Dan. J Marlowe was a prolific author of hardboiled and noir fiction throughout the late 1950s until the 1970s. Like Raymond Chandler, he got into the writing game relatively late in life, publishing his first novel at age 45. He wrote tough, hard prose and packed a lot of intense action into his relatively brief novels.
His most famous novels were Strongarm, Vengeance Man and The Name of the Game is Death, all paperback originals written for Fawcett's Gold Medal series in the early Sixties.
I recently read Marlowe's 1963 novel Strongarm in a Black Lizard paperback edition from 1988 and it's pretty powerful stuff. It's also densely packed stuff, a novel about ready to explode with its multiple plot twists and frenetic energy. Yet the book is compelling reading and entertaining, even though in the end all the plot tangles sort themselves out in a denouement just a little too pat for my taste.
Strongarm is the tale of Pete Karma, which isn't really the protagonist's name. This narrator, in a prodigious showcase of unreliability, uses two pseudonyms that are known to the reader and many more that aren't revealed and never does give out his "real name" - a storytelling conceit from Marlowe that sounds great in theory but in reality only adds an extra layer of complexity to an already dangerously overloaded fuse box of a book.
Karma is a hard man, already bitter from harsh war service in Korea and even more bitter from being double crossed by a sleazebag lawyer working for Steve Risko, a heavy weight political fixer and all time classic SOB who hijacked a state politics machine once ran by Karma's father. Risko, through the scuzzy lawyer, sees that Karma takes a fall for a murder he didn't commit.
Karma is thrown into prison, and with the aid of some fellow inmates involved with the syndicate that he meets while inside, breaks out.
He goes into hiding and takes a job as a bartender at a Mob-operated night club in Detroit. Here, he works under the name Pete Karma and falls in lust with the beautiful and curvaceous Lynn, a hostess at the club.
At the outset of the book, Karma finds out that one of Risko's men will be passing through town with a big stash of money and he decides to take some payback for the trouble Risko has caused him. He drives out on the turnpike, tailing the car driven by the money courier. Suddenly, the car collides with another car that has gone out of control. A fiery crash ensues, yet Karma is able to extricate a briefcase from the wreckage, albeit with a severed arm handcuffed to it - a brilliantly macabre touch that at least puts the opening of the novel well into the disturbing gray zone territory only mapped by that most hardboiled of the hardboiled writers: Jim Thompson.
Unfortunately for Karma, there were witnesses to the crash and when a fuzzy yet all too easily identifiable picture of him turns up in the papers, he has to take the briefcase full of money and run. Lynn, who only knows the tiniest fragment of Karma's complicated history, insists on joining him. In a strange and redundant plot twist, Karma is also later joined by Gussie, Lynn's cousin. But in the strangest and most redundant of all plot twists in this novel of filigreed and serpentine convolutions and involutions, Karma learns the briefcase also contains oilskin envelopes containing "plans" for some kind of atomic device. It turns out the briefcase wasn't from Risko's man at all, but was from the car that had gone out of control and collided with him. The car had been driven by a Soviet agent who had been on a run delivering the money and plans to his fellow travelers.
I've tried to lay out the plot in a straight line, as the opening chapters unfold in a series of flashbacks that bit by bit reveal the past of this mystery man who will only call himself Pete Karma. These early chapters, especially the ones dealing with the car crash, Karma's retrieving of the brief case crammed with money and atomic secrets and his disposal of the severed arm - one of the many strong arms alluded to in the book's title - are brilliant and contain many passages of great hardboiled writing. But then, the book goes off the rails when the Cold War plot is ramped up - a completely needless distraction when Marlowe's thirst for revenge against Risko would have been enough to carry a whole series of novels, never mind just one. I also found Karma's relationship with Lynn tedious and I'm never entirely sure why cousin Gussie had to be involved at all.
Yet, as I said, there are brilliant passages of writing here all the same and more than enough action scenes and convincing hardboiled dialogue to make Strongarm a powerful novel and well worth reading if you are a student of hardboiled crime fiction. I'm curious about Marlowe's other books and hope that some day I'll be able to track a few of them down.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Raymond Chandler: The Simple Art of Murder and Pickup on Noon Street
Raymond Chandler's 1944 essay, The Simple Art of Murder is pretty much the only statement of the credo of hardoiled, noir fiction. The only other one that comes to mind is perhaps George Orwell's Raffles and Miss Blandish, but that was written as a condemnation of hard boiled story telling which Orwell loathed for what he considered to be its trivialization of violence.
Chandler doesn't have much use for violence as fantasy either. In the essay, he vents his spleen at the cozily genteel and thoroughly unreal world conjured up in the early detective yarns of Agatha Christie, A.A. Milne. and even Arthur Conan Doyle - he is especially harsh on Doyle saying that many of his plots were rendered pointless by their errors in logic, or scientific or legal fact. He only lets Doyle off by saying that he at least was an originator of the genre and had to find his way around and couldn't always be successful.
Chandler is frustrated and disgusted by fake mystery tales in which murder was committed to provide a corpse for the detective to find and the murder itself was achieved, not with plausible weapons, but with such clever plot contrivances as "hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish."
Chandler praises Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon for bringing realism to mystery fiction and for writing about people with "a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there." He then writes memorably and eloquently of the true role of the mystery writer, "The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities...It is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in."
Chandler certainly lived by this credo and this was amply demonstrated in one of his most effective works of fiction, "Pickup On Noon Street." Frankly, I've always found Chandler to be an acquired taste. Although I enjoyed The Long Goodbye, his classic novel starring his famous private eye creation Philip Marlowe, I've always been baffled by the appeal of Chandler's best known Marlowe tale, "The Big Sleep" with its almost incoherent multiple plots and numerous red herrings.
