Catching up on recent stuff...

OK, I haven't been a very good correspondent. I'm trying to get caught up now and here's a few things I've read lately....

The second volume of her Henry and Emmy Tibbett series, Down Among the Dead Men is a solid if unremarkable mystery novel. Henry and Emmy are on holiday again, visiting some friends for a sailing vacation in the seaside hamlet of Berrybridge Haven. They get involved with the local weekend sailing community, get to know the locals, and hear a tale of a somewhat mysterious death that happened some time ago. But then there's some tensions, some strangeness, and another murder. Who did it, and why? It all wraps up nicely, if a bit sadly; it's a tale of a somewhat minor crime that snowballed into some bigger ones. It's a pleasant read, with well-drawn characters, a good plot, and a setting that reminded me of some of the waterside towns on the Chesapeake that I've visited. You can always count on Patricia Moyes.

Now THIS is a classic. Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black is simply amazing. A beautiful woman works her way into the lives of a series of men, and kills them all in various ways. It's sheer noir delerium, one of the great examples of dark pulp noir fiction out there. It inspired a Francois Truffaut film, starring Jeanne Moreau...but if you like the movie, prepare yourself, because the movie makes a substantial change to the story, changing the nature of the crime that started her spree, and a devastating final twist is cut that changed everything. I had read the novel first and found the movie disappointing....but I have friends who saw the movie first and found the book a disappointment, so your actual mileage may vary. I find the book superior and I'm glad I've managed to hang on to it all these years....I first read it as a high-school student back in the 80s, and I was pleasantly surprised to see I still had it when I moved.

Michael Rowe's Wild Fell was simply infuriating for me. Parts of it are excellent, as it describes the narrator's boyhood and experiences that led to him buying an old house on an island on a lake in Canada. It goes fairly leisurely for a while, but I didn't mind, as there were hints of menace in the story and in a prelude about the house...but then in the last chapter everything seems cranked up to 11 and revelations come so rapidly that it's hard to keep track, and it's unclear if we're supposed to take them as literal truth or just lies. It reads as if the author had come to his page limit and had to wrap everything up in a hurry. If it had simply been bad, I could have wiped my hands and walked away, but in this case, Rowe has genuine grace as a stylist...but I felt his plotting needed work. A lot of work.

So, that brings me a few steps closer to being up to date...more to come....

WALK OUT ON DEATH by Charlotte Armstrong

I've been wanting to read some Charlotte Armstrong for a while, after reading some good things about her work. This was the first I picked up....and I wasn't too thrilled by it.

Walk Out on Death (originally titled Catch-As-Catch-Can) isn't much of a mystery, but a thriller in which a series of circumstances lead to a perilous situation. It opens with a fairly silly situation: world traveler Jonas Breen has brought home Laila, his beautiful daughter (or so he claims) from a quickie marriage in the South Seas (or so he claims). Seriously, everyone seems to take this at face value. But anyway, he dies, and innocent and very naive 18-year-old Laila inherits a half million dollars. (For 1952, that was a fortune.) She is surrounded by various cousins: Clive Breen, Dee Allison, and Andrew Talbot. Laila has a crush on Andy, who's been having a turbulent relationship with Dee, and Clive, who always needs money. There's also Pearl Dean, a friend of Jonas, a spiritualist who may or may not have designs on the Breen cash.

After realizing she's made a fool of herself over Andy, Laila leaves the house for a long walk, and while she's gone the people in the house are in a panic as the housekeeper collapsed and died. It turned out she had eaten some improperly-canned beans and got botulism as a result...and Laila had just eaten some of the same beans. Soon Dee and Andy are searching for her to get her to a hospital for treatment. (This was a reality in the day; people could and did die from botulism, and their only hope was to be rushed to a hospital for an injection of an antivenin before 24 hours were through.)

Clive finds out...and decides to keep Laila on ice until she dies from the poison, so he can inherit. But then she takes off on her own, hooking up with her friend Pearl and hiding in Pearl's trailer while she drives off to the beach.

Dee and Andy have a series of misadventures while looking for Laila, and there's a prolonged chase, a dramatic traffic accident, a creepy laundry truck driver, and a conclusion in a house about to be flooded with a powerful insecticide fog before it all ends happily.

