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Book Review: NIGHTFALL (1947) by David Goodis

8/11/2019

While the average pop culture consumer might view the American crime genres of hard-boiled detective fiction and noir as one and the same, the differences are worth noting. True, there are many elemental overlaps, including an often urban setting, an emphasis on action and violence (or the threat of it), and a thematic view that sees the world in a shadowy, cynical light. But the plot of noir is usually concerned with an innocent or honest character – notably not a detective, as in the hard-boiled genre – who gets caught in a web of criminal temptation or fateful destruction. In film, noir stories were a staple of American cinema in the 1940s and into the '50s, often adapted from novels within the genre (see Double Indemnity [1944] and The Postman Always Rings Twice [1946], both adapted from James M. Cain books).

Nightfall, first published in 1947, is an excellent example of noir fiction from a respected writer in the genre. David Goodis was an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter who the previous year had received success with his moody second novel Dark Passage; he would see this book adapted by director Delmer Daves into a film featuring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. But Goodis stayed busy with his own fiction and script projects, and in 2018 Stark House released a collection of three of his noir stories, each from a different decade: Nightfall is paired with Cassidy's Girl (1951) and the late-period Night Squad from 1961.

What's curious about Nightfall is its bucking of genre conventions even as it stays firmly anchored in a noir world. Certainly the overall plotline aligns perfectly with genre expectations: Jim Vanning is living a life of concealment in New York City, on the run from something in his past. A suave but dangerous criminal is looking for him, and a police detective named Fraser already has Vanning under surveillance. Soon the reader learns of a three-man bank robbery a few months ago in Seattle and a missing suitcase filled with cash, and we start to see why Jim Vanning might be the reluctant center of attention.

With this archetypal noir situation in place, Goodis pushes his characters and prose to go beyond the predictable. One effective example is that the author spends just as much time crafting detective Fraser's personality and worldview as he does the hunted criminal's. This is an atypical and very successful choice, as it simultaneously humanizes the conventional cop character and raises the stakes for all involved: Fraser feels like something is not right with the picture, and wants to give Vanning the chance to acquit himself if somehow he is innocent. But doing so places pressure on the detective, whose superiors are expecting a swift arrest and tidy resolution.

Vanning is given a noir-esque love interest, an empathetic ally named Martha, and Goodis keeps the reader (and the protagonist) guessing over whether the woman can be trusted; some disturbing evidence hints at collusion with John, the Seattle gunman. (It's interesting that the characters we are given the greatest access to, Vanning and Fraser, are referred throughout by their surnames while those whose inner thoughts remain concealed from the reader are allowed first-name familiarity.) Perhaps the most surprising against-the-genre choice Goodis employs in Nightfall is its potential for a comparatively "happy" ending; noir rarely lets its ensnared heroes wriggle out of Fate's trap intact.

Nightfall is far from perfect. There's a critical moment where the bad guys leave Vanning alone in a room with a revolver and the suitcase full of cash whose logic is never satisfactorily explained. Even if it's a set-up, why would the stage need to be set in that way? And there's some lovely sentences Goodis forms from commercial designer Vanning's attention to colors – so unusual for a genre world literally defined in scale tones of black and white – but the thread doesn't really tie to a larger cloth. One sample:

"There were considerable things that made life worth living. Luxurious things, rich, colorful things… There was deep rose against a background of rich tan. There was shining gold. There was blue, a good, definite blue, not bright, not at all watery, but deeply blue. And then the tan again. Healthy tan. And all that added up, and it became Martha."

Still, the prose throughout the short novel shows thought and craft, and Goodis elevates his story from that presumably disposable genre of pulp fiction into something more resonant in terms of literary merit. According to the biographical introduction to the Stark House edition provided by Rick Ollerman, David Goodis himself was a misfit and a restless soul; his tales of misunderstood, luckless loners are well worth finding and exploring.

Nightfall was reprinted in 1953 as The Dark Chase and again in 1954 as Convicted.

