and thus we come to the end: White Jazz, by James Ellroy

 

 " ... it's dues time." 

White Jazz closes out Ellroy's LA Quartet, and in doing so, takes us into the life of  Dave Klein, Ad Vice lieutenant in the LAPD.   Unlike The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere and LA Confidential, Ellroy's writing style is dialed up full throttle, set at pure, raw energy here as he moves his reader into Klein's head 

"his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing -- taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and pervision."

Klein is telling this story years after the events of White Jazz, looking backward with his beginning in the fall of 1958:

"Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events -- so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down -- the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell." 

Afraid he'll forget: 

"I killed innocent men. I betrayed sacred oaths. I reaped profit from horror. Fever -- that time burning. I want to go with the music -- spin fall with it."

 Mind you, we haven't moved into the actual story yet and right away we have a preview of not only what's coming down the pike for Klein, who lived to tell the tale if one could actually call it living,    but of Ellroy's superb jazzed-up prose style as well.  

Aside from his police job, Klein has ties to local bad guy Mickey Cohen, Howard Hughes and mobster Sam Giancana. He is paid well to work as hit man, strike breaker, or to kneecap someone if necessary. He's also a slumlord and a law-school grad.  After the death of a federal witness in Klein's custody,  the case that takes center stage in White Jazz, one which will eventually take everyone involved to places they couldn't possibly have foreseen as ""the City of Angels begins to seem like the City of the Devils," starts with a burglary and the murder of two Dobermans at the home of JC Kafesjian, "LAPD's sanctioned pusher," and the owner of a chain of dry-cleaning establishments.  He is protected by Dan Wilhite of Narco;  Klein is called in "to square things," as Kafesjian insists on no investigation.  Ed Exley, now Chief of Detectives, decides otherwise, and Klein is partnered with Sgt. George "Junior" Stemmons to take care of it.   Away from the job, he is hired by Howard Hughes to keep tabs on a young actress by the name of Glenda Bledsoe, "with an eye toward securing contract-violating information."  In the meantime, as if this all wasn't enough, the  Justice Department investigators are beginning a " 'minutely detailed, complex and far reaching' probe into racketeering in South-Central Los Angeles," part of which would involve rumors of the LAPD allowing vice to flourish and rarely investigating "homicides involving both Negro victims and perpetrators."  Eventually Klein will come to realize that he's been tagged as scapegoat by the powers that be who want to keep their secrets to themselves.  He also knows that he's being used as a pawn in a much bigger rivalry.   He's not going to take either of these lying down -- as the back cover says, for Klein, "it's dues time."  

I really don't want to reveal  anything more about this book plotwise because at this juncture getting into the nitty-gritty of things would just kill it for anyone who hasn't read this book and may want to do so down the road.  There's also the fact that to try to enumerate the subplots found here would just be folly, and there's no way I can possibly describe the bleakness tied to the characters or the way in which things spiral out of control throughout the story.  I will say that while the books that came before this one were dark, this one is downright claustrophobic, a connected web of murder, revenge, sick and damaged souls, making the reader wonder if there is any possibility of justice at all in this hellish vision of LA.   

It also ends the LA Quartet, picking up the speed toward the finish in a way that only Ellroy could make happen as he moved across twelve years from 1947 to 1959.  More accurately it ends what is often labeled as the Dudley Smith Trio that had its roots in The Big Nowhere and comes to a head in White Jazz; although   The Black Dahlia  has little to do with the characters of the three novels that follow, it is most certainly the foundation of Ellroy's vision and as such necessary to understand many of the themes that make their way through all four books.  Word to the wise: do not under any circumstances make White Jazz your starting point -- you will be lost.  

 I think there have only been two other series I've read that have come close to this one in terms of sheer darkness of vision and which out-noir noir,  Derek Raymond's Factory series and David Peace's Red Riding Quartet.   While Ellroy's Quartet novels are, as I've been saying all along, not easy to get through on a number of different levels,  reading these four novels has been an experience in itself and I wouldn't have missed it.  I'm genuinely sad that it's over.  

happier reads now, I think! 

L.A. Confidential, by James Ellroy

 

-- read earlier

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime case and the price for clearing it was very, very high."

I'm one of those weirdos who actually preferred the novel to the film adaptation, and I think it's because it had been so long since I'd seen the movie that it I'd forgotten about it.   I recently watched the film again after finishing the novel and was a bit thrown off -- not only had the story been cut, which due to its complexity I'd expected, but parts of the plot were changed as well, even down to who was killed in the Nite Owl Coffee Shop.   James Ellroy himself said about the film that it was "about as deep as a tortilla." 

Luckily that's not the case with the novel. There is nothing shallow about  LA Confidential, which goes straight for the jugular and doesn't let go.   

As was the case in The Big Nowhere, three police officers are at the center of the story. Sgt. Jack Vincennes  has fifteen years on the force, yet he is not well respected by his superiors.  He was given a fitness rating of D+ by his own supervisor who also remarked that he is "barely adequate."  Jack has a side gig as technical advisor to a TV cop show (think Jack Webb and Dragnet) and also provides celebrity fodder for Sid Hughes' tabloid Hush-Hush, giving Sid the heads up when an arrest is about to be made allowing the magazine a leg up on press scoops. He also wants to leave Ad Vice and return to Narco before he retires,  and is told that if he can "make a major case," in a "Picture-book smut" investigation he'll get his wish.  Like many of Ellroy's tormented characters, Jack has a secret from his past which if uncovered would cost him everything.  Wendell "Bud" White has no use for men who beat women; as a boy he witnessed his mother's murder at the hands of his father.  Lieutenant Ed Exley, former war hero,  lives in the shadow of his father, a retired legendary cop now construction bigwig who is currently bringing a Disneyland-type park and a freeway to Los Angeles.  Exley "works poorly with partners and well by himself;" he is also regarded as a "coward" because he does not use violence against suspects.  Aside from his inner rivalry with his father, he too harbors a secret that he would prefer to keep hidden, and after he rats out the culprit in a jail beatdown by cops during a drunken Christmas Eve party, everyone hates him.  

The main case at the novel's  heart is the shooting at the Nite Owl Coffee Shop, "The first all-Bureau call-in in history."  Six people died when at 3 a.m. three men entered and shot the place up. The police have one hot lead on the case: over the previous two weeks, three men had been seen "discharging shotguns" into the air at Griffith Park.  They had been seen driving a purple Mercury coupe at the time and it was a purple Mercury coupe that a witness had seen parked across from the coffee shop at the same time the massacre went down.  But since this is James Ellroy we're talking about there, this case will quickly unfurl well beyond its center and as it spins, it will drag the three cops along with it, catching up to them in ways no one could predict.   And that's an understatement.  

LA Confidential has been criticized by readers for its rather labyrinthine complexity involving numerous subplots, but I didn't have an issue with it and frankly, could care less, since after having read its predecessors The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere, I've become used to Ellroy's penchant for grandiose, and I was caught up in each and every turn taken by this story.  What I really want to say is that it's a firecracker of a  read that sucked me so far down the rabbit hole of Ellroy's 1950s Los Angeles that is was a relief when I finally got out.   Again, not perfect, but pretty damn close.  

It's another book that is uberbleak, not for the squeamish, should come with warning labels, and yes, it's long in the reading, but I enjoyed every second of it.  Every nanosecond of it.  

