Foreign Affairs - Hugh Fleetwood

Paolo Levin, concert pianist living in Rome, is being followed by an emaciated and crippled young man.  He stands outside Paolo's apartment and watches the pianist. For weeks the young man shadows Paolo. He starts to show up dressed exactly like Paolo. After several failed attempts to get the stalker to explain himself the young man speaks: "I wish you would speak in English. I don't understand a damn word of Italian." Everything changes when Paolo tracks the young man to an apartment building in the Via Francesco Crispi. Shortly after the young man enters Paolo knocks on the door. He is taken aback when a young woman answers. Paolo soon discovers this is the young man's sister. From then on the terror truly begins.

What begins as an early stalker novel (before such things dominated crime fiction) soon turns into a devilish tale of control, obsessive love, bizarre torture, and mind games. Paolo is hardly a protagonist we want to root for.  On page one of the novel we discover he is vain man, the first paragraph is devoted to the decor of his apartment which is mostly made up of framed photographs of himself, both clothed and nude. The first pages continue to reveal a deluded and above average musician who while technically proficient is a slouch at artistic expression according to the classical music reviews in Italian newspapers. Nevertheless, Paolo sees himself as a great artist. It's difficult to care about Paolo until he falls under the spell of his stalker and then his sister. But are their intentions truly in Paolo's best interests?  

Though the story is primarily about Paolo he is hardly the most interesting character. Ralph, the 21 year old disabled man, is the more magnetic and fascinating of this doomed duo. Ralph confesses he fell in love with Paolo after watching him play his last concert. Ralph seems to have some kind of psychic connection with Paolo; he knows entirely too much about his private life. Also he cannot help but tell Paolo that he is not a great musician, not quite yet. If Paolo would only give himself over to Ralph and his sister he could make him what he wants to become. What is Paolo willing to give up in order to become that truly great artist?  

While this all plays out the sudden death by suicide of Paolo's friend Christopher haunts the pianist. As Paolo develops a friendship with Maggie, Ralph's sister, and comes to recognize both brother and sister as friends interested in his career Fleetwood drops hints that Christopher's death will connect all three people in a strange pact. In a truly shocking scene Paolo, after a night of carousing, finds himself waking handcuffed to his bed. What follows is one of Fleetwood's signature bizarre scenes of incomprehensible violence and cruelty ending with Paolo making a promise to his captor that will transform his life forever.

Fleetwood successfully subverts all expectations, eschews formula each time the story seems to be fumbling into routine and mundane events. He reverses the reader's sympathies on nearly every other page.  Paolo, at first an arrogant deluded wannabe, becomes a victim one feels empathy for. Ralph is sinister and sociopathic in one section, tender in loving in another. Paolo shifts into a vengeful would-be murderer while both Maggie and Ralph seem to become victims. Maggie at first a kind and sweet girlfriend morphs into a harridan that Paolo ought to abandon all while Ralph once again takes the upper hand. It is never clear whose side we should be on. Are they all at each other's throats plotting and exploiting one another without ever letting on what each of the three truly wants? Each time I thought I had figured out where the story was headed I literally gasped at the reversals and jarring plot pivots.

The blurb on the paperback edition I own quotes a Library Journal review describing this book as "insidiously hypnotizing." That's not hyperbole. When I reviewed Fleetwood's The Girl Who Passed for Normal last year in November I mentioned that the writer had technique in plotting and psychological suspense comparable to the best of Patricia Highsmith. Once again I will raise that worthy comparison. Though at times Foreign Affairs (1974) meanders into repetitive character monologues with obvious revelations Fleetwood will subvert expectations and twist the story around on itself. The climax involving a foot race along a cliffside pathway is truly a spine-tingling sequence that includes such reversals three times in a matter of four paragraphs culminating in a final gasp inducing sentence. It's beyond clever for a crime writer, it's a master stroke of ingenuity. 

There are some bothersome intrusions that threaten to undermine the entire plot like Paolo's antipathy towards marriage rendered in the cliched metaphor that it is a trap that will rob him of his freedom. Paolo's friendship with a superficial American ex-pat, Elaine, who thankfully disappears well before the midpoint is intended as either comic relief or an indication that Paolo can develop close relationships and yet adds little to the real story of the intertwined trio of Paolo, Ralph and Maggie. And the tendency for Ralph and Maggie to deliver lengthy monologues bogged down in reiteration could've been more powerfully conveyed with the help of an editor's blue pencil. 

Fleetwood continually surprises with paradoxical moments in this highly unusual tale of emotional blackmail that ultimately leads to self-discovery. Violence explodes out of tenderness. Lust gives way to devotion which gives way to mutual respect. And if in the end it seems that some form of contentment has been achieved, that love can be a learned behavior, it all comes at a terrible price. Secrets and sacrifices lead to an oddly fulfilled happiness for only two of these three characters who all seemed doomed from the start.

QUOTES:  And suddenly he felt that what was happening no longer concerned him. As if it wasn't he who was threatened, but someone called Paolo who had been invented by the brother and sister. A mere image of Paolo.

Ralph:  "She thinks that if you really got to love the music you played, instead of just yourself playing it --if you really understood what you were playing--then you would start to love her." 

He wanted to laugh. The world was marvelous when greed was the only proof of sincerity.

Maggie:  "[Ralph's] been the whole of my life. In a way he's almost me, and I'm almost him.  But in spite of it -- or because of that" --she hesitated-- "I'd love to be free of him."

He walked along with the cripple on his arm, and felt almost proud of the boy; as if he were leading an obscene bride to a sacrificial pyre.

EASY TO FIND?  Foreign Affairs was reprinted by Valancourt Books several years ago. Used and new copies of this trade paperback reprint are easily obtainable on various bookselling sites. Copies of both hardcover (mostly US editions) and paperback editions (a mix of UK and US) also turn up at the usual used book websites. Happy hunting! 

Feedback - Hugh Miller

THE STORY: Matt Galt, Scottish ex-pat and private detective with a middling business, lives and works in Stratford primarily because he is an aficionado of the Bard. At the start of this novel he is hired by antiques dealer Timothy Barton to discover who has been sneaking rats into his shop.  Galt spends the night in the shop, has a frightening encounter with the vandal and a small army of rats. The next day he delivers the news to Barton. Barton is not satisfied. He tells Galt he knows who is responsible but he needs better proof and that means literally catching the culprit. The case leads Galt into the gay subculture where he meets  a coterie of theater people, antique dealers and two shifty owners of a gay S&M leather shop.  His dogged investigations also lead to the discovery of an ugly white supremacist organization that is harassing immigrants. 

THE CHARACTERS: Galt is described as "43 years old going on 50" on the first page of Feedback (1974).  He also has "delicate long hands of an aesthete and the sallow lined face of a ruined saint." We learn Galt is a "sartorial disaster" who once paid close attention to his grooming and his clothes but "abdicated" his enthusiasm when he "came to realize that he had the kind of body to which good clothes did not take kindly."  Miller's sardonic sense of humor is pervasive as his insistence on pointing out Galt's anti-gay sentiments. Well, loathing is the real word. He uses "abomination" a couple of times in the three page rant that comes early in the book. But Galt will soon find himself confronting all his bigotry and biases when he is forced to role play in order to get information from the many gay men he meets.  Nearly all the gay men he meets are either crooks or con men. They are predatory, vain, arrogant or  patronizing -- most are a combination of several of those negative traits. No surprise, right?

Galt's old pal Bunny McQuaid is a highlight among the supporting characters and appears late in the book. Only 30 years old, blond, athletically built and much more attractive than dumpy and short Matt Galt, Bunny takes advantage of his physique and good looks in luring several of the more dangerous suspects. A scene between the sinister owners of the leather shop morphs from a faux seduction scene to an all-out brawl. There are a few action sequences in the book but this one is probably the best with the most satisfying conclusion.

