Cornell Woolrich dresses everyone in black

Mystery Club #6

For this post, I will be peering into the dark corners of Cornell Woolrich’s writing, both his first published novel The Bride Wore Black (1940) and other work.  Woolrich is a noir master, gritty and dark, with a spin to his tales that seems truly unique and which will get under your skin.  

There is so much I want to talk about in this book that can’t be discussed without spoilers, so this writeup will be shorter and less complete than it could be.  If you'd like to read along, you can order a copy of the book on my shop's website, or get it from a terrific bookseller or library near you!

https://greenhandbookshop.com/products/the-bride-wore-black-by-cornell-woolrich

I peeled through The Bride Wore Black in about a day, a rare occurrence in my reading life.  Then I had to read it again to take notes, because it was a full throttle ride when I was in it first time ‘round!  The edition I read was the current in-print edition from American Mystery Classics, which has a good introduction by Eddie Muller. He relates a quote from Woolrich, tossed off as a description of his writing goals: “All I was trying to do was cheat death.”  And so he has. 

Muller aptly describes Woolrich’s works, which “taken individually are nerve-jangling diversions; as a life’s work they added up to a towering wall of existential malevolence not even Sartre or Camus would dare scale.”  He also recommends consuming Woolrich’s work “in a feverish rush,” as “that’s how you feel the undertow…”  It’s certainly how I read The Bride Wore Black, and “The Night Reveals,” a short story written under his most popular pseudonym, William Irish.  The torrent of his words sweeps you before its tide, disbelieving yet unable to resist.

First of all, you must brace yourself for our detective’s name: Lew Wanger.  Perhaps the prototype for today’s ever-present Jack Reacher and Harry Hole?  Anyways, he’s a steady worker, and becomes an expert on this book’s killings, for all the good it does him.  As off-the-cuff as our protagonist’s name is, he has a serious job ahead of him. 

Second of all, you need to aware that these murders are done by killers who are determined, smart, and dedicated.  As fast a read as the book is, the cases are spaced out over a couple of years.  Are they even connected?  Lew Wanger thinks so.

At our very first death scene, a blanching member of the public who sees too much is dismissed by an officer on-duty who says, “Well, what’d y’expect, violets?”  Buckle up, everyone.  The gloves are off already.

But that doesn't mean this is a page-turner with no literary flesh on its bones.  Sunlight creeps between narrowly paced buildings, “at an angle that was enough to break its back.”  We attend a mysterious, unnamed play.  A word or phrase that someone hates, but which is never clarified, hangs in the background.  The reader is given puzzles of their own that will never be unraveled.

Children observe adult foibles in their unique way.  We are left knowing there are unseen clues, nothing more.  And grateful that the child was spared.

The casualties left behind in the wake of this often-creative and always-brutal wave of destruction are many and random.  Wanger observes the real-world effects on the victims left behind, the wives, girlfriends, and children: “The murder hadn’t been in the closet out there; it was in here on her face.”  Some noir is cold and hammers like newstype, but while his delivery of events may seem staccato, Woolrich gives us a glimpse below the action that echoes the shift towards victim awareness we see today in better true crime podcasts, like Maine's Murder She Told (https://www.murdershetold.com/).  

Our killers deal with brutal men in a wonderfully adept manner, dismissing them in myriad ways, all summed up in one line: “You have nothing that I want.”  These men, discarded and lucky enough to survive, have no idea how to deal with their fate.

Women fare similarly.  “Then what is she?” one acquaintance cries in frustration.  Best you do not know. 

While this book inspired Tarantino’s Kill Bill, it could just as easily have been Final Destination.  You’ll never know until it hits you, though.

On Shorter Works:

I read some of Woolrich’s short stories (always a good idea for introducing yourself to a new author), including “The Night Reveals.” This tale is part of a short story collection, written under the pseudonym William Irish, titled After-Dinner Story (1944).  I was bowled over after reading it. 

I will say just a little about “The Night Reveals” here, but it is serious proof of Woolrich’s creative skill in storytelling, and of the way he can draw you into the most innocuous life and remind you that we are all pieces of the puzzle. 

The narrator, a hard-working and earnest fire insurance adjustor, takes us through this awful tragedy step by step, doubting his own eyes at every turn.  As Woolrich says himself: “There was no melodrama in the way he said it…” 

And that is how this story sneaks up on us, step by step, inch by inch, and forces us to bear its final, fatal blow with our eyes wide open.

