Mount TBR #15

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

Murder by the Book – Rex Stout

This 1951 mystery opens with cranky chief of NYPD homicide detectives, Lt. Cramer, semi-sheepishly asking arch-nemesis Nero Wolfe for help identifying names on a list. The rotund PI can’t help until months later when his capacious memory recalls a mere name on that list and ties it to the deaths of a book editor named Joan Wellman and of a paralegal named Leonard Dykes.

Although these two deaths don’t seem connected, they end up previewing another crime by an author using the pen name of Baird Archer. All the readers of the manuscript have been murdered. Wolfe stays put in his brownstone, while he sends his chief assistant Archie Goodwin and the trio of Saul, Orrie, and Fred to various persons of interest for interviews.

This is highly recommended. The plot is clever and convoluted. The interplay between Wolfe and Goodwin is humorous, giving long-time fans much pleasure in meeting old friends once again. 

Dead Souls

Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol; tr. David Magarshack,  0140441131

A con man makes his way through remote towns in early nineteenth century Russia. He meets and deals with a variety of grotesque types. Our interest in this novel focuses not on the plot, but on colorful scenes that detail the social and psychological oddness of the characters. Gogol scrutinizes the attitude of peasants and gentry and their favorite activities, such as love and jealousy, intrigue and lawsuits, dirt and squalor, adventure and anguish. It is for readers to decide if his combination of anguish and humor is their cup of tea. I’m always surprised at Gogol’s exuberance, his exasperated caricatures of Russians..

Gogol’s witty and caustic style reveals characters. Smart, sharp and fun, he addresses the reader directly. It’s easy to read, it is hard to understand sometimes whether incidents really further the plot or expose the nefarious plans of the characters, and the trustworthy and not.

The late University of Michigan professor and critic Carl R. Proffer praised Magarshack’s translation as the one that he recommended to his students instead of Constance Garnett's rendering.  Sometimes the high-falutin’ word choices  -- "Good Lord, my dear fellow, what nonsense you talk" --  made me wonder if subsequent translators such as Pevear and Volokhonsky have tried to be more colloquial.

David Magarshack (1899 - 1977) was best known for his translations of Dostoevsky. In fact, Kazuo Ishiguro said in 2005, “I often think I’ve been greatly influenced by the translator, David Magarshack, who was the favourite translator of Russian writers in the 1970s. And often when people ask me who my big influences are, I feel I should say David Magarshack, because I think the rhythm of my own prose is very much like those Russian translations that I read.”

It’s funny how I get interested in people and read things by and about them. I’m from Michigan so Dr. Proffer of the U of M draws my attention. I’m interested in Magarshack because he was born in the city where I lived from 1994 to 1997, Riga, birthplace also of Isaiah Berlin, Sergei Eisenstein, and Cynthia Lynn (born Zinta Valda Zimilis) who played Fraulein Helga on Hogan’s Heroes.

A Dram of Poison

A Dram of Poison – Charlotte Armstrong

In this 1956 suspense mystery, a crime may occur. The protagonist and his merry band must prevent the crime. Otherwise, the protagonist may lose his wife and his freedom. The ending delivers the satisfying emotional release that we look for in a suspense novel. But on the way to the climax this story also provides the intellectual pleasure that we want from a novel.

Like Shirley Jackson, Armstrong was a close and cool observer. Of a wedding procedure between a middle-aged poetry prof and a girl young enough to be his student: “It was an ugly, dreary wedding. It made Mr. Gibson wince in his soul, but it was quick, soon over. He was able to take it as just necessary, like a disagreeable pill.”

Armstrong had a dab hand at constructing a plot that dragged her characters through the mill until the very last moment. In this novel, she examines the physical and psychological effects of a bad car accident. Now lame and feeling old and unsure, the protagonist goes into a depression that his unhelpful sister worsens with her cheap cynicism and amateur Freudian psychoanalytical mumbo-jumbo.

When the post-World War II anxiety is reaching a pitch, however, Armstrong twists the plot and changes the tone from somber to comical and philosophical. With lesser writers we would wonder about the wisdom of sudden changes in plot and tone and the introduction of a five new characters half-way through.  But Armstrong pulls off these audacious moves. She was truly a surprising, enchanting writer.

Christopher Pym in the Spectator wrote: "Nobody gets hurt in this pleasantly sentimental, good-natured version of the `psychological study' sort of crime story, but there is plenty of suspense, and a good chase after the poison bottle. Full marks for the fresh approach.” This novel won the 1957 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. I read another of her suspense novels, a howdunnit called The Unsuspected, which I also highly recommend though it is as unclassifiable as this one.