Being a pop fiction book of the 1970s there of course is the requisite sex scene. Galt runs into his old flame Margaret who though married still has feelings for Galt.  The reader gets to see exactly how strong those feelings are in a two page romp that goes into great detail describing Margaret's body, her orgasm and her apparent ecstasy.  Galt's body, actions and sexual satisfaction are not described at all. No surprise there either.  These type of censored sex scenes written by straight men always made me laugh when I was a teen in the 1970s.  I still find them utterly hilarious.

The most surprising part of the book comes at the midpoint when Kadija, a 12 year-old Indian girl, is seen sitting outside of Galt's office. She reports how her father was struck down by a car and is recovering from severe injuries in a hospital. She wants Galt to get the man who drove the car arrested and put in jail.  Not so easy, he tells her. It's really a matter for the police. But her story touches him and when she pulls a wad of money out of her pocket (all of her savings for the past three months) he refuses to take it.  He promises he will take her case for free.

Galt eventually meets with Maldur Singh, a Sikh who is the community leader for the small group of Indians living in and around Stratford.  The community has been harassed for months and part of the problem is a rat infestation in their homes and businesses.  Singh cannot understand where so many came form because he knows that the people who live there are meticulously cleaning all the time.  Galt begins to see a connection between the racist organization and the rat problem at Barton's antique shop.  The same person, he figures, must be involved, possibly linked to the organization. It all smells like a conspiracy with the racists behind it all and the end result the complete eradication of the Indian immigrants.

INNOVATIONS: One of Galt's biggest clues is a photograph of three men he steals from Barton's antique shop.  He find it by accident the night of the rat battle when an antique mug falls off a table.  The photo depicts Barton on his knees in front of two naked men displaying themselves. A souvenir of some erotic night of debauchery, Galt figures. But he vaguely recalls seeing the face of one of the naked men. He pockets the photo and shows it to several men and two women over the course of the book. Both naked men will eventually be identified by name and profession, both will figure prominently later in the book especially in the violent finale. 

One of the most original bits of detective work involves Galt's highly developed sense of smell. While doing battle with the mysterious rat vandal and the army of rodents Galt smelled a strange cologne. His memory for that unique scent haunts him and he wants to identify it. He thinks it must be a custom made cologne which he describes as redolent of "dahlias, but heavy, verging on decay."  While attending a play he catches a whiff of the cologne while buying a drink at the theater's bar.  He approaches Dominic Treadworthy, a voice and diction teacher, and starts talking to him about his cologne. Through flattery and elaborate lies Galt discovers that the custom cologne, Gilead Oil, is available only in one place -- a leather shop specializing in S&M costumes and equipment.  The two men who own the store keep popping up in this case. Coincidences and chance are also a running motif in the plot.

I also liked a scene where Galt picks up a prostitute and then reveals he's not interested in sex at all.  Essentially he blackmails her into revealing information on her clients. It is during this scene that Galt learns of the names of the owners of the S&M shop and that Harry Caine, the older nastier man of the two and a pansexual of sorts who will have sex with anyone, has the bizarre hobby of breeding domesticated rats. Rose, the prostitute, begins dishing the dirt not so much out of fear of what Galt will do if she doens't talk, but because she hates the men who run the shop. Anything she can do to bring about their ruin will give her perverse pleasure.

Ultimately, despite the offbeat humor and the likeable personalities of Bunny and Matt Galt, Feedback is a bleak crime novel. For a long time I realized there was no murder. But then... the novel can end only one way. Violent fights, cruel beating and murder finally rears its ugly head. Then comes the saddest of revelations in the final pages. Yes, the villains (all of them reprehensible people and not for their sexual orientation) get their comeuppance. The consequences of all their devilry and cruelty leave lingering scars for several characters. Feedback ends with one of the most downbeat final paragraphs in any book I've read this year. 

QUOTES:  Timothy reveals he is a con artist and he fakes the age of certain ornamental items by battering them in a convoluted manner and then selling them as antiques. When confronted with his fraud he rationalizes: "I'm not the only one who does it, you know. It's a long established practice." Matt nodded. "So is child beating, but I haven't heard anyone try to pass that off as an honourable tradition. Christ."

One day he would have real office with proper heating and decent decor. And one day, he thought wryly...a couple of pigs would go flying past the window.

[Galt] knew without the benefit of a mirror to check, that his dignified, serious face was radiating absolute conviction. A gentlemen to his rubber soles, even if he did come from Glasgow.

If anybody knew that paperwork and questions were the way things got done in England it was an immigrant.

Somewhere, underneath the tendencies and perversions, was there maybe a simply, howling human soul, crying for some clean air, some ordinary decency?

THE AUTHOR:  Hugh Miller (1937 - ) was born in Wishaw, Scotland and now lives in Warwick, England. Apparently he's still alive as I could not locate an obituary. Miller began his novelist’s career in 1973 with New English Library, a British publisher of mass market paperbacks mostly originals. His first crime novel, The Drop Out, was followed quickly by five more in 1974.  Feedback, his third crime novel is his also first private eye novel. He also wrote crime fiction under the pen names John Watts and John Warwick.  

In addition to crime novels Miller wrote a romantic fiction series set in the 1920s-1930s about a nurse, nine biographies of British stage magicians, books on magic and mentalism, and several non-fiction books on forensic medicine. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Miller made his living writing TV tie-ins based on UK TV series, including Eastenders, Ballykissangel and Touching Evil. He returned to crime fiction in1990 with a trio of crime novels about his only series character Det-Insp. Mike Fletcher.

I found an apparently self-written, tongue-in-cheek biography at Lybrary, an online website devoted to selling books on magic, mentalism, sleight of hand, and gambling. Miller had a variety of unusual jobs all of which seem to have popped up in his fiction. Here's the bio he wrote:

Born in Scotland at a time when the British still believed Chamberlain was a shrewd operator, Hugh Miller entered adolescence tainted by social lunacy. With the powerful energy generated by Gaelic despair, he hurtled through a formal education and out into a broad variety of activities. Has been a TV film cameraman and stills photographer, a civil servant, an assistant to a police pathologist, a protegee of the famous Dr. John Grierson, an investigator with an international enquiry organisation, author of several books, editor of a magazine and an active student of dishonest gambling. Took up magic to combat a tendency to bite his nails.

NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Prof. Peter Ponsonby - Academic, Mystery Novelist, Amateur Sleuth

When last I wrote of Jean Leslie's professor detective, Peter Ponsonby, several years ago (One Cried Murder) he was faced with the apparent suicide of a psychology professor that turned out to be nasty murder.  He also met his soon-to-be wife Mara Mallory who became his Watson of sorts in two other novels, both of which I have now read.  The second outing, Two Faced Murder (1946), with Peter & Mara is a silly story that seems completely influenced by the madcap murder movies that the "Thin Man" series made such easy targets for imitation.  It began sort of okay with the disappearance of an academic's wife who was straying from her husband into the arms and bed of a dashing British literature professor, a  colleague of Peter's. When the two go on a nighttime search for missing wife Jane, tracing her last known locations, Mara literally stumbles over Jane's dead body in a heavily wooded area near a beach. Then, sadly, the nonsense kicks in. Mara insists they bury the body, Peter complies. Then she insists they mark the burial site. Then she says No! They have to uncover the body. Then they go to the police. I threw in the towel when I got to this exchange of dialogue between Sheriff Amos Schroeder and Peter.

"...how was Jane killed?"

"She's been strangled. Her neck is broken."

"So?" Schroeder gave the information his professional attention. "Not the technique I would have expected, but then," he added modestly, "I'm no great shakes at this crime business."

Not exactly a policemen exuding confidence in his own profession. And then he tells Peter and Mara that they are allowed to conduct their own investigation. Encourages them even! He confesses: "I wouldn't get to first base with the college people. I guess my methods are too crude for them." Too bad, Amos!  That's why you're a cop. How ridiculous for a senior police officer to ask a literature teacher and an academic secretary to conduct a murder investigation simply because they know the college milieu better than he does.  I couldn't read anymore. I shut it and moved onto the third volume hoping for something that approached the noirish mood and plot of her last book (The Intimate Journal of Warren Winslow) which does not feature Peter and Mara.