Sprinkled through the story are heartbreaking moments of clarity.  The narrator sees around him the perfect coziness of his own home, but in the world outside sees New York City in its late-WWII realness: “…decrepit, unprotected tenements, all crammed from basement to roof with helpless sleepers…”  He sees the decay, but he also sees the vulnerable human lives stacked within it, as vacant buildings intersperse each packed block like zombies among the living homes.  He is all too aware that some people must make their abodes in the deserted buildings, because life is hard.

Suffice it to say he lives in a world of contrasts.  Teeming life vs. empty windows, black shadows and mold vs. the harsh light of destruction vs. the clean, civilized light of safe well-maintained buildings, like his own family's cozy apartment.

In his world, fire is an ungovernable devil, capable of any monstrosity even in its wild natural state – but in the hands of someone directing it?  Just as crazy, but more satanic in its dance. 

This story is in no way simple.  It would sound basic if I summed it up, but the variety of human conditions embedded in it are rich fodder for the reader's observation and comprehension -- for viewing with compassion, knowing eventually you will be forced to glance back at it for fast clear decision-making.  Woolrich makes nothing clearer than the fact that we are surrounded by gray areas, but that there will be critical moments when we must instead see everything in black and white.  We are all flammable.  There are flashpoints.

And also, as a very random sidenote, I now have to go look up the word “beanery,” because I feel like I’m missing out on a mid-century phenomena I’ve never heard of.  

Thank you Cornell Woolrich, and good night!

Cape Fear stalks our end-of-summer reading list

Mystery Club #5 

Back in 1991, I went to see Cape Fear in the theater.  De Niro’s terrifying performance still lingers in my mind, all these years later.  But it wasn’t until last year that I finally read the book that the film and its 1962 predecessor were based on.     

All you need is a cocktail umbrella!

John D. MacDonald, best known and loved for his Travis McGee novels, wrote Cape Fear in 1957.  It was originally published as The Executioners. 

The basic premise is a familiar one.  A lawyer, Sam Bowden, is stalked by Max Cady, a man he helped to put away in prison years before.  At that time Sam had been young, but now he has a family – a wife, three kids, two of them growing up too fast, and a sweet family dog.

You could practically write it yourself, couldn’t you?

Here’s where MacDonald’s genius comes in.  In little glimpses, we get to know the family.  Likewise, the ongoing deeds and general behavior of the villain.  Yes, the family is appealing and wholesome but human.  Yes, the villain proves himself to be the worst of the worst, over and over again -- far beyond retribution.

But the story goes beyond that.  The nuances of justice, of right and wrong, of how far one can allow oneself to go in the name of defending one’s bit of peace and happiness without destroying everything you’ve built and are proud of – and how much fear and oppression a human soul can take before it breaks.  Not to mention how our survival instinct expands to protect those we care about.

This all sounds very pompous as I write it, but the way MacDonald handles it, and turns it over in these pages for us to examine, is anything but heavy-handed.  It is, instead, very human.

Throughout it all, Cady puts the reader on edge as much as he does Sam Bowden’s family.  And Cady amuses himself by tormenting others.  For the most part he sticks to attacking citizens who won’t go to the police.  

One woman, perhaps a little too “friendly,” winds up with “a face like a blue basketball” after Cady’s ministrations with a smashed chair.  And even to her Cady mentions his adopted nemesis, Sam Bowden – “The Lieutenant” – twice.  “And both times it gave me the cold creepers, right up and down my back," she tells Sam. “One time he said you were an old Army buddy and to show you how much he liked you he was going to kill you six times.”

Cady, like many twisted minds we encounter in daily life, doesn’t make sense by the normal standards of society.

It takes some finagling to arrange for Cady to be put away, even temporarily.  Perhaps a small sidestep outside the law.  But even that doesn’t last.  And this time when Cady gets out of custody, he’s not pulling any punches.  He’s not wasting any time.

The clock is ticking.  Summer is high.  And there’s nowhere for the Bowdens to run, after all, but home.

This is a fast, partly delightful and partly very intense summer read.  Perfect for tucking in your pocket to take with you to the beach, or a solo picnic!

My favorite vintage version!

 

Green Men and Occasional Pseudonyms

Mystery Club #4

I enjoy the spooky and melodramatic cover art that graces vintage paperback gothic mysteries, but I rarely pick them up to read myself -- probably because they tend to be heavy on the 💕romance💕 and helpless female protagonists. 

However, a couple of years ago I found a 1987 US printing of The Castle of the Demon by Patrick Ruell (one of UK mystery author Reginald Hill’s pseudonyms), and couldn’t resist.

I had fun with its mashup of tropes – a little bit of vintage gothic, a little bit of mystery, a generous dollop of local folklore, a dash of potential romances (plural!), all set against a seaside cliff breeze, and by the end … well you might read it yourself, so I don’t want to spoil anything.  Things get a little crazy towards the end!

