearly every man Joan sets eyes on.

The detective work is shared by two characters. Joan Marplay who acts a sort of girl sleuth trying to prove her father is not the madman the police and newspapermen think he is. She is sure he was sent to the asylum wrongfully and that his sworn revenge was only a reaction to his furor at being thought mad. Then there is McNab who arrives with a letter in of introduction from the asylum announcing he has been hired to track down the escaped Marplay. With his pronounced Scottish brogue, rendered in a typical 1930s phonetic dialect, and his oddball tastes and habits (like carrying his lunch around in a wicker basket wherever he goes), McNab is the most unusual of the cast. So unusual that he arouses the suspicions of Superintendent Wrenn who has his sergeant investigate McNab's background. McNab is shrewd yet enigmatic. One never knows if he is out for himself or if he really wants to solve the case and apprehend Marplay.

They Can't Hang Me is an excellent example of a crime novel that mixes elements of the detective novel with that of the pulp thriller. So good was this first outing I had to read the other easily accessible crime books of James Ronald. I found most of his other books lean towards psychological crime novels that foreshadow the work of Patricia Highsmith and Julian Symons. I'll be reviewing three more later in the fall. Stay tuned.

Here's another of Patti Abbot's Flash Fiction Challenges. This time the idea came from her perusing an old newspaper and being intrigued by the headline "Michigan Man's Taste Gets Him into Trouble." We were to write a story of about 1000 words inspired by the headline and could if we wanted to change the state from Michigan to anywhere else. I guess mine would be better suited for Oregon, but I stuck with the one in the headline. Not that the setting really matters for my tale.

For more stories on the theme visit Patti's blog page here where some stories have been posted along with links to stories on other blogs.

A Taste of Temptation
Shall I tall you a tale of forbidden fruit? Oh, no metaphors for you, my friend. This is juicy, ripe and literal. So modern yet still so Old Testament. There may be no snakes and no stand-in for Eve but you do get a tree and fruit. But not an apple. Even if the tale is set in Michigan. Not cherries either. Patience, my friend. You will soon know. This is a tree that holds out one sole piece of fruit, the most tempting delicious fruit that you can hardly blame the poor man.

This man –- with the preposterous name of Jarvis Angelica -– considered himself the consummate gourmand. An explorer not of countries and cities but of international cuisine. Restaurateurs clamored for his attention and his highly developed palate. Jarvis’ taste buds were the envy of the foodies, his pronouncements of a cheese sample, for instance, were anticipated as would be the final verdict in a sensational murder trial. Jarvis tasted and passed judgment. A condemnation might ruin a produce seller, a retailer, a chef or the restaurant itself. But his praise often reaching states of ecstasy was a reward worth waiting for. Business always increased, doubling or even tripling profits. Jarvis’ taste was mighty and powerful.

His adventures in food were not solely confined to the table, however. In fact, he more preferred hunting down the raw ingredients that resulted in five star dishes served in Zagat rated eateries. If word reached him of an unsurpassed wine he needed to see, smell and taste the grapes. If he was told of a heavenly dessert of unmatched decadence he wanted to find the trees that bore the fruit, pick one, and taste it right off the branch.

A pear tart would be his undoing. The signature dessert at a little known bistro only insider foodies knew of and supposedly kept secret. No underground cult sensation would be kept from reaching Jarvis for long. If the secret had anything to do with food he could ferret it out better than the best truffle pig in search of mycophiliac wonders. Yes, in a pear tart Jarvis met his match.

Through his network of restaurant worker spies (the kitchen prep staff were his best informers) he soon learned of which orchard supplied the pears for the fabulous dessert and from there he obtained the exact location of the trees that were reserved as the private supply to the bistro’s pastry chef. Any attempt to cajole and flatter, however, fell on unimpressionable ears. Jarvis was barred from visiting the orchard. No one but employees were allowed on the premises.

