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Book Review: THE WIDOW'S CRUISE (1959) by Nicholas Blake

9/27/2021

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Poet and scholar Cecil Day-Lewis may have penned the detective novels featuring Nigel Strangeways to bring in some money (as has been stated), but he nevertheless plays the game asked of his chosen genre with energy, wit, and careful, clever strategy. I am continually impressed just how strong so many of the mysteries Day-Lewis published under his Nicholas Blake pseudonym are: throughout, the author shows inspired variation in crime fiction plotting and character building. The surprise isn’t that the United Kingdom’s eventual Poet Laureate could write engaging prose and plot intricate fair-play puzzles of bluff and double-bluff; it’s that he has put so much heart into the writing and seems to enjoy crafting the classically structured mystery tales he tells.
 
Published well after detective fiction’s Golden Age, The Widow’s Cruise from 1959 is still very much a product of that halcyon time. For one, it is a fair-play puzzle to a fault. Readers will likely reach the solution (or at least half of it) precisely because the author salts the clues so liberally and logically. This doesn’t really detract from Cruise’s enjoyable journey, however. Blake populates this story with a typically colorful and well-defined cast of characters, including a glad-handing blackmailer, two grudge-bearing teenagers, a pensive academic, a lustful Greek cruise manager, and two sisters – one a radiant beauty, the other a plain ex-schoolmistress recovering from a nervous breakdown – into whose orbit Strangeways and the other passengers are pulled.
 
Nigel and his girlfriend Clare Massenger are sailing on the Menelaos, a cruise ship touring the Greek islands. It is interesting to note that Blake’s Greece is tonally quite different in contrast to that offered by mystery writing peer Gladys Mitchell. The Greek terrain trod in Mitchell’s 1937 mystery Come Away, Death is dry, sun-baked, dusty, and listless: a hard ground where snakes and insects (and the reptilian Mrs. Bradley) can thrive. The landscape Blake offers is more tourist-friendly, with an emphasis not so much on sun but on water. Indeed, the waters on this Cruise are decidedly dangerous: one victim’s body is found drowned in the sea, while another person meets her fate in the ship’s swimming pool.
 
If The Widow’s Cruise falls short of the best Strangeways mystery stories, it is still a smart and very readable later entry in the series. And there is much to admire, from the clever use of character psychology woven into the solution and the killer’s revelation of guilt to the tale’s neat Aristotelian (i.e., Greek) unity: the story begins as the Menelaos starts its cruise and Nigel unmasks the murderer just as the ship finishes its fateful voyage and prepares to dock once more. That all-suspects-gathered climax is itself an entertaining parody of the ones Day-Lewis admired so much in Agatha Christie’s fiction. Strangeways uses the first officer’s cabin to build up and tear down a case against each suspect, with said suspects questioning both his authority – he is only an uncredentialled surrogate for the police, after all – and his explanations. Yet the detective has his eye on the larger game being played, and times his accusations for maximum effect.

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The Widow’s Cruise is an enjoyable and bright journey with much to see and appreciate along the way. I’m grateful the poet and scholar found it worthwhile to conceive and craft 16 Nigel Strangeways detective stories as he chased his other literary pursuits. His commitment to the fair-play puzzle genre is commendable, and the uniform quality of these tales makes me think he took his genre writing seriously while having great fun with each book's formation and follow-through. 

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Book Review: COME CLEAN (1989) by Bill James

9/24/2021

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By Come Clean, the fifth book in Bill James’ exciting, observant crime series featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, the thematic and stylistic elements are clearly defined and working effortlessly to tell the tale. As always, the author is keenly interested in exploring the relationships between those expected to uphold the law and those working hard to circumvent it. It’s a dance between copper and criminal, sometimes surprisingly convivial but always guarded and cautious. The crux is that the two groups need one another, both to provide a reason for being and also to keep informed about what each side is up to from sources where a little whisper in the right ear might pay dividends.
 
The organized criminal element in James’ unnamed city has been reduced to two rival gangs: Leo Tacette and his sons, and Benny Loxton and his faithful henchmen. (The personalities and fates of the other urban kingpins are vividly presented in the two prior entries, Halo Parade and Protection.) At start, Harpur and his supervisor, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, know that something dark is in the works, but are short on details. There are rumors that Loxton’s men may have silenced a potential informant in The Monty, Panicking Ralph’s pub. Among the customers in the wrong place at an inconvenient time are Sarah Iles, the ACC’s wife, and Ian Aston, her lover. Their bond is another pairing of law-abider and lawbreaker, both finding a thrill in their illicit and dangerous union. Benny Loxton learns of the witnesses and needs to take care of the situation, but must tread lightly to keep his plans moving forward.
 