This is certainly not the case with Pickup on Noon Street, a novella Chandler wrote for the pulp detective magazines of the 1930s. The limited word count he would have been allowed as well as the story requirements of the various magazine editors he would have been dealing with forced Chandler to rein in his weakness for rambling and concentrate on telling a tightly constructed tale. Yet this is no piece of mechanical hack work but a carefully contrived tale of extortion, murder and corruption that takes place in an all too believable America of mean streets, fist fights and people who see no problem in settling quarrels with a gun.
Pete Anglich is a small time private eye, a seedy man who lives in cheap motels, sleeping most of his days away in a drunken stupor. At the outset of the story, he is approached in his motel room by a man who tries to hit him up for some money. Anglich shoots and kills him. Afterward, he pays a bribe to the motel's front desk clerk to keep him quiet, saying, "I'm a man who likes to pay my way."
The sordidness continues as Anglich walks down Noon Street and picks up for a young woman standing on the sidewalk a package that has been tossed out on to the road for her from a passing car. It turns out the package is extortion money being paid out from a Hollywood actor eager to keep a lid on some not so publicity-friendly goings on (Remember, this was before the present era of Charlie Sheen and Paris Hilton!). Anglich quite literally gets caught like a deer in the headlights as the police pounce on him, thinking he is the extortionist:
He stiffened, whirled and the light caught him between the eyes. It came from the dark window across the street, a blinding white shaft that impaled him against the billboard.
His face leered into it, his eyes blinked. He didn't move any more.
The story is filled with brilliantly described sequences such as this which put you right into the scene and that even after almost eighty years, still ring horrifically true.
If you would like a small slice of Chandler's writing that gives you a good taste of his outlook, and his style, but without the complex plot excesses of some of his novels, Pickup on Noon Street is a good story to try out.
Chandler doesn't have much use for violence as fantasy either. In the essay, he vents his spleen at the cozily genteel and thoroughly unreal world conjured up in the early detective yarns of Agatha Christie, A.A. Milne. and even Arthur Conan Doyle - he is especially harsh on Doyle saying that many of his plots were rendered pointless by their errors in logic, or scientific or legal fact. He only lets Doyle off by saying that he at least was an originator of the genre and had to find his way around and couldn't always be successful.
Chandler is frustrated and disgusted by fake mystery tales in which murder was committed to provide a corpse for the detective to find and the murder itself was achieved, not with plausible weapons, but with such clever plot contrivances as "hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish."
Chandler praises Dashiell Hammett, author of The Maltese Falcon for bringing realism to mystery fiction and for writing about people with "a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there." He then writes memorably and eloquently of the true role of the mystery writer, "The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities...It is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in."
Chandler certainly lived by this credo and this was amply demonstrated in one of his most effective works of fiction, "Pickup On Noon Street." Frankly, I've always found Chandler to be an acquired taste. Although I enjoyed The Long Goodbye, his classic novel starring his famous private eye creation Philip Marlowe, I've always been baffled by the appeal of Chandler's best known Marlowe tale, "The Big Sleep" with its almost incoherent multiple plots and numerous red herrings.
This is certainly not the case with Pickup on Noon Street, a novella Chandler wrote for the pulp detective magazines of the 1930s. The limited word count he would have been allowed as well as the story requirements of the various magazine editors he would have been dealing with forced Chandler to rein in his weakness for rambling and concentrate on telling a tightly constructed tale. Yet this is no piece of mechanical hack work but a carefully contrived tale of extortion, murder and corruption that takes place in an all too believable America of mean streets, fist fights and people who see no problem in settling quarrels with a gun.
Pete Anglich is a small time private eye, a seedy man who lives in cheap motels, sleeping most of his days away in a drunken stupor. At the outset of the story, he is approached in his motel room by a man who tries to hit him up for some money. Anglich shoots and kills him. Afterward, he pays a bribe to the motel's front desk clerk to keep him quiet, saying, "I'm a man who likes to pay my way."
The sordidness continues as Anglich walks down Noon Street and picks up for a young woman standing on the sidewalk a package that has been tossed out on to the road for her from a passing car. It turns out the package is extortion money being paid out from a Hollywood actor eager to keep a lid on some not so publicity-friendly goings on (Remember, this was before the present era of Charlie Sheen and Paris Hilton!). Anglich quite literally gets caught like a deer in the headlights as the police pounce on him, thinking he is the extortionist:
He stiffened, whirled and the light caught him between the eyes. It came from the dark window across the street, a blinding white shaft that impaled him against the billboard.
His face leered into it, his eyes blinked. He didn't move any more.
The story is filled with brilliantly described sequences such as this which put you right into the scene and that even after almost eighty years, still ring horrifically true.
If you would like a small slice of Chandler's writing that gives you a good taste of his outlook, and his style, but without the complex plot excesses of some of his novels, Pickup on Noon Street is a good story to try out.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Mickey Spillane's The Consummata as Completed by Max Allan Collins
One of the first releases from the newly revived Hard Case Crime series was The Consummata, a novel first started by hard boiled originator Mickey Spillane in the Sixties and finished in the twenty-first century by fellow noir scribe and close friend Max Allan Collins.
