Retro Review: Knights of the Open Palm (1923) by Carroll John Daly

This book collects three stories: Knights of the Open Palm (1923), Dolly (1922), and The False Burton Combs (1922). All first appeared in Black Mask Magazine but come to us now from Steeger Properties which is an agent for Daly's estate.

I happened upon this book via a review in Paperback Warrior and decided to give it a try having read one of Daly's Race Williams novels several years ago.

Paperback Warrior credits Daly with creating the hardboiled detective genre. Indeed, this first Race Williams story appeared before Hammett's Continental Op hit the pages. Race is also the direct inspiration for Spillane's Mike Hammer. In fact, the first use of the term "hardboiled" that I've found is in the 1927 Black Mask publication of the Race Williams novel, The Snarl of the Beast.

Race is approached by Ernest Thompson, a wealthy farmer from Clinton, whose son Willie had recognized some of the Klan tarring and feathering a woman. He's abducted before the trial and the case disappears. Without a prosecution, the father expected to see Willie returned but that doesn't happen. Earnest is relieved to learn that Race isn't afraid of taking on the Klan and offers him a large paycheck.

Race finds a bitter ex-member of the Klan who gives him the secret passwords, handshake, and salute. Armed with this information and his two trusty automatics, Race heads to Clinton where he immediately ruffles feathers. Three Klansmen, in robes, appear at his hotel room to warn him away but Race is not intimidated, faster at the draw, and sends them packing. With some needed information from a townsman with no love for the Klan, Race is soon hot on the trail of young Willie and his fate.

Race is brash, supremely confident in his ability to come out on top no matter what, quick with a wisecrack and his guns. Race tells us he isn't a murderer but if someone pulls on him you bet they're going down ... with a bullet between the eyes (his preferred target). With his vainglorious posturing, Race is practically a caricature of the hardboiled detective but he carries it off making a memorable character and a great way to launch a genre. I would also say that Race is a direct descendant of the old west gunslinger hired to ride into town and sort things out. If you think about it, 1923 wasn't that far removed in time from the American frontier.

Daly's take on the Klan is pure parody. He portray's them as conmen and thieves out to make a buck using their "lofty" ideals as a cover. You really can't read the depiction of their salute without smiling. Honestly it reminded me of the high sign in the Little Rascals. I don't know how bold it was to ridicule the Klan in 1923 but Daly doesn't hold back. Race, of course, has no respect for Klan and has no qualms about taking some of them down. I do like Race's wry comment on the influence of the Klan in town that some of the Klan were actually in jail for as much as ten minutes.

I'd definitely recommend this story particularly if you want to see the origins of the hardboiled detective.

There are two other stories in this book, Dolly and The False Burton Combs.

Dolly is very different than the Race Williams stories. Here, a medical student falls in love with a showgirl and they come up with a devious way to convince his father to let them marry. It doesn't go well. The story is predictable and read-and-forget. It does verge on Poe-like horror with its theme of insanity and the narrator's creepy obsession with the Dolly's throat

The False Burton Combs is much better. The first person narrator (don't think he's named) makes his living conning the conmen. He comes across as a Race Williams prototype, brash, confident, good with a gun, He's not a bad guy, he isn't after the innocent, but has no friends in law enforcement. He is hired by Burton Combs to impersonate him and his father's hotel on Nantucket. It seems that Combs ratted on some very bad people, some of which went to prison. He needs to lay low and our narrator is very capable of taking care of himself. Like Race, he is quick and sure with a gun. It looks like young Combs might be in the clear but then three men who don't blend with the holiday crowd show up and it gets messy. This is a pretty good story that has a neat little twist.

So two out of three stories isn't bad. Overall, this is a worthy read and at $2.99 for the Kindle version a steal.

Graphic Novel Review: The Department of Truth: The End of the World (2021) written by James Tynion IV

A good percentage of my YouTube viewing is watching videos debunking conspiracies, mostly the flat earthers,  space deniers, and the moon landing hoaxers. The idea of elaborate conspiracies is fascinating and the conspiracies around Antarctica are a particular favorite of mine.

The Department of Truth: The End of the World takes on conspiracies in a bold way by positing that all the conspiracies are real. The Department of Truth is tasked with managing the conspiracies. Their job is "making sure that conspiracy theories remain theories." The danger is that 

The more people believe in something, the more true that thing becomes, the more reality tips in favor of that belief.

Cole Turner was was a fairly low-level agent charged  mainly with monitoring "funny" memes and discussions among right-wing nationalists and their conspiracy theories. While attending a flat earth conference, he has a shocking experience and subsequently finds himself conscripted into the ultra secret organization, The Department of Truth. He also has PTSD from his involvement in a conspiracy when a child which makes him ripe for work within the Department.

But the Department of Truth has another organization working against them, The Black Hat which is bent on exposing The Department. They claim they are the good guys which sets up an interesting dynamic where the Department's claim to truth is denied us. Cole seems doomed to being pulled in different directions.

