Book Fever
By Marcia Loy October 10, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Murder in California

It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about common-place things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring—with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader’s spine. . . .—Raymond Carver

Edgar Allan Poe is widely considered the father of the American detective genre. The three writers Book Fever looks at today are masters of the American hard-boiled types who inhabit ugly worlds. Unlike the British mysteries of the same era, their world is not the world of upper class drawing rooms and polite police inspectors. Their world is anything but genteel. The private detectives are tough, cynical, jaded. The cops don’t read people their rights; they are brutal and callous and don’t have any use for private eyes.

The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read. It is an exceedingly well written novel. —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1929. Hammett created two wonderful detectives in Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man. In The Maltese Falcon, also a famous movie, the gang’s all here in San Francisco—Sam Spade, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Joel Cairo and Caspar Gutman. They’re all looking for a black bird, which is worth a fortune. There’s a murder in the first chapter.

Excerpt: “Well now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And—remember, sir—they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?”

“I don’t know.”

The fat man smiled complacently. “These are facts, historical facts, not schoolbook history, not Mr. Wells’s history, but history nevertheless.”

A good, swift, violent story. —Dashiell Hammet

The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain, 1934. Cain wrote three classic mysteries, all of them made into great films. Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and Postman. This is one of those famous books that was banned in Boston. It’s the story of a young woman married to a Greek, and a drifter who comes to work for him outside Los Angeles. It’s a story of murder and what goes wrong afterwards.

First paragraphs: They threw me off the hay truck about noon. I had swung on the night before, down at the border and as soon as I got up there under the canvas, I went to sleep. I needed plenty of that, after three weeks in Tia Juana, and I was still getting it when they pulled off to one side to let the engine cool. Then they saw a foot sticking out and threw me off. I tried some comical stuff, but all I got was a dead pan, so that gag was out. They gave me a cigarette, though, and I hiked down the road to find something to eat.

That was when I hit this Twin Oaks Tavern. It was nothing but a roadside sandwich joint, like a million others in California. There was a lunchroom part, and over that a house part, where they lived, and off to one side a filling station, and out back a half dozen shacks that they called an auto court. I blew in there in a hurry and began looking down the road. When the Greek showed, I asked if a guy had been by in a Cadillac. He was to pick me up here, I said, and we were to have lunch. Not today, said the Greek. He laid a place at one of the tables and asked me what I was going to have. I said orange juice, corn flakes, fried eggs and bacon, enchilada, flapjacks, and coffee. Pretty soon he came out with the orange juice and the corn flakes.

“Hold on, now. One thing I got to tell you. If this guy don’t show up, you’ll have to trust me for it. This was to be on him, and I’m kinda short, myself.”

The prose rises to heights of unselfconscious eloquence, and we realize with a jolt of excitement that we are in the presence of not a mere action tale teller, but a stylist, a writer with a vision. —Joyce Carol Oates

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, 1953. All of Chandler’s books feature his private detective, Philip Marlowe, who operates out of Los Angeles. The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely are more famous but The Long Goodbye has been my favorite since I saw the movie with Elliot Gould. The book is very different from the film and just as good. Lots of people die and Marlowe has a tough time figuring out who did what to whom.

First paragraphs: The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox’s left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and no other.

There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn’t quite. Nothing can.

Next week Book Fever takes a look at one of the most popular classical mystery writers: Rex Stout. Happy reading!




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