Gun in Cheek

by Bill Pronzini

  Murder Goes South, by Amelia Reynolds Long. Woman mystery writer Peter Piper solves a series of antebellum slaughters in Louisiana and in the process, uncovers more misinformation than you ever wanted to know about voodoo and cypress swamps. This is so full of Stepin Fetchit blacks and thinly veiled racism that it easily wins the Most Objectionable Phoenix Mystery award.

  The Case of the Little Green Men, by Mack Reynolds. In which members of a science-fiction fan club are being terrorized and/or murdered by—it is alleged—little green men who have landed on earth. The hero, a jaded private eye, takes the case, reads a little science fiction to acquaint himself with the background, becomes hooked, and—it is inferred—immediately subscribes to every magazine in the field. He also solves the case, and it should surprise no one to learn that it was not little green men after all but a cunning human being who perpetrated the crimes.

  Carl Shannon's Lady, That's My Skull. The opening paragraphs of this one reads as follows: "The desk calendar said March twenty-fourth. It could have said any other day and the same thing might have happened. That is, I could have become mixed up with the painted skull. Still, if I had just skipped March twenty-fourth—say been on a big party and not sobered up—maybe I would have missed a lot of unpleasant things. Well, I didn't miss March twenty-fourth, so I didn't miss the damned skull or the trail of violence along which it gyrated." What happens after that involves the skull, which the lawyer-narrator finds in a pawnshop and which bears not only the letters of his old fraternity but the fingerprints of a gangster supposedly dead for years; a murder, a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace, a Chinese valet named Chan, and a watering hole called the Donkey Room wherein the hero makes an ass of himself-naturally).

  All the Phoenix mysteries heretofore discussed are either minor classics or near-misses; none quite achieves the unqualified classic status of two others, both published in 1941: Murder at Horsethief by James O'Hanlon and Death Down East by Hayden Norwood. These two mysteries are totally unlike each other, and yet each in its own way epitomizes the Phoenix mystique.

  The first, Murder at Horsethief, is the masterwork of former Hollywood scriptwriter and self-styled humorist O'Hanlon. It took him four other novels (three for Phoenix Press, one of which deals with a racehorse named Disaster that eats potted geraniums) to reach the lofty heights of Murder at Horsethief. It may be conjectured that the reason O'Hanlon wrote no more mystery novels after this one is that he knew he had reached the limit of his talent and would be unable to surpass himself. Few writers can lay claim, after all, to more than one classic in a lifetime.

  Set in an Arizona desert town near which gold has been discovered (again) in 1940, it concerns itself with a crooked saloon owner who was once a mobster in Los Angeles, a group of entertainers known as Frankie Sparrow and his Seven Canaries, a Mexican who is almost hanged by a group of drunken miners after, being falsely accused of murder, a tribe of Malooga Indians who live in the nearby mountains and say clever things like "How" and "Ugh," a group of vigilantes who wear flour-sack hoods and call themselves the Haunts of Horsethief, and the inimitable detective team of Jason and Pat Cordry, who were once extras in Hollywood but who are full-fledged stars in the firmament of southern California lunatics.

  The plot (or lack of one) is only one of the reasons that Murder at Horsethief is a tour de force. Another is that what O'Hanlon considers funny generally isn't, but most everything else is. O'Hanlon, you see, delighted in concocting phonetic and idiomatic dialogue. Everybody, including Jason and Pat, drops his g's and says "ain't" and butchers the English language in all sorts of fascinating ways.

  Some sample Western-miner dialogue: "In a coupla minnuts, Gents, yer gonna see with yer own eyes whut brand o' law we tends t' practice in Horsethief! Whut happens t' this heah Mex is gonna happen t' any white-livered coyote who gits notions 'bout ashootin' decent citizens in anythin' but a faih and squaih fight!"

  Some sample Indian dialogue: "Come catchum smoke. Chetterfiel ceegret. Come back byeumbye aftah braves makum powwow wit' Lomitaha."

  Some sample mobster dialogue: "Dey calls dis a funeril! Say, boss, remember the one we give t' Snuffy Dolin, back in Chi? Now dere was a send-off!"

