Halo in Brass – Howard Browne

Halo in Brass is the third Paul Pine detective novel from Howard Browne published in 1949. Browne made his living editing pulp magazines before making the pilgrimage to Hollywood. I discovered Browne after reading about him in reference to the work of Raymond Chandler. Browne’s ambition was to create a mystery novel where the killer was the least likely suspect. Naturally, I found this quite intriguing. As I’ve mentioned before in a previous post, the giallo film is what led me by the hand to the crime novel. Gialli, at times, thrive on convoluted twisty turns and sudden “gotcha” out of no-where killer revelations that can be both surprising and disappointingly illogical. Once I discovered that Browne worked to construct his novel in a way that guessing the killer was to be the challenge, I had to see for myself how it compared.

In short, Halo in Brass delivers the goods. Hometown Nebraska girl Laura Freemont has been missing for eight months in the Windy City. Her parents hire detective Paul Pine to track her down. Pine has a penchant for wise cracks and humorous observations while he investigates Laura Freemont’s known associates. Oddly enough, as his investigation unwinds Laura’s contacts start turning up dead and it’s not long before Pine is a suspect.

Browne acknowledges in his introduction to the McMillan Press reprint that his book negatively centers on lesbian themes. He also considers his own beliefs were negative, but changed since the timeframe of the original writing. The novel includes salacious subject matter considering the book came out in the late forties. Comparatively, the novel seems tasteful when stacked up to contemporary films such as Basic Instinct or Jade. However, placing a work in the context of its era adds a specific layer of social observation that’s pertinent at the time written. I think it’s important to know how those themes resonated in the time-period and how they play into the construction of the narrative and the audience’s perceptions.

Most importantly, the novel is good hard-boiled fun. It doesn’t beat around the bush and the plot works in a logical fashion. The one aspect of the story that really pays off is the revelation of the killer. I won’t spoil it, but it does work even despite countless movies and books that I’ve been exposed to using a similar plot mechanism. Browne even uses a Mark Twain reference that helps solve the mystery! I am currently tracking down Browne’s other novels including the other Paul Pine mysteries. Several titles were originally published under the pen name of John Evans. Browne died in 1999.

Compliments of a Fiend by Fredric Brown

First off, my discovery of Fredric Brown stems from the unauthorized adaptation of his 1949 novel The Screaming Mimi. That film was Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1969). It was an international success and a defining example of the Giallo mystery subgenre. 

The giallo-film is a highly stylized type of murder mystery or crime film that usually places a strong emphasis on the violent and sexual aspects of the story. The giallo-film stems from Italian publisher Mondadori’s set of pulp paperbacks with yellow covers hence the name “giallo”. Since the study of the giallo-film leads to the Italian giallo paperbacks, the Italian paperbacks naturally lead to American crime fiction of the early and mid- 20^th Century. Translated into Italian, many American crime authors had books published in the giallo paperback series. Therefore, my love for the Italian genre film, called the giallo, has metamorphosed into my love of American crime novels.

Anyway, a long story short, I know, too late; I first tried to track down Fredric Brown’s novel The Screaming Mimi. I quickly found out it is out of print along with the majority of Brown’s work. My first copy of the text was a bootleg. I read it and enjoyed it quite a bit. Furthermore, I’ve always kept an eye out for any of Brown’s novels, and just recently, I stumbled onto a private collection sold to Rhino booksellers. Now, after enjoying The Screaming Mimi, I’m digging into the rest of Brown’s work for the first time and in publication order.

Compliments of a Fiend (1950) was the fourth novel in Brown’s detective series featuring Am and Ed Hunter. As stated above, reading the novels in order I am able to see the progression of a much larger story arc that details the establishment of the Hunter and Hunter Detective Agency. In the first novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), Ed Hunter stays under Uncle Ambrose’s guidance after his father is murdered. They work together to solve the crime. Ambrose, who has had experience as a detective, works at a Carny and eventually takes Ed, in the subsequent books The Dead Ringer (1948) and The Bloody Moonlight (1949), into the Carny life until they decide to venture out into the world of private cops. Prior to starting their own agency, the Hunters work for the Starlock Dectective Agency and this is where Compliments of a Fiend begins.

Brown’s premise for this novel, inspired by Charles Fort’s work Wild Talents (1932), surmises that after two notable people named Ambrose, Ambrose Bierce and Ambrose Small, disappear under mysterious circumstances that a strange Ambrose Collector must be at work. Strangely enough, Uncle Ambrose doesn’t return home from a job after a man named “Collector” calls and specifically asks for Uncle Am. So begins, Ed’s adventure retracing his Uncle’s steps with the help of their boss, Starlock, and a former carnival burlesque dancer, Estelle. Along the way, we discover a multitude of suspects including a low rent psychic, an amateur photographer, a low life car skip, a crime boss and his menacing henchman. Only Ed is able to tie all the loose ends together to discover what has really happened to his Uncle (and mentor) Am. Only Ed can figure out if a fiend is actually collecting people with the first name of Ambrose.

Brown’s writing is consistently clean and straightforward with a sense of humor. There are a few suggestions of the supernatural to keep things mysterious and light. As I continue to read his work, I am constantly surprised at how well his stories hold up. I also have quite a few of his novels lined up to read this year, so I will continue to log them into my journal entries. McMillian Press published several collections of Brown’s short fiction a few years back, but sadly, those have gone out of print and are collecting enormous sums on the collector’s market (I guess those puns were intending since the book was about collecting). Also available, an omnibus of the first four Ed and Am Hunter novels, published in 2002, by Stewart Masters Publishing that isn’t too hard to find.