But rules meant nothing to Jarvis. Once on his quest he was unstoppable, an indefatigable hunter who needed his trophy. His senses fueled him. The promise of fragrant bouquets, the fervent excitement of touching, feeling, groping those pears, and ending in taste sensations one could surely drown in, all culminated into one superhuman power that kept him going. He was going to pick one of those pears himself if he had to climb the highest branch and set it free from its arboreal prison.

Never mind how exactly he got into the orchard. Bribery of a low paid security guard no doubt. The fact is he infiltrated the portion of the orchard that was like a Fort Knox of golden fruit. Equipped only with a flashlight and a pair of heavy duty, fleece lined, gardening gloves he made his way to the select trees.

Imagine his surprise when he saw them stripped bare. Not only were the trees barren of the prize pears none could be found on the ground beneath. It was impossible, yet his eyes did not lie. The harvest was complete. Stubbornly he refused to believe he had been too late. Passing his flashlight over the tops of the branches, muttering a string of foul curses, he was determined to find the last remaining pear. Surely a few were overlooked, maybe one not yet ripe enough allowed a day or so to reach piquant flavor. And then he saw it. One lone pear ignominiously abandoned on the uppermost twigs. He had to have it.

Now athleticism was never Jarvis’ forte. Before you imagine him to be some portly cliché of a glutton let me assure you he had a trim and handsome figure. Good eating will do that for you. But for running, cycling, working out of any fashion Jarvis had no time. The ascent into the tree to reach that treasured pear would be perhaps his greatest challenge. He inhaled to prepare himself and caught on the wafting night breezes the perfume of fruit like none he had smelled before. That was impetus enough.

Grabbing the nearest branch he surprised himself with the execution of a expert flip worthy of any Olympic gymnast. Soon he was making his way through a maze-like cage of gnarled limbs and torturous pricking twigs. The scent of the fruit leading him ever upwards. Just a few more feet, an arm’s length away. Jarvis plucked the pear and held it gingerly in his hand.

Now most of us would pocket that pear and make our way safely back to earth before eating it. Not Jarvis. He was entranced. He and the pear were as one, alone in the universe. The tree ceased to exist. He took in the aroma, fondled its shape, caught the gleam of its skin in the waning moonlight, then took a bite. A light exploded. Jarvis traveled out of himself and was transported to pear Nirvana. It was delectable, dream-like, he savored the mouthful and sank his teeth into the fruit once more.

Then a voice cried out, “What the hell are you doing up there?”

Jarvis startled by the sound, realizing that the explosion of light was not an ecstatic response to the unique flavor of the pear but a powerful searchlight held by some invisible man below, turned suddenly and lost his balance. He came crashing out of pear Nirvana, tumbling through the pricking twigs, scraping his designer suit on the rough bark of the branches and landed with a painful thud on the sodden ground.

The security guard (a more officious and tough one from a different part of the orchard) came over to investigate. He knelt beside Jarvis and asked if he was all right. He was curious to find out why this well dressed guy was in a pear tree at 2:30 in the morning. While officious and unbribable he was also kind and wanted to know if Jarvis was injured.

All he heard was one word from the orchard’s trespasser. “Divine.” And with the last brief taste still lingering on his lips and quiet smile on his face Jarvis Angelica took one last trip to pear Nirvana and never returned.

UK Edition (Heinemann, 1969)

Despite its exotic and desert landscape filled setting of Tunisia The Tremor of Forgery (1969) covers some familiar territory for Patricia Highsmith. There is the usual assortment of strangers befriended by a somewhat dull American, some overt and covert homoeroticism in male friendships, and perhaps most importantly her obsession with duality be it in personality, cultural mores, or political viewpoints. Howard Ingham, the American protagonist, is also a writer. This strong theme of duality is carried through in the title, also the title of a novel Ingham is writing about a banker who is secretly embezzling funds from his employer. Crime will play a role in Ingham's life just as it does with Dennison, his own protagonist, but it is a murky and ambiguous world that Ingham inhabits. We know that Dennison is a criminal and thief; we never know if Ingham is one though it is strongly hinted he may have killed a man.

