The Magician’s Wife – James M. Cain

James M. Cain’s three seminal works of crime: The PostmanAlways Rings Twice (1934), Mildred Pierce (1941), and Double Indemnity (1943) seem to over shadow the majority of his bibliography. One can argue after producing these works that all his other works are superfluous, and that the genre requires no other work. However, like any great crafts-man who continues to shape his or her art their output continues with a body of work that has its own set of highs and lows. Nineteen sixty-five’s The Magician’s Wife doesn’t necessarily have the same punch as Cain’s earlier work, but it does display a master genre writer using his talents to produce an entertaining piece of work.

Clay Lockwood sells meat. He’s a lonely man traveling up the corporate ladder while making the rounds of the major hotel food and beverage restaurants. His life is a bit like his work: cold, organized, and in need of possessions to fill his empty locker of a heart. On a whim, Lockwood flirts with a waitress at one of his stops only to find, embarrassingly, that she is a married woman. That’s where things should have stopped; however, Sally Alexis has an ulterior motive. Sally’s married to the local attraction, the Great Alec Alexis, who performs his magic show in residency at the local hotel’s theater. Once her husband’s on-stage assistant, her boss has now demoted Sally to mom, caregiver, and waitress.

Getting in touch with Clay a few days later, Sally sets up a date and they meet in secret. Instantly a connection is made and a romance blossoms. Sally reveals that her marriage is cold and lifeless and that she is merely biding her time so that her son can inherit her father-in-law’s fortune. Admittedly, her father-in-law’s death of natural causes could take a long time in addition to the fact that any inheritance her son would receive would be set up in a trust fund and unavailable until he’s of legal age.

Clay requests Sally to leave her husband and come marry him and she rejects his numerous proposals. She feels it would not be sensible to remove her child away from his wealthy heritage. Although shocked at the news of her child Clay remains sincere, his new job promotion will provide for them all. However, Sally suggests a work around involving accidents and life insurance with her husband. Clay immediately gets the insinuation and backs off, and by no means does he want to get involved with Sally’s implied workaround. He sends Sally on her way.

True to the melodrama aspect of Cain’s writing, additional wrinkles form in the structure. Sally’s mother, Grace, comes to Clay to encourage him to take her daughter away from her lifeless marriage. Reluctantly, Clay agrees to help Sally, but without the implied work around and will attempt to persuade her again to leave her husband and marry him. Unfortunately, Clay’s repeated attempts to persuade Sally to divorce without violence fail. Sally becomes childish and unpredictable pushing Clay towards a relationship with Grace. As with most good noir, there’s a love triangle.

Things start to cook up when Clay finally steps over the edge to commit murder for Sally. After meeting her husband by a chance at his own office, Clay gets a sense of The Great Alex’s personality: brash, egotistical, and demeaning towards woman. It is enough to make the invisible wires snap for Clay. The plot takes a left turn and becomes sinister. Clay’s torn between the two women and their moral stances on human life. Not only does Sally participate fully in the plans of her husband’s accidental death, her mother is also able to turn the check and ignore the act of murder with her silence.

The murder plan is the most exciting aspect and helps levitate this novel firmly into the crime genre and high above a melodrama love triangle. The meticulous planning of the accidental death involves stalking the Great Alexis’s habits before and after the show, tailing him home sans headlights down a deserted road, and eventually trial runs of the forced car crash that’s about to ensue. Cain’s suspense is terrific and reminiscent of the best filmic sequences of Hitchcock, Jules Dassin, or Jean-Pierre Melville. Admittedly, the set up takes time to formulate using ingredients from each of his greater works in a stew. Once that pot is simmering, the pace doesn’t slow down for the rest of the book.

The real magician of the story is not The Great Alec Alexis, although he performs and takes credit as one. Sally works her magic well manipulating Clay to murder, but never succeeds at pulling off the final act or the Prestige. If the reader wants to know the true magician of the story then he or she need look no further than the author, James M. Cain.  

