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Book Review: APPEARANCES OF DEATH (1977) by Dell Shannon

4/15/2017

7 Comments

 
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This month over at Past Offences, crime story authors writing in the year 1977 are under investigation. It’s a leap 40 years away from the previously nominated one, 1937, when classic detection’s Golden Age was at its zenith. And 1977 is 40 years back from where I write this review now, in 2017. On my bookshelf sat Appearances of Death by Dell Shannon, an author whom I have never read, so I embraced the opportunity and sampled my first story featuring Los Angeles Police Lieutenant Luis Mendoza.

I mention those time periods and their representative crime literature above – the 1930s and the Golden Age, the 1970s and American police stories, and the serial killer thriller that holds sway today – because Appearances of Death made me think often about societal and cultural behaviors towards mystery stories.

It is no secret that the detective tales from the 1930s and 1940s, especially from British authors, were puzzle-focused whodunits seen as a cerebral challenge to the reader: can you untangle the clues and arrive at the solution before the sleuth? There’s an immense pleasure to this format, but there was also a growing sense of dissatisfaction among readers as the decades continued and wars and life made it clear that such Golden Age puzzles were unrealistic and, increasingly, unsatisfying to readers who felt the restless pull of existentialism.

Enter the police procedural. Early practitioners like Georges Simenon and his Inspector Maigret (who started in the 1930s) struck a healthy balance of classic whodunit and a description of the daily duties of a modern police department: witness interviews, fingerprinting, medical examiners, and a lot of legwork. With procedural American authors like Ed McBain and Dell Shannon (the latter was a pseudonym for Elizabeth Linington, a prolific writer of mysteries from the 1950s until her death in 1988), the grit of realism was injected into both the types of crimes covered and the emotional distance of law officers who survey the results of violent crime on a daily basis.

And that was my first realization with Appearances of Death: there are a lot of casualties in the book, and (as with reality) the police only step in after the damage has been done. Both the title and the skull-pocked dustjacket cover are truthful indicators of the story ahead. Appearances isn’t explicit the way that the thrillers of today tend to be – I’ll address this contrast later – but there’s an honest depiction of the randomness and sheer quantity of real-world violence here that depresses me greatly. I love to escape into a Golden Age puzzle because it is spiritedly removed from the reality I know. In Luis Mendoza’s Los Angeles, the days are measured by the number of deaths at the end of the day – from homicides, robberies gone bad, hit-and-runs, rapes turned deadly, and the occasional innocent fatal freeway crash. For me, a little (as in, one Dell Shannon book) goes a long way.

The Robbery and Homicide Division keeps track of it all, and I need to credit Shannon’s skill as a writer that she is able to weave more than a dozen investigations throughout the book, concluding nearly all of them with the apprehension of the criminal(s). There is an admirable variety which, as long as I don’t get queasy from the cruelty of the various acts of inhumanity, is similar to unfolding several short stories over the course of a brief novel. But the cruelty (and surprising misogyny, although Linington was in her mid-50s when she wrote the book, and likely not too politically progressive based on her interactions, criminal and otherwise, between men and women characters) is a tough sell. The problem isn’t that the world she creates isn’t realistic, but rather that it is.

Women seem to fare particularly poorly here, as no less than three victims of the book were subjects of rape: abduction leading to rape and murder, asphyxiation after being tied up, gagged, and raped, and rape of a minor by a relative. Even after finishing this title, I can’t decide whether such depictions are exploitative or underscoring an unfortunate reality about female victimization in that era. Among the cases the department instantly dismisses with disdain is a death in an alley of “a longtime fag”. (As opposed to what? A newly minted fag?)

My larger point is that the narrative here, seen through the collective eyes of a group of cops, makes for awfully dispiriting reading. In one well-observed scene, Officer Galeano escorts a woman who just learned her son has died to the morgue for an identification of the body.  She speaks numbly to the officer about her lost child’s life and wonders what went wrong; his mind is on meeting his waitress girlfriend when he’s done with the shift. It’s a truthful moment on both sides, and also a depressing one. Just as with a homicide or crime detective, a reader is never able to avoid the reality of an unkind world, and I don’t quite have the talent for benumbed disconnection that Galeano does. There are indeed more muggings and home invasions that end in panicked robbers killing their targets than is comfortable to think about, and knowing that the veneer of individual security can be scraped away by a single gun barrel or masked intruder is not a pleasant reminder.