Perhaps the most subtle and insidious of her novels The Tremor of Forgery is unusual in how it incorporates criminal behavior into its supposedly simple plot. There are burglaries, thefts, attacks on a dog, one violent death most definitely a murder, and another possible murder. Though crime is present it is a shadow world of ambiguous and puzzling events; mixed perceptions and eyewitness accounts contradict one another throughout the action. We never know whose viewpoint we are to believe -- even that of our ostensibly innocent hero.

Yet crime is not Highsmith's primary concern here. This novel is a study in cultural and political disparity and their effect on visiting long term residents in a foreign country. It is also, strangely, something of a treatise on love. Besides The Price of Salt, I have never encountered in a Highsmith novel more discussions about love in all its forms, from platonic friendship to erotic desire, than I have in The Tremor of Forgery.

US Edition (Doubleday, 1969)

Highsmith's reputation rests largely on her development of what everyone likes to call noir these days - the dark crime novel that explores base motives, criminal impetus and the ugly side of human nature. Ironically, while exploring all these aspects of a noir novel The Tremor of Forgery turns out to be Highsmith's most life affirming and positive work. Even its slightly ambiguous ending is one I would classify as a happily ever after type.

Ingham is in Tunisia at the request of a film director friend who has commissioned the writer to pen the screenplay of a movie he wants to set in Tunisia. But the screenplay is soon abandoned when the director dies suddenly under suspicious circumstances. Ina, Howard Ingham's one time lover, eventually communicates with him via letter to explain the sudden death in a roundabout and vague way. Ingham can't decide whether to return home or remain in Tunisia largely due to the curious and sporadic letters he receives from Ina. Each time he writes he pours out his love to her, but she takes her sweet time replying to his letters. She must be prodded to tell the whole story of John Castlewood's death after Ingham's repeated urgings. One begins to suspect that Ina is complicit in what at first is described as an accident and then a suicide.

In the meantime Ingham toils away on his typewriter turning out page after page of his novel about the duplicitous banker. He is befriended by two men. The first is the overly friendly Francis Adams whose sunny personality masks a political and religious zealotry that will reveal him to be a bigot of the worst sort. The other is the artist Anders Jensen visiting from his native Denmark and making the most of his penchant for sleeping with Arab boys while attempting to bed Howard as well. Jensen has a dog named Hasso that will also play an important part in the story. Jensen tells stories of some attacks of cruelty on Hasso and when the dog suddenly goes missing he fears the worst.

A younger and happier Patricia Highsmith

Since living in Tunisia Ingham has found himself influenced by the apparent lawlessness and amorality of the Arabs he meets. He tells Ina "...if one is robbed five or six times, there might be an impulse to rob back, don’t you think? The one who doesn't rob, or cheat a little in business deals, some comes out in the short end, if everybody else is cheating." Even his discovery of a dead man in the street at night changes him. He finds it unnecessary to report the body and his indifference has dire consequences later when he attacks someone who he thinks is trying to break into his bungalow. Once again he does nothing but discuss the events in a rather vague manner with his true friend and confidante, Jensen, just as Ina danced around Castlewood's death (more duality). But Adams somehow gets word of the attack and begins to suspect that Ingham is trying to cover up the murder of a local thief and outcast who has recently vanished. Adams then shares his thoughts with Ina thus turning her visit from one of a reunion with her lover to one of suspicion, mistrust and betrayal.

The novel unfolds at what some might call a glacial pace. But it is fitting for this languorous story of developing friendships, reconnections, epiphanies and -- yes -- contentment and happiness found at long last. In the final pages Highsmith has a few surprises in store, some of which have been called ambiguous by other reviewers and critics. On closer reading of the subtle clues she drops the unanswered questions all become clearer. The mysterious disappearance of the Arabian thief is suddenly not so mysterious and Ingham may not be the bad man he thinks himself to be. He ends up leaving Tunisia with one final letter in hand, overdue from seemingly endless forwarding, that leads me to believe that he will go on to find the love he had been searching for throughout the book.