What really grabbed me about the book initially besides its title (!!) and the diabolical cover (!!!!) was the writeup on the back:   

“For Emily Follet, alone in the remote village of Skinburness, fear could take many forms.  It could be the college, formerly the castle of a renowned sorcerer, where no one seems to know what goes on.  It could be the mysterious black rider on his black horse.  Or the two recent unexplained drownings.  Or the green men.  Above all, the green men.”  And off I went to follow the train of green things, as I always do.  

Please note that Skinburness is a real place, and its name is honest-to-gosh thought to mean "the headland of the Demon haunted castle."  I’m glad it inspired Hill to pen this tale!  

Our narrator, Emily Follet, is a woman finding her own way for the first time perhaps ever.  She is determined to be independent.  She makes new friends during her vacation break, playing dominoes with the old village dudes at the local tavern, spending time alone with her lanky lolloping dog Cal on the beach, and at night she reads from a book on local folklore that she’s found on the bookshelves in her cottage.  

But strange things start happening at an accelerating pace, and it becomes difficult to know who to trust and who to avoid, who to keep at arm’s length and who to have dinner with, if only for politeness’s sake.  New disappearances occur, the windswept dunes hide secret excavations… and maybe a corpse or two?  And in the depths of the night, alone in her cottage, she hears strange voices on the phone line, and sees something unbelievable peering through the window into her bedroom at 3:00 in the morning. 

Of course, she can’t tell the polite Constable Parfrey the whole story about the face at the window.  He would think she was barmy.  “He seemed doubtful enough about its existence, as it was.  He probably suspected some kind of hysterical nightmare.  He would have hardly been reassured if she had told him the face was green.”  Events continue to ramp up, with mysterious nurses, midnight assaults, strange “archaeologists”, and then it goes completely off the rails in a fun little darkride.  

So if you like a diversion on the spooky side, with a decently-written female narrator, a gothic seaside setting, just the barest dusting of romance, and a dog named Cal instead of Scooby-Doo, you’ve got yourself a book recommendation here!  I hope someone brings it back into print soon. 

 

TONIGHT! Event: JAWS documentary at SPACE Gallery!

 

WHAT: Film screening of The Farmer & the Shark

WHEN:  TONIGHT!!!

Weds Sept 10 @7:00pm (doors open 6:30)

90 min runtime, followed by Q&A

WHERE:  SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St, Portland ME

TICKETS:  

https://space538.org/event/the-farmer-and-the-shark/

It's the 50th anniversary of Jaws this year!!!  

 

Join us TONIGHT at SPACE for the Maine premiere of "The Farmer & the Shark" - a documentary about the making of Jaws through the lens of Craig Kingsbury, the Martha's Vineyard farmer and fisherman who inspired the film character of the one and only QUINT!!! 

 

Director John Campopiano joins us for a Q&A after the film, as we celebrate the tail end of summer in a very New England way. 

Poet vs. Jabberwock - FIGHT!

Mystery Club #3

Fredric Brown’s Night of the Jabberwock (1950) 

vs. Michael Connelly’s The Poet (1996)

Reading Michael Connelly’s The Poet resurrected my experience of reading Fredric Brown’s Night of the Jabberwock, even though they are very different books.  So of course I had to dig out my old copy of it, and re-read it – even before I finished with The Poet.

I’ll start with The Poet because I really want to talk about Jabberwock – I like both books, but Jabberwock remains a favorite.  You’ll see.

Michael Connelly’s The Poet:

Last year, after years of hearing about him from others, I decided it was finally time for me to try a Michael Connelly novel.  I started reading The Poet, and was feeling pretty lukewarm about it – but as soon as the literary element made itself known in the storyline, I was hooked. 

The Poet is one of three novels Connelly has written featuring the main character Jack McEvoy, an investigative reporter.  In discussing McEvoy, Connelly has mentioned that his character is somewhat autobiographical, but “what is autobiographical is his view of the business” – when Connelly is writing the character, he writes what he himself would do in each given situation, drawing from his own experience as a crime beat reporter throughout the 1980s.  (see interview with Paul Davis here: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/16/michael-connelly-on-fair-warning-and-his-crime-rep/)

The Poet definitely feels personal, so I was pleased to find that verification in his own words.  I say personal, but really it feels like it’s unpretentious, more specifically.  McEvoy’s inner dialogue is raw and straightforward.  It gives you the impression that you are hearing his thoughts as fast as he is – there’s no filter, no buffer to slow them down and sift them out.  This also means there are moments in the story where McEvoy is just as in-the-dark as you, the reader (perhaps even more so).