  Some sample Western-preacher dialogue: "Brethern . . - and sistern . . . we are gathered heah t' give decent burial t' our departed friend an' brothah, Doc Thayah. Y'all knowed Doc t' be a mighty good man, which is more'n we kin say fer the murderin' skunk what plugged him! The Good Book sez 'Fergive us our trespissis like we fergives them what trespissis ag'in us.' By the way, lambs o' the flock," the gentleman deviated, "come Sunday, Ah'm preachin' a powerful pregnant sermon on thet subjeck of trespissin', in the Hossthief Theater, an' Ah wan's y'all t' be theah! Brothah Herman's Happy Harbor is mah new name fer the place, an' in it Ah inten's t' do a lotta soul-patchin'!"

  Some sample Jason Cordry dialogue: "Oo wanna make popsie-wopsie fweel very sad an' sowwy? Tell popsie-wopsie 00 fwogives him, or popsie-wopsie cwie!"

  Some sample Pat Cordry dialogue, 1: "Momsey do no want popsie-wopsie to cwie. Momsy fwogives popsy-wopsie an' fwows him a bug kissie-wissie!"

  Some sample Pat Cordry dialogue, 2 (after she and Jason have heard strange music being played): "It ain't swing!" Pat popped. "Sounds like their [sic] cutting a rug to wrap a corpse in. . . ."

  O'Hanlon's descriptive prose is brilliant, too:

  Pat was horrified. Her stomach became a fun-house of activity and her lower lip went into motion seconds before she was able to squeeze a sound past her lips.

  Jason's stomach slapped against his backbone. Beside him, Pat had become one hundred and four or concentrated gloom.

  A moon, from which some heavenly force had taken a huge bite, and to which a faraway coyote was paying wailing tribute, hung over Horsethief.

  A sudden thought bounced her heart to her larynx.

  About ten yards away, seated atop a horse beneath a large, solitary tree, Pat's bulging eyes located the gentleman for whom the "party" was being thrown.

  Murder at Horsethief, it may be said, is one of those cheerful romps, full of chuckles and guffaws and a malooga or two. Hayden Norwood's Death Down East, on the other hand, is a considerably more sober, if no less stunning, effort.

  Norwood's novel—he also wrote the equally stultifying They Met at Mrs. Bloxon 's—is set in a place called Hallowdale, Maine, and among its plot components are a bloody ax, a dead chicken, a wicked lady named Mrs. Ciccone (all people with Italian and other ethnic names are wicked in Phoenix Press books, except maybe for Duke Pizzatello), a missing minister, a missing town drunk, and a "hero" who goes by the name of Macbeth Archer.

  These elements do not have a great deal to do with the book's classic status, though. What makes it a tour de force is the fact that in its entire 256 pages, nothing happens.

  Nothing.

  Happens.

  There is no plot development, there is no characterization, there is no mystery (except why Norwood wanted to write it in the first place). Reading it, one keeps waiting for something to happen; one expects some sort of action, excitement, maybe even a "hell" or "damn" to liven things up; one thinks that perhaps he will be surprised or at least titillated by the ending. Nothing. The most exciting occurrence in the book is Macbeth finding the dead chicken. There is one other scene that has potential: Macbeth goes to confront Mrs. Ciccone, and she makes a vague pass at him; but he is clearly asexual, if not a eunuch, and he goes away from her shaking his head in a puzzled fashion.

  Here are some examples of Norwood's artful prose:

  "The train's late," observed Macbeth. He drew out his watch. "Three minutes past six. Three minutes late. How's that for close observation, Oscar?"

  "You should of been a detective," said Waddell, "instead of a soda jerk."

  Penny was waiting just inside the door, and her arms were around him suddenly, startling him. "Did I frighten you, Mac?"

  "No. I involuntarily jump like that every now and then. Maybe it's because my mother tied up my thumb
when I was a baby to keep me from sucking it."

  "I'm sorry I burst in this way," said Macbeth, "but axes with blood on them don't turn up every day. I wanted to ask Sheriff Redburn what to do about it. You see, there's human blood on the axe."

  "Is that any concern of mine?" asked Dr. Ashcraft curtly. "Is it any concern of the sick man here? Don't you realize that you've been made deputy sheriff to handle infringements of law and order, and not to make a nuisance of yourself? A bloody axe, did you say? It doesn't appear to me that that's a matter of any importance."

  "I'm sorry," said Macbeth. He went to the door.

  Foreboding gnawed like a cancer in Penny's bosom, and when she went to bed that night she was sure she wouldn't get a wink of sleep.