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye – Horace McCoy

I think I’ve found one of the most hardboiled, violent, and pulp novels of the early 20^th century. Horace McCoy’s 1948 novel,Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, packs a nasty one-two punch and drags the reader through the literary mud. In fact, the novel’s bullet pace contains a healthy body count to keep even the most modern jaded readers interested and these events happen in the first few chapters. More importantly, the crime genre elements hang on parts of McCoy’s story that isn’t written in the text. I’ll explain…

Ralph Cotter, A Phi Beta Kappa scholar, escapes from a prison work farm with the assistance of his Tommy-gun toting lover Holiday. Her incarcerated brother is a part of the escape plan too, but Ralph has to shoot him in cold blood or risk capture. After numerous prison guards and inmates die in pandemonium of the escape, Cotter hides out in town establishing a new identity under the name Paul Murphy with the aid of a local chop shop’s owner and con man named Mason. He plots a new heist to get some travelling and hiding out money only to have the plan go astray with the accidental murder of a milk deliveryman.

Mason’s insulted that Cotter would pull a heist in his own back yard, especially since Mason has the police in his back pocket. He dispatches a pair of dirty cops shake down Cotter and Holiday to retrieve the heist money. Burned and determined to prove his superior intelligence, Cotter devises a plan to blackmail the dirty cops and get the entire town in his pocket while hiding under his new name.

If you think the plot takes a turn here, well, yes. It does! Under the name Paul Murphy, Cotter meets a young woman, Margaret Dobson, attending a cultish church led by a former mob lawyer. Slowly, Cotter’s frame of mind starts to untangle and the reader begins to realize events and discussions happening between the lines and off the page. What we have here is a perfect example of the unreliable narrator. Up until this point in the story, everything has been literally a first person narrative told by Ralph Cotter. The problem is, Ralph is turning on radios that do not work and he hears music.

When Margaret’s prominent father discovers that Paul Murphy and Margaret have married without his consent, he offers Paul a large sum of money to sign annulment papers and to walk away. Not wanting the money to interfere with his crime syndicate, Cotter turns the money down. So begins the tumbling cascade of events that brings forth the downfall of a criminal mastermind. Ralph starts to confuse his own identity with the new identity of Paul Murphy. Acerbated by the complex relationship with Margaret and his crumbling relationship with Holiday the reader starts to see mental cracks through his inability to keep his stories and lies straight.

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye is a great example of an American 20^th Century novel. Labeling it, merely a crime novel would be, in fact, criminal. Much of this novel takes place inside the mind of the lead character and to have his mind unravel while we are inside of it is quite entertaining and an amazing piece of work. James Cagney stars in the 1950 film adaptation. McCoy is from Pegram, Tennessee not terribly far from where I grew up, so I already feel a kinship to him. His other novel of noted significance is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? published in 1935.

Freezer Burn – Joe R. Lansdale

Bill Roberts is a redneck. He’s as white trash as they come and lives with his dead mother whom he’s wrapped in garbage bags and doused in perfume to mask the putrid smell of decomposed flesh. Life is good. However, Bill runs out of money when he’s unable to forge his mother’s signature for her disability checks. What could possibly be the best plan of action for Bill? Rob a fireworks stand. A brilliant idea that anyone who lives or visits rural, county areas around the Forth of July can imagine would be great premise for a crime story.

Joe R. Lansdale’s 1999 novel takes a rural crime premise and infuses it with a touch of Tod Browning’s Freaks(1939). Lansdale’s works are a fine example of mashing several genres together forging a new genre that’s both refreshing and unpredictable. The scenario described in the opening paragraph is only the first chapter. The heist goes horribly wrong and Bill winds up chased through the swamps by the police. His cohorts have either both been shot and/or bitten by deadly viper snakes in the marsh. Exhausted, Bill passes out on a dry bank only to find his face supper for an infestation of mosquitoes. Rescued by a travelling entourage of carnival freaks, Bill meets the inhabitants that include the bearded lady, Conrad the Wonder dog-boy, the Siamese twins, and a strange white haired commander of the troupe, named Frost, that has an extra hand growing out of his chest. The motley ensemble of freaks chants “one of us, one of us” in a literary tip of the hat to Browning’s Freaks.