 

Turns out that the third and final adventure with Professor Ponsonby is the best.  And it mixes all of Jean Leslie's strengths in a story that is for once mature and hard-edged.  Most surprisingly, Three Cornered Murder (194) is thoroughly relevant and resonant for 21st century readers with its exploration of corrupt government, corporate greed and self-interest as the guiding principle of regional government officials more interested in lining their own pockets than listening to the concerns of their citizenry.  I was very glad to read a crime novel that smacked of realism instead of screwball illogic.

 

Peter steps into the central role of detective three days prior to his wedding. Mara -- more worried about the impending rehearsal, the guest list, the catering and other wedding plans -- helps only peripherally. And it is largely due to Pete's solo action as amateur sleuth and expert in fistfights that Three Cornered Murder succeeds so well. Leslie still has fun with witty banter, a seemingly innate talent as it highlights all of her crime fiction, but the focus on a group of thoroughly corrupt council members in a unnamed California town that resembles Santa Monica gives the book a necessary gravitas given the level of crime dominating the somewhat complicated plot.

 

Peter is witness to the shooting murder of city council member "Doc" Lawson, a G.P. whose patient list consists solely of his fellow council members. Lawson was shot while crossing a street and there are multiple witnesses besides Peter. When police arrive someone claims that Peter had a gun and he ought to be searched. Police do so and find a recently fired revolved in his coat pocket. Someone is trying to frame Peter for the murder.  

 

Lawson was involved in a shady gambling operation that is a cover for local government graft. He is also named as the pay-off man for the operation making large cash payments to several of the city council members. Joan Toplitz, wife of a former student of Peter's, is an investigative journalist who has written a book on city corruption and knows the whole scheme. She educates Peter and Mara about what's been going on. As Peter delves into this deeply ingrained graft he learns of a series of accidental deaths of the last seven (!) pay-off men. Joan, her husband "Babe" Scott, Mara and Peter begin to formulate a theory that someone they call Mr. X is behind all these accidents. That for some reason known only to Mr. X the pay-off man must be eliminated. Perhaps, they surmise, they are killed to prevent talking about the gambling operation and the bribery payouts. The plot then focuses on the search for a professional criminal who has masterminded the corruption and payoffs as well orchestrating serial murder disguised as accidental deaths.

 

I thought this story was very well done compared to the other two Ponsonby books. Less lighthearted and truly gritty this third entry often lets loose with merciless violence. One murder elicited a gasp from me for its random cruelty -- an intentional hit-and-run accident, brutal, ruthless, sadistic. That the victim is one of the most lively and likable characters among the supporting cast, Looney Wills — a newsboy barely out of his teen years, adds an unexpected level of poignancy amid all the cruelty. This story seemed utterly modern and unsettling in how it echoes our troubled times plagued with rampant mistrust of government officials and the disease of unrestrained avarice.

 

THINGS I LEARNED:  Instead of referring to Tom, Dick and Harry to refer to anonymous people a character refers to John Doe, Joe Average, and Addison Simms.  That third name was new to me. Off I went a-Googling. Addison Sims (with one M, by the way) turned up all over the internet. Of course! The best info came from an Wikipedia article on Ruthrauff & Ryan, an obscure advertising company that flourished in America from 1912 through 1964.  Sims was a fictional character created in an ad campaign for a memory learning service.  I'll quote directly from the article: "Ruthrauff wrote a prominent ad campaign for the Roth Memory Course. The ads featured a businessman greeting another with, ‘Of course--I remember you: Mr. Addison Sims of Seattle.’ The ads convinced American business people that a memory for names was an essential business skill, and ‘Mr. Addison Sims’ entered the vernacular."

 

Mara and Peter make frequent visits to a luxuriously designed drugstore with a soda fountain.  That drugstore and its staff become crucial to the solution of the hit man killings. While cleverly getting Bert, the owner and pharmacist at the drugstore, to talk about what he knows about Lawson and the shooting Mara decides to buy some cosmetics. Bert says, "That'll be $5.75 plus the 20% luxury tax and sales tax."  A 20% luxury tax on make-up?  I had to check on that. Whaddya know! According to a 1951 U.S. Treasurer's Report on Excise Taxes citing the taxes collected as a result of the Revenue Act of 1940 "...fur,  jewelry, toilet preparations, and later luggage, were subjected to taxes at the retail level, eventually reaching a 20% rate." Toilet preparations, which include make-up and cosmetics of all types, were taxed from 10-20% between the years 1939-1943. I spent way too much time reading about how the USA gathered additional revenue (apart from higher income tax) during the pre- and post-WW2 years through numerous excise taxes that were colloquially known by shoppers as the luxury tax. I thrive on these minute details in vintage popular fiction. I learn so much about the past.

 

EASY TO FIND? It's a shame that this last and by far the best of the Prof. Ponsonby detective novels is such a rarity. There were three copies I found for sale and I bought the cheapest several months ago. And now there are zero copies of the book for sale.  A true shame. This book is the one to read if you're interested in the work of Jean Leslie. It's not only relevant and resonant for our time, it's often rather witty and unexpectedly poignant. Of all the books I've read so far (I still have yet to read a non-Ponsonby mystery:  Shoes for My Love (1949) AKA Blood on My Shoe) the last Ponsonby book is the best written, most tightly plotted, has the most fascinating story, and is the most grounded in real believable crime. Perhaps it may see the light of day in a reprint edition.  If only one book by Jean Leslie could be reprinted I would like it to be Three Cornered Murder.

FIRST BOOKS: The Corpse in the Corner Saloon - Hampton Stone

Jeremiah X. Gibson, Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, is accompanied by his colleague from the D.A.'s office known only as "Mac" who also serves as the narrator in their debut which deals with the murder of a promiscuous barfly and sometime entertainer as well as the apparent suicide by poisoning of the man who supposedly killed her. But it's a lot more complicated than a tawdry sex crime --she was strangled, her clothing was carefully cut from her back and the word "Bitch" was written in lipstick on her bare skin-- and suicide. The first complication is that there are multiple witnesses who saw the man, night club dancer Hubert von Mund, in the woman's apartment. He has a very distinctive garish plaid coat he wears everywhere. And a man wearing that coat was seen in the window of Fleurette Val's home. It wasn't just his coat that make the witnesses remember him --  he was doing something rather lewd with his pants down. Gibby doesn't buy that someone would go to the trouble of such an elaborate crime, perform a sex act, and then come to a bar wearing the same coat and knock back a beer with a cyanide chaser. He starts an intensive investigation that takes him from tenement apartments to bars to small businesses meeting up with a collector of erotic photographs and dirty books, an odd husband and wife who seem to spend a lot of time playing voyeur on their neighbors, Hubert's ex-dancing partner who was abandoned when he broke his contract leaving her without a job, and a coiuple of hunky tattooed bartenders who have attracted quite a following from the regular female bar patrons.

The Corpse in the Corner Saloon (1948) is a forerunner to the sex-and-crime murder mysteries that would flood the popular fiction marketplace in the 1950s.  For the year of publication this book is incredibly racy, just shy of salacious. You get a veritable cornucopia of transgressive topics and incidents: exhibitionism, , erotic drawings, pornographic books, and sex in bedooms with draperies open. Naked people and voyeurs are everywhere. The reviewer for The Saturday Review in November 1948 said "Well enough done, but definitely not for queasy palates." Understatement! Stone manages to raise several sexual topics with wiseacre dialogue and well placed innuendo avoiding vulgarity with ironic humor.  The characters themselves are mostly a sleazy bunch (I counted only two suspects who weren't sex obsessed or window lurkers), no need to make it raunchier by going into great detail. Besides, I think the editors must've thought they were risking too much by including the murderer fondling himself in a window. They had to tone down all the rest of it somehow.