The Big Nowhere, by James Ellroy

With two books left to read in  the LA Quartet, after finishing The Black Dahlia and Big Nowhere I had to take a break.  They're excellent novels, but even I, someone who lives on a steady reading diet of bleak,  had to take a break before going on.  I didn't stay away for too long though -- these novels are like serious noir-reading crack.

It's 1950, and just three hours into the new year, acting watch commander Detective Deputy Sheriff Danny Upshaw ("a rookie squadroom dick") has already decided that the 1950s "were going to be a shit show."  He eventually becomes caught up in investigating a series of grisly, sexually-motivated murders, all the while fighting the territorial rivalry between the LAPD and the LASD as well as a department that doesn't want too much public attention called to these killings. Upshaw believes that solving this case will "make his name as a cop," but he has to make a deal to work as lead  jointly with both departments, bringing him into a team tasked with getting the goods on "lefties" associated with Communism in Los Angeles, specifically targeting the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands. The task force  consists of  Lieutenant Mal Considine from the DA's Criminal Investigation Bureau and Turner "Buzz" Meeks, an ex- Narco division cop, now "Fixer, errand boy, hatchet wielder" for gangster Mickey Cohen and head of security at Hughes Aircraft, where his real work is as a "glorified pimp for Howard Hughes."   Lieutenant Dudley Smith of the LAPD is also attached to the team, serving along with Mal as a chief investigator.  The novel follows these two threads as they slowly intersect, moving outward into various connecting subplots while moving inward deep into the minds of the three main characters to reveal how, as the back-cover blurb notes, "All three men have purchased tickets to a nightmare."  

Once again Ellroy brings us into an LA that is based on a foundation of fact, allowing him to construct his fiction around reality.  It's genius, really, when you think about it.   But in trying to describe this book or the others, the truth is as Tom Nolan says in his introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of The LA Quartet,  "Thumbnail sketches do not suffice" (xii).    With The Big Nowhere there is no possible way to encapsulate Ellroy's characterizations,  for example, or the movement toward the intersection of the lives of the three main players who all have their own their personal demons to confront while all the while having to contend with forces from the outside.  Without giving anything away, it's so hard not to feel some measure of sympathy for each and everyone of the these three people, despite what they've done.    It is a book that you feel rather than simply read, and it's visceral. 

 The Big Nowhere is not perfect, but it is a hell of a ride.  Definitely not for the faint of heart.  It is  not a book I'd choose as an initial leap into noir;  it's bleaker than bleak, twisted, unbelievably intense and difficult to read,  but I have nothing but serious praise for this novel. 

 

The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy

"...our partnership was nothing but a bungling road to the Dahlia. And in the end, she was to own the two of us completely." 

 In the Afterword section of this book, Ellroy says the following: 

"A personal story attends the Black Dahlia, both novel and film. It inextricably links me to two women savaged eleven years apart."

Those two women  are his mother  (Geneva) Jean Hilliker, who was raped and murdered by an unknown killer who then left her body in a Los Angeles roadside in 1958, and Elisabeth Short, aka "The Black Dahlia" whose body in 1947 was discovered in a lot on an LA street after having been horrifically murdered and mutilated.  Ellroy had first encountered Elisabeth Short's story at the age of eleven, after his mother's death, while reading Jack Webb's The Badge, and from there,  "Jean Hilliker and Betty Short" became "one in transmogrification." Over the years this "Jean-Betty confluence" led to the writing of The Black Dahlia, in which Ellroy, as noted in a 2006 article in Slate,   

"transformed the murky facts surrounding Short's life and death into art, the unknown 'dead white woman' becoming a tabula rasa on which the author could wrestle with his anger and affection toward his mother." 

The Black Dahlia not only lays bare Ellroy's demons, but in his version of the Black Dahlia case, it turns out that no one involved is left unscathed.  

Just briefly so as not to ruin it for potential readers,  it's 1946.  The promise of a coveted spot in LAPD's Warrants Division as well as chance to be a department hero prompts Officer  Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert to agree to a boxing match  that will hopefully result in good PR and a five-million dollar bond for the LAPD.  His opponent is Officer Lee Blanchard; together they become known (appropriately)  as Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice.   A solid partnership builds between the two men, who also become close friends as Bleichert eventually finds himself teamed with Blanchard in Warrants.  Fast forward to January 15, 1947 when the partners get info about a guy they've been trying to find and arrest.  Arriving at the place he's supposed to be, the bust gets sidelined when Bleichert looks out a window and notices a lot of police activity down below at 39th and Norton.   When they go to check it out, Bucky sees a cop "knocking back a drink in full view of a half dozen officers," and "glimpsed horror in his eyes."   It is, as he hears, "the worst crime on a woman" any of the cops have seen.  They have found the body of a young woman who had been bisected at the waist, obviously tortured and horribly mutilated, with her mouth, "cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you," and Bucky tells himself that he would "carry that smile" to his grave.  

The body belongs to Elisabeth Short, who will in time be dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press.  Even though they're not working Homicide, Bleichert and Blanchard are pulled into the investigation, although it isn't too long before Bleichert wants out.  For various reasons peculiar to each of these men, the horrific death of Elisabeth Short becomes an obsession; eventually,  as Bleichert reveals in the prelude to this novel, The Dahlia "was to own the two of us completely."  Set against the backdrop of an emerging, post-WWII  Los Angeles, it is this obsession with her death and her life that Ellroy explores in this novel,  as well as the psychological and other repercussions that move from character to character.  

The Black Dahlia is book one of four in Ellroy's LA Quartet.  An excellent blend of fiction and reality, it  messed with my head, kept me awake and chilled me to the bone.  As dark and disturbing as it is, and while in my opinion it falters a bit in the reveal, it is also one of the best crime novels I've ever read, and I knew immediately that there was no way that I was not going to read the remaining three books.  More on those to come. 

After reading this one, find a place outside to let the sun shine down on you.  You'll need it.  

The Red Right Hand, by Joel Townsley Rogers.

"... it was a pretty good play, as criminal plays go."

Two of my favorite mystery/crime novels within the last year or so have come from Penzler Publishers American Mystery Classics series.  First on the list is Dorothy Hughes' excellent Dread Journey, and now there's this one, The Red Right Hand, by Joel Townsley Rogers.

9781613161654
Penzler Publishers, 2020
230 pp
paperback

Originally published in 1945, The Red Right Hand  begins with our narrator puzzling over a number of "baffling aspects" of the story that we are about to read, starting with how it was that he completely missed a car that had to have been

"so close that its door latches must have almost scraped me, and the pebbles shot out by its streaking tires have flicked against my ankles, and the killer's grinning face behind the wheel been within an arm's length of my own as he shot by?"

 Was there, asks Dr. Henry N. Riddle,

"something impossible about that rushing car, about its red-eyed sawed-off little driver and its dead passenger that caused me to miss it complete?" 

But the "most important" thing "in all the dark mystery of tonight,"  is the question that opens this book as he ponders

"how that ugly little auburn-haired red-eyed man, with his torn ear and his sharp dog-pointed teeth, with his twisted corkscrew legs and his truncated height, and all the other extraordinary details about him, could have got away and vanished so completely from the face of the countryside after killing Inis St. Erme."