If it hadn't been for an unmentionable book by a writer known only by his initials Harriette Ashbrook might never have become a mystery writer. Just as Agatha Christie was inspired to pen her first novel by reading a poorly written detective novel Ashbrook in a newspaper interview done in 1933 confessed, "I owe it all to T.S. Fine literary style is discouraging to the beginner. It's better to read a terrible piece of tripe and get encouraged." Whatever that book and whoever T.S. might be we have to thank him for the creation of Ashbrook's ne'er-do-well amateur detective Philip "Spike" Tracy.

We first meet Spike Tracy in The Murder of Cecily Thane (1930) and he's a near twin of Philo Vance, who at the time had only appeared in five books. Tracy has got a playboy's philosophy of life, appears to be utterly hedonistic, has no job, and thinks becoming an amateur sleuth might be rather fun. The main difference between Ashbrook's detective and her obvious inspiration is while Vance loves to lecture ostentatiously on esoteric topics like Chinese pottery and ancient Egyptian burial rites Tracy is more down to earth, keenly observant but also a smart aleck. Tracy notices things the police overlook and enjoys pointing out their faults without ever appearing snobbish or patronizing as Vance often is.

Tracy has a brother who is the Manhattan District Attorney. R. Montgomery Tracy is his professional name as it is painted on his New York office door. The R stands for Richard and thankfully he doesn't go by Dick. As Vance has Markham and Sgt. Healy and Ellery Queen deals with a D.A. and his policeman father Tracy is paired with his brother and Inspector Henschmann. For good measure Ashbrook supplies a medical examiner bored with his job who displays the requisite black humor when examining the many corpses that turn up in the series.

...Cecily Thane is fairly traditional compared to Ashbrooks' later novels featuring Spike Tracy. The victim is the unliked young wife of an older man who allowed her to go out regularly with a "dancer" named Tommy Spencer. Mrs. Thane is found shot in her bedroom with a safe open and robbed of jewels. Turns out another woman was robbed and killed earlier and she too was seen in the company of a dancing gigolo named William Preston. Is there a criminal gang of male escorts turned thieves and murderers?

There are some unusual aspects to the criminal investigation like the search for the murder weapon which was disposed of in an odd manner and turns up in a most unlikely place. Also, a blotting paper clue is reproduced in the book and allows the reader to hold it up to a mirror in order to read the message thus getting a feeling of joining Tracy in his sleuthing. But the cleverest part is that the entire crime hinges on an altered timepiece. Ashbrook's insightful observations about the difference between actual time and perceived time make for one of the more modern features of the story.

She followed her debut with The Murder of Steven Kester (1931) which fans of obscure B movies may know in its cinematic adaptation known as Green Eyes. The movie turns up all over the internet these days as it was released by one of the bargain basement video outfits that churned out hundreds of DVD cheapies of movies now in the public domain. A murder takes place during a masquerade party held at the Long Island mansion of the title character. Kester is dressed as Bottom (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) complete with donkey's head. Tracy comes as a gladiator in an abbreviated costume consisting only of a tigerskin loincloth. When he goes in search of a safety pin in order to prevent an accidental charge of public indecency he stumbles upon the corpse. Ashbrook's offbeat sense of humor and her tendency to be a bit risqué is on flamboyant display in this book. Like many scenes added for comic effect in her books seemingly insignificant minutiae will take on greater importance when the crime is fully explained.