  But she did fall asleep, soundly, almost immediately upon resting her cheek upon the pillow. She was astonished to open her eyes and see the light of day.

  Macbeth entered his mother's house by the back door. He could hear his mother and Penny in the parlor talking.

  He went down into the cellar and brought up the head of the Leghorn hen as well as the carcass. He heard his mother say in a frightened voice, "There's somebody in the kitchen!"

  Mrs. Archer and Penny stood in the doorway, staring at him.

  "Heavens, Mac!" cried his mother...

  Macbeth grinned. "Say, this chicken is perfectly preserved," he said, "in spite of the fact that it's been dead for almost a week. Speaks well for the coolness of your cellar, Mama—and with cold weather coming on, it wouldn't surprise me if the carcass and head last for months without beginning to smell."

  Phoenix Press, I love you!

  5. The Goonbarrow and

  Other Jolly Old Corpses

  Before we realised their plan the door was pulled to, the hasp of the padlock clicked, and we were alone in the hut.

  I seethed. Tolefree . . . burst into laughter. "The old heroes!" he said. "The Lloyd blood's boiling." "It's a damned outrage!" I cried.

  "He who plays bowls must expect rubbers," said Tolefree. "Tit-for-tat, Farrar—and one up to Wales. I daresay you might have bowled 'em over, but I intensely dislike a rough house."

  "Tchah!" said I.

  —R.A.J. Walling,

  A Corpse by Any Other Name

  "Beastly mess the place seems to be in," grumbled Sir Arthur Penn-Moreton, looking round the room with a disgusted air.

  "Well, if you will give balls you have to put up with the aftermath," said Dicky, his younger brother, screwing his monocle in his left eye as he spoke.

  —Annie Haynes,

  Who Killed Charmian Karslake?

  RIDDLE: What do sex and the British mystery novel have in common?

  ANSWER: When they're good they're terrific, and when they're bad they're still terrific.

  This is an absolute truism. There is a certain civilized quality to British mysteries, particularly those published prior to 1960, that makes them a consistent pleasure to read. Murder may strike, all sorts of nefarious things may happen, but the reader knows from the outset that justice and order will prevail in the end. No matter how much blood is spilled in the buildings and byways of London, on isolated and legend-filled moors, in the wilds of Scotland, in stately and quite proper country homes, the essence of jolly old England remains inviolate—the last bastion of reason and tradition in a chaotic world. Even in the dark early days of World War II, when a German invasion and takeover of Great Britain seemed probable, there was little panic and no sense of defeatism; the mysteries of the period reflect a general atmosphere of hope, stiff upper lip, and business as usual. The lads at Number 10 Downing Street would sooner or later outwit the lunatic führer and restore the rational, time-honored way of life. The brilliant detective would sooner or later outwit the clever murderer and see him imprisoned or executed for his crimes. This is the way it must be, ergo this is the way it will be.

  All of which tends to make the reader of English mysteries comfortable, if not downright complacent. Whether a particular book was written in 1900 or half a century or more later, he knows exactly what he holds in his hands. It is predictable without being predictable, which is not a paradoxical statement at all. If the book is a good mystery, he will sense it before he has read ten pages. If it is a bad mystery, he will also sense it before he has read ten pages, but seldom will it make a whit of difference to him. Chances are he will finish it straight through to the last page and be as satisfied with it (in the sense of time well spent) as if it were The Hound of the Baskervilles or Murder on the Orient Express. No one ever cursed a British mystery out loud and hurled it across the room in disgust. Absolutely not. It just isn't done, you know.

  Until recent years and a not altogether beneficial American influence, the emphasis in the British mystery was on detection. Spy novels had their share of detection; so did thrillers.

  Not often do you find a pre-1960 English crime novel without a detective of some sort—policeman, private inquiry agent, gifted amateur, secret agent. Crimes were not only supposed to be solved, they were supposed to be solved by someone who knew his or her business; even amateur detectives had to have an extensive interest in criminology or at the very least in crime fiction and puzzle solving. Rogues such as The Saint were allowed to withhold evidence or information from the police because they were rogues. Few other nonprofessionals were granted this privilege during the course of their investigations—unless, of course, they were working hand-in-glove with Scotland Yard and withholding evidence or information served a specific purpose; then it was permissible. With apologies.