Spillane was the legendary author of numerous best selling hard boiled detective and action novels from the 1940s through to the 1970s. His most infamous creation was the tough talking, pistol packing and pugilistic private eye, Mike Hammer, immortalized in the classic 1947 novel, I, The Jury, memorable for its brilliant finale with its unforgettable blending of Eros and Thanatos:
Her thumbs hooked the fragile silk of the panties and pulled them down. She stepped out of them as delicately as one coming from a bathtub. She was completely naked now. A suntanned goddess giving herself to her lover. With arms outstretched, she walked toward me...She leaned forward to kiss me, her arms going out to encircle my neck...
The roar of the .45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step...
"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.
Spillane was both admired and reviled for his tough, unflinching prose, his tight plotting and the graphic sex and violence of his novels. Film director Stanley Kubrick, whose movie classic The Killing, adapted from the novel Clean Break by noted hardboiled scribe Lionel White and co-scripted by Kubrick and Jim Thompson of The Killer Inside Me infamy, is a masterpiece of noir in itself, once said, "Spillane knows all there is to know about reaching audiences."
There is no doubt that vintage Spillane novels, whatever their faults, are classic page turners that grip your attention.
The Comsummata, however, is an awkward final contribution to the Spillane canon. It is the unfinished and thus previously unpublished sequel to the 1967 Spillane offering, The Delta Factor, which was to kick off a series featuring a new Spillane hero, Morgan the Raider. The series fizzled out, however, after a botched attempt to turn The Delta Factor into a movie embittered Spillane. In frustration, he gave the unfinished novel to Collins, telling him that some day they would finish it. Collins eventually finished the novel and the end result is in stores now.
Ostensibly, the novel is set in 1967 Miami, where Morgan is being pursued by the Feds. He is the lead suspect in a $40 million armored car heist and very much a wanted man. He is given refuge by a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles and they offer him the job of finding seventy-five thousand dollars that has been stolen from their war chest. Grateful to his hosts and moved by their sincerity and sympathetic to their cause, Morgan takes the job.
He soon learns the man most likely responsible for the theft is Halaquez, a member of the group since exposed as a double dealer who collaborated with Castro. He was a regular customer at the Mandor Club, an extremely secret brothel for politicians, businessmen and other notable VIPs - a regular, but extremely unwelcome customer, due to his rarefied tastes in sadomasochism. Morgan is granted entree to the club and meets Gaita, a courtesan of the establishment who gives him some leads on Halaquez.
Morgan learns that Halaquez stole the seventy-five thousand to fund a crackpot scheme by a fellow Mandor Club customer, an inventor developing a device for detecting atomic weaponry. The dots soon connect and an elaborate tower of cards collapses all around Morgan, leaving behind a tattered network of duplicity implicating just about all of the novel's characters, a pile of corpses worthy of an Elizabethan revenge tragedy, and the surprise - or maybe not so surprising for more astute readers - identity of The Consummata, a half legendary dominatrix whose mysterious presence hangs tantalizingly over the novel and lends the story its name.
I said earlier that the novel was ostensibly set in 1967 Miami. What I mean is that the novel never really feels like anything from the 1960s. "Chippy" a long and deservedly lost slang word for prostitute is uttered by the characters at one point and just a few paragraphs later, those same characters use the present-day euphemism, "sex worker." Early in the novel, Morgan describes the armored car heist he was involved in as a "template" for such robberies - a term that would never have been used in the 1960s. Yet, at around the same point, Morgan talks about "the threads" worn by the federal agents pursuing him, very much a specimen of 1960s slang. Yet there are no references to movies or music from the time, nothing that really places the story in 1967. Even with its creaky Cold War-era nuclear conspiracy plot, the novel seems to exist in its own time continuum, in its own space of meta-narrative.
This seems to be a strange quirk of Collins, whose The First Quarry, a novel featuring the first adventure of the contract killer Quarry - Collins's version of Morgan the Raider - was supposedly set in 1970, yet featured such bizarre anachronisms as karaoke bars. The untimely intrusions into an otherwise naturalistic story are never explained and in the end, they bothered me and turned me off the novel. This is definitely a distracting aesthetic conceit that he should have left out of Spillane's The Comsummata. Collins did a much better job with Dead Street, the final Mickey Spillane novel published by Hard Case Crime in 2008, for which he wrote the concluding chapters. Collins' contributions fit seamlessly into the novel, his vocabulary and style totally blended with Spillane's and resulted in a very strong and entertaining book.
Now, I'm not saying The Consummata is a total write off, pardon the pun. There are some skillfully described action sequences and some beautiful erotic writing involving Gaita that are highly entertaining. If you are a fan of either Spillane or Collins, the book is a must-read.
It's just too bad that the book leaves you with a strong feeling of reverse deja vu, a feeling of loss at what might have been made at one time out of a brilliant idea for a great story.
Spillane was the legendary author of numerous best selling hard boiled detective and action novels from the 1940s through to the 1970s. His most infamous creation was the tough talking, pistol packing and pugilistic private eye, Mike Hammer, immortalized in the classic 1947 novel, I, The Jury, memorable for its brilliant finale with its unforgettable blending of Eros and Thanatos:
Her thumbs hooked the fragile silk of the panties and pulled them down. She stepped out of them as delicately as one coming from a bathtub. She was completely naked now. A suntanned goddess giving herself to her lover. With arms outstretched, she walked toward me...She leaned forward to kiss me, her arms going out to encircle my neck...
The roar of the .45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step...
"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.
Spillane was both admired and reviled for his tough, unflinching prose, his tight plotting and the graphic sex and violence of his novels. Film director Stanley Kubrick, whose movie classic The Killing, adapted from the novel Clean Break by noted hardboiled scribe Lionel White and co-scripted by Kubrick and Jim Thompson of The Killer Inside Me infamy, is a masterpiece of noir in itself, once said, "Spillane knows all there is to know about reaching audiences."