Bill James is a master of complicating the picture and exploring the nuanced permutations as powers shift and alliances change within the cast of his two crime-propelled worlds. There is a fair amount of empathy generated for the status-seeking criminal leads, even as they plot violence and put the lives of others at risk. One reason is that, at least so far, all of the crooks James has chosen to spotlight are upwardly mobile at heart: they want the upper-class amenities, but most of all they want to be socially respected. The money may be dirty, but it still buys the expensive house in the suburbs. Here, Loxton’s wife ensures that they are seen in the right circles, attending charity functions and donating handsomely to feed the unfortunate in Africa. The irony is that the quest for respectability isn’t out of reach; in America, at any rate, once one achieves a certain income bracket, few people will question where the money came from or just how many people were abused and discarded in its collection. Being rich is justification enough.

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Come Clean is the first book in the sequence to give the character of Sarah Iles a full-throated personality. She is an intriguing character of contradictions, a mix of pragmatic thinking and fanciful emotions that keeps her assessing her relationship with Ian while her physical attraction for him drives her actions.

It is also the first book that runs past the up-to-now concise length of 188 pages, and Come Clean’s pacing suffers slightly as a result. The dialogue exchanges and the sharply ruminative inner thoughts of the characters are as engaging as ever, but there are just too many of them, and a few scenes could have been summarized or omitted without losing any resonance, while also giving the story a sleeker trajectory. The novel is still highly readable, with a wonderful late-chapter climax that feels bracing and inevitable; the book just runs about 70 pages longer than necessary. And when an author delivers four slim and lean-muscled books in a series, a fifth, flabbier one that meanders more than the others is more noticeable in contrast.
 
But let me return to that amazing, amusing pas de deux between man and woman, cop and criminal, husband and wife, that Bill James orchestrates and explores in such fascinating detail. As an example, I share two paragraphs to provide Megan Harpur’s perspective. Harpur’s wife has very little stage time in Come Clean, but she too has analyzed her husband and has learned the dance:

Megan believed detective work should be like in the Sherlock Holmes pieces, all magnifying glasses and clever deductions from train timetables. And she believed, too, that there should be a great and obvious gulf fixed between what was legal and what was not.
 
So, she loathed the way Harpur worked, and referred to him occasionally as the sardonic rat of no-man’s land, apparently after some war poem she knew: almost everything could be reduced to literature if you had the reading. What she meant was that, to do his job, he lived and thrived in an undefined, dirty and perilous area between villainy and rectitude, constantly blurring the line separating what was right from what was necessary.

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Book Review: THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE (1934) by Erle Stanley Gardner

9/20/2021

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Rhoda Lorton makes quite an impression on Perry Mason. Although she flees the office after asking questions “for a friend” about the marital status of a woman whose husband was presumed dead but whose body wasn’t found, the attorney locates her and offers his assistance. The client is now married to a wealthy Chicago businessman named Montaine, but Gregory Moxley, her con man first husband, has re-entered the scene to cause trouble. When Rhoda becomes the prime suspect in his murder investigation, she provides police with a lie that, while well-intentioned, forces Mason to work overtime to prove her innocence.
 
One of three Perry Mason novels published in 1934, The Case of the Curious Bride has me once again in awe of Erle Stanley Gardner’s abilities. As with the other Mason stories I have sampled, the author delivers a complicated (and at times breathless) plotline so his attorney protagonist can dazzle readers and prosecuting counsel with some tricky – and ethically if not legally questionable – slight of hand. The genius of Gardner’s books lies in the way he shapes his plot specifics to give Perry Mason an opportunity to use these elements as ammunition in court. The actions and events by multiple parties leading up to the moment of the crime are rarely believable; there are far too many coincidences and conveniences for the setup to feel realistic. In Curious Bride, for example, we have a 2:00 am apartment assignation with a blackmailer where no less than three separate visitors with motives are present, and a pair of neighbors on hand to provide an earwitness account of the exact moment of murder.
 
And yet this busy scrimmage is a prelude to the clever manipulations that follow. Objects that other mystery writers would treat as clues Gardner lets Mason rotate and use as evidence for the defense, but only when the lawyer puts them in the context he needs. Here, such tactile and workaday items as doorbells, spare tires, and garage doors are used to challenge the uncertainty of witnesses and exonerate the defendant. This is one of the great charms of the Perry Mason books: we watch as the lawyer first learns about the object and then employs it in a surprising way to help clear his client.

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The Curious Bride also shows another storytelling strength in which Erle Stanley Gardner may be unequalled. The details and exploration of legal subjects are highly entertaining, even as they need to be taken by their fictional rather than factual premises. In other words, the author is not writing a book of dry legal code and precedent, but he is using these topics to spin a highly enjoyable narrative.
 
Rhoda Lorton’s perilous situation turns on a question of legal union status: is her marriage to wealthy second husband Carl Montaine annulled if she is still married to her first? Yes, and prosecutor John Lucas needs that annulment completed so the no-longer-married Montaine can then be forced to give evidence against the woman who is no longer his wife. Carl’s imperious father, who believes Rhoda is not deserving of the family name or fortune, presses for the annulment, but if Perry Mason can prove that Rhoda’s first marriage was illegitimate, then the Lorton-Montaine union would stand. Twists and complications abound, and while it’s unlikely that anything so convoluted would come along in reality, on the page and in Gardner’s hands these legal finer points become the basis for wonderfully escapist entertainment.
 