McEvoy’s twin brother, a police officer, died shortly before the story starts -- a purported suicide.  But something about the case bothers McEvoy, and when he latches onto some strange clues while digging into other similar cases, ostensibly in the process of researching police suicides as a whole, he knows he’s laid hold of a case much bigger, and more dangerous, than anything he could have imagined.  At the end of Chapter Two, he lays treacherous groundwork for the story to come, telling us, “I thought I knew something about death then.  I thought I knew about evil.  But I didn’t know anything.”

Two sentences form the lynchpin of this story, written inside the fogged windshield of the brother’s car: “Out of time.  Out of space.”  A cryptic legacy of which no one knows what to make.

And from those two short sentences spin the rest of this tale, feathering pinions of tiny case details, cop by cop, that stand out on reinspection, that have bothered the investigating officers, sometimes for years after their fellow officers’ deaths.

Needless to say, things accelerate quickly.  McEvoy finds himself first working against, then with, then against, then with a special FBI unit, and the creep of a killer piles horror upon horror as he hears the baying of the hounds getting closer.  The elegant sentences stolen from an age-old poet to grace each incident cannot conceal the sordid dealings which lie at the root of this spreading evil.  The only solution is a brutal cauterization of the elusive source.  I won’t spoil the story for you, in case you have yet to read it yourself.

Fredric Brown’s The Night of the Jabberwock:

Several years ago, while I was attending ReaderCon in Burlington, MA, my friend and fellow bookdealer Bob Eldridge gave me a copy of Fredric Brown’s Night of the Jabberwock.  I had never read Brown before, although I was familiar with him by reputation from his wild and absurd scifi work such as Martians, Go Home (1955).  Brown was also an early originator of flash fiction (the two opening sentences of “Knock” 1948, which form a complete story themselves, and “Answer” 1954).  But I hadn’t realized he also wrote mysteries.  That evening, sitting in my hotel room, I began reading Night of the Jabberwock, and didn’t get to sleep until very late that night.

Where The Poet embeds a few choice lines in each of its cases, waiting to be found by McEvoy’s stubborn tenacity, Night of the Jabberwock opens each chapter with an epigraph drawn from Lewis Carroll’s poem "Jabberwocky."  And like Connelly, Brown uses his experience as a newspaper proof-reader and reporter to build the backbone of this winding story.

The passage beginning with “’Twas brillig and the slithy toves,…” sets us out on our adventure, not quite knowing what we are up against, and feeling as ill-prepared as the forewarned son of Carroll’s rhymes.

Our guide and narrator is hardly better-off than we are.  Doc Stoeger, regularly haphazard newspaperman, publisher of the weekly Carmel City Clarion, and Lewis Carroll afficionado, wakes from a dream of the Jabberwock coming for him on the dark streets of his small town, only to find he’s fallen asleep at work waiting for the next-to-final proof of his latest issue, due to come out on Friday morning.  A few small tweaks to the type for the edition accomplished, he heads for Smiley’s across the street, looking forward to a drink to end the long day.

Smiley tells him, “Glad you got here early, Doc.  It's damn dull this evening.” 

Doc commiserates with him.  “It’s dull every evening in Carmel City, and most of the time I like it.  But Lord, if only something would happen just once on a Thursday evening, I’d love it.  Just once in my long career, I’d like to have one hot story to break to a panting public.”

Clearly, we readers know things are about to change.  Instead of the usual Thursday night drill, Doc is about to find himself in the middle of what seems like a dozen different nightmare collusions, none of which he could have anticipated in a million years.  This Thursday, he’s going to wish the evening’s brouhaha started and ended with having to figure out what to put in the paper now that the Tuesday rummage sale has been canceled at the last minute.

The evening starts off normally enough.  Rummage sale kerfuffles (you thought I was kidding?), some booze, a chess game, rampant Carroll-quoting challenges, etc.  A weaving walk home through the dark.  A dite[1] more booze.  Then Doc learns of the existence of the Roman Candle Department at the local fireworks factory (introducing him to a new lifegoal).  Still, all fairly normal Thursday night events.

Next one Yehudi Smith arrives on Doc’s doorstep, a peculiar chap hailing from a Lewis Carroll-loving club, with a strange invitation for Doc to attend a secret meeting.  More booze!  More Carroll quoting!  But these veer into some wonderful deepdives, introducing the lighter Carroll reader to such passages as:

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,

And each damp thing that creeps and crawls

Went wobble-wobble on the walls.

-- from “The Palace of Humbug”

Smith also brandishes a clipping from a nearby newspaper at Doc, titled “Man Slain by Unknown Beast,” and broaches the topic of risks associated with joining ranks with the Carroll-loving club.  Attack by a real Jabberwock?!