There is no doubt that vintage Spillane novels, whatever their faults, are classic page turners that grip your attention.
The Comsummata, however, is an awkward final contribution to the Spillane canon. It is the unfinished and thus previously unpublished sequel to the 1967 Spillane offering, The Delta Factor, which was to kick off a series featuring a new Spillane hero, Morgan the Raider. The series fizzled out, however, after a botched attempt to turn The Delta Factor into a movie embittered Spillane. In frustration, he gave the unfinished novel to Collins, telling him that some day they would finish it. Collins eventually finished the novel and the end result is in stores now.
Ostensibly, the novel is set in 1967 Miami, where Morgan is being pursued by the Feds. He is the lead suspect in a $40 million armored car heist and very much a wanted man. He is given refuge by a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles and they offer him the job of finding seventy-five thousand dollars that has been stolen from their war chest. Grateful to his hosts and moved by their sincerity and sympathetic to their cause, Morgan takes the job.
He soon learns the man most likely responsible for the theft is Halaquez, a member of the group since exposed as a double dealer who collaborated with Castro. He was a regular customer at the Mandor Club, an extremely secret brothel for politicians, businessmen and other notable VIPs - a regular, but extremely unwelcome customer, due to his rarefied tastes in sadomasochism. Morgan is granted entree to the club and meets Gaita, a courtesan of the establishment who gives him some leads on Halaquez.
Morgan learns that Halaquez stole the seventy-five thousand to fund a crackpot scheme by a fellow Mandor Club customer, an inventor developing a device for detecting atomic weaponry. The dots soon connect and an elaborate tower of cards collapses all around Morgan, leaving behind a tattered network of duplicity implicating just about all of the novel's characters, a pile of corpses worthy of an Elizabethan revenge tragedy, and the surprise - or maybe not so surprising for more astute readers - identity of The Consummata, a half legendary dominatrix whose mysterious presence hangs tantalizingly over the novel and lends the story its name.
I said earlier that the novel was ostensibly set in 1967 Miami. What I mean is that the novel never really feels like anything from the 1960s. "Chippy" a long and deservedly lost slang word for prostitute is uttered by the characters at one point and just a few paragraphs later, those same characters use the present-day euphemism, "sex worker." Early in the novel, Morgan describes the armored car heist he was involved in as a "template" for such robberies - a term that would never have been used in the 1960s. Yet, at around the same point, Morgan talks about "the threads" worn by the federal agents pursuing him, very much a specimen of 1960s slang. Yet there are no references to movies or music from the time, nothing that really places the story in 1967. Even with its creaky Cold War-era nuclear conspiracy plot, the novel seems to exist in its own time continuum, in its own space of meta-narrative.
This seems to be a strange quirk of Collins, whose The First Quarry, a novel featuring the first adventure of the contract killer Quarry - Collins's version of Morgan the Raider - was supposedly set in 1970, yet featured such bizarre anachronisms as karaoke bars. The untimely intrusions into an otherwise naturalistic story are never explained and in the end, they bothered me and turned me off the novel. This is definitely a distracting aesthetic conceit that he should have left out of Spillane's The Comsummata. Collins did a much better job with Dead Street, the final Mickey Spillane novel published by Hard Case Crime in 2008, for which he wrote the concluding chapters. Collins' contributions fit seamlessly into the novel, his vocabulary and style totally blended with Spillane's and resulted in a very strong and entertaining book.
Now, I'm not saying The Consummata is a total write off, pardon the pun. There are some skillfully described action sequences and some beautiful erotic writing involving Gaita that are highly entertaining. If you are a fan of either Spillane or Collins, the book is a must-read.
It's just too bad that the book leaves you with a strong feeling of reverse deja vu, a feeling of loss at what might have been made at one time out of a brilliant idea for a great story.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Georges Simenon's Madman of Bergerac
Recently I finished The Madman of Bergerac, an Inspector Maigret murder mystery novel by the legendary Georges Simenon.
A few posts back, I praised the Maigret novels on the basis of two that I had read: Maigret at the Coroner's (which I have reviewed) and Maigret and the Loner (which I haven't.) Both of these books date from later in Simenon's career, the former from 1952 and the latter from 1972. Both are highly realistic in their details about police work and investigative techniques and yet at the same time, are impressive in their social and psychological observation.
However, this cannot be said of the Madman of Bergerac, a much earlier Maigret mystery dating from 1933. Presumably in his later years, Simenon was likely influenced by the murder mysteries of Raymond Chandler and the police procedurals of Hilary Waugh and Ed McBain, which are meticulously accurate and authentic. Also, between 1945 and 1955, Simenon lived in the US and Canada and would presumably have come into contact with noir pulp novels and stories and would have learned something of hardboiled suspense writing which would have informed his later work.
None of that is evident in the Madman of Bergerac. The novel begins with Maigret taking a train trip to the provincial town of Bergerac to visit an old friend from the Paris police department and to do a little salmon fishing. He shares his train compartment with an eccentric man who lies in the upper bunk. He mutters to himself and fidgets and seems to be upset about something. Abruptly, as the train slows in its approach to the Bergerac station, the man leaps from the bunk and flees the compartment. Alarmed by the man's odd behavior, Maigret gives chase. The man jumps from the train and Maigret impulsively jumps with him. The man sees Maigret pursuing him and he shoots Maigret in the shoulder.