As for the mystery elements Gibby (as he is referred to by our narrator) is keen on the "Clue of the Coat", as it were. In fact, clothing and the world of tailoring play an extremely important part in the solution to the two crimes. A tailoring business owned by Marlowe Trutt features prominently in the story. Arnold Carroll is Trutt's longtime associate and friend.  For a long time the story seems to be implicating Carroll as the murderer with a motive of over-protectiveness of Trutt and revenge. Trutt has a surprise connection to Fleurette Val that turns the case on its head. And when an unusual order for a fabric that matches the strange yellow and blue plaid of Hubert's distinctive coat is trace back to Trutt's business Mac becomes highly suspicious of Carroll.

One of the more interesting clues is the word neatly written on Fleurette's back. Of great interest to Gibby is the "t" which is not fully crossed. This turns out to be the trademark of someone's signature and is well known to anyone who uses Trutt as their tailor.  His signature with partially crossed T's (see the illustration on the Dell paperback) is well known because his name is the company logo. His flourishing signature appears on labels in clothes as well as the ornate business cards he hands out to clients. Someone is trying to frame Marlowe Trutt. Gibby sees through this transparent ploy immediately.

Despite the tawdry nature of the crimes and the prurient interests of the window spies in the various apartments that face the murder scene this is a well plotted mystery with deft twists and several excellent red herrings that fooled me and led me away from the real unexpected villain of the book. I'd classify it as a fair play detective novel that mixes up noirish subject matter found in typical private eye novels of this era with traditional mystery novel plotting. One particular clothing related clue mentioned exactly once in the early part of the book is a clincher to the identity of the killer. I completely missed that clothing remark. It was placed nonchalantly with the expertise of Carr or Christie. Kudos to the writer for that one. 

THE AUTHOR:  "Hampton Stone" is one of the many pseudonyms used by Aaron Marc Stein (1902-1985) who began his mystery writing career as early as 1935 when as "George Bagby" he wrote a long series of detective novels inspired by the growing popularity of police procedurals. They all feature Inspector Schmidt and the narrator George Bagby who, like S. S. Van Dine, "authors" the books as if the cases were real. Under his own name Stein created the archaeologist sleuthing team of Timm Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt, and the engineer Matt Herridge. The "Hampton Stone" detective novels all feature Gibby and Mac and lasted into the early 1970s with a total of 18 books.

THINGS I LEARNED: The art of tailoring and the business of being a tailor is a highlight of the novel.  Even supporting characters turn out to have tailoring and sewing skills. Clothing aficionados take note!  You will learn all about the snobbery of high end tailors and their tastes in fabric, the commercial aspect of clothing industry disdained by true tailors, the "ghetto" of Manhattan's garment district, and even the intricacies of inserting a zipper into a pair of pants. It was all sort of fascinating. The many crime movies I've seen featuring tailors as protagonists from The Tailor in Panama to The Outfit don't offer anywhere near the depth of understanding nor give as much insight into tailoring as in this book.

EASY TO FIND? Dozens of copies of the two vintage paperback editions are out there for sale. Pries for the vintag e paperbacks range from $3 - $15. You can choose from the nifty Dell Mapback shown above, or a Paperback Library edition from 1971 with cover art that makes Gibby look like long gone, action movie star Steve McQueen. Hilarious! A few copies of the US 1st edition shown at the top of this post are also available for sale ranging from $15 to $54, with and without DJs. I read my copy from the Chicago Public Library. Don't have one to sell you. Sorry.

Thin Air - Howard Browne

THE STORY: Ad exec, Ames Coryell, returns from a vacation in Maine with his wife Leona and 3 year-old daughter Phoebe.  While Ames unloads the luggage from the car Leona quickly exits the car and enters the house.  When Ames goes in with his daughter and the suitcases he can't find his wife. Her handbag is on the table in the dining room but no sign of his wife.  He panics.  Runs through the neighborhood and cannot find her.  When he calls his neighbor Sally Fremont to ask if maybe Leona made a quick visit at their home Sally is perplexed. It's 2 AM in the morning! Why would Leona stop by? "Where is Mark?" Ames asks inquiring about Sally's husband. She tells him Mark is still awake in his office working on his latest architect's project. "Will you check? Maybe Leona is there."  Sally does so and is shocked when she discovers that Mark too is gone. Did the two run off together? If not, have they vanished into Thin Air (1954)?

THE CHARACTERS:  This is primarily Ames' story and he acts as first person narrator. Once his wife disappears he reveals himself to be a willful and temperamental man. He makes an immediate enemy of Lt. John Box assigned to look into the claim that Leona Coryell has disappeared. Box makes no pretense that he suspects Ames has something to do with her disappearance which of course infuriates Ames. The two do not get off to a good start and it only worsens as the book progresses. Fed up with a detective who won't listen and has already accused him of murder Ames is determined to solve the mystery of his missing wife on his own.

Then Mark is found unconscious not far from his home and taken to a hospital where he lapses into a coma. He has been struck on the back of the head with the ubiquitous blunt object. Now Box thinks that Ames is acting out some revenge plot having picked up on hints that Ames imagined that Mark has perhaps had a secret affair with Leona and that they were running off together. Box is sure that Ames found Mark and attacked him. He warns Ames that if the coma worsens and Mark eventually dies he will be after Ames Coryell for a definite murder.

French paperback edition
(Editions Ditis, 1957)

Coryell then dismisses the police altogether and comes up with an ingenious plan. He enlists his entire advertising firm to turn his wife's disappearance into a regional campaign. Everyone from the art department head to every agent writing copy will work on the project. Ames even involves the agency's market research team who work at a completely different company to help in their elaborate campaign.  They will create a public interest in Ames' missing wife. TV ads, magazine ads, radio spots--the whole shebang.  Leona's face will be everywhere and she will be on everyone's mind just like the many products that the advertising firm sells. Create the need and the public will respond with purchase power.  Or in this case with possible eyewitness accounts and other information. The ultimate aim is to turn the public into a collective of amateur detectives. Soon the police and the ad agency are deluged with phone calls offering  tips and witness stories.

Some of the tips pay off and Ames soon finds himself paying a visit to a blond woman staying in a fleabag hotel. And that's when the story begins to get complicated and a bit fantastical. Best leave it there. Unexpected twists and unbelievable coincidences compound leading to a shocking murder and the somewhat outlandish reason for Leona's disappearance.

INNOVATIONS:  The idea of using an ad agency to solve a crime is wholly original. Many of the sequences where the men from Palmer & Verrick, Market Researchers offer their expertise to Ames show a truly clever way to introduce detection into the story. Market researchers, as head agent Uhlman, tells Ames are little more than compilers of statistics. They have at their hands multiple references and databases (mostly in book form in this decade) to help locate anyone and any company. As an example: when Ames shows Uhlman and his men a photograph of Marty Dry wearing tee shirt, jeans and house slippers standing in front of  car parked near an apartment building and another building with the letters ERY visible at the edge of the photo Ames is sure than the photo was taken in front of his home. Who would be dressed like that anywhere else? Remember it's 1954 and slippers were only worn in the home not in public like they are now in this age of "slovenly chic" fashion choices. They also notice the numbers 773 on the building with the letters ERY.  Uhlman offers up a variety of businesses those letters might be: grocery, stationery, bakery, millinery, etc.  After looking up addresses in Manhattan where those numbers occur in the street address he then brilliantly eliminates all neighborhoods where those businesses could not be next to an apartment building using his vast knowledge of sociodemographics.  Then Uhlman and a crew of eight other men use phone directories, split up the alphabet, and within only a few minutes they have pegged a few possible addresses where Marty Dry lives and when Ames drives to the first and most likely address he is astonished that the photo matches the location exactly. Very impressive detective work, I'd say. Completely believable, too, given how market research firms work.  

Some more innovative detective work is performed by Ame's daughter who is only 3 years old. When she asked her mother "Do you like me, Mommy?" while they were driving home from a brief stop in Connecticut Phoebe tells her father that her mother said the wrong thing. It's a game that she plays with her parents. She asks the question and they always says No. And then Phoebe asks "Why not?" and they reply "Because I love you." When the woman said yes to the question "Do you like me?" Phoebe knew it wasn’t her mother sitting next to her. This surprising news leads Ames to the most startling discovery in the book and the beginning of his action-filled search for the whereabouts of his wife.

