European RC #7

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge

Mission to Paris – Alan Furst

Most of the action takes place in Paris but the best part of the book is the chapter that takes our every-man secret agent to Berlin. Germany in late 1938 ranked with the USSR and Japanese-occupied China as the most frightening places in the world. Furst has the characters witness where the Holocaust began with Kristallnacht. One character, who lived through the Russian Revolution, says, “I know that smell – it’s the smell of burning buildings.”

Like in his other historical spy novels, this is a dramatic story in a noir atmosphere that takes place mainly in Paris on the eve of war, with Europeans seething and boiling and ready to burst at any time. The plot is well done, without excessive violence and with just the right amount of suspense and sexy romping. Furst is especially skillful at the process of how Nazis pressured naïve people to do their will with a mixture of money, manners, and coercion.

The main draw here, as in his other novels is the return to the era between the wars and the characterization. The characters are free spirits all trying to live their lives with integrity in the shadow of the Nazis who regard integrity as a pesky constraint on obedience. The climax is set in Hungary and the secondary character Count Janos Polanyi plays a key part in saving our heroes, as he did in Kingdom of Shadows, Blood of Victory, Dark Star, and The Foreign Correspondent.

The Second Man

The Second Man – Edward Grierson

This excellent courtroom mystery begins with our narrator Michael Irvine in a dour mood. In the north of England in a crowded set of chambers, he is forced to double up in a broom-closet of an office with The New Guy. The New Guy turns out to be woman barrister Marion Kerrison, who, on the bright side, is about the same age and has the same depth of legal experience as Michael. Over time he recognizes that while she may be young, green, and reckless in court, she’s brilliant, insightful, and possesses amazing gifts for speaking and cross-examining.

Marion gets her once-in-a-lifetime chance in a high-profile murder case. She must defend a shady Australian named John Maudsley, charged with the murder of his aunt. The two witnesses for the prosecution give unassailable testimony. Maudsley doesn’t help himself by looking deceitful and acting over-confidently. Nor does Marion when she flies off the handle in court and rankles the judge. She intuits that it was a second man, not her client, that did the deed.

Edward Grierson (1914 - 1975) was a lawyer himself so the settings of chambers and courts strike the reader as authentic. Set in the middle 1950s, this vintage mystery weaves together the murder case itself with a woman barrister’s struggle to be accepted as a professional and a damn good one. Vintage too are the various male attitudes ranging from outright hostile to condescendingly sympathetic. Also old-fashioned is Grierson’s assumption that we have read the same books that he has:

I was always moved too easily: by the death of Steerforth, and the perplexities of John Forsyte, by Soames walking in his picture gallery in Mapledurham, Uncle Pio, Natasha at the window in the summer night, and the dying fall of the words that record the passing of Socrates.

David Copperfield, The Forsyte Saga, The Bridge at San Luis Rey, and The Apology, but who’s Natasha? Where was her window?

In the spirit of “two great peoples separated by a common language,” American readers will have to brush up on Rumpolian terms such as “take silk,” “leader,” and “queen’s counsel” and picture barristers in gowns and little wigs. I daresay that Americans will be flummoxed by the idioms too: “[Women] want to make an Aunt Sally of you; so will you please to perch yourself up there to be shot at!” They will turn to the Web to figure out puzzlers from European history: “Cross-purpose crimes of the Reichstag variety have a respectable ancestry: do not some historians believe that there were two independent plots afoot on the night when Darnley died in Kirk o’Field?”

Still, these are mere quibbles, questions easy to answer in our wired world. I agree with James Sandoe, a critic for New York Herald Tribune, who ranked this mystery "among the very best of that long, diverse series of detective stories set within the formalities of a trial." In 1956, it won the Crime Writer’s Association Golden Dagger Award, when it was called (say it three times fast) the Crossed Red Herring Award.

Mount TBR #13

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

The Letter of Marque – Patrick O’Brian

This novel is the 12th of 21 about Jack Aubrey and his friend Dr. Stephen Maturin of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era – when exactly we don’t know, since O’Brian keeps years obscure. The title refers to an official commission which authorizes a private ship to attack and capture merchant vessels from a hostile power. Before 1856 when an international agreement ended the practice, a ship operating under a letter of marque was known generally as a "private man-of-war" or "privateer," both of which were terms Navy men disliked.

This novel is much less dark than the previous The Reverse of the Medal. I detest spoilers so all I can say is that because Maturin has become unexpectedly rich, he buys Aubrey the decommissioned Surprise for privateering. Maturin keeps up his contacts in the intelligence service, with the ultimate goal of a mission to South America. Jack, who feel bereft since being disgraced out of the Navy, has two stunning successes that bring about favorable results.