Maigret later regains consciousness in the hospital. Leduc, his old friend from the Paris police, is called to the hospital to confirm Maigret's identity. Leduc explains to Maigret that the hospital authorities are suspicious of Maigret because of his jump from the train. They think that he is the Madman of Bergerac, a sociopath who has so far killed two local women by stabbing them through the heart with a needle. The townspeople are in a panic and wary of any strangers in their midst.
In spite of his injuries, and in spite of being completely outside of his Paris police jurisdiction, Maigret starts an investigation of the case first from his hospital bed and then later from a room in a local hotel where he has himself billeted once his condition improves. He is aided and abetted by Madame Maigret, who comes from Paris to join him. Much to his wife's dismay, Maigret makes a nuisance of himself with his constant invasive questioning of everyone around him from his doctor to hotel staff to the local prosecutor and police chief. He even puts up a reward to call in people to speak with him at the hotel about any information they have about the killings.
He learns that the man who jumped from the train was a human smuggler who supplied local brothels with women. He is a suspect until his dead body is found by police near the train tracks and soon after, a woman reports being accosted by a man who tried to strangle her. Obviously, the Madman of Bergerac is still on the loose.
He then looks into the history of a local man of business with a fondness for pornographic art books - "books for conoissieurs" who may also be a suspect.
Of course, Maigret ultimately cracks the case and along the way unravels a tangle of small town bourgeois intrigue and duplicity. I suppose the book is entertaining in its way, but the implausibility of its story - Maigret jumping from the train with the man when he could've flashed his police badge at the train operators and had them stop the train so he could go look for the man; an out of town and out of jurisdiction police detective running an investigation from a hospital room and then a hotel - really put me off.
I doubt that I will read another early (1930s) Maigret novel. However, I am still curious about the later novels from the 1950s on. These seem to be better constructed, more plausible and ultimately, more entertaining.
A few posts back, I praised the Maigret novels on the basis of two that I had read: Maigret at the Coroner's (which I have reviewed) and Maigret and the Loner (which I haven't.) Both of these books date from later in Simenon's career, the former from 1952 and the latter from 1972. Both are highly realistic in their details about police work and investigative techniques and yet at the same time, are impressive in their social and psychological observation.
However, this cannot be said of the Madman of Bergerac, a much earlier Maigret mystery dating from 1933. Presumably in his later years, Simenon was likely influenced by the murder mysteries of Raymond Chandler and the police procedurals of Hilary Waugh and Ed McBain, which are meticulously accurate and authentic. Also, between 1945 and 1955, Simenon lived in the US and Canada and would presumably have come into contact with noir pulp novels and stories and would have learned something of hardboiled suspense writing which would have informed his later work.
None of that is evident in the Madman of Bergerac. The novel begins with Maigret taking a train trip to the provincial town of Bergerac to visit an old friend from the Paris police department and to do a little salmon fishing. He shares his train compartment with an eccentric man who lies in the upper bunk. He mutters to himself and fidgets and seems to be upset about something. Abruptly, as the train slows in its approach to the Bergerac station, the man leaps from the bunk and flees the compartment. Alarmed by the man's odd behavior, Maigret gives chase. The man jumps from the train and Maigret impulsively jumps with him. The man sees Maigret pursuing him and he shoots Maigret in the shoulder.
Maigret later regains consciousness in the hospital. Leduc, his old friend from the Paris police, is called to the hospital to confirm Maigret's identity. Leduc explains to Maigret that the hospital authorities are suspicious of Maigret because of his jump from the train. They think that he is the Madman of Bergerac, a sociopath who has so far killed two local women by stabbing them through the heart with a needle. The townspeople are in a panic and wary of any strangers in their midst.
In spite of his injuries, and in spite of being completely outside of his Paris police jurisdiction, Maigret starts an investigation of the case first from his hospital bed and then later from a room in a local hotel where he has himself billeted once his condition improves. He is aided and abetted by Madame Maigret, who comes from Paris to join him. Much to his wife's dismay, Maigret makes a nuisance of himself with his constant invasive questioning of everyone around him from his doctor to hotel staff to the local prosecutor and police chief. He even puts up a reward to call in people to speak with him at the hotel about any information they have about the killings.
He learns that the man who jumped from the train was a human smuggler who supplied local brothels with women. He is a suspect until his dead body is found by police near the train tracks and soon after, a woman reports being accosted by a man who tried to strangle her. Obviously, the Madman of Bergerac is still on the loose.
He then looks into the history of a local man of business with a fondness for pornographic art books - "books for conoissieurs" who may also be a suspect.
Of course, Maigret ultimately cracks the case and along the way unravels a tangle of small town bourgeois intrigue and duplicity. I suppose the book is entertaining in its way, but the implausibility of its story - Maigret jumping from the train with the man when he could've flashed his police badge at the train operators and had them stop the train so he could go look for the man; an out of town and out of jurisdiction police detective running an investigation from a hospital room and then a hotel - really put me off.
I doubt that I will read another early (1930s) Maigret novel. However, I am still curious about the later novels from the 1950s on. These seem to be better constructed, more plausible and ultimately, more entertaining.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman
Recently, I finished The Fifth Woman, a Kurt Wallander thriller by Swedish mystery writer Henning Mankell.
I have the book in its mass market paperback edition, which was just released this past summer. Even in this portable format, it still runs to 654 pages - about twice the length of the other Wallander books I've read. It's far and away the longest - and the most ambitious - of the Wallander books I've read so far.
In the book, Wallander must investigate the mysterious and grotesquely violent deaths of some men in the environs of Ystad, his home town. A retired car dealer with a fondness for writing poems about birds is found impaled on wooden stakes in a pit that he has fallen into. Another man who runs a flower shop is found strangled in a forest.