Sitting at the desk of a certain Professor MacComerou, he goes back in his mind to  "set the facts down," so that he can "examine the problem," thereby launching this most strange but genuinely satisfying mystery story that kept me baffled right up until the end.  It all begins in New York when  Inis St. Erme borrows a friend's Cadillac so that he and Elinor Darrie can run up to Connecticut to be married.  Not wanting to wait the mandatory three days in New York, they make their way to Danbury, where they discover that they'd have to wait five days, so there's a change in plan: they'll be moving on to Vermont to tie the knot. First though, they make a stop at a local grocery and decide to have a picnic at a quaint little place called Dead Bridegroom's Pond  recommended by the grocer.   Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker who waits in the car while Inis and Elinor go on down to the lake. But their romantic picnic is interrupted when their passenger attacks St. Erme and goes after Elinor before driving away with the car, leaving her there frightened but unhurt.  Obviously, the same can't be said for St. Erme, as we know from Riddle at the very beginning that he's been killed.    Dr. Riddle, as stated on the back-cover blurb, "discovers a series of bizarre coincidences that leave him questioning both his sanity and his own innocence," but he is most seriously disturbed by how he could have missed the Cadillac as he was walking on the very road from which the car emerged at the very same time that he was there. But things are going to become even more weird before we catch up with the good doctor in real time, at which point the entire bizarre plot unfolds and all is revealed.

To say any more about the plot of The Red Right Hand would be absolutely criminal.

my growing Penzler Publishers American Mystery Classics shelf, appropriately shaded in a sort of noirish shadow. 

I love the originality displayed here in terms of plot and especially style.  This is not just another average mystery from the 40s, to be sure; it moves away from the norm from the get-go.  As author Joe Lansdale says in his introduction to this edition,

"The story moves back and forth in time, akin to the natural thought process, as if the whole thing were spilling out of the narrator's brain from moment to moment, and we were seeing all the in-betweens of thought."

 He also notes the "near stream-of-consciousness" style used by Rogers, and I don't think it would have had the same impact done any other way.  I've seen this book described a few times by readers as "surreal," and that's not an exaggeration -- at one point a dancer weighs in on how to solve the many riddles nested within this case:

"You need to wear a leopard skin, a chiffon nightgown, and a feather duster on your tail, and dance the beautiful dance of the corkscrew and the bottle."

Red herrings abound, so much so that I was completely baffled; there is quite a bit of repetition as well as a number of bizarre coincidences that run throughout this novel, two elements I normally detest and yet, somehow it all seems necessary here and more importantly, it works. As one of the policemen says toward the end of this book, "... it was a pretty good play, as criminal plays go."  I couldn't have said it better myself. 

Joe Lansdale's own reading experience with this novel sort of mirrors my own when he says that at times he

"... felt as if I were seeing the world through a dark and grease-smeared window pane that would frequently turn clear and light up in spewing colors like a firework display on the Fourth of July. At the same time there was that sensation of something dark and damp creeping up behind me, a cold chill on the back on my neck."

I felt that "cold chill" more than once during my time with this book.  It is genuinely one of the most bizarre mysteries I've ever read, with a solution that I never saw coming, one that is completely and utterly satisfying, an ahhhh read to be sure.    I can honestly think of nothing negative at all to say here.

very much recommended; it should delight readers of old mysteries and readers who are looking for something out of the box in their crime fiction.

pure writing excellence: Dread Journey, by Dorothy Hughes

9781613161463

Penzler Publishers/American Mystery Classics, 2019

187 pp 

paperback

Every once in a while (with mega-apologies for the cliché about to be used), I run into a novel that not only knocks my socks off storywise  but also leaves me confident that for the duration of my reading I am in the hands of a master of the craft.   Dread Journey is one of those, and I have to wholeheartedly agree with Anthony Boucher who said of this book (to quote one of the editorial reviews on Amazon)  that it is "Not to be missed under any circumstances."

 Dread Journey is certainly not your average mystery story.  I had an inkling that such was the case on reading the first words of the novel:

"I'm afraid." 

The woman who spoke those words hadn't meant to say them out loud, and it isn't too long before we find out a bit more of what's behind her reasoning:

"It wasn't a tremble of fear. It was a dark hood hanging over her head. She was meant to die. That was why she was on the Chief speeding eastward. This was her bier."

Movie actress Katherina (Kitten) Agnew realizes that it doesn't have to be this way, since she has another option open to her.  She could go to the director of the film she is scheduled to star in (also on the train) and "release him of all obligation," and "from the verdict of death."  Vivien Spender would then be free to star his "newest discovery," young Gratia Shawn, as Clavdia Chauchat in his planned movie production of Mann's The Magic Mountain, the role which he had had in mind for Kitten when he'd first discovered her.   The thing is though, that Kitten won't back down.  Knowing what had happened to those who had come before her, the "innumerable Clavdias," encompassing

"The one in a home for alcoholics. The one picked up soliciting. The one who jumped from a window while Viv was in Florida with the new. And the others, returned to the drabness from which they had once hopefully emerged, walled behind counters, playing walk-ons"

she had hired an attorney to draw up an "unbreakable contract for the role."  But Spender wants Gratia, and Kitten knows from past experience with the man that he usually gets what he wants.  Hence the "Dread Journey," and the suspense begins from Kitten's not-meant-to-be-spoken-out-loud comment and is maintained throughout the story to the point where the book becomes absolutely unputdownable.  

Had this been the sum total of the novel, it still would have been good, but Hughes puts her characters under serious scrutiny here.   As Sarah Weinman notes in her excellent introduction, the author's use of "omniscient viewpoints," allows the reader to examine

"the characters' inner sancta and excavates their fears, their desires, their jealousies, their dreams with the most exacting literary scalpel."

Along with the building suspense, it is Hughes' ability to get her readers directly inside of her characters' heads that elevates Dread Journey well beyond just another crime/mystery/suspense novel, pushing it well into the literary zone, as she has done with the other books of hers I've read. 

 1947 Pocket Books edition, from Goodreads

As just one of the many characters populating this novel, it is the porter James Cobbett who is the most interesting of them all.    He is a man who "had pride in himself," someone who "didn't consider a man equal to him unless he were equal in dignity and pride."  Given that he is African-American, it's to Hughes' credit that she didn't stoop to the racist stereotypes of her time or those which came before.   Cobbett is a sort of outsider, detached from the action of Kitten, Spender, and the other members of this drama; at the same time after  years of doing this job, he has an incredible understanding of human nature.  He sees himself as "responsible for this car and its tenants," and knew instinctively when "something was wrong."    In one absolutely perfect run of prose that lasts for nearly five pages in Chapter Six, it is through Corbett's observations that we see what's happening as he watches his group of passengers while suffering under an unshakeable "weight of depression," and it is not too far off the mark here to say that when "Something cold touched the root of his spine" as he sat watching,  something cold also touched the root of my own spine.  It is a most chilling five pages that I will  never forget.

I love Hughes' books,  and this one is no exception.   It is all about the writing and her ability to direct us immediately into the minds of her characters here, and on top of all that I've mentioned so far in this post, she has an underlying story about the abuses of power and a look at how things really worked in the Hollywood of her time, which is not at all pretty.  It is also a window on the times, with characters down on their luck and affected by the war.  There is so much happening in this little book that keeps it from being just another crime story, and  I'm delighted that Penzler Publishers has released this new edition of Dread Journey.  Despite the fact that Hughes' books are great, she is still widely unknown, so hopefully people will pick up a copy and discover her writing genius for themselves.    I'd recommend it to Hughes readers who perhaps haven't made their way to this novel or readers who, like me, prefer the more literary side to their reading across genres.

I LOVED this book -- it is pure writing excellence and pure reading pleasure.  I can't ask for more. 