Her plotting is original but her execution is sometimes faulty. There are some great clues like the evidence of something having been destroyed in the furnace of the Kester home, a suspect's past life as an actress, and a pair of dice that turn up during a scene involving an ostensibly extraneous crap game -- yet another "big clue" disguised in a scene of minutiae that helps Tracy solve the murder. But while the reader is presented with all of this Tracy still withholds some important data. Too much offstage action in this story for my tastes, too many scenes when Tracy goes away and we have no idea what he does until pages later in the denouement.

Ashbrook starts to experiment with unusual themes in her next two books. In one book she touches on abnormal psychology and uses some groundbreaking research in a rather daring surprise reveal while the other gives her a chance to discuss the lonely life of World War 1 veterans, their often tortured lives, and the private demons they must learn to deal with back home far from the brutality of the front.

The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933) shows considerable improvement from her first two detective novels. Tracy is on his own in this outing which takes him to the backcountry of Vermont. Ashbrook does an excellent job with misdirection and even manages to include an impossible disappearance. For the 1930s this was probably an astonishing mystery with a gasp inducing, surprise ending. It deals with twin sisters -- Mary, a bedridden invalid, and Jill, an extroverted, highly sexual young woman. Jill believes there is a plot to kill her. She enlists Tracy's aid to prevent her impending murder at the hands of her oppressive and odious guardian and his nurse, but the old man turns up dead first. And Jill is discovered standing over his body with the bloody weapon in her hand.

Though it may all become rather obvious to the 21st century reader Ashbrook must be commended for handling a topic rarely used in detective fiction of the 1930s. A rural Vermont sheriff mentions a well known Victorian novel in the final pages, perhaps the only familiar reference on the topic to a reader of Ashbrook's time. She handles the topic fairly well for a device that is now an overused trick in thriller and mystery fiction. I like ...Sigurd Sharon for its daring invention and its subversive depiction of a sexually free female character.

The theft of a valuable stamp collection, several murders and a handful of attempted murders are at the core of the elaborately constructed A Most Immoral Murder (1935). Tracy is back in Manhattan with the usual supporting characters from the police and D.A.'s office. He also makes frequent trips to New Jersey, notably the fictitious town of West Albion where a secret in the past is revealed to have a connection to the murders and the stamp collection theft. Ashbrook uses a murder investigation to draw comparison between wartime killing and murder in civilian life and has some very strong opinions about each and the effect killing has on soldiers. I found it to be her most mature work even if the plot gets a bit creaky with some old fashioned tropes involving adopted children that seem borrowed from Victorian sensation novels. The unfolding of events, however, is impressively done. The large cast of well drawn characters holds the reader's interest with the stamp expert being the most memorable of the lot.

Harriette Ashbrook wrote only seven novels using her real name then handful more under the pseudonym "Susannah Shane." The Shane novels are a blend of Mignon Eberhart style "women in peril" thrillers and all-out farcical comic crime novels like the work of Phoebe Atwood Taylor and Craig Rice. I prefer her work under her own name.

These days Spike Tracy is utterly forgotten. Sadly, so too is Harriette Ashbrook. I'd recommend tracking down any of her books -- they're entertaining, sometimes devious, and often very original for the time they were written. Spike Tracy was one of the better Vance impersonators but a lot more likable. As Ashbrook says of her own creation, "He's the kind of man I wish I could meet in real life."

Philip "Spike" Tracy Detective Novels
The Murder of Cicely Thane (1930)
The Murder of Stephen Kester (1931)
The Murder of Sigurd Sharon (1933)
A Most Immoral Murder (1935)
Murder Makes Murder (1937)
Murder Comes Back (1940)
The Purple Onion Mystery (1941) (AKA Murder on Friday)

Though Rupert Penny only wrote a handful of books, all published by the esteemed Collins Crime Club, not a single one of his books was published in the United States during his lifetime. It took the ingenuity of Fender Tucker and Gavin O'Keefe, those very busy men over at Ramble House, to resurrect these fiendishly clever, often preposterous, and genuinely baffling detective novels and allow American readers an opportunity decades overdue to read them. Policeman's Holiday (1937) is the second of only eight novels featuirng the "talkative policeman" Inspector Beale and his Watson of sorts the financial reporter Tony Purdon. And it's one of the strangest detective novels I've read in a long while.