Back to the Classics: Mystery

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

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This novel stars the detective duo of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. The story uses country superstitions, a fiendish hound, and an old family curse. Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead with a rictus of terror on his face. And near the corpse, in one of the most famous lines in detective fiction, “… the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

Conan Doyle skillfully piles up weird little incidents that unnerve the heir to the vast estate, Henry Baskerville. Even the unflappable Holmes is concerned for the safety of Sir Henry. He sends Watson with the heir to his remote Dartmoor mansion. Watson therefore is particularly active in this story and tells his story in letters, diary extracts, and straight exposition.

On the up side, Conan Doyle skillfully describes dreary landscape in order to capture an overall grim tone. Turning a conventional Victorian creepy novel into a Sherlock Holmes tale contributes to the originality of the plot. What Conan Doyle called “female interest” is fostered in the story, mainly due to indirectly describing the hard lot of women, married and not, at the hands of men. There are melodramatic passages but they are a lot of fun. On the down side, there are is a plot hole so large that even Holmes himself acknowledges it in the reveal when, provoked by questions, he says, “It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it.”

Mount TBR #14

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

Owls Don’t Blink – A.A. Fair

A. A. Fair is the pen name of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of ace defense lawyer Perry Mason. The mysteries under the pen name feature the private eye partnership Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.

Like all famous whodunit partnerships ranging from Holmes & Watson to Gravedigger Jones & Coffin Ed and Nick & Nora, Cool & Lam appeal to readers because, though they are both smart about figuring out scams, they are opposites in personality. Impulsive Bertha Cool has a hair-trigger temper and has only a porous filter between her brain and her mouth. Ex-lawyer Donald Lam has a good grip on legal deviations and police procedures. He is a master at interrogation, making inferences, and keeping his mouth shut. He frustrates Bertha mightily by being impossible to pump for information. Bertha is recovering from a health scare so she doesn’t push herself away from a hearty meal. Lam has a slight build, but is skilled in boxing and jujitsu. Because they know they make a good team, they like each other enough to banter at once affectionately but frankly.

Owls Don’t Blink is set mainly in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Lam is on the trail of a missing woman. Bertha arrives in the Big Easy with the New York lawyer who has hired them to find an ex-model for reasons he is reluctant to explain. As Lam often does, he locates the woman very easily –too easily, in fact. Then, a corpse is discovered in the missing woman’s former apartment.

The scene shifts from New Orleans to Shreveport and from there to Los Angeles, though there is also a desert scene where Gardner can describe the landscape he loved so deeply. Plenty of action and convoluted incidents capture our attention before the conclusion, which is complicated. The scams and schemes in this novel are ingenious, but the best point is the interplay between Lam and Bertha, between Lam and the persons of interest in the case.

The time for this mystery is early 1942 (at the latest) so with the decisive Battle of Midway yet to be fought, the outcome of the war with Japan is a huge question mark. Lam’s decision to enlist takes a fuming Bertha and Elsie Brand by surprise. Having feelings for Lam, Elsie hurts because their good-byes were hurried but proud that he’s going to serve.

Other Cool & Lam Mysteries

Turn on the Heat (1940)

Spill the Jackpot (March 1941)

Double or Quits (December 1941)

Top of the Heap (1952)

Traps Need Fresh Bait (1967)

Flag Day

A Leap in the Dark:  The Struggle to Create the American Republic  - John Ferling

I will always read histories of The Movies and The American Revolution. Luckily, authors want to tap the lucrative and endless market for textbooks so there are plenty of choices. John Ferling’s A Leap in the Dark:  The Struggle to Create the American Republic focuses on patriots versus the British and then partriots versus other patriots.

To my surprise, I’ve found the early national period more interesting than the 1760s intolerable imperial encroachments (a close second) or battles (a distant third). Ferling’s specialty at the State University of West Georgia is the political conflicts of the 1790s.

He devotes about half the book on the conflicts among Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams. Like Bernard Bailyn, Ferling makes a strong argument for Jefferson’s political savvy and organizational skills. Ferling also elucidates how region and class made elites different in their socio-economic interests. In one mini-biography Ferling tells the story of a nouveau riche from New York, Abraham Yates. He rose from a "humble farm family" to the New York state legislature, thus representing to figures such as Hamilton the rise of upstarts that would foment a social revolution.

I think that lay readers with a serious interest in the early republic who enjoy Joseph Ellis' books (here and here and here and here)would enjoy this one. So would undergraduate history majors and graduate students. 

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.