Lansdale uses the familiar tropes of the crime genre to build his narrative and then deliberately steers in another direction. With Bill’s face a swollen mess, the freaks are able to relate with him and a bond forms. Bill agrees to work with the troupe until he recovers, but soon finds his place and continues after his recovery, working and driving the trailers for the carnival on its summer tour of the small Texas towns. Frost lets him stay in the refrigerated camper that houses the main attraction of the carnival: the frozen, mummified corpse of a possible Neanderthal man nicknamed “The Ice Man”. Frost later explains that the frozen corpse was a purchase that included a story explaining its reputed biblical origins of the missing body of Christ while hinting at a supernatural curse that comes with the package.

If that doesn’t have your attention, Lansdale introduces the femme fatale of the piece: Frost’s wife. Gidget’s constantly described in various states of revealing daisy dukes, bra-less midriffs, nighties, and nakedness. She’s captured Bill’s attention from the start, by not only her figure, but also her apparent normalcy. She’s the only member of the carnival troupe that’s not disfigured or deformed. She’s been seduced by Frost’s kindness and accepted his hand in marriage even though she’s revolted by his other hand growing out of his chest. She forces him to wear a glove on it during their frequent lovemaking. Gidget has plans to take over the carnival and knows that the Ice Man attraction is her ticket out.

Here comes the powerhouse James M. Cain noir connection and the pivot point for the novel. Now it is ThePostman Always Rings Twice (1934) meets Freaks. Gidget coerces Bill to do her bidding and murder Frost so that she can take over the carnival. Using her body to control Bill’s thoughts, she’s able to lay out a fiendish plot to mask Frost’s murder as an accident while painting on the carnival’s Ferris wheel. Suspense builds by the planning and the execution of this deed; however, it should be no surprise, and without giving anything away, that something will go wrong.

While no pun intended, these brief plot descriptions are just the tip of the iceberg. Lansdale grabs the reader, shakes them up, and spits them out. What really grabs me is the inability to pinpoint the direction the story is supposed to move. This provides an exciting narrative that constantly offers surprise twists with quite familiar story elements that mixes different genres such as horror and crime. I’m not overly familiar with Lansdale’s work. The film adaptation of his novella Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) being the first that comes to mind and proves that Lansdale’s work defies categorization. Also, the recently filmed Cold in July (2014) adaptation is what attracted me to pull Freezer Burn off my shelf and read it for this blog. I was not disappointed.

Burglar – David Goodis

Steeped in an unwritten honorary thieves’ code, DavidGoodis’ Burglar is a prime example of American noir of the 1950’s. Sitting parked in the dead of night, carefully smoking cigarettes, Nathan Harbin and his band of criminals, prepare a course of action that will unwittingly change the course of their life. Harbin, the brains of the operation, is the expert safe cracker that never carries a gun. Gladden, the only female and barely an adult herself, cases the house on the street and works as a temporary maid, getting the details where the valuables are kept in a wall safe. Baylock and Dohmer surround the house on either side with flashlights in hand to signal any disturbance or unusual activity approaching. Together, the team has managed a dozen hits, but something in the air on this particular night presents more tension than the other jobs.

Published in 1957, Burglar’s tension surmounts when a patrolling police car interrupts the heist. Fortunately, Harbin’s fast thinking in conjunction with the gang’s coolness prevents disaster. The cops are convinced of the cover story and leave the scene. In the course of the robbery, we learn the strengths and weaknesses of each of the key players. Harbin learned his trade by necessity. His mentor was none other than Gladden’s father, killed in a heist gone wrong. Since then, Harbin has taken responsibility of Gladden and lives by a code of ethics of this dead man. Gladden follows Harbin’s every move and there is more behind her willingness to follow him all the way to the life of crime. In Goodis’ world, the thieves’ code is predominantly a male oriented. The characters of Baylock and Dohmer represent this male universe resenting Gladden and finding her to be the weakest link in the gang. However, their animosity fades after a job and Gladden presents herself to the gang members as a more useful human being by making sandwiches and doing housework as opposed to an equal member of the gang.