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Book Review: THE DREADFUL HOLLOW (1953) by Nicholas Blake

7/30/2019

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There is something rather delicious about an outbreak of poison pen letters affecting a tranquil community, and I have always had an affinity for mystery fiction that uses this rather unpleasant method to shake up its characters. Part of the appeal lies in the fact that crime stories are all about concealment and revelation, about the hypocrisy of the public appearance against the private act, and there is the added bonus that a sprinkling of anonymous accusations (real or imagined) can upset guilty and innocent alike and puncture the artificial posturing of a proudly "normal" and "decent" society.

The villagers of Prior's Umborne, it seems, have a malignant agitator in their midst. Residents are receiving some very unflattering – and often inflammatory – anonymous letters, and financier Sir Archibald Blick hires Strangeways to find the source. He quickly realizes that there is a lot to investigate, as Prior's Umborne is home to its share of eccentric figures, including Blick's two sons, affable Charles and enigmatic Stanford; sisters Rosebay and Celandine Chantmerle, the former a scheming neurotic and the latter suffering from psychosomatic paralysis; and Daniel Durdle, a religious zealot and rumored illegitimate offspring of a powerful family.

Although Nigel believes he can identify the poison pen writer at an early stage, tensions and dangers escalate when Celandine is presented with a pair of binoculars rigged to shoot needles out of the eyepiece when the focus is adjusted. The Blicks have access to a machine workshop, but so does Durdle, and it's possible that the cruel gift was the result of a conspiracy. When the secret relationship between Charles and Rosebay becomes known, Sir Archibald – a fervent proponent of eugenics – flies into a rage and threatens to cut his son out of the family legacy. His objections are short-lived, literally: the next morning he is found dead at the bottom of a quarry.

The Dreadful Hollow finds Nicholas Blake poised perfectly between the puzzle plotting of his earliest books – plotting at which he excels far beyond the average mystery fiction author, by the way – and the brooding character psychology that will consume some of his later titles (see 1961's The Worm of Death, for example). But here, the twin interests are given the liberty to complement each other, and it is a mostly successful blending of classic detection and the character-based psychoanalysis that will largely replace it as crime literature moves through the 20th century.

I have always admired Blake's fair-play clue crafting, and it is still evident here. He refuses to condescend to the reader, and often I found myself making a deductive connection only to have Nigel Strangeways voice the same idea before extrapolating past it and continuing to connect the dots. Where a lesser writer may have left a clue observed but unexplained until the denouement, Blake underlines it and works out the possibilities on the spot.

One example: a row of crushed wildflowers near the quarry means a) that Celandine's electric wheelchair was here recently, and b) it might not have been manned by Celandine, since she is a lover of nature and would not drive over the flowers if she could help it. But then Nigel continues to hypothesize: c) the track is not deep enough if the wheelchair carried the weight of two bodies, Celandine's and Archibald Blick's; d) the chair's motor was drained the day of the murder, so Celandine could not use it to drive up to the quarry and back with a dead or unconscious Sir Archibald, et cetera. It is quite enjoyable to play Watson while the detective is doing some real-time theorizing; many mystery writers let their creations sit on their hypotheses until it's time for the drawing room reveal, but this has never been the case with Blake and Strangeways, and that's to be commended.

Even with strong deduction on display, Hollow still sounds a few hollow notes. There's a mid-book digression on the natural tendency of women to lie which creates a chauvinistic bump, and some readers over at Goodreads, reviewing the book this month in the Reading the Detectives group moderated by Judy, Susan, and Sandy, justly questioned a point of physiology Blake employs in the solution. Still, this tale of secrets coming to the surface in a village pushed to its breaking point is engaging and fun, and it builds to a satisfying and dramatic climax that feels quite cinematic in its approach. A worthy entry in the Nigel Strangeways series and a strong addition to the subgenre of poison pen plotlines in mystery fiction.

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Book Review: THE CROUCHING HILL (1941) by Winifred Blazey

7/12/2019

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Cover of the 2015 print-on-demand edition from Isha Books, India.