And thus the night begins to turn its tail and reveal a sinister side.

Before dawn breaks, Doc will have lived a lifetime’s worth of insane and terrifying events, all by pure happenstance.  All echoing back and forth from Carroll’s rhymes.  All insensible, as most human things are.

It’s not in the book, but surely at some point Doc quoted Alice in Wonderland to himself: “Dear, dear!  How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning?”

In closing:

Both Brown and Connelly are aces at writing a tale that lures you in quietly, then gets its hooks in you with all sorts of intriguing details, and then thrashes you mercilessly (but with great interest in your entertainment as a reader).  Almost a half-century apart, but both highly skilled, and both well worth a read.

Early dustjacket art for Jabberwock!

 [1] A “dite” is a Maine measurement, somewhere between a smidge and a bit.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dite

EVENT: Jaws documentary! The Farmer & the Shark by John Campopiano

WHAT: Film screening of The Farmer & the Shark

WHEN:  Weds Sept 10 @7:00pm (doors open 6:30) - 90 min runtime, followed by Q&A

WHERE:  SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St, Portland ME

TICKETS:  https://space538.org/event/the-farmer-and-the-shark/

It's the 50th anniversary of Jaws this year!!!  

 

Join us at SPACE for the Maine premiere of "The Farmer & the Shark" - a documentary about the making of Jaws through the lens of Craig Kingsbury, the Martha's Vineyard farmer and fisherman who inspired the film character of the one and only QUINT!!! 

 

Director John Campopiano joins us for a Q&A after the film, as we celebrate the tail end of summer in a very New England way.

Picnics, Lies, and Videotape

Mystery Club #2

There once was a book that haunted me.  

First, it haunted me as a movie, which I watched on VHS tape back in the 1990s, when I worked at Videoport.  

Then, it haunted me because I hadn’t read the book yet (that took a while, finally read it in 2022, phew).  

Finally, several months later, it haunted me from within another book!!!  Madness!  What is this willful book?

It is none other than the Australian masterpiece, Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.  

 

The dreamlike movie of the same title (1975) was directed by Peter Weir, in his iconically surreal manner (his Last Wave also made a deep impression on me in my 20s, another Videoport-era watch).  

 

The novel was written based on a series of dreams Joan Lindsay had, and wasn’t published in the US until Penguin brought it back to life in 2014, so I guess I can be excused for not having read it until recently. 

 

And the third element? 

Well… that’s how this post happened.  I had picked up Riley Sager’s The Last Time I Lied and was intrigued by it immediately.  It wasn’t the first Riley Sager I’d read, that was Home Before Dark.  

 

The Last Time I Lied starts by introducing us to our narrator, Emma, an artist who is gaining notice for her mysterious paintings.  What no one know is that each of these dark wooded landscapes hide three missing girls from Emma’s past, obscured but present under their layers of paint.

I devoured The Last Time I Lied in a matter of days (rare for me), and found myself haunted by it in a way which distinctly reminded me of Lindsay’s book.  It wasn’t even so much the matching set of missing girls, three from Appleyard College in Picnic at Hanging Rock, and three from Camp Nightingale in Sager’s book.  

 

It was moreso the dreamlike summer atmosphere, the liminal spaces being explored by the girls outside of their normal lives while away at camp, and then off-hours in forbidden adventures outside of the camp. 

The setting (beyond the warm weather) couldn’t be more different between the two books.  

 

Picnic at Hanging Rock is sunstruck late Victorian Australia, arid, all sandstone and dust, peppered with desert-dwelling plants, parched and sparse with a fringe of greenery and forest, made more uncomfortable by school uniforms and formal dress requirements.   

 

The Last Time I Lied is a wooded lake, rich with birdsong, treeshadow, and moss, carpeted and cloaked by water and woods.  While the camp's founder, a foreboding presence who lives on-site, is not to be argued with, within the strictures of the camp the young women find ample room for pushing boundaries.

 

At Hanging Rock, there seems to be no space for secrets, no place to hide, which makes the disappearances all the more unsettling.  The sunbleached stony heights of Picnic Rock stand brazenly out and dare searchers to exhaust and dehydrate themselves in their futile quest.  

 

At Camp Nightingale, there are too many places to hide.  While the disappearances are upsetting, they don’t defy explanation.  The wilderness around the lake’s dark water closes in and thwarts searchers.

 

It wasn’t until I finished reading The Last Time I Lied, and in a mood of thoroughness read the afterword by Sager that I realized how right my instincts were!  Sager had deliberately riffed on the dreamy haze / nightmare sharp glow of Picnic at Hanging Rock, drawing from the haunting mood of Peter Weir's excellent movie, but not allowing himself to read the original book by Joanna Lindsay until long after he'd completed his own novel.

