Friday Favorites - Georgette Heyer's Mysteries

Georgette Heyer doesn't quite rise to the level of "favorite" mystery author, but after reading three of her mysteries, I can say that she's definitely on my reliable list.

Heyer is famous for her Regency romances, of course, but the mysteries were contemporary to the time they were written (mostly 1930s and early 40's, but there were a couple that cropped up a decade later in the 50s.) They're all "manor house" mysteries -- puzzlers taking place among England's idle, or semi-idle class. Very much the kind of scenario you imagine playing Clue -- was it Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Candlestick?

The biggest problem I have with her writing is that she introduces us to a huge crowd of characters with similar names right off the bat. She does a good job of differentiating their _characters_ (which are usually a bit caricatured and flat, but still entertaining) but a few pages later you can't remember whether Figton Newby is the lawyer who is in love with Heather Mushingham, or if that's Stanton Biggby who's in love with Saffron Billingham. (And does "Miss Mushingham" refer to Heather, or is that her aunt?)

This sorts itself out after a couple of chapters, but I now don't start a Heyer mystery without a notepad.

Behold, Here's Poison is my favorite so far. It didn't start out that way: the characters are not very likeable, or at least they seem like they aren't. Most of them were under the domineering thumb of the victim, and they're kind of whiney and defensive, and prone to squabble. It perks up as soon as the chief antagonist shows up -- a cousin who is now "head of the family" and who is described as an amiable snake. Think Oscar Wilde as a master villain. He benefits most from the crime, he has a perfect alibi, and everybody, including the police would like to nail him.

But he also has this oddly beneficent effect on the story in that he, temporarily at least, often unites the bickering parties. The story itself plays on a hidden theme of amiability, and social poison, and all that.

The puzzle is fun, though the ultimate solution isn't memorable, the revealing of the situation surrounding it, and the little solutions along the way, make it worth it. The police characters are not so memorable, but they grow on you, and the story perks up particularly well when in Inspector Hannasyde's point of view.

Because the cluing is kind of interesting, I might do a little discussion of the big and small secrets in the story on the Spoilers blog. (I'll post a link here if I do.)

See you in the funny papers.

Friday Favorites: Black Orchids by Rex Stout

Rex Stout wrote a lot of novellas featuring Nero Wolfe. They were usually collected, three to a book, and titled things like "Homicide Trinity" and "Trio for Blunt Instruments." They were the exact right length for a light puzzle mystery with a lot of great character interaction.

Novellas were popular in the old days. Every pulp magazine had one if not several. (Sometimes serialized, sometimes billed as "A Whole Novel In This Issue!") They didn't survive into the paperback era well, though. I only noticed two ways by the time I was around in the sixties: one was the "Dell Doubles" where two short novels would be bound, back to back, and the other were these Nero Wolfe stories.

I believe Black Orchids was the first of the Nero Wolfe novella collections -- billed as a "Nero Wolfe Double!" because it only includes two stories. It was the very first Nero Wolfe story I'd ever read, long long ago, and it had all the elements which made me fall in love with the series.

It is, in many ways, like a TV series. It's all about the characters, and their foibles, and struggles. In particular the conflict between the narrator Archie Goodwin, who is the real hero of the stories -- a smartass tough guy who is Wolfe's secretary, body guard and errand boy -- who is something of an irresistible force, and Nero Wolfe himself, whom Archie describes on the first page thusly:

"Wolfe himself could have got a job in a physics laboratory as an Immovable Object if the detective business ever played out."

Wolfe is brilliant, but agoraphobic and possibly a little obsessive-complusive. He hates to have his routines disrupted, and has set up his life so that they never will be. He owns an entire brownstone in New York City, and has a brilliant chef working in his kitchen, and a green house on the roof where he raises orchids. Wolfe is also a masterful bully who gets his way every time, and sometimes it's a wonder to watch him manage it when the whole world is trying to foil him.

Archie is the one person who can disrupt Wolfe's routine, and that's actually his primary duty -- to cajole, sass and manipulate Wolfe into taking on cases and making an income to support his lifestyle. Of course, even when Wolfe takes on a case, he won't leave the house except under extreme duress, so that's the other part of Archie's job -- to run around collecting information, and as often as not, cajoling, sassing and manipulating people into coming to see Wolfe. Sometimes Archie has to manipulate both the witness AND Wolfe into meeting.

I think the ending of the first novella in the book, Black Orchids, is the weakest part, but it's not bad. The truth is that the solution and unmasking doesn't really matter. The driving question of the story is how Wolfe will get his way, and how Archie will get his job done, in spite of opposition by the police and others, and the piling on of complicating problems they have to juggle.

The second story in the book, Cordially Invited To Death (I think originally called Invitation to Murder) is a little more pure puzzle/whodunnit, but still a good read. (I can't tell you if the ending is good or not, because, unlike the ending of the first one, I actually remembered the key clue, so I was expecting it.)

I am right now writing another Mick and Casey story, and one of the things that struck me as I read Black Orchids, is how much influence Archie's narrative voice had on me. Even though Mick and Archie are quite different characters, I think it was Archie who gave me the feel for the "reporting voice" of a pro, who also had a dry sense of humor about the world around him.