*The Complete Judith Lee Adventures, by Richard Marsh (ed.) Minna Vuohelainen

9781943910229
Valancourt Books, 2016
546 pp

paperback

"Judith Lee is a young woman who calls herself a teacher of the deaf and dumb; in reality she is the most dangerous thing in England." -- 371

 In August, 1911 the popular magazine The Strand (Vol. 2, #248) first began to serialize the adventures of a young woman in a short story written by Richard Marsh (1857-1915) called  "Judith Lee. Pages from Her Life: I -- The Man Who Cut Off My Hair."  The book is really one of a kind in terms of the literary female detective to this point in time; it is also a stunning collection that is very much a valued addition to my own home library of early crime/mystery fiction. 

Judith Lee is a "teacher of the deaf and dumb," and uses what she calls "the oral system -- that is the lip-reading system" in her work.  Her father was, in fact, "one of the originators" of the system; her mother was deaf with a speech impediment "which made her practically dumb," but through lip reading quickly became able to understand what people were saying and to speak. As a result,  Judith has "lived in the atmosphere of lip-reading" all of her life.   Beginning with "The Man Who Cut Off My Hair," an adventure that she recounts as having taken place when she was a young girl, "this knack of mine," as she says, has led her into "the most singular situations ... the cause of many really extraordinary adventures." 

my photo from "The Man Who Cut Off My Hair," (17). Illustration by W.R.S. Stott

Over the course of these twenty-two adventures, Judith Lee will tackle (among many others)  jewel thieves, a bride with a penchant for disappearing, the Mafia, the theft of deadly curare, mysterious deaths in a lonely house;  while the stories are great, it's really Miss Lee that drew my interest throughout the book.  She is fiercely independent, has no plans or desire to marry ("Never, never, never!")  and travels the world as part of her work. She says of herself that she is a "woman, but no weakling," and takes lessons in jiu-jitsu as part of a duty to "keep my body in proper condition."   Her "gift," which includes being able to read lips in multiple languages, gives her the ability of "entering into people's confidence," but she expresses ambivalence about it at times.  For example, in "Eavesdropping at Interlachen," she says that

"There have been occasions on which, before I knew it, I have been made cognisant of conversations, of confidences, which were meant to be sacred, and, though such knowledge has been acquired through no fault of mine, I have felt ashamed, just as if I had been listening at a keyhole, and I have almost wished that the power which Nature gave me, and which years of practice have made perfect, was not mine at all." 

However, she goes on to acknowledge that "there have been times indeed when I was very glad indeed that I was able to play the part of eavesdropper."  Sometimes her eavesdropping becomes intentional as she notices people who just look wrong (for example in "Conscience"), and often she has "premonitory little shivers" which she feels are sent to her "as warnings," as in "Uncle Jack."  While some of the adventures in this book begin with Miss Lee trying to right a wrong, as in the case of a men wrongly sentenced to death, she also describes herself as "Nemesis," thwarting evildoers to the point of gaining a reputation among them, as noted in "The Finchley Puzzle:"

"Judith Lee is a young woman who calls herself a teacher of the deaf and dumb; in reality she is the most dangerous thing in England."

I didn't discuss these stories in any detail for a reason since this is a book that should be gone into with very little awareness of what they entail. The Complete Judith Lee Adventures is a joy to read, and in this edition we have the great fortune to have an excellent and most eye-opening introduction by Marsh scholar Minna Vuohelainen, who has written extensively on her subject, and who examines not only this book, but puts it into context along with Marsh's other work.  She also quotes Kestner's Sherlock's Sisters, which no aficionado of early female detective fiction should be without; he goes into the Judith Lee stories extensively as well.  It is truly one of my favorite crime/mystery reads this year, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

-------

note:
While I hate to draw attention away from Valancourt Books, there is another edition of Lee's complete adventures available from Black Coat Press, who is also in my top tier of small, independent publishers.

I dare you to come out of these unscathed: The Factory series, by Derek Raymond

"The black novel ... describes men and women whose circumstances have pushed too far, people whom existence has bent and deformed.  It deals with the question of turning a small, frightened battle with oneself into a much greater struggle -- the universal human struggle against the general contract, whose terms are unfillable, and where defeat is certain." 
            -- Derek Raymond, The Hidden Files, as quoted by James Sallis in the introduction to He Died With His Eyes Open (x).


note:  My editions, with the exception of Dead Man Upright are all from Serpent's Tail (bought eons ago), but Melville House has them all as part of their International Crime Series.

This is going to be a long post since it's going to be about five books. There are no spoilers at all, beyond what's already on the cover blurbs.  And since I don't really write reviews, I'll point you to people who know what they're doing and who are good at it:

Derek Raymond's Factory Novels, by Jeff VanderMeer
Doors Closing Slowly: Derek Raymond's Factory Novels, by Patrick Millikin
The Visionary Detective, by Joyce Carol Oates

Ah, to have the talents of these writers, but such is not my lot, so on with my own take on these dark, unflinchingly raw, heartbreaking and excellent novels.

These five books are collectively referred to as the Factory series, based on the fact that their main character works out of a police station on Poland Street nicknamed "The Factory."  This detective sergeant has no name (becoming "the nameless one" in my head),  and works in A14, Unexplained Deaths.  It is "by far the most unpopular and shunned branch of the service," and the nameless one explains in He Died With His Open he and his colleagues there work on

"obscure, unimportant, apparently irrelevant deaths of people who don't matter and who never did."

At Unexplained Deaths, "no murder is casual, no murder is unimportant," and our detective sergeant prefers to work on his own without interference from the higher ups.  He refuses promotion, and in The Devil's Home on Leave, the point is addressed from the detective's end as to why, after one of his superiors tells him that if he remains a sergeant, he'll "always get the shitty end of the stick."  His answer:  "Maybe ...,  but I think that's the end where the truth is."  He knows he is not "inspector material, or Branch material, but just Unexplained Deaths material," and he is completely okay with it.  (29; 123)  The people at A14 "didn't see death" like others did, and certainly not in any kind of "civilised prepared way:

"We saw it without the church, without the priest, without the funeral parlour; no hymns, just the dead body stiffening, sometimes in one, sometimes in more than one piece; we saw death suddenly, when we had a hangover, called out to the raw dank place where death was when we weren't in the mood, like a cabbie picking up a client obliterated by the dark on an empty road." (Dead Man Upright, 24). 

Reading through these books we also come to realize that Raymond has given us an ongoing commentary about contemporary British society and politics.  As Paul Oliver reveals over at the Mobylives blog, 

"Raymond was a writer of great complexity, who wrote with a nearly unmanning combination of fury and compassion as he chronicled the austerity of Margaret Thatcher's England." 

His work here in the Factory series, as whoever writes the back-cover blurbs for Melville House says, is  an "unrelenting investigation into the black soul of Thatcher's England," but really, it's not difficult to see in these novels that Thatcher's England has become pretty much soulless; it's not just the buildings that are in decay and left to rot, but also the souls of some of its inhabitants.

That "fury and compassion" is alive and well here, transferred into the form of Raymond's detective, whose  work at A14 often takes him into the "sad, narrow streets" in which live

 "the desperate last fugitives of a beaten, abandoned army, their dignity, rights and occupations gone (or never known), their hope gone, tomorrow gone."

He often encounters those "made invisible in their misery by the frozen night," for whom he could not get any justice "until they were dead" (How The Dead Live, 25-26); and as the series progresses, we learn why justice is so important to him and what it is that motivates him to solve these cases that are sent his way. 