This is where Goodis sets up the reader to go for a ride. Goodis flips the coin and presents two criminals that work as the villains in the piece. A femme fatale that breaks up the male dominated crime scene and is the exact opposite of Gladden’s character. Della uses her body to seduce Harbin and feigns love to get what she wants. Della works closely with Charley who is a crooked cop that’s ready for a shakedown. Together, they want to get their hands on those precious emeralds. The situation caused by the patrolling police that interrupted the heist at the beginning. Both Harbin and Gladden are sexually frustrated individuals. Not only does Della works on Harbin with her physical appearance, Charley works on Gladden with his physicality and feigned sensitivity. There’s a nice parallel happening between the key characters. It’s a mirrored world where two sides of the criminal underworld co-exist and conflict with each other.

The novel’s bleakness builds throughout each chapter and finally erupts into astonishing and brutal violence made even more shocking by Harbin’s ability to handle it with professional aplomb. For example, when a fatal shootout occurs outside of Nathan’s automobile, Nathan is able to keep his wits about him and dispose of weapons, vehicles, and bodies in a professional manner. The novel contains a coolness that reminds me of the films of Jean-Pierre Melville such as Le Samouraï or La Doulos.

Drowning in darkness, Harbin and Gladden find themselves at the end of the novel in the blackness of the ocean, which is an interesting metaphor for the entire novel. There’s no escape and it only gets darker and darker the further down you go. Burglar is quite a piece of noir fiction and I can’t think of any other crime author that paints in words a bleaker vision.

The author, predominantly known for Dark Passage (1946) adapted into a film version starring Humphrey Bogart, sued for copyright infringement over the TV series The Fugitive. Another celebrated French filmmaker, FrançoisTruffaut, adapted his novel Down There (1956) aka Shoot the Piano Player. Re-appraised and reprinted for the first time in fifty years, The Library of America published Five Noir Novels of the 1950’s in 2012 that includes The Burglar, Dark Passage, Nightfall, The Moon in the Gutter, and Street of No Return.

Tricks – Ed McBain

I’ve often cited on this very blog my preference for reading series novels in order of publication. However, I just violated my own rule and picked an 87^th Precinct novel at random. Well, not entirely at random, the premise of Halloween night in the Precinct seemed too tasty to resist browsing over the few McBain titles I own. One reason I felt comfortable jumping into the series is because I’ve always looked at the 87^th Precinct novels as self-standing episodic tales. Like many crime shows on television, it isn’t difficult to start watching in the middle of a season, or for that matter, in the middle of an episode, and picking up the story elements and running with them quickly deciphering what crime has happened and following along with the investigation. 

Master storyteller Ed McBain fills in plot elements with previous tidbits or character development pertaining to the previous 39 installments necessary to the plot without slowing down the action. In fact, it’s straight action all the way through and takes place in a single night in linear fashion. I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the 87^th Precinct having read Ax (1964) and having seen the movie Fuzz (1972) with Burt Reynolds. Again, the characters are easy to get a grasp on and the reader can follow along with the investigation. However, I think my appreciation will grow as I read more 87^th Precinct novels and become more familiar with the team’s interactions and humor. The book is full of humor and great crackling dialogue that at times reads like a screenplay.

True to its title, Tricks (1987) rattles off out of the gate with liquor stores robbery that ends with a manager gunned down by children in costumes. Could children possibly perform such an outrageous act or is someone pulling a Halloween trick? A murderer cuts up prostitutes picked up at the local dive bar in a neighboring precinct and a stakeout becomes organized. Eileen Burke is the plant in the uncover sting operation for the prostitute killer posing as a trick despite recovering from an attack on herself not that long ago. Cotton Hawes takes the call from a lovely magician’s assistant who’s searching for her missing husband, the Great Sabastiani that has mysteriously vanished after an afternoon matinee. Coincidentally, Sabastiani’s apprentice has left town in their van leaving all of their tricks and props scattered across a parking lot. Body parts are turning up in trashcans all over the city and a magician is missing. Do the body parts belong to the missing magician that has performed his very last trick?

Steve Carella, Andy Parker, and Arthur Brown also play major roles in this novel. Carella and Brown plan a stakeout of their own inside a liquor store with disastrous results. Andy Parker responds to the call of Peaches Muldoon, who was the mother of killer, now harassed by an obscene phone caller. Parker is eager to connect and romance Peaches, but stumbles on a little trick by pretending to be dressed as a plain-clothes cop at Halloween costume party and impresses all the guests with his authenticity and very real badge and gun. Strangely enough, a circus performer takes notice of Parker’s charm and Parker quickly has a little female admirer.