Rupert Penny is the adopted pseudonym of Ernest Basil Charles Thornett, a newspaper writer and cruciverbalist when he wasn't concocting incredibly complicated murder mystery plots. In Policeman's Holiday he decided to combine his two passions -- detective novels and crossword puzzles, or more accurately acrostics. The murder victim Bernard Pommery is a J.P., philanthropist, ex-publisher of novelty magazines and an acrostic enthusiast. His body is found hanging in Dillow Woods several miles from his home. In his pocket is an acrostic puzzle that has not one but two solutions (!) each of them providing the police with clues to the killer's motive and means.

I'll forgo any attempt to summarize the intricate, multi-layered plot. Some readers may complain that this book is saturated in plot, that it's nothing but plot. I wouldn't quibble with that observation, but then there are an entire subset of detective novels that exist solely for the plot and the puzzle. Curt Evans has written about some of the better writers in his book Masters of the Humdrum Mystery. I'd class Rupert Penny with those "humdrums" as well. As a crossword puzzle constructor Thornett would naturally be drawn to writing detective novels in which puzzles and an abundance of enigmatic clues are integral to the story. His former life as a cryptographer in the British secret service no doubt also aided him in his puzzle-making abilities.

Policeman's Holiday is something of a tour de force in that regard. It's hard not to resist the pull of the puzzle from the moment the body is discovered hanging from the beech tree when all appearances say it must a suicide and all reason says it cannot possibly be so. And Thornett's storytelling pulls the reader just as an expert angler knows how to pick the perfect lure. The manner in which Inspector Beale approaches solving the crime is both entertaining and gripping. True to the style of most Golden Age detective novels Policeman's Holiday is also gussied up with maps and diagrams, including one that shows how nearly impossible it was for the victim to have committed suicide.

The pièce de résistance of Rupert Penny's detective novels is his gimmick of the "Interlude." Occurring a few chapters from the end these breaks in the narrative are similar to Ellery Queen's "Challenge to the Reader" in which the reader is asked to pause, mull over the story, sift through the clues and toss out the red herrings, and come up with his solution before turning the page and reading the actual revelation of the murderer. Just as with Queen a Penny "Interlude" is akin to a medieval knight tossing down his gauntlet. You're in for a real battle, albeit a battle of wits if you dare to take up the gauntlet and attempt to figure out the solution of a Rupert Penny mystery. I've failed three times so far. And as for that acrostic -- I managed to figure out one of the eight diabolically clued lights. I'd be willing to bet a wad of money that no one will be able to get both solutions to that particular puzzle.

Rupert Penny as he appears on the rear DJ
of a Collins Crime Club edition

Rupert Penny's Detective Novels
The Talkative Policeman (1936)
Policeman's Holiday (1937)
Policeman in Armour (1937)
The Lucky Policeman (1938)
Policeman's Evidence (1938)
She Had To Have Gas (1939)
Sweet Poison (1940)
Sealed Room Murder (1941)

As "Martin Tanner"
Cut and Run (1941)

"Never say Nevermore!"

At long last I can formally announce my involvement with the new independent publisher Raven's Head Press. Our first book -- reviewed here back in March -- is The Starkenden Quest by Gilbert Collins. Plans are to reissue adventure, crime and supernatural fiction that exemplify the kind of gripping and exciting stories published in the long gone pulp magazines and the vintage paperback imprints like Dell Mapbacks and Gold Medal. Future titles being discussed include many books previously reviewed here at Pretty Sinister Books which garnered a lot of interest from you lovely readers in your comments.