In the first book of this series, He Died With His Eyes Open, the nameless one takes on the case of a man found dead in "a ghastly lonely area," laying there with his eyes open, severely battered; it looks like the work of two people.  The dead man has been identified as Charles Staniland, 51, and the sergeant's superior from Serious Crimes, Bowman, calls it a "derelict death," but when the detective begins his investigation, he realizes pretty early on that the "cheap suit" on the body belied someone "educated, reflective, intelligent."   After he listens to a number of cassettes and reads papers left behind by the dead man,  our nameless detective realizes that he had "started to think, dream, almost be Staniland by proxy."  In short, he has established a connection with this man who, while living, had suffered a tragedy leaving his life to take a turn for the worse, sending him as well as his  hopes and dreams into a downward spiral.  And now he wants justice:

"Though Staniland had died at the age of fifty-one, he still had the innocence of a child of six. The naive courage, too -- the desire to understand everything, whatever the cost...The fragile sweetness at the core of people -- if we allowed that to be kicked, smashed and splintered, then we had no society at all of the kind I had to uphold... I knew I had to nail the killers...Not just know them. Nail them."

 It is the detective's ability to establish this connection between his victims and himself that is at the heart of these five novels; it is also this particular quality which makes these books so emotionally taxing to the reader, since as the detective uncovers what it is that has brought these people to where they are now,  we simultaneously learn more about what it is about him that has brought this man to do what he does.   We also come to understand just how much the past continues to haunt the present, another idea that runs throughout this series.

The Devil's Home on Leave takes a bit of a different path, since at the beginning of his investigation of a most brutal, grisly crime, the killer's MO narrows down the identity of the suspect.  What's left in this case is for the detective to gather proof against the perpetrator, which is going to be challenging since this man has no conscience, no fear, and nothing to lose.   And while I didn't particularly care for the direction that this story ultimately took,  we learn much more about the detective's heartbreaking past and how it is that he has come to "understand murder" so well.

By the time I'd finished book three,  How the Dead Live, and book four, I Was Dora Suarez,  I was sort of wishing I hadn't read all four in a row.  I felt much like I did the time I binge watched the TV version of David Peace's Red Riding Quartet, after which I was like completely gutted. (Do NOT make that mistake; trust me on this one).    There is the deepest sort of pain to be found in both of these books; different, but pain all the same, and there's so much here that it takes its toll.   In How the Dead Live our detective is sent to look into the case of a missing woman, a doctor's wife whose absence had gone unreported.  His efforts are stymied as he  runs into a wall of silence from just about everyone in the small village of Thornhill, but when he finally learns the truth, it's his compassion that takes over in an extremely sad and tragic situation.  Meanwhile, his uncomprehending and unwanted superiors, sensing the headlines to be made over the case,  decide to bulldoze their way in, and the nameless one goes to great lengths to see the right sort of justice through, even at the potential cost to his career.

 While looking for reviews about these books, I came across an article in  The Australian mentioning that  crime novelist Ian Rankin once called Raymond's  I Was Dora Suarez "`English crime fiction's equivalent to Edvard Munch's The Scream."   I'd say that's about right.  He also notes in that article that Raymond's books are not only novels, "but also reports from a front line of casual cruelty in a world lacking empathy," again, spot on, and while that idea is apparent in each and every book in this series, it is especially true here.  Not only does the title character, Dora Suarez, live in a "world lacking empathy," she also inhabits a world where  the sickest, lowest, and meanest people lack any sort of conscience.

 Once  that book was over, not only had I had enough of  Derek Raymond for the moment, but I had to sit and regroup for two days before I could move on to the last book, the first night with sizeable portions of bourbon in hand.   James Sallis, in his intro to He Died With His Eyes Open, referred to I Was Dora Suarez as a book that sends electric shocks through your system (see below), which it did -- it is so powerful in fact, that I don't want to say too much about it.    It is not only tragic because of the horrid death of Dora Suarez and of  her older housemate but reading further into it, it's also a case that will drive the nameless detective further than ever in his quest for justice.   And how sad is it really, when a lonely, haunted man finds the woman of his dreams only after she's dead?   There's much much more indeed, but let's leave it there.  Of all of the books in this series, this one is best experienced cold, with not much known about it ahead of time.  What I will say is that in my opinion, in I Was Dora Suarez we find everything Raymond has written about in the previous novels fully realized in a way they hadn't been before to this point, and perhaps that's why I found it to be the most powerful of all of the Factory books.

And finally we come to the end, with Dead Man Upright, which is a bit of a departure from the rest of the series in some ways, but in others, not really.  For just one thing, there isn't a specific crime that brings the nameless one into the case, but rather a potential crime.  In a pub and drinking beer with a friend, our detective  hears from his old police buddy about the strange behavior of an older man, a certain Henry Cross,  in his building, whose dealings with different women have captured the interest of the detective's friend.  As he puts it, "there's something that smells dead off about it."  Once the nameless one assures his friend he'll look into it, he searches the older man's apartment, and finds some pretty chilling signs that his friend's intuition was right, and that the man most likely dangerous and needs to be off the streets.   But what he doesn't find is a body or any sort of evidence at all that points to a specific crime -- all he can do is warn the potential victim while he tries to catch what he believes to be a serial killer before it's too late.   But she's having none of it, since for her, he's her only chance at happiness in an otherwise dreary life.  And while I won't give away the rest, Dead Man Upright delves into one of the darkest places there can be -- directly into the mind of a psychopath. It is my least favorite of the five, but still very, very much worth the read.


As James Sallis says in his introduction to He Died With His Eyes Open,

"Five or six times in a life you come across a book that sends electric shocks skittering and scorching through the whole of you and radically alters the way in which you perceive the world." (vii)

 After finishing the entire Factory series  I can certainly attest to the "electric shocks skittering and scorching" that not only went through the whole of me, but also sort of imprinted themselves into my brain in their wake,  probably to leave a mark forever as to how I approach and engage with crime writing.   They are, as the back cover blurb from He Died With His Eyes Open notes (again quoting Sallis), "literature written from the edge of human experience," and they indeed seem to exceed the "limits of the crime novel and of literature itself."   The fact that the main character is a detective working for the police in London might make anyone believe that Raymond's novels are yet just another series of police procedurals, but that is absolutely not the case and reading them as such is just plain folly.    These books  are among the darkest of the dark in the realm of crime fiction,  and are not for everyone, and for those who do read them, beware the toll they take on your wellbeing for the duration.

I loved these books and there will never be anything like them again, I'm sure.

*...and diving into the 1880s: Devlin the Barber, by Benjamin Leopold Farjeon

9781540370426
createspace, 2016
originally published 1888, Ward and Downey
202 pp

paperback


"...the ends of justice are sometimes reached by roads we cannot see." 

and now, for something completely different...

I first heard of this book while looking at the website of the Lilly Library at Indiana called The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction. 1841-1941, and bought it back in January of this year while I was plotting out what I might be reading over the next twelve months. I had no idea what I was getting into at the time, and I must say that it took me completely by surprise. Eye-opening surprise. 

Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (1838-1903) was a prolific British author who wrote his first novel, The Life and Adventures of Christopher Cogleton (1862-1863) after leaving the gold fields of Australia and New Zealand and taking on a job as journalist for The Otago Daily Times.  [In the spirit of purely historical interest, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that particular novel was the first book ever "printed, published, and bound in New Zealand."]  Father of famed children's writer Eleanor Farjeon and mystery novelist Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, Benjamin  also dabbled in "sensation mystery novels," for example his Great Porter Square of 1885 and his The Mystery of M. Felix of 1890, with Devlin the Barber falling between those two in 1888.   It was in 1888 that the series of Jack the Ripper murders began, and from what I can see, the timing of Devlin the Barber was no coincidence.