THE AUTHOR:  Howard Browne (1907-1999) worked at several advertising agencies as well as being the editor of two notable genre fiction magazines according to the DJ blurb on the back of my copy of Thin Air.  Further research revealed to me that those magazines were Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Not only was he editor of those magazines Browne contributed his own fantasy, adventure and science fiction stories under both his own name and a variety of pseudonyms.  He is probably best known for the crime novels he wrote under his pseudonym John Evans. As Evans he created the private eye Paul Pine who appeared in a series of four novels set in Oak Park, Illinois and Chicago.  In 1001 Midnights Bill Pronzini called Paul Pine "one of the best of the plethora of tough guy heroes" from the post-WW2 era. He goes on:  "Although the Pine novels are solidly in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, they have a complexity and character all their own and are too well crafted to be mere imitations."  Browne also wrote for television and the movies. Thin Air was adapted several times for television. The first of several TV versions was the sixth episode in the second season of Climax! with Robert Sterling as Ames and Pat O'Brien as the policeman. Later adaptations of the missing person motif would appear in numerous crime dramas including episodes of The Rockford Files and Simon & Simon.  In addition to numerous TV scripts from series in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly westerns and crime dramas, Browne wrote the screenplays for three gangster movies: Portrait of a Mobster (1961), The St. Valentine's Massacre (1966) and Capone (1975) with Ben Gazzara in the title role.

QUOTES:  If I don't get [my wife] you're going to be up to your tie clasp in police. 

He looked slightly less dangerous than the Bobbsey Twins. 

When a girl's that close to a guy it would only seem reasonable that she'd have his phone number or his address... Maybe in a little black book. Girls who live alone in cheap hotels along shoddy back streets have books like that. ...At best this was a lonely world. 

I was making enough racket to alert half the county. This was what came from preferring football and girls to a membership in the Boy Scouts.

Looking into his eye was like looking at the falling blade of a guillotine

I was up to my hatband in doubt.

There was no warning, no advance whisper of sound. Only the world blowing up in a sudden sea of white flare laced with agony, and I was falling through it in slow motion toward the edge of blackness.

It was time for the organ music and please omit flowers.

EASY TO FIND? Multiple editions are offered for sale on line, a mix of paperback reprints and the original Simon & Schuster hardcover. The first paperback (Dell 894, 1955) is the most common edition for sale. A later 1984 reprint from Carrol & Graf also turns up often from online dealers.  The first edition will of course cost you more with prices ranging from $75 (dampstained book with a VG- DJ) to $450 for a fine copy in DJ that is also signed by Howard Browne. Happy hunting!

FIRST BOOKS: Two Lovers Too Many - Joan Fleming

Don't be fooled by the title or the odd illustrations on the DJs of Two Lovers Too Many (1949). It may seem like a melodramatic hospital romance novel based on the title and illustrations, but this debut crime novel from Joan Fleming is an innovative work incorporating aspects of the detective, suspense and horror novels. In fact, Fleming is prophetic in predicting how scientific discoveries and advances can be perverted in the hands of a criminally minded individuals bent of exacting revenge. Her insight into the possible exploitation of science is nightmarishly resonant for our violently troubled 21st century.

As the title implies, the story is about a lover's triangle -- or rather quadrangle as we will learn by the midpoint. Despite what the title says there are actually three men vying for a woman’s attention.  Daisy Walkern, a vapid femme fatale concerned with only herself and sexual conquests, is rescued from her life as single mother by Alan Walkern, the gallant but very homely and disabled (he has a club foot) physician. He marries Daisy and becomes stepfather to her unruly child Barney. While married to Alan, Daisy becomes pregnant and they eventually have a second son, Peter. But while married to Walkern Daisy continues her life of teasing and taunting any man who will pay attention to her.

When the book opens Alan Walkern is dead. And one of Daisy's "lovers" is dead, apparently a suicide by gun.  Paul Lathbury is found in the hayloft of a barn shot dead.  But the gun is nowhere to be found. How then can the death be a suicide?  Did someone remove the gun to prevent anyone thinking the handsome, well-liked, highly successful man killed himself? Another young doctor, Alastair Southery, is assigned as a locum tenens to fill in for Dr. Walkern until a new physician can be hired. Alastair begins an innocuous investigation with only a few questions concerning Paul's death. But the most senior physician in town, Dr.  Forty, an associate of Dr. Lathbury and Dr. Walkern is not satisfied with the police work. He is also concerned about an odd coincidence.  Dr. Walkern supposedly died from aplastic anemia and Dr. Lathbury whom Alastair is working for, is currently being treated for the same condition.  How is it that both of the town's doctor's contracted anemia within months of each other when prior to that both men had no signs of any chronic illness? Dr. Forty is relentless in pursuing this medical coincidence.  He even suggests that Walkern's death and Paul Lathbury's death are related because they were linked to Daisy Walkern.

Though he at first dismisses Dr Forty's wild speculation that someone is killing men who cross Daisy -- could it be Daisy herself? -- Alastair finds himself cast into the role of a medical detective.  He begins subtly questioning everyone in the village, eventually spying on them and doing a little snooping into their homes and personal belongings. When a medicine bottle turns up missing he begins to think that Dr. Forty's theories may have some truth in them. Alastair discovers that what can cure illness can also induce illness and he is determined to expose the murderer and prevent more deaths.

Some of the supporting characters provide welcome relief in a story fraught with tension and danger.  Alastair befriends a seven year boy, the son of a talented portrait painter Calliope Eldernell who earns her primary income as a servant in the Lathbury home. Both Calliope and her son Tim serve as the common sense characters who seem to be Alastair's only friends and provide the groundwork for what ultimately is a happy ending for this trio. Tim is a delight and Calliope, a troubled woman who doubts her own artistic talent, provides hope in a book that is largely doom-laden and focused on the darkness within everyone else in the village.

Fleming's first crime novel is utterly fascinating. She has created both a medical detective novel and a horror novel simultaneously. The murder method turns out to be diabolical.  It's a modus operandi first introduced as a fictional murder method back in the late 19th century by a handful of astute short story writers like L. T. Meade, but not truly explored by 20th century crime writers until the WW2 era. A master of innovation in the crime novel Fleming has never been noted to follow genre formula. She often employs imaginative twists and trenchant satiric touches both of which are on display in this first novel that promised so much. Many of her later novels are superior and this first effort definitely predicted great things for her. It’s a shame so few people know of her work and that 95% of her crime novels are out of print. 

The Glass Heart - Marty Holland

Down on his luck Curt Blair is waiting out a rainstorm in a “ritzy hash joint” just outside of Hollywood, USA when he steals a fancy camel hair overcoat then flees intending to sell the coat. It’s how he makes his living these days – ripping off suckers' coats, rifling the pockets for treasures and cash, then selling the ransacked coat. But this time all hell breaks loose and he’s being chased. While hiding from his pursuers he ends up in the backyard of Virginia Block’s home. She mistakes him for the handyman she recently hired from an agency. Curt being the opportunist that he is wisely plays along and learns the job comes with a free room and kitchen privileges. So he accepts the job, gains a cheap salary of $20/week and a place to stay and eat.

Later the same day aspiring actress Lynn York shows up at the boarding house. She is paying $60/month for an upstairs room, but no kitchen privileges for her. Mrs. B is greedy and a miser we soon figure out. Within hours Curt and Lynn are hooking up and doing the dirty deed in the dirty basement where while putting the moves on Lynn Curt is bothered by the irritating sound of a dripping pipe. He vows to fix the leak though that task is not on the insanely long list of arduous work Mrs. Block expects of him.

While dealing with the plumbing problem Curt discovers a gruesome surprise and jumps to conclusions.  A bit of detective work supports his rash theory and he sees dollar signs. He schemes to blackmail his landlady and employer. Soon he finds his paltry salary increased to a cool $1000/week.

And if you haven’t already figured out that the tables will be turned then you don’t know your crime fiction.