Wallander and his team of investigators are baffled and horrified by the crimes. As the story twists and turns, it becomes evident to them that the killer may be a woman bent on revenge for violence she has suffered at the hands of men. The men who were killed - in spite of the placid appearance they presented to the world - all had a history of violent relationships with women.
The story is a bleak one, with grim depictions of the grisly crimes. Wallander must also confront the more troubling aspects of his own past relationship with Mona, his ex-wife.
In style, the novel departs from previous Wallander tales in that the story isn't entirely seen from Wallander's viewpoint. Chapters with Wallander are intercut with chapters seen from the woman murderer's viewpoint, so we sometimes find out things that Wallander hasn't yet learned. In these chapters, we learn that the killer's mother was murdered on a trip to Africa while staying with a group of four nuns. She was the unidentified fifth woman of the group.
The killer learns of her mother's death from a remorseful woman police investigator in the African country who had sent her a letter explaining that her death had been covered up by local authorities. Knowledge of her mother's death breaks the woman and she embarks on her murders, methodically killing one by one local men she knows to have had been in brutally violent relationships with women.
The novel is complex and harrowing. My only real objection to it is that perhaps Mankell lays on the adversity a bit too heavily. Wallander's father dies during the novel, adding a somber note to an already serious theme. There is also a pointless subplot about a vigilante militia being formed in Ystad to fight back against the murders that could just as easily have been left out. In spite of that, the novel is still effective, chilling and provocative. Well worth a read.
I have the book in its mass market paperback edition, which was just released this past summer. Even in this portable format, it still runs to 654 pages - about twice the length of the other Wallander books I've read. It's far and away the longest - and the most ambitious - of the Wallander books I've read so far.
In the book, Wallander must investigate the mysterious and grotesquely violent deaths of some men in the environs of Ystad, his home town. A retired car dealer with a fondness for writing poems about birds is found impaled on wooden stakes in a pit that he has fallen into. Another man who runs a flower shop is found strangled in a forest.
Wallander and his team of investigators are baffled and horrified by the crimes. As the story twists and turns, it becomes evident to them that the killer may be a woman bent on revenge for violence she has suffered at the hands of men. The men who were killed - in spite of the placid appearance they presented to the world - all had a history of violent relationships with women.
The story is a bleak one, with grim depictions of the grisly crimes. Wallander must also confront the more troubling aspects of his own past relationship with Mona, his ex-wife.
In style, the novel departs from previous Wallander tales in that the story isn't entirely seen from Wallander's viewpoint. Chapters with Wallander are intercut with chapters seen from the woman murderer's viewpoint, so we sometimes find out things that Wallander hasn't yet learned. In these chapters, we learn that the killer's mother was murdered on a trip to Africa while staying with a group of four nuns. She was the unidentified fifth woman of the group.
The killer learns of her mother's death from a remorseful woman police investigator in the African country who had sent her a letter explaining that her death had been covered up by local authorities. Knowledge of her mother's death breaks the woman and she embarks on her murders, methodically killing one by one local men she knows to have had been in brutally violent relationships with women.
The novel is complex and harrowing. My only real objection to it is that perhaps Mankell lays on the adversity a bit too heavily. Wallander's father dies during the novel, adding a somber note to an already serious theme. There is also a pointless subplot about a vigilante militia being formed in Ystad to fight back against the murders that could just as easily have been left out. In spite of that, the novel is still effective, chilling and provocative. Well worth a read.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Excerpt From Watching and Listening
Here is a selection from Watching and Listening, a noir short story I recently completed about a lonely, socially awkward man who becomes obsessed with a coffee shop waitress.
WATCHING AND LISTENING
The night embraced Johnny, gathering him into its unseen arms, not letting him go.
He was a willing captive. He wanted to lose himself in the night and never return to his lonely house that stood by itself at the end of the street, right at the edge of the woods and not far from the ravine, its nearest neighbor many blocks away.
The night entranced him, comforted him. In the night, his solitude melted into the anonymous glow of street lights, into the vacant gloom of shadowy laneways and back alleys.
He slowed in his flight, drawing to a halt beside a utility pole. He flattened his palm against it, catching his breath, regaining his balance. That wine he had bought for tonight, which was to be the night of nights but which had been an empty disappointment – what else could it have been, really? - had unbalanced him. His mind reeled with images and ideas that surged through him like electricity.
He looked about the deserted street. He was only a few blocks from that yawning pit of loneliness that was his house, lonely and desolate at the best of times – he had known no other home; he had inherited it from Mother when she had passed away four years ago – but even more so now thanks to Mina’s absence. He had wanted to invite her over to visit him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it somehow. He was so shy with her, so shy with women, all he could ever do was watch her and watch them. He could never get more personal with them than a passing glance on the street or from across a coffee shop.
So, tonight, he’d pretended that he had had the guts to ask Mina to come over, had decided to throw a little party for himself with Mina as the imaginary guest of honor. He had sat at the dining room table that had been laid with Mother’s best china and cutlery, methodically drinking one glass after another of the expensive wine he had bought at the liquor store just for this wonderful occasion.
His throat tightened and he blinked to hold the tears back. He was turning thirty next week, far too old to be choked up like this.
He hadn’t even wept like this when Mother died.
At the end of the street stood a set of traffic lights; Smile’s coffee shop was right there. A sprint of a minute or two and he would be walking in the door. There was hope; she might still be there. He checked his watch. It was only ten-thirty. Her shift didn’t end for another hour at least. He would go there and see her and talk to her, convince her that she should date him.