 

Both books are well worth reading.  

 

Lindsay’s book was a perfect read in the thick of winter for me, especially February and March where everything seems to slow down to a trickle and reading about hot, dry places on the other side of the world is a balm, no matter how intriguingly nightmarish they might be.  

 

I would recommend reading The Last Time I Lied in the thick of summer, when the sun is so hot you flee for the wooded shadows, and the humidity makes you not want to move any more once you reach the shade.  

 

Criterion's cover art for their rerelease.

Criterion was kind enough to rerelease the film in recent years, so you can watch it via their streaming channel or by picking up a DVD or Blu-ray of the film.  There's a good trailer here, if you'd like to get a taste of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XNrF6lsvw

On Mysteries - a personal history

Mystery Club #1

It has been a while since I posted about my love of mysteries here on the shop blog.  Part of the reason was that I had started a separate blog which was all about mystery reading.  But then after working on the (207)Terror posts with Dennis, I realized that I didn't need to send you folks somewhere else for mystery book posts.  So I'm going to reintegrate them here instead.  😺  Enjoy!

My favorite all-time reads in no particular order, but limited to ones with a mystery/crime element:

The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale – Dark and tantalizing, the Depression-era Texas landscape is introduced to readers through the eyes of the young narrator, who finds out bit by bit how hauntingly strange the adult world can be.  Peppered with ghostly tales of local folklore and mysterious crimes in the obscure but too-close-to-home Big Thicket, this book calls out to horror, mystery, and true crime readers alike.  "He was just a big shadow next to the tree, and I thought of the devil come up from the ground, all dark and evil and full of bluff." --Harry

 

The Cass Neary series by Elizabeth Hand – After staying up way too late finishing the first book in this series, Generation Loss, I emailed Liz and explained to her, “Rarely have I read a book whose main character has made me want to smack them upside the head so often and made me want to hang out with them the other half of the time.”  Cass Neary is warped and wonderful.  Elizabeth Hand is a magician.  No matter the setting, she captures it, and places you in it.  With mere words on paper she can create vivid phantoms in your mind the way few other writers can.  Her visual imagery does not beat you over the head with descriptive terms, instead it infects your brain and haunts you (in the best way possible).

 

Two of my favorite covers for Nemesis.

Agatha Christie, in particular but in no way limited to: N or M? (the first Tommy & Tuppence book I ever read, though 3^rd in the series), The Man in the Brown Suit (a rare standalone novel from Christie), and Nemesis (wherein Miss Marple is set to solve a mystery without being told what it is or who it involves).  My mom introduced me to Christie's books when I was still young, knowing I would love them, and I have been reading them ever since.

"You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end."  -- Miss Marple

Least favorite: Endless Night which seemed horribly pessimistic to me.

 

John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series – I started reading John Connolly because I ran across a reference to Massacre Pond in Scarborough in the text of one of his books, Dark Hollow (you will soon find out that I often sample mystery series by jumping in at a random title that appeals to me rather than being sensible and starting from the beginning).  I read it and liked it – great characters, peppered with adept wit for humor.  So I kept reading them!  

 

If you want a dark, intriguing, no-holds-barred series, some of which is set in Maine, this is it.  Especially if you like the cathartic feeling of reading a book where by the last page everything is burned to the ground, these are for you.  They are not light and fluffy, but boy are they good.  I could say more, but I don’t want to spoil it.  You should probably go and sign up for his monthly email, because John Connolly is delightful, and every time one arrives it makes me laugh while reading it.

 

3 Raymond Chandler titles with stellar Tom Adams cover art

Raymond Chandler – I’ve read both Hammett and Chandler, and let me tell you, Chandler is the one for me.  Something about his ability to paint a scene, and his careful choice of words and phrasing, sticks with me.  From Killer in the Rain (so evocative!) to his collected short stories (did you know he wrote stories in the weird fiction vein, as well as noir crime writing?), Chandler does not waste your time.

"I could feel my skin crawling, and the air was suddenly cold on it." -- Carmady, in "The Curtain"

 

Ngaio Marsh – For a long time, I only read Agatha Christie.  No one had told me that there was another author, equally adept, equally witty, who had written stories in a similar vein, although hailing from New Zealand instead of Britain.  Almost as prolific as Christie but not quite, (she wrote 33 novels, while Christie wrote 33 for Poirot alone), she left behind a treasure trove of cases as related by her main character, Chief Inspector Alleyn, possessor of a sneaky sense of humor.