Reading The Glass Heart is like travelling back in time to a 1950s movie palace watching a B movie programmer. It’s crammed full of action, double dealing, manipulation, greed, lust and crime. Everyone is out for himself or herself. James M Cain, who penned multiple densely packed novels about two timing lovers and how greed controls their lives admired the book so much he 1. wrote a praiseworthy blurb for the Julian Messner first edition dust cover and 2. wrote a screenplay adaptation that unfortunately was never produced.  Even he recognized the cinematic potential of this hard to resist story.

While it’s not hard to predict that Curt and lovely Lynn will hook up within hours of meeting I doubt many readers will be able to predict the unusual plot twists. Soon a handful of supporting characters descend upon Mrs. Block looking for handouts including Elise, Lynn's future roommate and a member of an evangelical church devoted to enlisting new members and coaxing money out of them to help build their new church.

The story is overloaded with plot and incident. It’s almost like reading two books in one at the same time. There’s almost no time in the action-filled pages to question the often outlandish turn of events. But I did! And frequently. Some of my nagging questions included: Why on earth is Mrs. B such a pushover? Why didn’t she just throw Curt out of her house rather than be bled dry? And why is Lynn so simple minded and easily manipulated? I guess there is no room for common sense in potboiler fiction. The book exists solely to explore crime and base motives (mostly dealing with lust and avarice) but offers no insight into any of the reasons the characters need so desperately what they long for. I wasn’t asking for heightened literary reasons just a few mundane ones.

Late in the book it all turns a bit ridiculous. Elise receives a telegram that her husband was killed in action overseas. She refuses to accept this and in her religious mania keeps praying that hubbie be returned to her. Like a true believers she’s asking for a miracle. One guess as to how that turns out. Because of course every absurd coincidence one can possibly imagine will be crammed into these 192 pages.

Why have one kook when you can have two? Mrs. B is later revealed to be a bit of a loon herself. Lynn spends much of her time eavesdropping throughout the book and hears her landlady talking to herself and singing in a little girl’s high pitched voice. She has conversations with her dead husband, very intimate and revealing conversations. It all leads to a confrontation between the two woman involving a revolver and a golf club that doesn’t end well at all.

Do you think anything will end well in a book of this sort? Think again!

It starts off as noir but some odd detours and intrusive subplots among the minor characters transform the book to a quasi romance. This schizoid state results in a near parody of noir by the time you get to the two climactic moments. Remarkably – almost unbelievably – for something so laden with doom, insanity and murder, both intentional and accidental, it all ends with a cop out finale that includes a wedding and happily ever after honeymoon in New Mexico! I gather that Holland opted for a hearts and flowers finale because she wants the real villain of the piece to be revealed as a vile monster who “deserved” to die. And she seemed to want to make her leads into decent people who were victims themselves. Really strange considering they were crooked and corrupt from the get-go. When the penultimate chapter exposes the villain’s wide ranging schemes of cheating, thievery and mean-spiritedness one wonders if Holland knew a similarly horrible person and this was a revenge piece.

Marty Holland (1919 - 1971)

And yet though I sound like I’m disparaging this book I found it all utterly addictive. The Glass Heart is, I confess, a guilty pleasure. I couldn’t stop reading and had to know where each ludicrous scene would lead and of course how it all would end. It truly is one of the best examples of a genuine B movie on paper. And no wonder – the author Marty Holland was a secretary at Republic Pictures, one of the leading producers of B movie programmers, for many years. She was writing pulp fiction in her spare time, wrote the book that became the classic noir thriller Fallen Angel, and a story treatment for another crime movie classic The File on Thelma Jordan. Typing all those scripts at Republic Pictures taught her well, I guess.

Stark House has reprinted all of Marty Holland’s crime novels over the past year and a half. The Glass Heart is the newest reprint added to that small pile of books. For decades this novel was unavailable to mere mortals like you and me because the few copies for sale were listed by booksellers at unaffordable collector’s prices. It’s wonderful to have Marty Holland’s books all available to the general public in Stark House’s usual handsomely produced editions. For lovers of noir, kooky melodrama and twisty plotting these books are a must have. Highly recommended – even with all the caveats listed above. The Glass Heart is genuine thrill ride that will leave you both gasping in awe and laughing in shock.

Don't Rely on Gemini - Vin Packer

What’s your sign, girl?
Is it compatible to mine?

If your sign matches mine
Think of what we'll have
We'll be making babies together, forever

“What’s Your Sign, Girl?” - Danny Pearson/Tony Sepe

When I first moved to Chicago I religiously checked my own horoscope on my birthday in the Sun-Times because they include a section called “If Your Birthday Is Today…” and below would be a paragraph about what the coming year had in store for me – and the thousands of other people born in the same day, of course. I would cut it out, put it on my fridge, and review it on the day before my birthday. Invariably it was 90% wrong. But I never bothered to think about all those other people who were born on the same day in the sign of Sagittarius. How did the year work out for them?

That’s the premise of Don’t Rely on Gemini (1969), “a suspense and astrological novel” from the wildly inventive Vin Packer, aka M. J. (Marijane) Meaker. I didn’t for a second believe the hype on the paperback's cover promising “the most gripping spellbinder since Rosemary’s Baby.” For some reason throughout the early 1970s anything that remotely had anything to do with occult, supernatural or even New Age topics were tied to either Rosemary’s Baby (1967) or The Exorcist (1971) or both. The astrology element in this book is used merely to study the concept of parallel lives. A savvy and better-read editor would have done well to compare Packer’s novel to the works of Charles Dickens because coincidence and family secrets run rampant in this book. But would a quasi-literary analogy like that sell books? You bet your crystal talisman, it wouldn’t.

So let’s start with this concept of astro-twins living parallel lives. Astro-twins are unrelated people, complete strangers, who were born in the same year on the same date at the same time. Everyone has at least one astro-twin – well, actually everyone has hundreds, perhaps thousands of astro-twins. And that ought to make all you only children feel a lot less lonely, right? You have myriad siblings who are your astro-twins. But in all likelihood you will never meet them or know them. Regardless, they may be living a life similar to your own. That’s at the core of Don’t Rely on Gemini. And yes, the astro-twins we will meet are born under the sign of Gemini. According to all the mumbo jumbo we are forced to read Gemini is apparently one of the least favorable signs of the twelve in the crazy mixed-up world of the Zodiac. Not just unreliable and mercurial in temperament and obsessive about jobs and hobbies and projects, but apt to lose interest in those projects because of that gosh darned unreliable, mercurial personality.

Archie Gamble is the head writer of a TV special featuring the renowned astrologist Anna Muckermann. In order to add legitimacy to the show Mrs. Muckermann wants to talk about astro-twins and have a few on the air to talk about their lives. Mrs. M has documented evidence of several cases of astoundingly parallel lives in astro-twins that she offers up to Gamble, one case dates back to the days of George III. She insists that the TV show will be a huge draw if people are confronted with the truth of two strangers with the same star charts leading similar lives. This she claims will be proof that the rotation of the planets and other celestial activities do indeed rule our lives. When the moon in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars not only will peace guide the planets but the ratings will probably go sky high. Or so Mrs. Muckermann and Archie hope.

Staff members including Archie Gamble himself give out their birthday info and ads are placed in newspapers to lure in prospective volunteer astro-twins. There are several bites. The most fascinating comes from Margaret Dana who volunteers her husband Neal as a match to Gamble’s birthday data. She invites Gamble and his wife Dru to her home to meet her husband and discuss the possibility of appearing on the TV show. Sounds like fun, right? But this is a crime novel. Guess what follows? Worse than Mercury in retrograde, my friends. Being born in the house of Gemini with Saturn rising adds up to a volatile Molotov cocktail of a star chart as we will soon find out.

A fight happens at the Dana household just as the Gambles are about to arrive. In the course of the heated argument someone dies as the result of an accident and then – Ding, dong! It’s Archie and Dru on the front porch ready for dinner. And a dead body at the foot of a staircase inside. A bottle of wine is not going to solve this inconvenience.