That is what appeals to me about Archie's voice; while it is often sarcastic and witty, underneath it is always meticulous, detailed reporting. That's his job. He can report conversations verbatim, without notes. He is observant enough to give Wolfe a clear picture of what happened elsewhere -- even though Archie may not have full grasp of the significance. Wolfe can always count on Archie to report everything there is to report, so Wolfe can figure out the crime.

A friend of mine once came across a meme: if you could have the life of any character in literature, who would you choose? I tend to ignore those kinds of memes because I don't really want to be anyone else... but that one I knew right away: Nero Wolfe. Never have to leave the house, have great food, time to commit to favorite hobbies, and best of all, I'd be living with Archie Goodwin! What's not to want?

See you in the funny papers.

Friday Favorites - Bullet For A Star

Sometimes I think that if Stuart M. Kaminsky had been super human, I might never have become a writer.

See, Mr. Kaminsky wrote stories that I really wanted to read. And my motivation for writing was because I couldn't find enough stories that I really wanted to read. So if he had only been able to write even faster than he did (and he was prolific) maybe I wouldn't have needed to be a writer.

But he didn't write any faster than he did, and he didn't write the stories that were in my head, so in the end, he had the opposite affect: he didn't turn me into a writer, but he sure as heck accellerated the process.

He made me want more.

Kaminsky was a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, won an Edgar and was nominated for nearly every other mystery award. He had a madcap absurdity, and a gentle pathos to everything he wrote, whether it was comedy or drama. Even his police procedurals, set in the harsh world of Chicago, and the harsher world of Soviet Moscow, had a redemptive sweetness to them.

Much as I liked his police procedurals, and other series, my first love is and always has been Toby Peters -- a down and out private investigator in Hollywood in the 1940's. Toby was his first fiction series, and his longest, at 24 books. I have all of them and I tried to limit myself to re-reading only three in a year as I waited for the next one to come out.

And they've been out of print and hard to find, and that has sorrowed me deeply....

Until this month, when I discovered that Mysterious Press/Open Road is releasing the first sixteen or so books in ebook format. And even though I already own them all in paper, and even though the price is a little on the high side at $9.99, I'll be re-buying them all over time.

And I'll be reviewing them as I read them. Because I want you to know how cool these books are.

Bullet For A Star

The Toby Peters saga begins in 1940. Errol Flynn is being blackmailed, and the studio needs somebody to handle the pay off quietly and cleanly. They call on Toby, an aging PI with a bad back and a smashed nose, to handle the transaction. Toby, who was fired from his job as a Warner security guard at the studio several years earlier, is out of cash and happy to get the job. However, the job doesn't go so well, but that's par for the course for Toby. Getting beat up, shot, framed for murder, beat up again, framed for another murder... that's pretty much Toby's daily life.

This first book in the series is a little different from the rest as it is a little more hard-boiled, thought it is still a pastiche. It involves one moderately explicit sex scene, and not as much silliness as the other books. Even so, it is a good set up for the series, because it really does lay the foundation for everything that makes you love Toby.

When we first meet him, Toby Peters seems like a complete loner. He's on his own, on the edge, with nothing more to his name than what's in his pockets, and nobody to fall back on when he (frequently) falls. He's a tough guy, but not a mean one. As a matter of fact, there is a gentleness to Toby that makes him a lot less of a loner than he seems. The fact is, over the course of the book, you find out he has an unexpectedly strong network of family and friends, many of whom want nothing to do with him -- an angry, alienated bully of a big brother, and Toby's ex-wife in particular -- and yet there is a thread of affection which keeps them all in orbit.

This sets up the fact that Toby is a patient guy, who has a lot of affection for his fellow human beings, even those who are greater misfits than himself. And as the series wears on, that affection is like a magnet drawing people into his life.

Aside from the pleasure of the characters, though, this series is also a beautifully researched historical novel too. Kaminsky, before he took to fiction, was a film historian. He wrote one of the great books of academic theory about film and popular culture, American Film Genres. The books all take place at a very specific time and day in history, and Kaminsky gives us great details, down to what was on the radio, and what was in the papers (via Toby's dry ironic hard-boiled narration).

Toby also crosses paths with lots of real characters from Hollywood history, some not so well known, so it can be hard to pick out all the real ones from those he makes up. In this one Peter Lorre gives him advice on the case, and Frank Capra reacts unexpectedly to Toby crashing through the set of Meet John Doe. Bogie helps him track down a suspect on a location shoot for High Sierra, and several scenes take place on the set for the Maltese Falcon -- which ws being built for filming at the time.

The most fun thing about this specificity, though, is that the stories in the series are continuous: at the end of this story, Toby gets a call from Judy Garland, who showed up for a publicity shoot on the dismantled set for the Wizard of Oz, only to find a dead ex-Munchkin. And at the end of Murder On The Yellow Brick Road, Toby gets a call from the Marx Brothers....

If you like humor and adventure, combined with a little dramatic weight and sentiment, you'll love Toby. I really can't recommend these books highly enough. You can get Bullet For A Star at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple's iBookstore and other vendors.

Next Friday I'll talk about Black Orchids -- the first Nero Wolfe I read.

See you in the funny papers.