As usual episodes and continuing saga make the reader marvel. I was excited by the cutting out of the Diane – O’Brian builds tension effectively. Both Maturin and his countryman Padeen battle opium addiction, as Maturin also develops too strong a liking for coco leaf. Maturin is also addicted to the worthless Diana Villiers, who likes him all the better now that he is rich. On the Surprise, Aubrey has to deal with religious issues with the enigmatic Sethian crew members. There’s comedy: Aubrey’s kids, raised around sailors, talk like sailors; Killick is Jack’s semi-rebellious servant, always muttering; wealth goes right to Stephen’s head, making him feel entitled and miserly.

Read them all in order and keep the Kleenex handy. The Aurbrey-Maturin books make me happy to be alive, to be able to enjoy such stories.

Mount TBR #12

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

The Case of the One-Eyed Witness – Erle Stanley Gardner

A skeptic might argue if you’ve read one Perry Mason mystery, you’ve read them all, and so re-reading them is the greatest waste of time since social media.

In any Mason story, the inevitable killing comes out of an intricate scam. Though Perry Mason hires Paul Drake’s detectives, Perry and his savvy secretary Della Street do much of their own legwork in interviewing witnesses and persons of interest. The cops misconstrue evidence not because they want to frame Perry’s client but because they are filtering evidence through the wrong assumption that Perry’s client is guilty. The DA has the same confirmation bias and thus thinks all is fair – like priming witnesses or depriving the suspect of sleep and food for easier interrogation - in ushering Perry’s guilty as hell client into the gas chamber.

Despite Perry’s warning not to talk to the cops, his clients always do, assuming “just telling the truth” to the cops and DA will help despite the fact that it never helps because the cops assume the suspect is lying. We long-time Perry fans also expect in every novel that his clients will act irrationally by not telling Perry all the facts, becoming listless and apathetic, or pursuing a selfish agenda. However, Perry assumes they are innocent of first-degree murder and have a right to a defense. Perry can be counted on to fight for a fair trial, especially when the breaks are going against his clients. Perry feels such commitment to the truth that he will not suppress, conceal, or distort any of the actual evidence.

We fans therefore return to Perry Mason novels because he represents an ideal lawyer that will fight for us when crooks steal our property and the criminal justice system disregards our rights. Mason knows that human beings, being fallible and unknowing and careless and malicious, will make mistakes. Crooks blunder because they are ignorant, cops and prosecutors because of bad assumptions, evidence suppression, cognitive inertia, and corner-cutting. Knowing that courts will uphold palpably unreasonable conduct on the part of the police, Perry fights with legwork, logic and argument based on the law. He feeds our fantasy wish for somebody that will protect us when life plays a dirty trick on us and we get in a world of shit with the authorities.

Fans re-read Mason novels simply because we like Perry, Della, and Paul, give Lt. Tragg the benefit of the doubt that he in fact has a soul, and detest preening DA Hamilton Burger. We like the period Americana of soda fountains, phone booths, gladstone bags, and retro expressions like “Are you trying to make a monkey out of me.” Like writers such as Dickens, Trollope, Collins and Wharton, Gardner has fun with naming characters: Pierre LaRue, Celinda Gilson, Percy R. Danvers, Dr. Carlton D. Radcliffe and Medford D. Carlin.

By the way, in this one Myrtle Fargo is accused of stabbing her husband Arthman D. Fargo to death. Appearing for the state on the stand is Mrs. Newton Maynard, with one eye bandaged, thus the title. Admittedly, this one has an edge involving racism, an issue still hot in post-Japanese-American internment in California in 1950 when this book was published. Gardner was against unfairness and injustice in all its forms so I don’t see the racism as casual in this book, as it is taken for granted in much genre fiction of the time. Gardner invariably has a sympathetic portrait of a female character who is pushing hard to make it in a world where men dominate. Also, the racket in this outing is particularly slimy, as Gardner approaches gritty noir.

Memorial Day

Toward the Flame: A Memoir of World War I – Hervey Allen

During WWI, Hervey Allen’s unit of the National Guard (from Pennsylvania) fought in France. Many military and cultural historians consider Allen’s Toward the Flame to be the best combat memoir of WWI by an American.

This is not a mud and blood memoir of the trenches since by the time Hervey and the men he served with got to fight, it was a war of movement. Allen was keen observer and gives descriptions of men dealing with shelling, anxiety, boredom, and ordinary but wonderful activities such as eating. Hervey gets across that in battle the individual infantryman’s survival depended on a combination of training, comrades, lay of the land, and luck.

Allen gives a memorable account of the battle for Fismes and Fismette during the Aisne-Marne offensive of 1918. Some historians of the war call that battle the worst five days of fighting faced by the American forces in WWI. Allen is best-known as the author of the historical novel Anthony Adverse in the 1930s. It sold like hotcakes for its epic story and spicy parts.