Some readers, of course, would want to have a shotgun seat to tag along on LAPD investigations, and they will find Appearances of Death an interesting study in law enforcement procedure. (Ironically, they might find the high closed-case rate of Mendoza’s crew a little too fantastic.) It’s my contention that we have such a fascination with serial killer thrillers in our crime novels these days because they offer a bit of the it-will-never-happen-to-me fantastical premise that attracted Golden Age readers. Even when brutally explicit, it is easy to think of a serial killer as an exotic animal, not a commonplace rodent that robs, steals, and accidentally kills innocent people with frightening frequency. We can still convince ourselves that we are out of the destructive path of a serial killer, vicious and rule-breaking as he may be, just as that GAD body in the library is no one we know or need to feel sorry for.

But the steady stream of violence presented in Appearances of Death – from family members, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers all with base motives of sex or money or instant rage – is frightening in the extreme, because it is constant, random, and very much a part of our world. Forgive me if I prefer to retire to the comforts of the drawing room mystery for a while.

7 Comments
J F Norris link
5/3/2017 10:57:06 am

You survived her! Kudos for making it all the way to the end of this one. I'd have bailed on it halfway.

Elizabeth Linington loved to mention her membership in the John Birch Society in her DJ bios and PR material. But she was so vocal in her far right ultra conservative worldview that she was kicked out of the group! More than any other mystery writer I've encountered she litters her books with her personal opinions and what I feel is an entirely backward worldview.

While she has a sheer love of Golden Age mystery plotting and gimmickry and spares no allusions to her favorites writers of the past, her books are plagued with ultraconservative bigotry especially towards "loose women" (who are always to blame for their rapes) and gay men and lesbians. Avoid at all costs <I>Greenmask</I>, another in a long line of anti-gay mystery novels in which the villain is not only gay, but insane and irredeemably amoral. I can't stomach her books even if some of them have rather clever plots.

Plus, her policemen don't do real police work at all which is a huge problem for me. That she gets credit as "Queen of the Police Procedural" pisses me off. Helen Reilly wrote police procedurals with more accuracy and did it four decades before Linington showed up.

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Jason Half link
5/3/2017 07:51:05 pm

Hello John! Your comments on Linington, and your acerbic tone, tickle me greatly. I didn't do much research on Dell Shannon's life prior to the review, but you're right: her political and sociological views are fully on display in her casting of heroes and villains and fates, at least in this book. (And, it sounds like, her others too.) The woman-hating and homo-hating in this one was pretty remarkable, to say the least, even for the 1970s.

As I mentioned, what I noted regarding the procedural with this book wasn't any wrong step so much as an unbelievable string of coincidences and confessions that come along at just the right time to break each and every case. That created an odd frisson of "reality" and neatly plotted mystery fiction that didn't feel convincing. Thanks for your warning about Greenmask; I shall approach Dell Shannon timorously in future.

And P.S.: I just began the Murder in the Closet collection, so have only read one of your three contributions (Samuel Hopkins Adams and the interesting Secret of Lonesome Cove), but I'm enjoying the anthology greatly. Congratulations to you, Curt, and everyone else involved!

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J F Norris link
5/4/2017 05:02:58 pm

Thanks for getting a copy of MURDER IN THE CLOSET, Jason. It's chockfull of great writing and eye opening insights about LGBQT themes in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. At Malice Domestic this past weekend I did a brief talk about my contributions and an overview of the rest of the content. It was to a very small group but those who showed up were intrigued. I was asked about The Secret of Lonesome Cove and gave the briefest possible summary of the book and a capsule bio of the author. After I discussed the reincarnation aspect and the total personality/gender transformation that in the essay I likened to a transgender person the two women's eyebrows literally bugged out and one asked me, "When was this published again?" I told her 1912. Everyone laughed in amazement. Then another woman said, "Martin Edwards was right. There really are no more original ideas left if stuff like this was being written that early."