Of Winifred Blazey’s four published novels, 1941’s The Crouching Hill is the only one that is overtly structured as detective fiction. The book is dedicated to friend and companion Gladys Mitchell, “who supplied the setting for this book and suggested it should be written as a detective story.” And while the novel may provide all the elements of a traditional whodunit, including the discovery of a body, an investigator, multiple suspects, and a solution in the form of a confession, the sum total adds up to something more peculiar, off-key, and, unfortunately, ultimately disappointing.

I had high hopes for The Crouching Hill not only for its deliberate genre choice but also because the author’s two earlier efforts were compelling and rewarding reads.

Dora Beddoe (1936) was a marvelous first effort, a moody character study of a woman treated unfairly by life and family until she reaches a murderous breaking point. To me, 1938’s Indian Rain was even more impressive, an epic story of a man trying to make sense out of life and find peace in a world filled with misery and injustice. The Crouching Hill, in contrast, never focuses on a single character for which the reader can feel pathos or experience change. Many aspects, from continuously revolving characters being interviewed to the murder victim remaining a cipher through to the final pages, contribute to keep this mystery operating academically and artificially, but never truly organically.

The plot is a strange blend of sordid realism and Golden Age-era whodunit, with neither type landing satisfactorily. Schoolteacher Marion Francis is one of four staff members accompanying a group of girl students to the country, where the girls are to spend their holiday “billeted” with local villagers. After their charges have been paired with their host families, the teachers take rooms at the Rose and Thorn Inn, where Miss Francis and colleague Ursula French drink heavily and mix with the men in the pub. In the morning, Miss Francis is found “suffocated and strangled” in her bed; a post-mortem reveals that she was pregnant. The inspector immediately suspects her roommate Miss French (of the murder, that is), and those suspicions are heightened when a pair of local schoolboys claim to have interacted with the woman earlier that day, then disguised as a male motorcyclist.

While Blazey is quite good at crafting observations of social attitudes and human quirks, the tone of this book never quite settles. The details are too often squalid and grim – a pregnant woman’s death, a hasty tumble in the pub with a travelling salesman, a lecherous, rheumatic old man who relates his eavesdropping to the inspector with a leer and a wet-eyed wink – and the plotline (and certainly the story’s resolution) offers little joy or catharsis.

Taken as a novel of detection, well… It’s a litany of endless interviews, and there is no real fair play at work because the motive remains hypothetical until the killer steps forward to confess and explain. (There’s also an alibi reversal in the final chapter that feels like quite a cheat.) I get the feeling that, although she is using a familiar genre structure, Blazey isn’t interested in presenting a game to challenge the reader. The problem is that no larger theme is allowed to resonate, in part because no character is explored to a depth that makes us feel we understand him or her.

If her earlier, better books are an indication, I think the author is most interested in sending her fictional protagonists through a crucible, coming out either strengthened or defeated on the other side. In The Crouching Hill – even the title’s imagery of a landscape waiting to spring is referenced but never successfully activated in the story – Winifred Blazey’s true protagonist, the fated Marion Francis, is dead on the first page, her motivations and character a muted mystery, and no one, including the author, is quite able to bring her back to life.

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Book Review: BOBBY OWEN, BLACK MAGIC, BLOODSHED, AND BURGLARY (2015) by E.R. Punshon

7/7/2019

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Several years ago, when I was nearly finished with providing summaries and reviews for all of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley books at The Stone House, I flirted with the idea of creating a second tribute website spotlighting another overlooked GAD-era mystery writer. Back in the early 2000's, some writers (like Mitchell) were underrepresented on the Internet, and very little information beyond title lists and brief author biographies were available to curious readers. I had already read the first three books in E.R. Punshon's series featuring policeman Bobby Owen, and felt like he would be a worthy candidate for early Internet-era canonization.

And he would have been, except for one thing: I found that Punshon's books were always enjoyable and moderately engaging but not really notable or especially commendable. His detective fiction straddled a strange space on the strengths-and-weaknesses spectrum that brought them close to a neutral score whenever I finished one. And that's odd, because my experience with E.R. Punshon and Owen has always been positive, yet I never rush to start the next installment. So while to date I've read the first 12 titles in the 34-book Owen series in chronological order, it has taken me 17 years to do so.