It is easy to praise the plotting mechanics and inspired use of legal code in the Perry Mason books, in part because they are so exuberant and give each story a delicious “what comes next?” forward momentum. But this reader also can’t quite overlook Gardner’s transgressions as a prose writer. Once more, dialogue identifiers are overused mercilessly. Two-character exchanges are filled with “asked Perry Mason” and “said Paul Drake” when we know exactly who is speaking, especially since so much dialogue takes the form of Mason asking a question and the other person answering. Used sparingly, identifier phrases are innocuous and helpful; overused in a Mason novel, they are repetitive and redundant.
 
I also get a little restless with Gardner’s use of adverbs, and each time Mason or the judge looks at someone “frowningly”, I react wincingly at the awkward word choice. And there’s a curiously complete newspaper account providing details of the murder, which is quoted in full in the story. And by complete, I mean complete: the paper readers (and Mason) learn that there were no fingerprints on the fireplace poker and that a set of keys were found at the crime scene, with a photographic reproduction of the keys prominently featured on Page Seven. Have the police held nothing back? Or perhaps the cub reporter is also moonlighting as a crime scene investigator for the city. Minor distractions, but ones that still offer unfortunate little bumps while traveling along an otherwise brilliant road. 

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Book Review: PROTECTION (1988) by Bill James

9/15/2021

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​By this, the fourth entry in Welsh novelist Bill James’ stellar police procedural series featuring Colin Harpur and Desmond Iles, one theme has become a cornerstone: whether cops or criminals, everyone is operating in subjective shades of gray. The definitions of hero and villain are negligible in this world, and true to reality, the characters bouncing off one another in Protection are a mass – and a mess – of contradictory values. The police break rules and arms to move forward on a case, while the career mobster places family first (both of the nuclear and the criminal kind), even as doing so threatens his liberty and his life.
 
Bernard “Tenderness” Mellick had a bit of a falling out with Ivor Wright, the leader of a rival protection gang, with the result that a blowtorch flame found its way around the more delicate parts of Wright’s body. As retaliation, Wright’s men kidnap Graham Mellick, Tenderness’s mentally handicapped eleven-year-old boy. With this scenario, the stage is set for the author to explore a number of surprising considerations and contradictions among the characters.
 
Mellick’s wife Jane is increasingly distraught about their missing child, but he can’t and won’t ask the police for help, as the force has spent years trying to put Mellick behind bars. Detective Harpur hears about the kidnapping through a well-placed informant, but sits on the information because his source (a white-collar criminal of whose activities Harpur looks the other way) asks him to. And Hubert Scott, a bent retired cop under pressure from an internal investigation, wants Harpur to lie and say he ordered him to take all those payouts that have been deposited into Scott’s bank accounts over the years, a necessary step to keep his undercover identity with Tenderness looking authentic. And if Harpur is not so inclined, well, it would be a shame for the investigator to hear about Harpur’s affair with another officer’s wife, not to mention his inaction on a known child abduction.
 
The genius of Bill James’ characterization and plotting lies in his ability to recognize and plumb the contradictions of people wanting to do right while still making a series of morally questionable choices. He lets only his most ignorant characters off the hook; the rest have very inconvenient flashes of doubt and self-loathing. Colin Harpur is surely the most introspective; the author regularly has him examining and doubting his own motives, from his ongoing affair with a widowed and remarried woman to his disproportionate desire to keep her new husband, a fellow officer, safe during a dangerous standoff where weapons could be fired. As written, Harpur’s supervisor, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, may carry the least uncertainty of self, although the man has the rhetorical habit of proclaiming that he is riddled with regret even as his behavior and personality show the opposite.
 
And then there is family man and blowtorch wielder Tenderness Mellick. He tortures his competition, he shows no remorse when a press for information at gunpoint leads to violence and death, and yet he manages to generate empathy. This is largely because he is willing to do everything for the sake of his wife and his son, and he realizes the necessity of his sacrifice – and the futility of the attempt – by degrees. Next to Colin Harpur, it is Tenderness Mellick who comes off as the most self-aware; they are two sides of the same coin, flawed from the minting.

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Just like the books preceding it, Protection plays out its storyline in a way that is satisfying and inevitable, even as it is agreeably difficult to predict just who will be standing by story’s end. As with the previous novel, the excellent Halo Parade (1987), equal time is given to the two groups under pressure: the men who represent the law but don’t always act legally, and the men who have chosen a career in crime but are trying to glimpse a life that lies beyond it. There is glamour in neither profession, although there is dark humor, fraternal allegiance, loud bravado, and midnight doubts abundant in both. Witty and thoughtful, always compulsively readable, the crime novels of Bill James are due for a 21st century re-appreciation.

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