 

Jan Willem van de Wetering – I first read one of his Amsterdam novels because (you guessed it) I was going to Amsterdam.  I loved it!  The understated humor of the main characters was right up my alley, and the immersion in a city in another part of the world sealed the deal.  But the first book I read by him, The Maine Massacre, was in a graphic novel format.  Yes, he was Dutch, but he spent the latter part of his life in Maine, and after almost three decades here, he died in Blue Hill, ME, in 2008.  In other words, he’s got a lot going for him.

 

RECENT READS* that I’ve loved:  Riley Sager’s The Last Time I Lied, Simone St. James’ Sun Down Motel, Maureen Johnson’s The Box in the Woods, Adam Sternbergh’s The Blinds, Jean Luc Bannalec’s The King Arthur Case, M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series (the books and the AcornTV series), Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, and Robert Thorogood’s Death in Paradise (the books and the BBC series).

*:  (This list is a couple of years old, but it still holds good!)

 

OLD FAVORITES that I haven’t read in a long time:  Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series, Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy series (which has some issues I'll admit), Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee series, Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane series.

(207)TERROR #4 -- The Pike by Cliff Twemlow!

Hi everyone!  Once again life ran amuck with us.  Yep.  Dennis and I got together to have one of our little horror chats back in…. oh heck, mid-March!!!  Whoops.  It was my job to type up our booktalk notes, and here I am 4 months later finally getting around to it.  Life is full of unexpected complications.  It’s a pity more of them don’t lend themselves to being resolved quickly, but hey that’s life, isn’t it?  We had such wonderful goals of getting back on a more regular schedule with this blog, but we are irredeemably irregular, as it turns out.

 

This installment of (207)TERROR is in honor of The Pike by Cliff Twemlow!   

 

The Pike in its original paperback format.  Shiny!

 

I found out about this fishtale from friend and documentary filmmaker John Campopiano (Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary [2017], Pennywise: The Story of It [2021], and Snapper: The Man-Eating Turtle Movie That Never Got Made [2022]).  John was interested in The Pike’s status as one of those horror stories that was slated to be made into a major motion picture, but floundered and sank somewhere along the way as filming was getting going. 

 

I’ll leave that story for John to tell you someday, but suffice it to say it is a gem buried back in the early 1980s, which was to gain its sparkle from the dazzling star Joan Collins and the picturesque location of the Lake District.  The story’s events were set in and around Windermere in Cumbria, England.  According to the book’s introduction, Hammer Film Studios had accepted a screenplay of The Pike for production before Twemlow wrote it out in novel form for publication.

 

The Pike by David Seltzer (1982)

“A cold relentless killer from the murky depths”

 

You had me at murky!!!

 

I will admit that I started this novel with few expectations, beyond a hope for plenty of monster fish.  I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing, which is surprisingly professional and all in all a very fun read.  I’m not surprised it was picked up for adaptation!  How disappointing that it prematurely disappeared from view.

 

Dennis and I sat down over drinks and snacks, and hashed out our reading experience.  We both love the movie Jaws, and The Pike is clearly a descendant – as the introduction avers, “The Pike was Cliff’s answer to Jaws, and to the franchise that had given birth to.”  One of the characters even has the last name Brodie -- too close to Chief Brody’s name to be anything but a planned coincidence!!!  But -- “Is this even legal?!” Dennis jumped into the fray immediately, and was then shocked at my blasé response.  “That didn’t bother you?!” 

 

Au contraire!  I relish a good effort in the vein of Jaws.  Where’s my JAWS Bingo card?  Let’s start with… a REGATTA!!!  I really enjoy the many, many movies and stories that follow the Jaws formula.  Snowbeast (1977) and Tentacles (also 1977!) are among my film favorites.  So while I was gleefully marking off blocks on my JAWS Bingo card, Dennis was being bothered by all the Jaws tropes, which felt like cheating to him, rather than an homage. 

 

I do recommend taking the JAWS Bingo approach.  A boating/lake festival imminent in the next two days?  Check.  Hordes of badly-behaved boaters running amuck in the water trying to flush out the monster fish?  Check.  Wait wait wait – even a counterpart for Matt Hooper, shark specialist?  CHECK!!!  Bahahahaaaaaa! 

 

As pike-specialist John Wilmslow comments, no doubt with accompanying eyeroll as he surveys the “savage glee” surrounding him on the lake, “Compared to some people, the behaviour of underwater predators was genteel.”

 

It just puts a big fat grin on my face, and turns Dennis into a Mr. Grumpy Pants.  Earlier today, I asked him if he had any last-minute commentary about The Pike, and all he said was, “No final thoughts from me other than the book should’ve been illegal.”  Which just made me start howling with laughter again.