I don’t want to give away too many details, but the book’s layers weave into many story elements that intersect at various points of the different investigations. If police procedurals are your cup of tea, then the 87^TH Precinct will fill your kettle. Ed McBain was the pen name for Evan Hunter, who wrote the novel Blackboard Jungle, and most famously, the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. While close to fifty novels in the 87^th Precinct series, Hunter has another fifty novels under various pseudonyms including Evan Hunter and Hunt Collins. Hunter died in 2005 at the age of 78.

Fer-De-Lance – Rex Stout

Rex Stout is another American author with quite a prestigious bibliography. His novels top out in the seventies and span over six decades. His popularity is accounted by simply browsing his numerous titles in used bookstores that crowd the shelves ragged, worn, and dog-eared. Each paperback’s spine cracked in a million places resembling spidery varicose veins. Luckily, I found a copy of Stout’s first Nero Wolfe novel at a Goodwill store several months ago, that has waited patiently on my shelf for discovery.

Like most literary series, it is always best to start at the beginning. However, Fer-De-Lance drops the reader right into Wolfe’s world, as if several novels had already taken place. Already established as a great mind for detective work with several references of past triumphs and adventures, Wolfe is a practically larger than life character that enjoys his agoraphobic state while consuming copious amounts of beer and food. Comically, not only does Wolfe never leave the house he never varies his schedule even when clients come at his request. A designated rule is in place that prohibits entry in the upstairs greenhouse when Wolfe is brooding amongst his true friends, the plants.

Archie Goodwin represents the irritable body to Wolfe’s brain marching out on foot to do the investigating groundwork. Dutifully reporting all findings and feeding them into the brain, Archie comes across at times as a cocky smart ass, but manages to remain humble, respectable, and likable throughout the novel. Archie is at once at awe with Wolfe’s brain prowess and at the same time frustrated at feeling an outsider to his mentor’s working methods.

I found the duo a nice mirror to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson characters. Stout playfully makes Watson the brain and Holmes the documentarian since the novel is entirely from Archie Goodwin’s perspective. However, I can argue that Nero Wolfe is the amalgamation of Holmes and Watson’s brains combined and Goodwin is merely the commentator. The character comparison is a topic that’s well worth exploring in a larger format with ample research of seventy novels to read.

Goodwin, along with a few other tail-men and strong-arm types flex Wolfe’s grip on New York City’s underworld at the tail end of the depression. Although not destitute, money is tight, expenses are cut and extemporaneous help cut back. Goodwin is one of the few hired hands that manage to stay within Wolfe’s employment. When asked by one of Wolfe’s part-time tail-men as a favor to help his wife’s friend find her brother, Carlo Maffei, Wolfe devises a probable turn of events, which leads, of course, to murder stemming from only a brief interview from Maria Maffei. After finding a clue in a picture cut from the daily newspaper of a seemingly separate death by natural causes of a well-respected professor, Wolfe directs Archie to place a $10,000 bet with the District Attorney’s office that the professor died from a poisonous needle shot out of a golf club. Intrigued, but confused, as to how all of these events tie into the disappearance of Carlo Maffei, Archie is game for the work.

And that’s where it get’s good! Archie’s dispatched to interview the medical examiner, the district attorney, the family of the professor, golf caddies, and groundskeepers. A nice assembly of suspects gathers at the house, at his and Archie’s invitation, for interviews only on Wolfe’s designated time-schedule. All of Wolfe’s visitors have their patience tested by his stated genius, but its Archie’s frustration with the pace of genius that occasionally erupts into bickering spats that provide the comic relief of the novel. There is a substantial amount of zingers where I found myself chuckling aloud.

The resolution works well and includes a fiery plane crash. Yes, that $10,000 bet still stands at the end for Nero Wolfe to collect. To combat Wolfe, the suspect plants a surprise when a lethal snake pops out of a drawer, as it seems the best way to attack a man in his own castle. A tremendous amount of excitement for a book about a genius detective that is famous for never leaving his house!