But, he had to steady himself first. He braced himself against the utility pole. His breath came in short gasps. His heart raced. His white dress shirt, hours ago so crisp and tidily pressed - he’d actually laid out a few bucks to get it dry cleaned for tonight - now dripped with sweat and clung to him in the clammy, humid air of the August night like a sodden rag. He caught his breath and held it. He had no choice. He had to get to Smile’s and see Mina. He had to.
He lunged forward and made himself run the final blocks. Soon, he was across from the strip mall which housed the coffee shop. He stood behind a tree, away from the glow of the street lights.
He could see Mina in the window, mopping the floor by the entrance. She was in her tight-fitting orange and white uniform that clung to her curvy figure so enticingly, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was a year younger than he, she’d mentioned her age in passing one night, but the pony tail and her warm smile dissolved the years and made her seem like a fresh-faced college girl, identical to the ones he admired from afar when he was a janitor at Dorchester College, before Mother had died and he didn’t need to work anymore, because he had her inheritance…
Don’t let the memories run away with you, he thought. Look at what’s in front of you. Look at how beautiful she is and how she could be yours, if only you spoke to her the right way and stopped being such a nervous ass.
He took courage from the night that surrounded him, and crossed the street, looking directly at Mina through the window. She couldn’t see him, not yet, but that was all the better.
He pushed open the door and he was inside.
Mina saw him and smiled. “Good evening, Johnny. You look kind of warm.”
Tom smiled back as he sidled up to the counter, hoping he wasn’t staggering. Mina set aside her mop and followed him. “Yeah, been walking too fast. It’s real muggy out. You been busy tonight, Mina?”
“We had a bit of a crowd in here about an hour ago, bunch of kids heading out to the clubs, I guess. No one since, though. Pretty quiet.”
Johnny was glad his voice sounded clear. He didn’t seem to be slurring his words. “Gives you time to yourself to look after the place”
“Yeah,” she said shyly, her voice trailing off as she walked behind the counter.
He looked at the faded lit-up picture on the wall behind the counter of a china mug almost spilling over with steaming coffee. He remembered coming in here as a child with Mother years ago when the picture was bright and new. Now Mother was gone and the picture was fading away. He cursed himself. Don’t get all morbid. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just ask Mina out? She’d been here a year, she knew who he was. He wasn’t a stranger to her.
He watched Mina slide gracefully behind the counter, her bare, well-toned legs exposed from just above the knee by her orange skirt that fit just right, not too sexy, but not too plain either.
Johnny licked his lips appreciatively. He coughed and raised his hand to cover his mouth, hoping she hadn’t seen him. “Got a bit of a cold?” she asked.
“Think so.”
“That sucks. Not surprising though, with so much rain lately. Oh well, what can you do? You want your usual?”
“Large coffee with two creams.”
“You got it.”
He paid for his coffee and while he took it in his hand that trembled maybe a little too much, he glimpsed at Mina’s dark brown, almond-shaped eyes. She smiled warmly and for a moment, his eyes lingered over the glimpse of cleavage her blouse revealed.
Had she noticed him looking? Maybe that was why she was still smiling as he sat down at his usual table. He glanced back one more time at her. She was still looking, but her forehead creased with what looked like a frown. Was she angry with him? Best not to look her way again for a while.
He sipped his coffee. He looked at the cup in his hand. Rock steady. His tremor wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wasn’t as visibly drunk as he had feared.
Someone had left a newspaper on the table and he looked through it, occasionally sneaking peeks at Mina. She was no longer at the counter; she had returned to mopping the floor.
The front door opened and a young woman with long blonde hair swept in, a duffel bag in her hand.
“Hey, Erica! How you doing!” Mina shouted as the blonde woman smiled and waved a greeting as she hurried to the back of the store.
Erica worked the counter overnight. Johnny cursed to himself. Her arrival meant Mina’s shift was ending. Soon she would be going home. He would not talk with her again that night.
He would have no choice but to go out for one of his walks. He never used to take late night walks, but in the last month or so, they had become a real habit for him. He found they relaxed him and helped him sleep. They also helped him keep an eye on Mina. Now, that wasn’t the only reason he did them. He needed the exercise and the time to think, but it never hurt to make sure Mina got home okay and no one had disturbed her. He didn’t want to see any harm come to her and none had.
So far.
WATCHING AND LISTENING
The night embraced Johnny, gathering him into its unseen arms, not letting him go.
He was a willing captive. He wanted to lose himself in the night and never return to his lonely house that stood by itself at the end of the street, right at the edge of the woods and not far from the ravine, its nearest neighbor many blocks away.
The night entranced him, comforted him. In the night, his solitude melted into the anonymous glow of street lights, into the vacant gloom of shadowy laneways and back alleys.
He slowed in his flight, drawing to a halt beside a utility pole. He flattened his palm against it, catching his breath, regaining his balance. That wine he had bought for tonight, which was to be the night of nights but which had been an empty disappointment – what else could it have been, really? - had unbalanced him. His mind reeled with images and ideas that surged through him like electricity.
He looked about the deserted street. He was only a few blocks from that yawning pit of loneliness that was his house, lonely and desolate at the best of times – he had known no other home; he had inherited it from Mother when she had passed away four years ago – but even more so now thanks to Mina’s absence. He had wanted to invite her over to visit him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it somehow. He was so shy with her, so shy with women, all he could ever do was watch her and watch them. He could never get more personal with them than a passing glance on the street or from across a coffee shop.