 

This book consolidates the first five issues of this title, each of which looks at a different conspiracy. That Tynion steeped himself in the worlds of conspiracies is evident. The psychology of conspiracy theorists is pretty much spot on and how he describes the belief in conspiracies is unsettlingly close to the rhetoric you hear from conspiracy theorists. One issue dissects how you would go about constructing a conspiracy.

I'm not sure how to characterize the art work except that it isn't photo realistic.The panels often only hints at what is being depicted. We also get collages of elements that create a nightmare image.

If you have any interest in conspiracy theories then this is a must read but besides that the story, art work, lettering, and design are excellent making it my favorite graphic novel of the past several years. I can't wait for the next issues.

The Bride Wore Black (1940) by Cornell Woolrich

Cover of my copy

 This is my first Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968) novel and, given how much I enjoy noir fiction, I don't know why I've waited so long. Woolrich's writing career began with his jazz-age novels, published between 1926 and 1932. Apparently these were frothy little romances revealing the giddy social life of pretty young people and getting them published wasn't easy; he wasn't taken as a serious writer with these books. He reinvented himself as a pulp and detective fiction writer and his output took off. He had to use pseudonyms he was publishing so many books. The Bride Wore Black is the first in the new phase of his writing and is also the first in his six books in the "black series" which are: The Bride Wore Black, (1940), The Black Curtain, (1941), Black Alibi (1942), The Black Angel, (1943), The Black Path of Fear, (1944), and Rendezvous in Black (1948). 

Wikipedia lists 48 Woolrich stories which were turned into films, four of which are from the black series (original title/film title): Black Alibi/The Leopard Man (1943), Black Angel (1946), The Chase/The Black Path (1946), The Bride Wore Black (1958). One of his stories that made it into film should be instantly recognized: in 1954 Hitchcock filmed Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly which was adapted from the Woolrich story, "It Had

Cover on Amazon

to be Murder".

By itself, The Bride Wore Black would be a pretty good novel to start a career as a writer of pulp and detective stories but to have the first book a noir is even better. Eddie Duggan (link below) sees psychological instability as an attribute of characters in noir and combine that with Otto Penzler's dictum that there are no happy endings for the noir protagonist then The Bride Wore Black fits into the genre nicely.

This is a female revenge story. For most of the book, we don't who the woman is or why she is bent on revenge against men between whom there is no evident connection. The title gives a clue but no idea how it relates to her victims. 

Woolrich hit upon a structure for the novel that I think is as bold as choosing to start with noir. The book has five section and each section has three chapters all with the same titles: The Woman; chapter named for the victim; and Post Mortem. The first is the setup, the second is the assassination, and the third is Detective Wanger's report. The Woman is shown to be beautiful, ruthless, a master at disguise, and a meticulous planner — a genuine femme fatale. Wanger is the only one to see a connection between the seemingly unrelated murders. The events in the book are spread over several years and Wanger is obsessed with finding connections ... and The Woman. In the end it is a chance remark that makes the pieces come together.

The revelation comes at the end when the reader finally gets the whole story and what a story it is. I'll only say it is the icing on the noir cake. It is a very satisfying read and I recommend it. Now I need to get my hands on the film made from the book, The Bride Wore Black directed by Francois Truffaut in 1968. I have to see if it keeps the noir flavor but considering it's Truffaut I imagine it will.

I enjoy Woolrich's style of writing and given when it was written it holds up very well and I would't consider dated for modern readers. I did learn that women wore wimples back then which I had only associated with nuns. He has a nice flowing style that is a pleasure to read. He is excellent with descriptions and developing characters. My favorite might be Part Two, Mitchell, The Woman, where he describes Miriam, a maid at the Helena Hotel, and her routines. I took a lot of pleasure in the way Woolrich put the words together.

Duggan, Eddie, "Writing in the Darkness: The World of Cornell Woolrich".

I liked all the covers and couldn't decide which to use so I used them all

The Guest List (2020) by Lucy Foley

Cut to the chase: Would I recommend reading The Guest List? Sure, it's an easy afternoon read with a twist that has wide appeal from what I've read about the book in social media. For me, I really wan't invested in any of the characters (disliked most of them).  I would say it is good but not great and a mostly enjoyable take on a particular type of mystery (described below). 

As always, if you loved the book and think I got it totally wrong, tell me. 

Links to other (better) reviews at the bottom.

The premise of The Guest List is simple. Guests arrive on Cormorant Island off the coast of Ireland for a wedding held at a renovated manor called The Folly. The bride, Jules, is the driven publisher of a successful online magazine, The Download, determined that this will be a perfect wedding. The groom, Will, is the star of a reality TV show, Survive the Night, where he is left at night, blindfolded and tied up, and has to make his way to civilization. He is also knee-tremblingly handsome to the ladies.

Among the guests are Charlie, long-time friend of Jules and his wife Hannah, Jules' half sister Olivia, and five of Will's mates from Trevellyan, a public school, Johnno, Angus, Femi, Duncan, and Peter. The wedding is managed by Aoife, the wedding planner and co-owner of The Folly. Some of these guests harbor dark secrets that will emerge.