  Little-old-lady sleuths have always been among the most popular of British ADs. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple is no doubt the most famous of these, but another of some renown is Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, more generally known as Mrs. Bradley (in her early adventures) and Dame Beatrice (in her later ones)—the invention of schoolteacher and folklorist Gladys Mitchell.

  There are those who would argue that Miss Mitchell's work is comparable in quality to some, if not all, of Mrs. Christie's and has no place in a critical study of this nature. Perhaps.

  Every author has followers, and there is no question that a small cult of Mitchell devotees has evolved both here and in her native England. At least two critics—Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan, co-authors of an expert study of women detectives and spies in fiction, The Lady Investigates (1981)—feel that Miss Mitchell is a satirist of considerable skill bent on ridiculing various conventions of mystery fiction and that Mrs. Bradley is one of the wittiest detectives in the genre.

  Still, Mitchell's prose is of the eccentric variety, to put it mildly—something of a cross between Christie and P. G. Wodehouse, with a dollop or two of Saki, or maybe John Collier, thrown in—and, like garlic and rutabagas, is an acquired taste. Those who acquire it place Mitchell in the first rank of mystery novelists; those who can't acquire it put her somewhere slightly above the likes of R.A.J. Walling. Indeed, she may be the only mystery writer on either continent to be praised as a creator of classics simultaneously at opposite ends of the genre.

  Gladys Mitchell began her career in 1929 with a book called Speedy Death, in which Mrs. Bradley herself commits a murder (a la The Saint in at least one early exploit) and in which a red-blooded male explorer turns out to be a woman. Intermittently over the past fifty years, Mitchell has produced some sixty additional mysteries, all featuring Mrs. Bradley and many with supernatural and/or folkloric elements. One of these, even more interesting than Speedy Death, is The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (1930), which has nothing much to do with a butcher's shop but does concern the dismemberment of a man killed on a Druidic sacrificial stone, so the title is more or less valid. This particular novel alone (pace Craig and Cadogan and the other Mitchell admirers) qualifies Miss Mitchell for inclusion in these pages.

  The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop is very English. That is, it is peopled with characters who say things like "Mater, dash it all," and "greasy bounder," and "the chap's off his chump," as well as use such
obscure British slang expressions as "How twiggee he isn't a padre?" and who run around extricating themselves from not-very sticky situations in a manner that might have delighted Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. It is also chock full of such passages as:

  "Really, James!" his aunt protested frigidly. "You are a most offensive-looking object, most! You are perspiring, boy!"

  "Sorry! Yes, I know," gasped Jim. "Beastly hot weather. Damned well out of training! Had to run the hell of a way after you! Came to tell you—came to tell you—" he rolled his eyes wildly and racked his brains. What had he come to tell them? Must think of something. Something feasible. Must think of something quickly. "Came to tell you—" A wave of relief flooded over him. "Tea-time!" he shouted triumphantly. "Came to tell you it's tea-time! Tea-time, you know. Hate you to miss your tea. So beastly, you know—so—er—so beastly disappointing, you know, to miss your tea. I mean to say—tea. What is life without a nice cup of hot tea? Cold tea, you see, such beastly stuff. I mean to say, cold tea—well you feel as though you've put your shirt on the hundred to eight winner and the bookie's caught the fast boat to Ostend. No? Yes?"

  To say that the pace is leisurely would be to commit premeditated understatement. The pace is nonexistent. People talk a great deal, either in drolleries or in the fashion of James as just quoted, and hold endless discussions about bird watching, alpine plants, relatives, church matters (" 'Father hasn't any morals. He's a clergyman.' "), money, and such macabre topics as sacrifices and missing skulls. The book's one homicide turns out not to be a murder after all but an accidental death; the dismemberment was by a different person than the one responsible for the accident—"that poor dago"—who had planned to kill the victim. The poor dago, a monomaniac, cut up the body because that was what he'd intended to do in the first place and "his fetish seems to be exactitude and laborious attention to correctness of detail." So he whacked off the dead man's head and went into hiding with it; then, later, he returned to where he had left the trunk of the body and dragged it off to his butcher's shop to make steaks and chops out of it. The person who caused the victim's death is turned loose by Mrs. Bradley because she has an "aunt-like affection" for him. The poor dago jumps out a hospital window and kills himself.