So, tonight, he’d pretended that he had had the guts to ask Mina to come over, had decided to throw a little party for himself with Mina as the imaginary guest of honor. He had sat at the dining room table that had been laid with Mother’s best china and cutlery, methodically drinking one glass after another of the expensive wine he had bought at the liquor store just for this wonderful occasion.
His throat tightened and he blinked to hold the tears back. He was turning thirty next week, far too old to be choked up like this.
He hadn’t even wept like this when Mother died.
At the end of the street stood a set of traffic lights; Smile’s coffee shop was right there. A sprint of a minute or two and he would be walking in the door. There was hope; she might still be there. He checked his watch. It was only ten-thirty. Her shift didn’t end for another hour at least. He would go there and see her and talk to her, convince her that she should date him.
But, he had to steady himself first. He braced himself against the utility pole. His breath came in short gasps. His heart raced. His white dress shirt, hours ago so crisp and tidily pressed - he’d actually laid out a few bucks to get it dry cleaned for tonight - now dripped with sweat and clung to him in the clammy, humid air of the August night like a sodden rag. He caught his breath and held it. He had no choice. He had to get to Smile’s and see Mina. He had to.
He lunged forward and made himself run the final blocks. Soon, he was across from the strip mall which housed the coffee shop. He stood behind a tree, away from the glow of the street lights.
He could see Mina in the window, mopping the floor by the entrance. She was in her tight-fitting orange and white uniform that clung to her curvy figure so enticingly, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was a year younger than he, she’d mentioned her age in passing one night, but the pony tail and her warm smile dissolved the years and made her seem like a fresh-faced college girl, identical to the ones he admired from afar when he was a janitor at Dorchester College, before Mother had died and he didn’t need to work anymore, because he had her inheritance…
Don’t let the memories run away with you, he thought. Look at what’s in front of you. Look at how beautiful she is and how she could be yours, if only you spoke to her the right way and stopped being such a nervous ass.
He took courage from the night that surrounded him, and crossed the street, looking directly at Mina through the window. She couldn’t see him, not yet, but that was all the better.
He pushed open the door and he was inside.
Mina saw him and smiled. “Good evening, Johnny. You look kind of warm.”
Tom smiled back as he sidled up to the counter, hoping he wasn’t staggering. Mina set aside her mop and followed him. “Yeah, been walking too fast. It’s real muggy out. You been busy tonight, Mina?”
“We had a bit of a crowd in here about an hour ago, bunch of kids heading out to the clubs, I guess. No one since, though. Pretty quiet.”
Johnny was glad his voice sounded clear. He didn’t seem to be slurring his words. “Gives you time to yourself to look after the place”
“Yeah,” she said shyly, her voice trailing off as she walked behind the counter.
He looked at the faded lit-up picture on the wall behind the counter of a china mug almost spilling over with steaming coffee. He remembered coming in here as a child with Mother years ago when the picture was bright and new. Now Mother was gone and the picture was fading away. He cursed himself. Don’t get all morbid. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he just ask Mina out? She’d been here a year, she knew who he was. He wasn’t a stranger to her.
He watched Mina slide gracefully behind the counter, her bare, well-toned legs exposed from just above the knee by her orange skirt that fit just right, not too sexy, but not too plain either.
Johnny licked his lips appreciatively. He coughed and raised his hand to cover his mouth, hoping she hadn’t seen him. “Got a bit of a cold?” she asked.
“Think so.”
“That sucks. Not surprising though, with so much rain lately. Oh well, what can you do? You want your usual?”
“Large coffee with two creams.”
“You got it.”
He paid for his coffee and while he took it in his hand that trembled maybe a little too much, he glimpsed at Mina’s dark brown, almond-shaped eyes. She smiled warmly and for a moment, his eyes lingered over the glimpse of cleavage her blouse revealed.
Had she noticed him looking? Maybe that was why she was still smiling as he sat down at his usual table. He glanced back one more time at her. She was still looking, but her forehead creased with what looked like a frown. Was she angry with him? Best not to look her way again for a while.
He sipped his coffee. He looked at the cup in his hand. Rock steady. His tremor wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wasn’t as visibly drunk as he had feared.
Someone had left a newspaper on the table and he looked through it, occasionally sneaking peeks at Mina. She was no longer at the counter; she had returned to mopping the floor.
The front door opened and a young woman with long blonde hair swept in, a duffel bag in her hand.
“Hey, Erica! How you doing!” Mina shouted as the blonde woman smiled and waved a greeting as she hurried to the back of the store.
Erica worked the counter overnight. Johnny cursed to himself. Her arrival meant Mina’s shift was ending. Soon she would be going home. He would not talk with her again that night.
He would have no choice but to go out for one of his walks. He never used to take late night walks, but in the last month or so, they had become a real habit for him. He found they relaxed him and helped him sleep. They also helped him keep an eye on Mina. Now, that wasn’t the only reason he did them. He needed the exercise and the time to think, but it never hurt to make sure Mina got home okay and no one had disturbed her. He didn’t want to see any harm come to her and none had.
So far.
Upcoming Reviews on Hard Boiled Reads
Just a quick update to let you know that more reviews will be soon posted here. Future titles I'll be talking about include two new Hard Case Crime titles, Quarry's Ex, by Max Allan Collins and The Comsummta, an unfinished Mickey Spillane novel from the late 1960s completed by Collins, who was a close friend of Spillane. Also under consideration will be The Madman of Bergerac, a disappointing Maigret novel by Simenon and The Fifth Woman, a Kurt Wallander mystery by Henning Mankell.
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