Many authors I have known about peripherally for many years but I never bothered to read and I kick myself after I realize what I’ve been missing out on. It amazes that Rex Stout’s creations continue to live a life of their own almost 80 years after their creation. I will continue to explore Stout’s work as I find it. I don’t believe that reading each work in order is essential, but I will do my best to maintain a sense of continuity.

Wild Town – Jim Thompson

Way out west lives an oilman, Mike Hanlon, who manages prolonged success with a thriving hotel despite a debilitating injury that left him in a wheelchair. However, his aged years and wealthy heritage didn’t prevent him from marrying a trophy wife, twenty years his junior, named Joyce. The Hanlon Hotel resides in the jurisdiction of Sherriff Lou Ford, a questionably wealthy officer of the law who by all appearances lives on the grift. Enter the ex-convict drifter, Bugs McKenna, with an uncanny knack for being unable to stay out of trouble, who the Sheriff convinces to apply for the job of the hotel detective, and in turn, convinces Mike Hanlon to hire him. Bugs suspects the crooked Sheriff is up to no good and using an ex-convict as his patsy. Gather these elements together and you will find that the novel is the perfect recipe for criminal mischief.

Bugs McKenna begins his job as the hotel dick at the Hanlon Hotel trying to second-guess the motivations behind his employment. All signs point to Sheriff Ford and Joyce Hanlon working in conjunction to dispose of Mike Hanlon, so Joyce and Sheriff Ford can profit on Joyce’s inheritance and have a fall guy to take the wrap. Despite the obviousness of Ford’s motivations, Mike Hanlon’s motivations seem quite murky. Why does Mike Hanlon decide to trust McKenna? Does his boss realize that a plot is forming around his demise? It isn’t long before other trouble begins to brew at the hotel when $5000 goes missing from the books. The head accountant encourages Bugs to lean on the new accountant in order to save his own job.

Jim Thompson succeeds in taking the conventions of the crime story such as murder, blackmail, grifting, and double crosses and throws each one for a loop. I believe that Thompson’s goal is to keep the reader guessing at every turn and allow enough evidence to sustain a logical assumption of the direction of the story only to deliberately steer it onto a different track. Thompson’s personal sense of humor also matches the streak of black humor that runs throughout the story. For example, my favorite is the death of the hotel accountant, who’s accused in a subplot of stealing $5000, picks a fight with Bugs McKenna and accidentally flies out a window when Bugs dodges his lunge. Our anti-hero Bugs, is the embodiment of Murphy’s Law, if something can go wrong, it goes wrong and in quite a slapstick sort of way.

If it’s discovered that Bugs was in the accountant’s room, his unsavory reputation will jeopardize his safe position at the hotel. This causes him to panic and destroy evidence only later to realize that he couldn’t have been the only other person in the room. Suicide is ruled but quickly changed to murder as evidence of intoxicants in the accountant’s bloodstream turn up in an autopsy. The accountant would have died anyway, despite falling from the window. The Sheriff suspects a female as the culprit, as drugs, according to the Sheriff, are “a female’s weapon of choice.” Even after Bugs establishes his alibi away from the scene of the crime, a blackmailer emerges and puts the heat on him to pay $5000 or risk exposure as a suspect.

The novel takes another turn into quasi-detective fiction. McKenna, who’s hired as the hotel detective despite having no experience as a detective or in law enforcement, must solve the mystery of who is blackmailing him and, in turn, the murderer. The novel could easily fit into an amateur detective sub-genre, but it continues to morph and change styles. I don’t want give away all the twists and turns, but reading it is like listening to a great progressive rock album that shifts sounds and rhythms at will but always manages to impress at the skill of playing.

Wild Town doesn’t sit easily within any confined description of the crime sub-genres. It is all of those things at once and that’s what makes it so damned entertaining. Published in 1957, Wild Town rests comfortably between the more recognized publications of The Killer Inside Me, After Dark,My Sweet, and later publications such as The Getaway and Pop. 1280. I understand that Thompson’s recognition came only after his death, but it makes me question what the public considered great crime fiction at the time. As I’ve read several of his other works, I’m convinced that Thompson was an author that could always invert the crime genre and revitalize it.