FFB: The Man Who Didn't Exist - Geoffrey Homes

THE STORY: Robin Bishop, California newsman, stumbles across a sport coat left on the beach late one night. Pinned to the jacket is a note that seems to indicate the owner of the coat committed suicide. It's signed by Zenophen Zwick, a famous bestselling mystery writer whose true identity has been kept hidden from the public. Intrigued by this mystery and emboldened by a newspaper clipping, also found in the jacket, that teases about five possible men who might really be the mystery writer Bishop sets out to find the truth about Zwick, who he is, and what might have happened to him. Is it all a publicity stunt? Did he kill himself by walking into the ocean? Or did something far more sinister happen to the mystery writer?

THE CHARACTERS: From the very first page The Man Who Didn't Exist (1937) is engaging and not just because of the double whammy mystery related to Zwick's body disappearing and his true identity, but due to the well drawn cast of oddball creative types. The newspaper clipping found in Zwick's jacket mentions five possible men who could be the mystery writer and they include a poet with hardly any sales, a painter of "headless and feetless nudes", a playwright, and a novelist presumed to have died after falling off a cliff. Bishop meets and interviews each of the still living men several of whom reside in the same apartment building (see the rear cover of the Dell Mapback below). Over the course of his Q&A he uncovers even more mysteries and more deaths occur that might never have occurred had he not decided to seek headline grabbing news. His guilt is apparent and pervades the novel at key moments lending an unexpected gravitas to the proceedings not often encountered in the genre. Most amateur sleuths of this era are more keen on arriving at the solution, naming the murderer and being praised for being clever rather than agonizing over the people who died, pondering the what ifs, and owning up to responsibility for violence that might never have been. Homes also has a flair for crisp, crackling dialogue which he later honed to a sharp edge while working as a story and screenwriter in the movie and TV industry from the mid 1940s through the 1960s.

INNOVATIONS: Unique to Homes' series about Bishop, one of the many reporter sleuths in America's Golden Age of mystery fiction, is the reporters are much more adept at detective work than the police. Bishop, his cohort Guy Barton, and even a rival reporter from the Express do 90% of the detective work in this book. Another 10% comes from Bishop's wife Mary who does some literary sleuthing and comes up with proof of which of the five men wrote the mystery novels as Zwick. The police do next to nothing except bluster and scream at the reporters for meddling in their affairs. What is most intriguing is the deal making that goes on. Bishop, as well as Brennan from the Express, get permission to grill suspects, visit crime scenes, and collect evidence for the police only in order to scoop each other with headline stories while making sure that the police get all the credit in print. It's amusing to watch the pompous and nearly incompetent Chief Hallam Taylor contradict himself each time new evidence is presented and new stories are published in the rival papers. Often he hasn't seen the paper in time to comment and must take his cues from the ever present journalists.

Despite the multiple Q&A sequences the story is never static. It's involved and heavy on action. Many of the action scenes seem like cinematic set pieces like a high speed getaway with Mary at the wheel of the car after Bishop has been forced to beat up a cop in order to escape from a storage closet in the basement of the murder scene. Neither overly complex nor convoluted this is a well told, gripping mystery novel with several clever tricks and plot gimmicks. One of those tricks seems almost like an impossible crime in that one of the murder victims was shot and yet none of the suspects in the building could have been able to pull the trigger when the gunshots were heard as they were in the presence of witnesses who saw no gun.

THE AUTHOR: Unlike his creation Zenophen Zwick there is no mystery as to the identity of mystery writer Geoffrey Homes. He was Daniel Mainwaring who like Robin Bishop began his career as a newspaper reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle then slowly transformed himself into short story writer, novelist and script writer for radio, movies and eventually TV. Mainwaring is probably best known for writing the crime novel Build My Gallows High (1946) which became the ultimate noir film, Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum and his then wife Jane Greer. With the success of that one film Mainwaring turned solely to Hollywood for his income. His scriptwriting career outlasted his life as a crime novelist with numerous contributions as screen adapter of his own novels, well over twenty original screenplays, and a handful of episodes for popular 60s TV shows like Cimarron Strip, The Wild, Wild West and Mannix.

QUOTES: Normally I quote from the book, but I thought this was a lot more interesting as it comes straight from the author:

"First I had a detective named Robin Bishop, and I got sick of him. Bishop got married and then got awfully soft, and I got fed up with him. I changed to Humphrey Campbell, who was a tougher one. With Build My Gallows High I wanted to get away from straight mystery novels. Those detective stories are a bore to write. You've got to figure out 'whodunit'. I'd get to the end and have to say whodunit and be so mixed up I couldn't decide myself." (from an interview by Pat McGilligan)

EASY TO FIND? Looks fairly good in the online used book market, but prices are all over the place. Oddly, the Dell Mapback is extremely scarce while multiple copies of the original Morrow hardcover are offered for sale. Of course, once the hardcover has an original DJ then the price is going to be higher. If you're in the mood to own a nearly pristine copy and have a spare $750 you can own a lovely copy of the first edition with a DJ. Otherwise, based on condition, prices range from $15 to $200+ for a hardcover and $18 to $30 for the paperback. I found no UK editions of this title for sale online., but there is one Spanish translated edition from a dealer in Bilbao for a mere seven bucks. But their shipping fee from Spain is a little under $30. (?!) Best deal I found was a Dell Mapback on eBay for $24.99. Pricey for a Mapback, I think, but it looks to be in much better shape than my beat up, water stained Mapback.