It's a bit of a mess, but at least it's an energetic mess. It moves quickly although sometimes the plot contrivances are just too damn contrived and convenient, including Laila nursing a broken heart in the morning and finding true love in the afternoon. I did like how a witness to the aforementioned accident, an elderly mute woman, is regularly dismissed and ignored by everyone around her until finally someone stops and thinks to ask if she happened to see anything. Maybe a bit overly obvious that she's standing in for how so many women and their contributions are overlooked and ignored, and also for society's dismissive attitude toward the elderly, but it was still nicely done.

But all in all, the story is too muddled and too contrived to hit bullseye, but it is energetic and fast-moving enough to make an acceptable time-killer for a lazy afternoon. It's a fairly brief read, about 184 pages, and out of print, but you may come across an old copy in your local friendly used book emporium.

March at the Phantom Opera House!

Tonight we're all dolled up in our vintage and bohemian finery...we're going to the opera!

The show is that old warhorse "Carmen," but it's effectively done, as you can see here...



"Carmen," despite its overfamiliarity, has a ton of great music, and when done right has a load of atmosphere. It can also be seen as a precursor to film noir, with its tale of a good man led astray by a heartless, manipulative woman. The song above sets things in motion...she warns them all that she's a danger, but still tempts and coaxes Don Jose to self-destruction.

Just think...where would actresses like Lizabeth Scott and Peggy Cummins be without Carmen?

Show's over...let's go back to my place for a bite, shall we?

I MARRIED A DEAD MAN by Cornell Woolrich

But wait, I hear you cry. That picture says "William Irish"! Well, yeah. That was a pseudonym used by prolific pulp author Cornell Woolrich; when it's reprinted today (which is rare, for some reason), it's credited to Woolrich. (That's an old cover above; the version I have is much less interesting artistically.)

It's the 1940s. (The book was published in 1948, and no other time is given.) Helen is eight months pregnant, unmarried, and has been cast aside by her paramour, who has simply sent her a train ticket back to her hometown of San Francisco, and a five-dollar bill. Depressed and miserable, with nothing to live for, she is temporarily cheered on the train trip by meeting young married couple Patrice and Hugh Hazzard, who are on their way to meet his parents. Patrice is pregnant as well, almost as far gone as Helen. And she learns that Hugh's family has never met Patrice, and doesn't even know what she looks like.

Naturally, it happens. Patrice and Helen are in the washroom together. Patrice complains of her loose wedding band, and asks Helen to hold it for her. Helen puts it on her finger to keep it safe....and the train is in a horrible accident.

Helen gives birth in the wreckage, passes out, and wakes up in the hospital...and discovers she's been mistaken for Patrice. The Hazzards are dead, and the REAL Patrice was mistaken for Helen. Her first instinct is to set the record straight...but nobody takes her seriously, then she finds out the Hazzards are incredibly wealthy, and thinks of how they would provide for her child much better than she ever could. So she goes along with it, slowly adjusting herself to her new lifestyle and happily caring for her child.

Until one day, an envelope arrives in the mail. Inside, the letter has a single sentence. "Who are you?"

Really, if you think I've given away a lot, I haven't. This is the basic setup, and what follows is a dark and twisted tale of secrets, lies, blackmail, and murder.

If this sounds like film noir, or Hitchcock, you wouldn't be far off the mark. Countless classic films have been made from Woolrich's works. Rear Window. Phantom Lady. The Bride Wore Black. The Leopard Man. Night Has a Thousand Eyes. The Window. Mississippi Mermaid. Original Sin. Many more. And this novel was filmed in 1950 as No Man of Her Own, with Barbara Stanwyck. It's said that more films noir were based on his work than any other crime writer, and it's fitting. His style is spare but cinematic, lending itself well to dramatic interpretation.

But land sakes, it's DARK. I'm not giving anything away when I say it ends on a dark and despairing note, as it begins with that and the story is told in flashback. This is that dark, cynical universe where the bad guys might get theirs but the good guys may get screwed over in the process. After reading this I need a nice cozy ghost story to brighten my mood. Supernatural terrors are one thing, but man's inhumanity to man, and the cruelties of fate, are something else, and much worse.

Woolrich can be hard to find; much of his work is out of print (estate issues, saith Wikipedia), but every now and then you can find something in your local friendly used-book emporium. Once I even found a hardcover collection, "The Best of William Irish", that had PHANTOM LADY, DEADLINE AT DAWN, and an assortment of stories, and no mention of the Woolrich name. But keep your eyes open, you might find something. And note the titles of the movies based on his work; even when diluted for the screen, they're an experience. (And boy, was The Bride Wore Black diluted, robbed of a brutal, ironic twist at the end...)