The story is mostly narrated in first person by Johnno, Hannah, Jules, Olivia, Aoife, and Will (toward the end) with some third person narrative bridging past and present events. The bridging chapters are set Now with the personal narratives taking place around Now. I don't mind the shifting voices structure because it allows more to be revealed as the story moves along and it steadily builds tension. I wish there had been another voice, the photographer. This is a wedding and Jules would have wanted lots of images for her publication. I can imagine the photographer moving around, capturing revealing moments.

The majority of the book is building backstory and defining characters. The most sympathetic are Hannah and Olivia. The message is rather pointed: the men are pigs and the women suffer. This really becomes obvious when we experience Will's five mates from Trevellyan. They are all fairly loathsome jerks who revert back to their disgusting schoolboy selves when they get together. The way they act, their attitudes, their  cruelties, goes back to their time at school which they describe as a cross between a prison and Lord of the Flies. This tells you something about their life there — survival of the fittest. I think the author intended them as caricatures of English public school Old Boys. For most of them, it was the best time of their lives. 

The book is compared to some of Agatha Christie's works which is a stretch. It isn't the locked room mystery some have called it; a locked room mystery is both a whodunit and a howdunit. It is in the tradition of English country house mysteries where a group of people bearing dark secrets come together in a remote location where SOMETHING happens. The book has a melodramatic start: the lights go out and there is a scream of terror. 

The author weaves clues for where the story is going within each character's narrations and these clues will come together at the end. About three quarters of the book is taken up with this. The last quarter of the book ups the pace considerably and all the clues are revealed in their proper place. 

The authors strings the reader along and you don't know what happened or indeed if anything happened until the end of the book. The clues dropped along the way are pretty clever, though, and at the end, you realize they they were right there in our faces. I did guess the twist though I confess I mostly didn't see what was going on until near the end. I do think the story relies on a few too many coincidences to come together. The resolution is ok, though it felt to me like the story just sort of trailed off. 

 I liked the description of the island but I kept getting distracted wondering who insured The Folly. The place appears to be a death trap. There are cliffs over a crashing sea, crumbling remains of houses near the manor, a dangerous battlement accessible to the guests, and a bog that will suck you down to join the bodies of inhabitants slaughtered by Vikings if you step off the unmarked path. I can't imagine bringing children to the island and turning them loose. I know I would have been in the crumbling houses and up on the battlement like a shot.

 Smart Bitches, Trashy Books loves it.

Positive review on Book Club Chat,

Another positive review on Read This, Not That. Careful, it does tell you what happened.

The Midnight Library (2020) by Matt Haig

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is an easy read but one that can give you much to think about. I enjoyed it myself but it probably won't be for all readers. I'm not sure why I picked it up but having "library" in the title is sure to get my attention.

Nora Seed has given up on life. She lost her job, her cat died, and she has a lifetime of regrets. For her, 

Regrets don't leave. They weren't mosquito bites. They itch forever.

She decides to end her "useless" existence but instead of oblivion she finds herself in a library of endless shelves, all containing books bound in some shade of green. She is met by a woman identical to her old school librarian, Mrs. Elm.  Mrs. Elm explains

Between life and death there is a library, she said.  And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you made other choices ... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

Nora is presented with a very heavy book, The Book of Regrets. The bulk of the book deals with Nora's explorations of what ifs. In the process, Nora explores, multiverses, quantum wave functions, and philosophy — Nora studied philosophy at university. Nora gains insights about herself along the way but I'd rather not go into detail because it would be a disservice to the reader.

A book like this has the potential to be painful or affirming. I think it would be very difficult to not think what your personal Book of Regrets would contain. How heavy would it be.

The Midnight Library could have been one of those new age self-motivation Hallmark moments books that I avoid. It really isn't one of those books that deliver a message drenched in saccharin. A blurb from The Washington Post on the book's Amazon page call it "A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits." I wouldn't characterize it that way at all. Personally I dislike the phrase "feel-good" in most cases. I found The Midnight Library an engrossing read that will have me thinking about it for some time. A commenter on a Facebook book group said what I was fumbling toward: "Easy to read but encouraged a lot of deep thinking and reflection on the side. For me, it was painfully reaffirming - a book I needed to read at a particular point in time." She nails it and I will add that I found it impossible not to see something of myself in Nora. Heather Caliendo over on the Book Club Chat has a good review. She calls it "a very heartfelt and touching novel" which I guess is close to feel-good but not quite. I would also apply a phrase Heather says about another of Haig's books, How to Stop Time which she calls "a little melancholy". That works for The Midnight Library as well. Read Heaher's review here.

I expect opinions will vary wildly. I would really like to hear from someone who didn't like the book.

Oh, and as a retired librarian, Nora says something to Mrs. Elm that I got a kick out of

Librarians are soul-enhanced search engines.

I never thought of us exactly that way before.