Of the few Robin Bishop Books I've read I enjoyed this one the most. Coming soon a look at the Homes' milk drinking private eye Humphrey Campbell and his shady, very corrupt boss Oscar Morgan.

Geoffrey Homes & the Reporter Sleuth

The Man Who Murdered Himself (1936) - Geoffrey Homes

Reporters make good detectives. Well versed in the five Ws of fundamental journalism, armed with sharp wit, innate curiosity, and usually gifted with manipulative interviewing skills they are a natural choice for a mystery writer's protagonist. Add a sarcastic sense of humor, a jaded outlook on life, and a mistrust of humanity in general and you've got the makings for the prototype of a private eye. Although one of the earliest reporter detectives is Joseph Rouletabille created by Gaston Leroux back at the turn of the 20th century, the journalist sleuth is a typically American choice of hero for crime writers. There's Kent Murdock and Flash Casey (both reporter/photographers); the numerous reporter heroes in the wacky novels of Harry Stephen Keeler; the newspapermen (both editors and reporters) in Fredric Brown's books; an entire library full of the Phoenix Press mystery novels, a publishing house that seemed to require that the lead character be a reporter detective. Geoffrey Homes' (in reality Daniel Mainwaring, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter himself) contribution to this popular type of fictional detective is the one-time alcoholic journalist turned private eye Robin Bishop.

Bishop's first case is an involved tale of multiple missing persons that leads to the discovery of multiple dead bodies. His employer, Oscar Morgan, runs a private detective agency that specializes in missing persons and Morgan selects the most financially rewarding cases by scanning the local newspapers and keeping a eye out for life insurance policies with large pay outs. At the start of the story Morgan proposes to Bishop that they go after the missing brother of a recent apparent murder victim.

Allen Hastings, an unemployed pilot is found drowned in a reservoir. He has also been shot in the abdomen. Broken chair and bloodstained walls in his kitchen indicate a struggle there. A .32 caliber bullet is pulled out of the living room wall. Smart aleck and lazy cops assigned to the Hastings murder find a way to manipulate the coroner's inquest jury to return a verdict of suicide. The newspapers rage at the cops. Next day, in retaliation for the absurdity of the inquest findings the papers are calling Hastings "The Man Who Murdered Himself."

Hastings has a brother, Robert, who the police can't locate. He's the sole heir to a $20,000 life insurance policy. Morgan figures he and Bishop should track down Robert, give him the good and bad news, and maybe they will get a cut of the insurance money. This is the standard operating procedure at Morgan & Company. Bishop agrees to start the search for Hastings by visiting his brother's rooming house. In the basement he finds a trunk and when the landlady is distracted by a phone call which takes her back upstairs he manages to steal the trunk, load it into his ca,r and take off. Inside the trunk he finds a cache of hidden letters - the first piece of evidence that will take him on a wild chase throughout southern California as he unearths secret after secret in the two Hastings brothers' lives.

Homes depicts the police in this book as lazy, irresponsible dullards. They simply don't want to do any investigating. If the case has even the slightest appearance of an accident or suicide they'll do their best to monkey with the evidence to close the case so that it is never treated as a murder. It is Bishop and a fellow reporter, Guy Bentley, who do all the real work. There are several scenes where the reporters badger the police, show them up at their own game, reveal that they have more evidence than the police (they usually hit the crime scenes first and steal the evidence), and pretty much make the police look like a bunch of fools. Bentley even boasts that he found one of the missing people in the morgue. The chief of police shoots him down by saying "You found Raymond Harris in the morgue" (an alias for the true identity of the dead body). Splitting hairs, to be sure, and a feeble attempt by the police to save face.

Homes has a laconic style, serves up a fast paced action based story, and is most adept at creating dialog that sings with realism and wit. The story gets very involved and hints at the convoluted noir masterpiece that would be his final novel Build My Gallows High, later turned into a classic film noir Out of the Past. The plot machinations involving two different life insurance policies are almost unnecessary because in the end they are nothing but red herrings. The solution and the identity of the killer do come as a big surprise but we learn everything second hand in a lengthy monologue from Bishop who tells of his findings to Bentley and Mary, the secretary at Morgan & company.

I'll be reviewing the rest of the Robin Bishop books in the coming weeks. This is a short series and I'm interested in reading them in order to see how Homes continues his views on reporters whom he purports to be better at detective work that actual police detectives. For a book written in 1936 it's one of the best of the semi-tough subgenre of the hardboiled school (I think some call it soft-boiled, but that's too evocative of diner food to me). More smarts here than brawn. Maybe the witty wordplay and verbal sparring give way to more physical fighting later in the series. But to be sure this was a most promising debut of one of the best of the reporter detectives of the American Golden Age.

Robin Bishop detective novels
(Books reviewed elsewhere on this blog have colored links)
The Man Who Murdered Himself (1936)
The Doctor Died at Dusk (1936)
The Man Who Didn't Exist (1937)
The Man Who Murdered Goliath (1938)
Then There Were Three (1938)
(This last novel introduces Humphrey Campbell,
a milk drinking private eye who replaced Bishop
as Homes' series character.)