And yet, the focus here is not so much on the actual crime itself, but rather on the titular character Devlin, who rents a room at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lemon.  The fact that Devlin is a lodger might bring to mind the spectacular novel The Lodger written in 1913 by Marie Belloc Lowndes,  but trust me, outside of the Ripper connection,  the two books are as different as can be.  It all begins when a Mr. Melladew discovers in the newspaper that his daughter Lizzie had been the victim of a "Horrible Murder in Victoria Park!," which comes as a shock because he'd seen her just the night before when kissing her goodnight.  Adding to his misery, he also discovers that her twin sister Mary has vanished with no clue as to her whereabouts.  Portland, the girls' uncle, newly-arrived from Australia, puts forth a proposition to our narrator, offering him a thousand pounds to discover who killed Lizzie and another thousand if he brings Mary home safe.  Having just recently been laid off, the money is sorely needed, but where to begin?   As fate would have it, a letter arrives from a much-loved former servant from his parents' home, a Mrs. Lemon, entreating him to come to her house.  Answering her summons, he discovers that she wants to talk about her lodger, Mr. Devlin, and oh what a bizarre, strange tale it turns out to be!   If  you will  forgive the cliché,  the story revealed by Mrs. Lemon held me completely spellbound to the point where upon returning to the hunt for Lizzie's murderer I almost didn't care about that part of the story any more.

Devlin the Barber is a real treasure, not so much in terms of the crime aspect, but because it is so vastly different from all of the old crime/mystery/detective novels from the 19th century I've read to this point.  Really, outside of the murder mystery, the draw is Devlin himself, especially as seen through the eyes of his landlady.  Farjeon must have had a right jolly old time writing this novel, and I had a right jolly old time reading it.  I'm not going to discuss particulars here, but I'll just say that it would probably be much more fitting to post about this novel in the dark fiction section of my reading journal.  It's also a much easier book to get through than the others read so far with far less melodrama, narrative that flows much more smoothly -- in short, it's much more reader friendly.

It is a book so far out of the ordinary that it begs to be read.  I absolutely loved it.

another seriously good novel, this time from Russia: The Investigator, by Margarita Khemlin

9781784379650

Glagoslav Publications, 2015

originally published 2012

translated by Melanie Moore

336 pp

paperback

"Irredeemable guilt, you either forgive or forget without forgiveness. But living with it is impossible." 

This book is yet another example of why I'm a huge advocate for smaller presses, who tend to put out some of the best and sadly unknown work, making for some of the most intelligent writing and through them I've been introduced to authors whose writing I would read again and again.  Let's take this book, for example, The Investigator, by Margarita Khemlin.  I had never heard of either Khemlin or this particular title before Ksenia at Glagoslav got in touch (and I thank you very, very much for the books you sent) re Slavic books in translation.  I actually turned her down at first because of my majorly-sagging tbr shelves through November,  but she assured me that there are no time pressures so I agreed. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the back cover and discovered that it was shortlisted for the 2013 Russian Booker Prize.  I knew I had something special here and as it turns out, I was absolutely correct.  

What lies at the very heart of the story in The Investigator is something I never expected, remaining a mystery throughout the entire novel and I aim to keep it that way here, because any hint will wreck what lies beneath.   Set in the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950s, in the town of Chernigov, the story is narrated by police captain Mikhail (Misha) Ivanovich Tsupkoy, who was previously a military intelligence officer  until he was demobbed and became an police investigator.  The novel is, as he notes, his reminiscence of "a single incident from my long and extensive career," the death of one Lilia Vorobeichik in 1952.   A suspect in her murder comes to light very quickly, an actor named Roman Nikolayevich Moiseenko, who eventually confesses to the crime, and then saves himself a court trial by hanging himself in his cell.  Case closed? Well, we're only at page eight, so obviously not. As it happens, two events spark Mikhail to continue digging -- his best friend's suicide, and the interference of a certain neighbor of the dead woman who somehow manages to come up with the heretofore undiscovered murder weapon.  This woman, dressmaker Polina Lvovna (Laevskaya), turns out to be the proverbial thorn in Misha's side, sowing doubt on his integrity as an investigator to whoever might listen to her, which turns out to be troublesome for our investigator. Secrets acting as smokescreens abound in this book, making Misha's job all the more difficult as he tries to unravel them to get to truth. But as the reader moves closer and closer to the why of things, it seems that everyone involved here has something to hide and that they have their own reasons for holding their secrets and their stories close. 

Now, when a novel starts out with a murder, it's easy to understand why it might be labeled as crime fiction, but The Investigator turns out to move well beyond the standard crime tropes to become a serious piece of historical fiction taking the reader beyond the novel's present into its past and back again.   It can come across as murky or even a bit silly at times, as Tsupkoy travels hither and thither between Ukrainian towns interacting with a complex set of characters over and over again; however, among other things, what seems to come out of this (for me, anyway), is that the people who live here are very much connected to their past histories, to each other, and most especially to the very troubled history of this area, and that it is impossible to separate any one of these elements from the other.  I won't say why, but this point becomes very, very clear by the end of the book.  There is a LOT of ambiguity here to be examined, and the stories that are eventually revealed are beyond satisfying as far as my own interest as to what drives people to do the things they do.  I'll also say that there are some very big surprises to be had that I wasn't at all expecting.  Sorry to be so vague, but I don't want to give away a single thing. 

Looking at it solely from the perspective of a crime fiction reader, the story of the investigation itself  is a good one and as noted earlier, the surprising solution is kept at bay until close to the ending, as is the secret that underpins everything.   At the same time, also noted earlier, this book goes well beyond the realm of a simple crime novel, and becomes a lovely yet disturbing piece of historical writing done very, very well. If The Investigator is an example of what Glagoslav has to offer, they will be seeing their books talked about here a lot.  Highly, highly recommended for serious readers who are always looking for something new and different.  Frankly,  I've read some seriously excellent books this year, and this one just got added to that list.  

Thanks again, Ksenia. I loved it.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!!! His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae, by Graeme Macrae Burnet

9781910192146

Contraband, 2015

280 pp

paperback

There is no doubt that when I go back to look over what I've read this year (hence this reading journal),  this book will probably be at the top of my favorite books of all categories for 2016.   I loved this book. Hear me? I said LOVED. I don't often express my LOVE for a book in all caps, but this one just blew me away.  His Bloody Project was nominated for this year's Man Booker Prize, and made it through to the shortlist, so evidently the judges thought it was great too.  It was so good, in fact,  that although I'd decided to read the entire longlist this year, after finishing this one I knew I'd found my winner.  How the official  judging plays out may be a completely different story, but this would be my hands-down choice for sure, so no point in reading further down the list for me. 

The time is 1869, and a young (17) Roddy Macrae of the small remote village of Culduie, Scotland has just killed three members of one family.   His family and the other villagers are crofters, ekeing out a harsh, miserable existence, and are always at the mercy of their benefactor "the factor," and his representative in the village, the Constable. Roddy confesses right away, and there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he is guilty.  But the major question in this novel is "why?" and the story surrounding the murders  is revealed slowly via different sources in this book: Roddy's memoir, written "at the behest of  [his] advocate," witness statements, police statements, psychological assessments, and other voices that join in to tell the story.  However, there's a big catch: from page one on, it becomes very clear that truth and perception are in the eyes of the beholders, and that both may just be slippery and elusive.  