Punshon's strengths include inventing imaginative mystery scenarios and effectively conjuring mood and setting in his stories. His proletariat policeman Bobby Owen, who rises in the ranks over the course of the series owing to his keen intelligence and quick actions, is a very likable figure, modest and earnest but also perceptive and intuitive in a winning way. (I haven't read any books in his earlier Carter & Bell series.) Even with these positive attributes, though, Punshon's prose can feel uninspired and repetitive, and his pacing is sometimes very slow, allowing the reader to get ahead of his plotlines.

I was curious to try a collection of his short stories published in 2015 by Ramble House, Bobby Owen, Black Magic, Bloodshed, and Burglary. I'm very glad I did, because problems with pacing and prose disappear when the author shifts his focus from novels to short tales. There is a welcome mix of crime stories – five of them feature Owen, while the others allow the story to unfold from the criminal's or intended victim's point of view – and a handful of very entertaining weird tales exploring supernatural and spooky phenomena and the unlucky people whose lives change (or end) when they become entwined.

Experiencing these short pieces one after another, I was impressed with the creative variety of storylines on display, and with the attention Punshon pays to crafting a solid story in whichever genre he is practicing. Several of the collected stories were published in periodicals like The Strand Magazine and The Weekly Tale-Teller in the first decades of the 20th century, when both crime-themed tales and eerie ghost stories were in a sort of pre-pulp popular demand. (Thank you to Ramble House and editor Gavin O'Keefe for locating and assembling the unjustly neglected works.) The shorter format also shows Punshon's ability to be nimble and spare, whittling a story down to its essentials while still using enough description and scene-setting to ignite the reader's imagination.

All five Bobby Owen stories collected here were originally published in The Evening Standard, and they are uniformly good if not especially memorable. The horror stories in the following group fare better, and Punshon clearly knows how to use the genre elements to strong effect. While none of these stories breaks new thematic ground, the best of them are eerie, imaginative tales. The early "Little Red Devil", first published in 1904, shows the Faustian price to be paid for a writer driven to create horrible, transformational art; "The Living Stone" from 1939 would feel right at home in a Clive Barker anthology decades later, while stories like "The Long Lane" (1898) and "From Beyond the Barrier" (1911) recall the straightforward yet unsettling supernatural narratives of M.R. James.

The anthology also includes seven pieces collected as crime stories, and they vary in approach and tone. Liberated from the limitation to tell tales just from the policeman's perspective (as with the Bobby Owen shorts), these are fun, mischievous little stories of larceny and murder. "My Day of Vengeance" (1906) channels Poe's immortal "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843) – indeed, it is the story of a murderer who must unexpectedly battle his conscience and keep hold of his sanity – and "The Miracle Worker" (1919), about a suburban couple falling for a charlatan of a spiritual medium, has the DNA of O. Henry in its blood.

E.R. Punshon, author photo from the 1950 Penguin paperback reprint edition of Mystery Villa.

My favorite tale, however, is "Lady Betty and the Burglars". First published in 1917, it is a lively early example (certainly running against crime story stereotypes of its time) of the notion that a woman is able to confront dangers and solve problems on her own, emphatically without the need of a man to come to her rescue. It's a droll effort, and still surprising and fresh more than a century later.

The collection Bobby Owen, Black Magic, Bloodshed, and Burglary is an impressive testament to E.R. Punshon's care for crafting storylines, evoking mood, and telling a variety of tales. I am grateful that his work has been anthologized to avoid losing these stories to time, neglect, and indifference, which would be a shame. While I never got around to honoring E.R. Punshon with his own website, I am very happy to champion his writing in this review!

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Book Review: NIGHTFALL (1947) by David Goodis

Book Review: THE DREADFUL HOLLOW (1953) by Nicholas Blake

Book Review: THE CROUCHING HILL (1941) by Winifred Blazey

Book Review: BOBBY OWEN, BLACK MAGIC, BLOODSHED, AND BURGLARY (2015) by E.R. Punshon

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