Back to the Classics #11

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018.

Wanderer – Sterling Hayden

What might be considered classic about a memoir by a not-terribly-well-known Hollywood actor?

Sterling Hayden seems fiercely honest. Honesty is timeless. Honesty is a model. So that is why I consider this a classic not only with a one-word title but a classic written by non-writer, up there with James Webb’s Fields of Fire and Albert Ellis’ A Guide to Rational Living.

Probably best known as mad general in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Sterling Hayden (1916 - 1986) was also in The Asphalt Jungle, Kubrick’s The Killing, the noir Suddenly, and played a bent cop in The Godfather. Knowing full well that he had all the acting chops of, say, George Raft or Robert Stack, Hayden wasn’t really at ease with his image as the hunky, strong, stolid type. When Paramount Pictures signed him up in 1940, they dubbed him ''The Beautiful Blond Viking God. '' Hayden wasn’t easy with that but he said “the money was good.”

He married a Hitchcock ice queen Madeleine Carroll. But they didn’t see much of each other because he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps under an assumed name. He didn’t want to be seen as just a Hollywood actor poser. As John Hamilton, he earned both the Silver Star and Bronze Star. He served with the ur-CIA, the Office of Strategic Services, in Yugoslavia, Italy and Germany – one of the very few Marines not in the Pacific for WWII. He knew Wild Bill Donovan, founder of the OSS, and had dinner with FDR.

War affects different people in different ways (see Suddenly). War solidified Hayden’s belief in nonviolence, civil disobedience, and his identification with poor and the oppressed people.  War also briefly made him a Communist. He joined the Party but was not active because politics interfered with dating and romance. In 1951, after being summoned by the House of Un-American Activities Committee, he named names of Hollywood friends who had naively dabbled in communist / left groups after WWII.

 If I have any excuse, and it's not a good reason, the FBI made it clear to me that if I became an "Unfriendly Witness" I could damn well forget the custody of my children. I didn't want to go to jail, that was the other thing. The FBI office promised that my testimony was confidential. And they were very pleasant. So I spilled my guts out, and the months went by, and I was on some shit-ass picture, and I got a subpoena. The next thing I knew I was flying to Washington to testify. The worst day of my life. They knew it already, and there is the savage irony.

The government knew it already but wanted to humiliate him, just like they wanted to torment Edward G. Robinson into saying he was a dupe even when he never acted out of being duped. Stories like this make me amend the Irish invocation, “God between us and evil” to “… us and the goddamn government.” After the HUAC, Hayden lost his lefty buds and had a B-movie career though John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle keep him in the public eye.

Hayden writes in a unique style, to produce a sprawling hodge-podge of a book. Over the course of 400+ pages, though some memorable passages are well-realized, the melodramatic tone takes patience, parts in need of strict editing a time-pressed reader just has to skim. But as I said above, without being embarrassing, he is honest and the parts about sailing would really appeal to a sailor.

Movie: Suddenly

Suddenly

1954 / B & W / 75 minutes

Tagline: A cold-blooded thriller!

A young widow lives with her eight-year-old son and her father-in-law in the sleepy SoCal burg of Suddenly. Because she lost her husband in the Korean conflict, she forbids her son from playing with toy guns and joining the Cub Scouts. Her father-in-law, an ex-Secret Service operative, speaks out against over-protecting the boy, arguing that if he doesn’t develop strength of mind, he will be unable to take his turn in fighting cruelty, hatred, and tyranny and contribute to making the Declaration of Independence stick. The village sheriff has romantic designs on the widow, but hurts his case when he buys the boy a cap pistol. A crisis occurs that tests the mettle of all the characters.

The script is just okay, setting up the paper-thin characters. Frank Sinatra puts in a convincing performance, here just as suitably larger than life as his Maggio in From Here to Eternity. He plays a detestable killer who learns to like killing during WWII. Nancy Gates, who appeared with Sinatra in Some Came Running, is okay as the pacifist widow.  The sheriff is played by hard-nosed Sterling Hayden, best remembered as the mad general in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and the hard-bitten copper Michael Corleone shot in the restaurant with Solozzo. Also good was James Gleason as the father-in-law, mainly because he gets off cool Americanisms like, “shucks to you,” “tan your hide,” and “hurt like blazes.”

I suppose a viewer could label this movie a late 1950s artifact and make the expected allowances. We could identify themes of defending the country against domestic terrorists, the motivations of betrayal and violence, the different ways that wars influence individual personalities, the importance in family values, and realistic men controlling idealistic females. We could also see the movie as simply a concise thriller that compresses four hours of action into a tight 75-minute film.