But that’s not the worst of it. Neal Dana never knew about the Gambles coming because his wife was being coy in holding back the surprise of the evening. Neal, you see, was hoping that his wife was going out to her Italian lesson so he could have yet another secret tryst with his adorable mistress Penny. While making up a tale about his wife leaving the house and ushering the Gambles off his porch Dru Gamble hears a woman crying in a back room somewhere. She is sure it’s Margaret but she and Archie agree to leave because something certainly is not right and they are clearly not welcome. So the Gambles drive away.

Then… Archie loses control of his car going down the treacherous hill that leads to and from the Dana house. He crashes into a tree. They have to go back to the house and ask for help. Just as Neal Dana is about to bury the body in the backyard!

Don’t Rely on Gemini sounds initially like a lurid tale from the preposterous world of pulp fiction. Noirish to the core everyone seems utterly doomed amid the insanely surreal action and a pile-up of plot contrivances. Meaker, however, is playing with a loaded deck here. Each contrivance and coincidence is carefully calculated to twist the story toward her theme as she dares to play with superstition and fatalism in allowing her characters to surrender to fate rather than make well thought out decisions. She manages to juggle the ostensibly absurd moments with a very deadly combination of characters who are easily manipulated and those who give in to obsessive thoughts. Mrs. M proves to be perhaps the most dangerous person of all. In her zealous beliefs and dire pronouncements she contaminates the Gamble’s marriage and their relationship by planting seeds of doubt and foretelling impending doom if the couple does not follow her advice. Saturn is ruling their lives; failure to heed all the warnings will lead to disaster. The law of astro-twins does not lie!

The real conflict, however, has nothing to do with astrology. It is the Gambles’ perception of reality. They know nothing about Penny and Neal, unlike the reader, and they assume that a car that belongs to Penny is actually Margaret’s, that each time they see the green scarfed woman in the Ford Falcon they think they see Margaret. Dru learns of Margaret’s affair with a young man from a diary and letters she finds through yet another one of the many coincidences Meaker packs into her story. At the same time Archie is trying to decide whether Neal’s parallel life is worth putting on TV Dru is trying to protect Neal Dana from discovering his wife’s affair.

But, of course, we know what Archie and Dru don’t – that Margaret is dead. That Neal is having an affair of his own with Penny. Neal becomes dangerously obsessive about Margaret, his guilt overpowering him. Penny is fearful she is losing her older lover and she’s right. She can never hope to gain back his attention when he’s drowning in such a powerful nostalgia, she cannot compete with the memory of the perfect wife he is creating in his mind. Nothing can tarnish that memory just as no one can bring Margaret back to life. Someone is going to have to pay the price for that horrible accident. But wait…was it an accident? Didn’t Penny push Margaret down the stairs?

Don’t Rely on Gemini is not only an intriguing thematic exploration of the perils in surrendering to fate it’s also a pop culture smorgasbord of late 1960s America. The book is brimming with brand names, musicians, movie stars and authors including mystery writers Margery Allingham and Mary Stewart. Everything from various models of domestic and imported automobiles to Barry Farber, radio talk show host on WOR and WMCA. Even the plus size dresses and a joke about the maternity line of Lane Bryant crop up in the story. Rock and folk music play in the background of certain scenes as much as Archie’s favorite recordings of operatic arias. Neal disappears into his record collection as well in one of the telling moments playing up the parallel life angle. He plays selections from The Pajama Game original cast album or classical piano music from a William Kappell record to conjure up memories of his dead wife. At other times it feels as if the characters are like the intellectuals of Helen McCloy’s sophisticated Manhattan of the 1940s for the novel is also inundated with literary allusions covering Shakespeare, D. H. Lawrence and the 17th century poem “The Meditation” by – get ready for another coincidence – the obscure philosopher and theological poet John Norris. I could have written an entire blog post on "Things I Learned" alone there was so much popping up within this story.

This was the last novel Meaker wrote using her "Vin Packer" pen name.  The 1970s found her turning to juvenile novels which apparently were her most successful books.  I have acquired several of the Packer books over the years, but oddly this most recent one (originally purchased for last year's "Friday Fright Night" meme but proved less suited for that Halloween feature) is the first I've read.  I'll be digging out the other Vin Packer books I own and tearing through them throughout the rest of this year. Stay tuned.

NEW STUFF: Untamed Shore - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Agora/Polis Books
ISBN: 978-1-947996-92-1
284 pp $25.99
Publication date: February 2020

I can never resist marketing hype. Why? I should know better. I really should. But when I learned that one more person was attempting to liven up the classic noir thriller and that writer was primarily known for her revisionist fairy tales and fantasies and mash-ups of science fiction and the traditional romance novel how could I possibly pass it up? Silvia Moreno-Garcia with three bizarre homage novels of fantasy, supernatural and fairy tale motifs to her credit and a handful of anthologies as editor/compiler has published her first crime novel, Untamed Shore (2020). It’s modeled on the old-fashioned James M. Cain style story of a sucker being led down the road of temptation by a greedy devious woman. But in Moreno-Garcia’s revisitation of this very familiar plot she has reversed the roles. The tempter is a gorgeous and very desirable man and the sucker is a young woman.

Viridiana is hired as a translator/typist to a non-Spanish speaking would-be writer. The writer is rich. He’s married. And his wife’s brother is in tow with them as they rent the ultra-modern mansion called The End located at the very tip of Baja peninsula. It’s the brother, Gregory, who latches onto Viridiana. She may be all starry-eyed but the reader knows she is hardly headed for a happily ever after ending. This kind of role reversal while not wholly original provides an imaginative writer with definite possibilities to shake up a tired formula. I’ve read several Cain style crime novels with reversed roles of temptress/patsy. I’ve even read one where the duplicitous schemers are gay men trying to kill a third man for his money. Did Silvia Moreno-Garcia pull it off? Much to my surprise she did.

I was not buying much of the book for its first half. Moreno-Garcia is clearly still very much sticking to the romance novel formula in this her sixth full length novel. To be honest I have not read any of her other books but going purely by the plot summaries I can see that she is in love with love. All of her books feature young women in the lead roles and all of them are entranced by dangerous men. This is the rudimentary ingredient for all romances and especially the Gothic romance novel (two of her most recent novels are heavily influenced by that subgenre). She’s revisiting very well worn territory here. And the romance angle even though it may be ornamented with paragraphs of startling shark imagery and some intriguing lore about shark fishing is overly familiar and hardly eye opening.

Her protagonist saves the book. Viridiana invigorates what might have been just another romance redux book. It's not just her unusual name (her father named her after the lead character in a Luis Buñuel movie he loved) that makes her unique. With her odd job as reluctant tourist guide and interpreter for the 1970s gringos who find her native Baja peninsula Mexican town an exotic attraction Viridiana is the kind of character you want to spend a lot of time with. She has a horrid home life, she’s dumped her dull fiancé and in the process of being willful and independent has alienated both her mother and would-be mother-in-law, not to mention the would-be groom. Viridiana wants desperately to escape her dead end town. Unappreciated, insulted and maligned by nearly everyone in her town, lectured by her mother who constantly reminds her she does not know a good provider is enough to save her its no wonder that Viridiana retreats into solitary fantasy. We know she deserves a better life. And we want that for her – at any cost.

Enter the trio of rich and flashy Americans who bring to life all of her Hollywood fantasies. You see, like her father Viridiana is a movieholic. She can’t help but draw comparisons to Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun as she finds herself drawn into a risky romance with Gregory. All of her references relating to love and sexual attraction are from old movies. She embarrasses herself with her indulgent imagination and finds herself dictating her dreams into a cassette tape recorder her absent father gave her as a substitute for a diary. She knows it’s wrong to dream girlish fantasies, but can’t help herself. And Gregory exploits her Hollywood fantasies with promises of taking her away and setting up a new life in Paris. She wonders aloud in her tape recorded musings if it all is just too good to be true.

You better believe it is.