I'm really not going to say more than that little bit about the plot, because really, it's a book that should absolutely be experienced on one's own.  It's a stunningly superb novel, and aside from offering readers the challenge of  trying to piece together what may have actually happened and why,   the author has done an excellent job here in bringing us into life  in the small, rather claustrophic village of Culduie, mid 19-th century.   I'll just note that aside from the mystery of the why, the social, political, religious and class explorations in this novel elevate it to something well beyond anything else I've read this year.  

Reading this novel at a slower pace pays dividends, and it is definitely a book to be savored.  I cannot recommend it highly enough, and I will say that anyone thinking about it would be wise to avoid any reviews or reader posts that give away much more than what's on the back-cover blurb or what I've said here.   I'll also say that it is a story that demands active reader participation --  it's a thinking person's novel that really demands close attention, but also one that highly satisfies in the end.  Sheesh! It seriously just does not get better than this!!!!

  

perfect noir greatness: Black Wings Has My Angel, by Elliott Chaze

(read in June)



9781590179161
NYRB Classics, 2016
originally published 1953
209 pp

paperback

"...real life is not a series of nice interlocking ripples graded for size and fitting into a pattern that can be called off like your ABCs. It's a bunch of foolish tiny things that don't add one way or the other, except that they happened and passed the time." -- 62

As I am fond of saying, plot isn't always everything in a good crime novel, and Elliot Chaze's Black Wings Has My Angel is a great case in point.  It's also now the best crime novel I've read so far this year, and I do not say those words lightly.

After a sixteen-week gig working as a roughneck on a drilling rig in Louisiana, Tim Sunblade has his first bath in four months in his flea-bitten hotel in Krotz Springs.  A knock on the door later he meets prostitute Virginia; three days later they're on the road together, Virginia having warned him that "when the money's gone ... I'm gone too."  When Tim tells her in return that when that day comes, he'll probably be sick of her, she replies in what turns out to be prophetic words: "It'll be better if you're sick of me."   The two begin to make their way west where Tim has big plans that initially don't include Virginia, but as they make their way first to Colorado and later, to the Big Easy, their relationship takes on a strange, twisted life of its own, ultimately sealing both of their fates. That's the nutshell version which doesn't say much but in terms of what happens here, the story is best experienced on one's own.   Chaze has offered up a deadly match up in Tim and Virginia, both of whom have self-destructive tendencies, both of whom are flawed people with dark pasts.  Tim and Virginia are two of a kind: they have a healthy love of cash; both have a "horror of being broke," and each has the measure of each other.

 But as I said, it's not so much the plot here but the ongoing, deepening interplay between these two characters that makes this story, as well as  Chaze's excellent writing.  I already knew I was in love not too far into the novel, when Virginia gets the better of Tim at a cafe in the New Mexico desert, and Tim goes back to track her down. He's fuming, holding a Magnum .357 that he sticks into his waistband as he's coming into town, where he passes by some little shops with signs that read "COME IN AND SEE THE GIANT MAN-KILLING LIZARD," "SEE THE MAN-DESTROYING RATTLESNAKE," and "REAL LIVE COBRA -- COBRAS KILL A MAN EVERY HOUR IN INDIA."  If we haven't yet figured out that Virginia is a femme fatale, a predator, and a man eater, well, we definitely get the point now, in big, bold letters.   But more than anything else, the beauty of this book is in the way Chaze uses Virginia's sexuality to bedazzle Tim into making some pretty bad choices here, while at the same time revealing Tim's major weaknesses and his sheer desperation that allow readers to actually sympathize with him.

Black Wings Has My Angel is one of those books that kicks you directly in the gut and doesn't let up. Reading it, I knew that happy endings probably weren't in the cards for either Tim or Virginia; I knew something terrible was coming down the pike, and I once again had that feeling of watching an unavoidable, inevitable train wreck, unable to look away.  It's not pretty -- it's very dark, filled with an overarching sense of doom and gloom, and god help me, I absolutely loved it.  I'd say that someone needs to make a movie out of this book, but they'd probably mess it up, so no.  This is noir reading perfection and it seriously just does not get better than this.

a little belladonna with your bovril broth? The Deadly Dowager, by Edwin Greenwood

9781943910380
Valancourt Books, 2016
(originally published 1934)
233 pp

paperback

"There's only one thing that matters, ... and that is the Family."

So sayeth the grande dame Arabella, Lady Engleton of the de Birketts, a family whose "fortune -- or misfortune" came into being with a reward from none other than Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII.  Flash forward a few centuries, and meet the entire de Birkett clan, and do it quickly before something terrible happens to them.

Arabella, now 83,  has for the last 65 years of her life devoted her energies to restoring the de Birkett's fallen fortunes, with very little in the way of results.  She's pinned her hopes on her young grandson Henry, age 20, whose mother died when he was three, and who's been in Arabella's care ever since.  Her goal is to

"somehow set the Family on its feet again, enable Henry to wear his coronet in the House of Lords and look his peers in the eye without the stigma of poverty hanging round his head like some disreputable halo."

So, as the novel opens, Arabella seems to have hit on a marvelous scheme for ensuring that Henry will be well provided for and that the de Birketts will continue to maintain their place among their noble peers.  She has called a "Family conclave," bringing anyone connected by blood or marriage (however tenuous that connection may be in some cases) together at their home in Mount Street, London.  Her idea: to insure all of their lives up to twenty thousand pounds. That way, when the policies mature, young Lord Henry should find himself with well over forty thousand pounds to "sustain his position in the world and his dignity in the House of Lords."  God help anyone who doesn't agree, like poor old Uncle Alfred, who is "leaving his little bit to charities," because death has a funny way of making an appearance -- along with a new will leaving it all to Henry.    And the body count begins to rise, slowly but surely. I mean, seriously -- they all should have figured out that this was just a very bad idea.

One would think that the "deadly dowager" would be happy at this juncture, but no, that's not quite all that is up her sleeve.  While young Henry's fortune is being planned (and, if you'll pardon me,  executed), Arabella has other plans for her young grandson that involve marrying into a wealthy family to better secure the de Birkett position and lineage. The problem is that Henry's already in love with Dora, and well, to the Lady Engleton, his choice is simply not acceptable.

So now people may be thinking "oh great. You've just wrecked the whole plot, the whole storyline, the whole book, in fact," but the truth is that I  haven't given away any more than the back-jacket blurb reveals. The fun is actually in waiting to see what our dear, deadly Arabella is going to do next, as well as the truly ingenious characters in her orbit.   As Mark Valentine has written in his introduction to this novel,

 "Greenwood took care to provide an (as it were) full-bodied supporting cast" 

aside from "the book's eponymous assassin," and the resulting ensemble makes for great fun, as does the lovely satire on class in 1930s England.  There is also budding romance here which normally I don't care for, but here it works and is another reason for all of the out-loud chuckles coming from me that kept coming the entire time I was reading this book.  There is a great one liner from the New York Times contemporary review of this novel that pretty well sums it all up:

"Quite the jolliest crime story that has come our way in many moons."

I know murder isn't supposed to be funny, but well, sometimes it's just refreshing that way.