We are currently looking at books by Dorothy B. Hughes, Ramona Stewart, Lionel White, Hugh Wheeler (aka Patrick Quentin and Q Patrick), Samuel Taylor and Walter Van Tillburg Clark. We are also in negotiations to obtain exclusive American reprint rights for the reissue of the books of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. An idea to create a Kickstarter campaign to help bring about this coup is also being considered.

Each reissue will have an informative introduction by yours truly. For The Starkenden Quest I did extensive research on the work of Gilbert Collins and uncovered an unusual event that might explain the reason his writing career was so short. Additionally, we were lucky enough to get permission to include the original Virgil Finlay illustrations that accompanied the Famous Fantastic Mystery pulp magazine reprint. The book is really a handsome edition. I'm proud to have been a part in freeing it from the Limbo of Out-of-Printdom and placing it back into the hands of modern readers.

I have two copies of The Starkenden Quest I am offering for free in one of the first giveaways to celebrate our first book at Raven's Head Press. All you need to do is leave a comment below and give me the name of a writer or book you've longed to see back in print. On Thursday, October 17 I'll take all the comments, throw them in a hat, and randomly select two winners. And if you like autographed books I can even scribble my name inside for you. Winner's choice, of course. Maybe you'll want your copy unsullied and pristine.

The Starkenden Quest is now available for purchase via amazon.com on this page. All future titles will also be available via amazon. For more information about what Raven's Head Press has planned please visit our website.

"Never say Nevermore" is our motto. Good books shouldn't disappear into Limbo and be forgotten. We hope to bring a lot of forgotten books of out the past and into the present for a generation of new readers, and hopefully beyond.

* * *

GIVEAWAY IS OVER. COMMENTS ARE CLOSED.

Thanks to all who participated!

Though I am reluctant to reveal the unusual process by which the winners were selected at random (a pasta bowl was involved and I will say no more) I am nonetheless happy to announce the winners of the two free copies of The Starkenden Quest are:

1. "Manfred Arcane" - who coincidentally is a lost race fan! (Seriously, his name was truly pulled out at random)

2. "Level 1 Homemaker" - I only wish it were a copy of a Clifford Witting novel I could give you

Please send me an email by clicking here and tell me your name and mailing address. You might also tell me if you would like me to autograph the book.

Thanks so much to all those who left comments. I was overjoyed by the many responses and the hearty well wishes. Thanks also to Jeff Pierce who gave me an extra boost when he linked to my post over at The Rap Sheet, his stellar and informative crime fiction blog.

You might be interested to know that in the short three year history of this blog the Raven's Head Press announcement garnered the most comments out of all my posts. Yes, all posts over a three year period! Was that because free books were involved? Hmm... Michael Hudson and I thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.

Onward and upward!

Christina Mordant cannot enter a church without getting ill. The very smell of a chapel is enough to make her nauseated. Animals shy away from her and growl for apparently no reason when she walks by. When night falls her usual polite and timid demeanor gives way to an indulgent and hedonistic personality that is more cruel than kind. What is going on with this young woman who has been abandoned by her father and left to fend for herself in a small house in the south of France?

Long before The Exorcist almost single handedly was responsible for an explosion of suspense novels and thrillers about demonic possession there was To the Devil--a Daughter (1953) Dennis Wheatley's first book to deal with the supernatural phenomenon. He handles the subject matter less luridly than those more familiar books of the 1970s displaying his usual staunch occult beliefs and a detailed look at Black Magic rituals. It's all wrapped up in a fast moving adventure novel that outdoes much of what is found in the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s.

To the Devil -- a Daughter is one of Wheatley's later novels incorporating his fascination with all things occult. Because it was written in the 1950s the Satanists turn out to be a bunch of dirty Commies not Nazis, his usual target for villainous evil.