Noah Stewart link
6/15/2017 09:53:57 am

I reviewed a Dell Shannon novel some years back as part of my "100 Mysteries you should die before you read" series ... (https://noah-stewart.com/2013/05/14/knave-of-hearts-as-by-dell-shannon-1962-003-of-100-mysteries-you-should-die-before-you-read/), and it may amuse you. I also have an essay in Murder in the Closet so it seems we have a similar range of interests!
I'm glad to find your blog and I'll look forward to reading through it in more detail.

Reply
Jason Half link
6/17/2017 08:12:31 pm

Hello, Noah Stewart!

Thanks very much for providing a comment and introducing yourself. I just spent some time at your Noah's Archives blog, and hope to spend more time exploring it soon. Your "100 Mysteries You Should Die Before You Read" is a great idea, and I admire how committed you are to deconstructing sub-par work; highly enjoyable! (I must confess that I of course did the quick-read mental switch of "read" and "die" a couple times initially, so that when I realized you were preparing to pan Knave of Hearts, then I read the phrase more closely and the penny dropped.)

Although Appearances of Death was frustrating for all the reasons you point out about Shannon/Linington's ideology, literary shortcomings, and tics, as it was my first (and likely last) Shannon mystery, I didn't have the investment to get truly mad at the book, as you have fostered and explained so well in your review.

I am grateful for your information on Mendoza's inherited money, as I wondered why, in Appearances, Alison spent the entire book doing nothing but dragging a real estate agent from one giant California mansion to another before deciding to purchase (apparently with Mendoza's money) and completely renovate an old mission-style hacienda, including adding electricity and plumbing, in the remote L.A. hills. How is this happening on a cop's salary? And is hubby really going to indulge his wife's lark of an idea when he has an hour-plus commute to work each day? It was all enormously silly, gender stereotypical, and exasperating.

The sheer number of "hunches" and just-happen-to-be-there-at-the-times in the book I read that invariably solved each and every case was something out of plot-contrivance Fantasy Land. And I really enjoy your comment here on the author:

"Wikipedia and other sources are silent as to whether Linington ever married or had children or anything approaching a relationship with a normal human, but I’m suspecting not."

Thanks for showing me your website, and I will absolutely add it to the links I have for crime and mystery blogs on here. And congrats on your Murder in the Closet entry; I knew about the "gunsel" term (and I vastly prefer Hammett to Chandler, which is probably heresy in some circles) and it is indeed interesting to consider queer-perceived characters from an era when it was a) not generally socially understood, and b) considered criminal, which may be partly why the fey, sexless "pansy" stereotypes were so popular: not only were they shorthand, but no embarrassment in considering physicality or personal acts needed to be present in the neutered depictions.

Best wishes -- Jason

Reply
curtis j. evans
3/21/2024 04:07:54 pm

What is amazing to me is how a lot of her fans find these grim books cozy, cause of the details about the cops and their constantly pregnant wives and their cats. And, oh, because she doesn't use bad words. It's a weird disconnect.

Linington loved to read and get ideas from true crime magazines and as they got more and more exploitative, stressing rapes and murders of women and children, so did Linington. Linington was a recluse who really didn't experience the world outside of these magazines and John Birch Society propaganda and she had a very dark view of the world. Ironically she also loved classic detective fiction.

Reply
Jason Half link
3/23/2024 12:37:56 pm

Hello Curtis, and thanks very much for commenting on my Dell Shannon review! You always have lively discussions over at The Passing Tramp after your illuminating posts, and I appreciate that.

I wasn't aware of Linington's reclusive nature or her reliance on the contemporary true crime magazines for inspiration, but both make complete sense based on this sample novel. (I still haven't added another Shannon book to my TBR pile, and don't know if I'd have a better experience for doing so.) All best wishes to you -- Jason

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