While the 1930s may not be everyone's favorite period for crime reading, The Deadly Dowager was just plain absolutely delightful -- farcical, yes, in its own way, but I defy anyone to read this and not laugh at some point during this novel. Crime light, indeed -- a perfect summer read to toss in the beach bag, lay back and totally enjoy.  I just loved it.

another dynamic duo during dedicated down days, this time from Valancourt Books: Wax, by Ethel Lina White and Gilded Needles, by Michael McDowell

 Valancourt Books publishes old crime fiction, supernatural fiction, horror fiction and long-ago forgotten novels, and they've kept me entertained ever since I discovered they existed. My shelves are teeming with their books, precisely because I crave the obscure and because I haven't yet met a Valancourt  novel I didn't like.  Two more books now join the vacation reads:  Wax, by Ethel Lina White and Gilded Needles, by Michael McDowell.  They are two totally different animals -- Wax is pure vintage British mystery while Gilded Needles is more of a dark, historical crime novel of revenge set in New York in 1882.  Gilded Needles gave me a case of the willies and as I noted somewhere, caused me to pretty much stop breathing during the last 1/4 of the book.  Wax, on the other hand,  is more along the lines of a whodunit set in a most incredibly creepy atmosphere that doesn't let up throughout the entire novel.  Both, though, gave me the most intense satisfaction, which is all I can hope for when I'm enjoying vacation time.  I only brought a limited number of books with me, so I got very lucky with these two.  

First up is Wax, by Ethel Lina White, probably best known for her novel The Lady Vanishes. 

9781941147597
Valancourt Books, 2015
187 pp
paperback

Sadly, this particular version is not available in the US, but I bought mine at Book Depository and it was here in no time. Luckily,  Kindle readers  can get a copy for about six dollars.   It is an old novel originally published in 1935, and as soon as I opened it to the first page, I found myself already soaking in atmosphere.  At two a.m., Mr. Ames, who along with his wife serves as a caretaker for the old waxworks museum just outside of the small town of Riverpool, wakes up and remembers that he may have left a candle burning in "the Horrors."  When his wife goes to investigate, she gets a creepy vibe from the wax figures, "a company of -- poisoners" whom she felt "resented her presence," since "At this hour, the gallery belonged to Them." Her fear drives her home in a hurry, where she tells Mr. Ames that

"...those figures were up to some business of their own. And I felt in my bones that it was no good business either." 

Seriously -- what a cool opening!   The Waxwork Gallery was built in 1833, and had been "almost unlucky almost from its beginning." Evidently, the builder had hanged himself in the Hall of Horrors, then in the next decade a dead "tramp" was discovered there.  In the 1890s, a prostitute was murdered there in the alcove, "wherein was staged -- appropriately -- the final tableau in the career of Vice."  Moving the show into the 20th century, the body of a "commercial traveler" was discovered, this time with Virtue as a companion.  Opening the door of the Waxwork Gallery reveals a dimly-lit space with panelled walls draped with black velvet, coated in dust. Some of the figures have seen better days; for example, Mary of Scotland is wearing moth-eaten black velvet and is described by Mrs. Ames as being "germy" and in need of replacement.

When young Sonia Thompson comes to town to take a job at the local newspaper, the Gallery is the first place she visits, and thinks she sees two people come to life. Mrs. Ames tells her that she herself saw no one, so Sonia puts it down to an illusion.  However, she's not at all comfortable -- as we are told,

"She saw the Waxworks, not as harmless dummies, but as malign agents in a corrupt traffic..."

and feels as if the walls themselves were rocking in the "rushes of darkness."  She was, in short, "filled with horror of the Gallery."  As Sonia begins to acquaint herself with the people of Riverpool, she is warned away from the wax museum more than once -- sage advice, as it turns out, since a body is discovered there.  But it's not just the Waxworks that give Sonia the willies, since she soon finds herself wading knee deep into closely-held secrets that no one, absolutely no one, wants revealed and people who will go to great lengths to keep these hidden.   Sonia can't help herself though -- after all, she is a reporter and she wants to discover exactly what is going on in this small town.  She decides that there is only one way to get to the truth, and that is to spend a night on her own inside the Gallery.

Yowie zowie -- what a fun book!  What sets this book apart from a number of other works of the time is the The Gallery, which as I noted earlier, is the focal point of this book, and is in its own way, connected to pretty much everything that goes on in the town. It is not as taut as I generally like my mystery novels to be, and it took a while to get to used to the author's sort of rambling style. On the flip side, what I discovered is that although it seems like there is a wee bit o' the babble going on here, there are important clues to be uncovered throughout the story, so there were places that I went back to in order to pick up what I'd missed.  I have to say that I was hooked immediately, and that the novel turned out to be a fun read with a quite an ending.   Vintage crime readers will definitely enjoy this one, as will readers looking for something just a bit off the beaten path.  I will be revisiting Ethel Lina White later this year, as I plan to read her Some Must Watch (aka The Spiral Staircase) as well as her The Man Who Was Not There, both of which became films in the 1940s.

And now, moving right along to part two of this post, Gilded Needles is one of the darkest, creepiest tales of revenge that I've ever had the pleasure to have read.

9781941147917
Valancourt, 2015
paperback, 284 pp

The setting of Gilded Needles is New York, 1882.  The first thing that struck me on opening the book was the most excellent panoramic view of the city as the old year changes into the new.  The author provides us here with a glimpse across the spectrum  into what's happening at that moment, giving us a peek at the lives of  "... the poor whose poverty was such that they would die of it," the "criminals whose criminality was no final guarantee against the poverty they tried to escape," the "mildly prosperous and moderately respectable," and finally, for the "very rich who needn't trouble themselves with respectability." But most importantly for the purposes of this book, there is the "Black Triangle," a "little space that lies west of MacDougal, between say Canal and Bleecker Streets."  It is a place where "horror festers," located "within half an hour's walk of the most fashionable houses of the city."  It is in this small slice of the city that "Black" Lena Shanks and her family run their criminal enterprises; everything from illegal abortions, receiving stolen goods, selling dead bodies, you name it.  However, the denizens of the Black Triangle aren't limited to the poor or the criminal -- it is also a favorite locale for the more "respectable" citizens on its outskirts for gambling, picking up prostitutes, and whatever other pleasures they desire that are definitely not found say, in Gramercy Park.

It is just one of these "respectable" people who sets this story in motion.  Young Benjamin Stallworth is having his fun slumming in the Black Triangle, when he notices Lena.  She recognizes his eyes, remembering the time when a certain Judge Stallworth sentenced her husband to death and had her children taken away while she also went to prison.  In the meantime,  the Judge and his son-in-law, Duncan Phair, have decided to build their political and social clout by trying to take down the criminals and exposing the "evils" of the Black Triangle, publicizing their efforts in the newspaper.  But while the plan seems to be working, one particular event sends Lena and her family over the edge, and now she's looking for revenge.  And it definitely isn't going to be pretty.  The novel goes back and forth between the Shanks family and the Stallworths, who really don't help themselves with their own arrogance and their lack of understanding of human nature.

Gilded Needles is written in a way that reminds me so very much of the 19th-century "city mysteries" novels I've read,  exposing the city's dark, seamy underbelly and scratching off the veneer of respectability.  McDowell has captured the style of this sort of old novel while making it his own; he is one of the best dark fiction writers whose work I've had the pleasure to have read.  Gilded Needles  is one of the most horrific non-horror stories I've read in a while -- bleak, very Dickensian and well, let's just say that it's definitely not for the faint of heart.  At the same time, it is absolutely one of those books that once picked up will not easily be put down, and to be honest, I was still shaking after I'd  finally turned the last page.   I highly, highly recommend this one -- a definite no miss for readers of dark fiction and historical crime fiction.