Wheatley has a kind of Ann Coulter rant he lets loose early in the book outlining his ideas about all things evil:

Now that more than half the people in the world have become godless, they have also become rudderless. Once they have put away from themselves the idea of the hereafter they think only of their own selfish ends of the moment. That leaves them easy prey to unscrupulous politicians. Before they know where they are, they find themselves robbed of all personal freedom; their family life, which is their last tie with their better instincts, is broken up, and their children are taken form them, to be educated into robots lacking all individuality. That is what nearly happened in Nazi Germany and what has happened in Russia; and if that is not the state of things that Satan would like to see everywhere, tell me what is?

The story is pretty much a by the numbers pursuit adventure story with a smattering of witchcraft and black magic to spice up the usual fist fights, kidnappings and other derring do. Wheatley has a real gift for making the most cliche adventure set piece come alive with genuine excitement and suspense. The scene where Molly Fountain's son John, the over confident hero, manages to get aboard the villain's yacht, subdue a bad guy and make his way to rescue Christina, the imperiled heroine is a great example of taking the standard potboiler action sequence and enlivening it with character traits that humanize both the good guys and bad guys. John is flawed, not a superman and acts with a trace of guilt always thinking of the consequences of committing murder. (At the time the guillotine was still the death sentence for capital crimes in France.) The bad guys are devilishly smart not stupid. And Canon Copely-Syle, a corrupt clerical figure intent on attaining "Oneness with God," outshines any of the wicked sorcerers and occultists created by Sax Rohmer. Wheatley was probably one of the first writers to take the conventions of pulp thrillers with their over-the-top action and superhuman heroes and make them more believable and realistic.

From the very first sentence ("Molly Fountain was now convinced that a more intriguing mystery than the one she was writing surrounded the solitary occupant of the house next door") the reader knows this is a book that will tell a gripping story. The manner in which Wheatley unveils the secret life of Christina, how thriller writer Molly Fountain slowly puts together the pieces, and the discovery of the mysterious plot behind Christina's strange exile in the French Riviera and her instructions to talk to no one of her past are all masterfully executed. The story is everything here and it is easy to forgive the frequent lapses into ultra-conservative political tirades like the one previously quoted.

Bloomsbury has purchased the reprint rights for all of Dennis Wheatley's novels. All of them will be available in eBook format with a select few also released in paperback. The first few have already been released and To the Devil--a Daughter is one of three titles that will be released in both formats. The other paperback editions released this month are The Forbidden Territory (Wheatley's first novel soon to be reviewed here) and the classic black magic thriller and one of Wheatley's truly excellent books The Devil Rides Out. Click here to read more about Bloomsbury's Dennis Wheatley reprints in both paperback and digital editions.

A movie adaptation (very loosely adapted) of To the Devil--a Daughter was done in 1976. It was the last of Hammer Horror movies and starred veteran Hammer actor Christopher Lee as an excommunicated priest bent on world domination. It's nothing at all like the book and Wheatley hated it. He even called it obscene! Now that's strong criticism coming from a secret sadist.

Case of the Laughing Virgin - Jonathan Craig

IN BRIEF: The Death Pool - Vernon Loder

FFB: Blues for the Prince - Bart Spicer

SUMMER PHOTOS: Alien Visitation and High Trestle Trail

VIDEO: Water's Edge - Robert Bloch

FFB: The Dogs Do Bark - Jonathan Stagge

LEFT INSIDE: Smith & Wesson Advertisement

FFB: Powers of Darkness - Robert Aickman

FFB: Space Opera - Jack Vance

FFB: The Eighth Square - Herbert Lieberman

FFB: The Crippled Muse - Hugh Wheeler

Late Summer Hiatus

FFB: They Can't Hang Me - James Ronald

FLASH FICTION: A Taste of Temptation

FFB: The Tremor of Forgery - Patricia Highsmith

FFB: The Detective Novels of Harriette Ashbrook

FFB: Policeman's Holiday - Rupert Penny

Raven's Head Press Takes Flight

Winners of the Raven's Head Press Giveaway

FFB: To the Devil -- a Daughter - Dennis Wheatley