 

I liked the use of a reporter for the main narrator, who joins up with a nicely varied team including a savvy local woman and the wildman local lake steward. 

 

Dennis enjoyed the three-guy team that is the other viewpoint for storytelling.  The three adventurers came kitted out to film a documentary about Lake Windermere, the longest ribbon lake in England, in which the team sees great potential for adventure.  Its impressive length sets it above and beyond most idyllic holiday spots for divers and explorers alike, and their aim was to let the world know about its unparallelled options.  They weren’t expecting to hear from the hotel bartender the news, “There’s something ghastly in it.”  Uh oh!  Oh YEAH.  Game on!

 

Like Jaws, part of the drama in The Pike is generated by physical evidence left behind in the wake of bloody slaughter, once again illustrated in the form of a monstrous tooth.  Not even a whole tooth – it’s just a sheared off portion of a tooth, found in the skull of the first known human victim of the beastly pike.  Ah heck, the pike has around seven hundred teeth, he’s barely going to miss part of one.

 

There are some wonderfully awful deaths in the book, including poor Henry, early on in the third chapter.  Nobody is spared, man or wildfowl, and there are no niceties involved.  Just gore, dismemberments, and lots of panicked splashing.  Pity the poor creatures who either witness the slaughter, or stumble across the pike’s leavings after the fact.  A community member summed up Henry’s fate: 

 

“She glanced over her shoulder as if something invisible had moved closer to listen.  ‘Dead,’ she said, ‘Mutilated.’”

 

Diana, almost a hundred pages later, doesn’t fare well either, and we get to be plunged into the water with her every step of the way.  It is quite delicately disgusting. 

 

A cautionary soul warns others: “This fish has tasted human flesh.  By now it may be looking for more.”  And it’s not just any fish.  Our expert estimates it is over 10 feet long, well over 200 pounds, and ”something this size wouldn’t put on the brakes for anything smaller than a rhinoceros.”  The pike is no ordinary pike – no, it’s a giant, a freak – five or six times the size of the biggest officially recorded catches in the UK, even today.

 

Well guess what?  Like the pike, and like Jaws before, our 3-man documentary team isn’t just any film crew, either.  These guys are in it to win it.  They won’t even be stopped by the lake water, which they refer to in their highly technical jargon.  “Larry went to the rail and looked down at the water lapping the side of the boat.  ‘It ain’t going to be easy.  It’s creepy water.’”  No, seriously – they give a definition for this condition.  Because “things can sneak up on you in that stuff.”

 

As they get ready to dive, knowing they may encounter the monster at any moment, Joe says to Lars, their cameraman, “If it chews your leg off, try to face the camera while it’s doing it.”

 

Unlike Jaws, there is a twist ending in The Pike, which we can’t tell you about because that would ruin everything.  Suffice it to say that it gives the last pages of the books a distinctly Scooby-Doo-for-adults flavor.  It’s ludicrous and questionable, and really not a logical “ending” at all, so we both wondered if the author was in fact laying the groundwork for a sequel.  Oh well, maybe someone else will write it someday!

 

As someone with very Fortean leanings, it was unsettling for me to encounter very anti-Fortean attitudes in the book.  Absolutely nothing outside the average norm is allowed to exist (or at least is refused acknowledgement) in this prosaic universe.  This outlook towards the UK’s infamous lake monsters was reflected by a 1982 series of articles for New Scientist, in which Maurice Burton posited that Nessie and the like could be logically explained away.  Burton thought sightings might be the result of mistaken identification of innocuous fermenting Scots pine logs rising to the surface of the loch, their velocity generated by the release of gases during decomposition. 

 

It is entirely possible that, alongside his intended mirroring of Jaws tropes, Twemlow was also using The Pike to thumb his nose at the dour men who poo-pooed the UK’s long history of lake sightings and water horses.  As friend Brian Sterling-Vete points out in his chatty introduction, Twemlow “had always been fascinated by monsters, aliens, and the paranormal.”  Not only that, but early on, “Cliff wanted to turn Manchester’s Belle Vue amusement park into an animated version of what we would now call Jurassic Park.”  Twemlow was excited by the idea of the existence of monsters, whether mythical, real, or manmade.

 

In discussing the end of the book, Dennis noted the high level of denial amongst the characters (again, very like the plot track of Jaws).  If local authorities can wade through the mysterious carnage, then wrap up the case and put a bow on it with an arrest, who needs to worry any more?  Yes, let’s all blithely jump back into the water again. 

 

YOU GO RIGHT AHEAD!  Yes, YOU FIRST!!!

 

Happy summer, everyone!!!