Soon her employer is found unconscious at the foot of the stairs. They call the police and a doctor. But by the time they arrive at The End, miles away from the town center, he is dead. Convenient accident or murder? Viridiana begins to suspect the worst and sees Gregory and Daisy, his sister, in a wholly new light as the police begin to question them. She even turns snoop and amateur sleuth and uncovers additional mysteries that need explaining. The movie she dreamed of begins to seem more and more like A Place in the Sun. She had forgotten about the death of Shelley Winters in that movie -- an accidental drowning that leads to Montgomery Clift’s being charged with murder. Her movie fantasies become even more terrifying the more she tries to find out exactly who Gregory and Daisy are and why they came to Baja.

At this point the book kicks into high gear shifting in tone and piling on more action, Moreno-Garcia abandons the dreamy introspective narrative that dominated the first half and takes up the motifs and situations of genuine noir and pulp fiction. Con men, gangsters, crooked cops, bribes galore, a convoluted will, a suspicious nephew, ultra bloody violence. We get it all. Viridiana is forced to grow up almost instantly. She recognizes she’s been used and turns the tables on her exploiters.

I’m glad I took the time to stick with this one. It paid off in ways that I didn’t think the writer was capable of. If Moreno-Garcia has not read the typical crime novels to familiarize herself with this genre she at least has watched a lot of movies to get a handle on the right conventions and plot elements. I thought I knew exactly where this was headed but she managed to throw in a few unexpected curve balls and surprised me at least twice. She sure was not afraid of some gory violence and torture either. I usually don’t applaud this in any writer, but after the ostensible false start of the book it was exactly what the novel needed. Without it Viridiana probably never would have changed and realized at least something resembling a Hollywood ending. And, of course, getting the long overdue life that she richly deserved.

The Singing Clock - Virginia Perdue

THE STORY:  In the middle of the night Jacklin Bogart discovers the dead body of her cousin Antoinette and proceeds to cover up the crime. She is certain she knows who is guilty. We watch her remove the weapon from the scene and bury it far away, then she washes blood off her clothes. Lt. Brady arrives on the scene and is too clever to be fooled by Jacklin's charade. He knows she is shielding someone and perhaps trying to incriminate one of her relatives she so hates. Soon we learn that Jacklin is highly suspicious of nearly all her relatives and suspects someone guilty of not only killing her mother but trying to do in her beloved grandfather. When another murder occurs in the home it is clear to Brady that Jacklin's meddling is endangering the lives of the entire Crandall household.

THE CHARACTERS: Jacklin is one of the earliest renditions of the now tired cliche of "the unreliable narrator".  We never really know whether to believe her outrageous claims that someone not only arranged the accidental death of her father, but manged to drive her mother to commit suicide. Or perhaps killed her and made it look like suicide. Despite her beliefs her parents' deaths are not viewed as crimes by anyone,  but only by Jacklin herself. Her hatred of her relatives infects her every interaction. Her desire to avenge her parents' death affects her close relationship with her grandfather who she also believes is being targeted by the same homicidal manic who killed her parents. Everard Crandall, is an irascible old man who seems to be as misanthropic as his granddaughter. But someone still manages to poison him, a botched attempt to kill him that does not go unnoticed by the police or the relentless killer who will try again later in the story.

David, Antoinett'es former fiance, who had an argument with the murder victim the very night she was killed.  It seems that David whose reputation is tainted by his volatile temper had a prime motive and all eyes turn to him as suspect number one.  Was Jacklin protecting him with her monkey business at the scene of the crime?  Further complicating the case is that fact that Jacklin has an obsessive love for her cousin, Ward, who was training to become a doctor in Germany but was forced to return to the US in 1939 when the war broke out. She dreams of marrying him, and longs to be a Crandall so she get get rid of the odious name Bogart and all the hateful things it reminds her of.

The Crandall household is typical of these GAD fictional homes populated with troubled wealthy people all waiting for an ailing relative to die. The eccentric standout is Aunt Mel, Antoinette's mother. She is a religious zealot obsessed with New Age style movements like the one that celebrates The Great Life Force she is currently proselytizing about. In one of the book's highlights she lets loose with a tirade of invective at Everard accusing him of bringing about her daughter's death and cursing him to die.

Everard's housekeeper Mrs. Wollaston, was at one time his lover and they intended to marry, but the family prevented their union in holy matrimony. Mrs. Wollaston, nevertheless moved into the house to stay by the man she loved and care for him.  But is it possible her love is all a sham and she is actually in love with Everard's money?

ATMOSPHERE: The title of the book comes from a musical antique grandfather clock that has a prominent place in the home. Throughout the novel Jacklin hears the clock chiming an hour and a portion of the lyrics of "My Grandfather's Clock" run through her head. The song itself lodges in her mind like an earworm, and each time the clock chimes a new hour she hears another line of lyrics singing to her. Often the phrases ironically comment on the action that just occurred or will foreshadow future incidents in the narrative. Perdue uses this motif to add an eerie menace as the murder investigation unfolds. The rhyme includes the line "But it stopped short, never to run again, when the old man died" and Jacklin is fearful that if the clock stops it's tune or stops its incessant ticking Everard Crandall will in fact drop dead. She is determined to save him and is on constant watch as people continually enter and exit his bedroom where he spends much of his time.

INNOVATIONS: I thought this was going to be a suspenseful inverted crime novel and that Jacklin was guilty from the start on page one when we follow her destroying evidence and covering up the murder. But The Singing Clock (1941) is in fact a legitimate whodunnit, an ingenious blend of psychological suspense and detection. Filled with shifts in tone, surprise revelations, astonishing secrets and some transgressive touches like marijuana addiction and borderline incestuous love, The Singing Clock is one of the most remarkable crime novels to be published by Doubleday's Crime Club and a minor masterpiece from Virginia Perdue, a sorely underappreciated American crime fiction writer. The last chapter of this book is bonechilling and genuinely thrilling with Perdue's final unexpected shocking revelation. All that preceded suddenly shifts, characters are seen in a new blindingly altered light, and the story all makes perfect sense. The last few paragraphs are literally bloodcurdling with a scene reminiscent of the violent movies of Quentin Tarantino and the nightmarish tales of Cornell Woolrich and Robert Bloch. For me the final chapter of The Singing Clock is utterly ingenious and makes this book a breathtaking pioneering novel of misdirection in crime fiction. I was both impressed and astonished, a rare reaction these days.

THINGS I LEARNED:  I remember "My Grandfather's Clock" as a nursery rhyme from my childhood. My younger brother and I had it on a kid's record and we used to listen to it over and over as we did with the many odd songs in our large record collection. But apparently it's actually a folk tune that dates to the post Civil War era. Written and composed by Henry C. Work the song was published in 1876. Work is also the composer of a march that memorialized Sherman's invasion of Savanaah called "Marching Through Georgia."

According to a Wikipedia article Henry C. Work wrote a sequel to the song in which the narrator "laments the fate of the no-longer-functioning grandfather clock – it was sold to a junk dealer, who sold its parts for scrap and its case for kindling."

A lyric line from the song inspired "Ninety Years without Slumbering" in the classic TV series The Twilight Zone. Similar to what Jacklin believes in Perdue's novel in the TV show Ed Wynn stars as a man who fears his life will end when his antique clock stops ticking.

For those unfamiliar with the song "My Grandfather's Clock" you can hear Johnny Cash do his own rendition. It's the only one I can listen to now amid the sea of annoying kid's versions.

QUOTES:  "Don't think you can get out of it so easily! You've gone too far, Everard Crandall.  Your wickedness and cruelty have offended against the Great Life Stream!" Jacklin felt a mad desire to laugh. At the same time there was a prickling along her spine. It was only a part of Aunt Mel's latest religious fad. Nevertheless, it was rather horrible.

"Nobody can call his soul his own. Not so long as [Everard's] alive."

There was an air of vigorous health about [Aunt Sarah], a country air, as if she were made of good rich soil instead of ordinary blood and nerves.

And I can't resist adding this one in our days of mask phobia and pandemic viruses:

...the other man gave a harsh laugh which ended in a fit of coughing. He really had a bad cold, Jacklin thought with distaste. Why didn't they stay at home when they were sick. It wasn't fair to go around snuffling and coughing and infecting other people.