Writers’ Read. It’s a Mystery to me by Doug Hawley

Real Ones

Dashiell Hammett is famous for The Maltese Falcon and the Thin Man Series.  Not remembered today, but Red Harvest is an example of something different from him.  It happens in Poisonville / Personville (fictionalized Butte Montana) where crime ran rampant in the street.  Most crime stories and mysteries have involved a single bad guy or a small gang.  Hammett was a leftist, but worked for the Pinkertons which were sometimes involved in strike breaking, which was an obvious conflict.  Later in life he was jailed for his beliefs.

It was not a major story, but he wrote something which involved a suspect who was obviously guilty.  Unlike most stories of the time, he was guilty.  That was the twist. 

He led an odd life.  He was a Catholic who remained married to his only wife despite spending little time with her, partially due to his tuberculosis.  He is known for helping the career of Lillian Hellman.  Despite his tuberculosis, he served in both WWI and WWII.

The Maltese Falcon was filmed twice; the best known starred Humphrey Bogart.  It was parodied in The Black Bird, a 1975 movie with George Segal.  The Thin Man 1934 movie was followed by five sequels.

Hammett introduced his never named short pudgy Continental Op in early stories, the famous Sam Spade with the satanic face in The Maltese Falcon, and of course Nick and Nora in the Thin Man (Nick was not the thin man, it was the corpse).

P D. James (Dame Phyllis) like Hammett knew what she was doing.  Her husband was an invalid and she worked in civil service to support the family and she understood courts.  I had the good fortune to attend one of her book readings.  She had two lead characters, Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray.  Perhaps due to her background, like Ross MacDonald, her stories were more about the consequences of murder than finding the guilty party.  She had a series featuring Dalgliesh on and a production of Death Comes To Pemberley on PBS.  She was criticized for only featuring murders among prominent people.  Her response was something like common crime is not interesting. 

She had one variation from her crime stories which may have been based on the decline in sperm in western society.  The Children Of Men posited that men no longer produced sperm.  The elderly were encouraged to commit state sanctioned suicide because they were a burden without the young.  JD Vance and others would have loved the plot.  The race was on for a rumored pregnancy which might save the world.  The unfortunate movie version concentrated on violence.

The Santa Teresa Ones

Ross MacDonald was born Kenneth Millar in Canada.  His private detective Lew Archer is based in Santa Teresa (thinly disguised Santa Barbara California where MacDonald lived).  His wife Margaret Millar was also a mystery writer.  Lew Archer was his private detective, who was named Harper in The Moving Target, and The Drowning Pool starring Paul Newman.  Newman thought the character’s name should start with an H after his success with Hud.

MacDonald’s stories were more mainstream literature than most mystery writers, and he wanted to do scholarly studies, but not much came of it.  Like Dame Phyllis, his stories were not hard boiled but reached back to events in the past that erupted in the present. 

MacDonald suffered criticism from John D. MacDonald, also a crime novelist, because a Ross story had a color in the title which was a John D. signature, and his name similarity.  His life had its share of tragedies.  His daughter died young, and MacDonald slipped into dementia later in life, which was doubly sad because of his gift with words.  He never got a chance to write scholarly pieces.

Sue Grafton also lived in Santa Barbara, but her character Kinsey Millhone followed Ross MacDonald and was located in Santa Teresa.  Millhone has a lot of mundane tasks like keeping her old VW going, eating at a local restaurant, and paperwork, but gets beat up and has sexual encounters like her male book PI brethren.  Her series went through the alphabet “A is For Alibi” to “Y is for Yesterday”.  Her disappointed fans never got to Z because she died after Y and forbad anyone to continue the series.  

 The Twisted Ones

Patricia Highsmith is known for “Strangers On A Train” and the Ripliad, her series about an immoral murderer Tom Ripley.  She was an aggressive Lesbian, but tried conversion therapy, and didn’t seem to care for anyone.  I may not be reading her books correctly, but they seem to have things happen without obvious emotion or motivation.  The movie “Strangers On A Train” had a standard happy ending, whereas the book ended in a double murder.  Her first work was in comics.  She wrote many animal stories which she may have liked better than people.  Much of her life was spent in Europe and she tried to smuggle snails under her blouse between countries.  Late breaking coincidence – local burger stand has a Ripliad beer.

Jim Thompson was interested in abnormal psychology and may have been depressed.  In early life he failed at employment in the oil industry.  It may not connected to his writing, but he was an alcoholic and a leftist as was Hammett.  His hard early life in Nebraska shows up in his books which were violent and featured people with no redeeming features (compare with Patricia Highsmith).  He has been more popular after most of his books were written.  I’ve seen and / or read:

The Killer Inside Me – Several killed at what was supposed to be a celebration

After Dark My Sweet – A femme fatale and murder

The Grifters – Twisted mother and son frauds

The Getaway – Starts off as a standard crime novel, ends in fantasy land south of the border.

Raymond Chandler

He was a drinker, lived in Nebraska for a while, and worked in the oil industry.  Sound familiar?  His protagonist was Phillip Marlowe.  He would say “Marlowe, like the poet”.   He learned about writing mysteries by reading them.  He would patch together a novel from pieces of his short stories, which made the stories hard to follow.  They had loose ends and might not clear up who did what.  Women were usually the murderers.

 His personal life was strange – despite his books, he was a prude who didn’t get married until late and then to a much older widow.  He had criticized Ross MacDonald which probably caused MacDonald to write a character who married his mother, an implied criticism of Chandler.

He will always be remembered for “The Big Sleep”.  “Farewell My Lovely”, “The Lady In The Lake”, and “The Long Goodbye” were all made into movies.

Not so great.

Brett Halliday wrote the Michael Shayne series which was turned into movies and television productions.  According the Wikipedia the later novels were ghost written and Shayne was not that competent.  I read a few years ago, and all I can remember is his standard treat which had butterscotch and he had a regular travel agency he used..

I saw Robert Parker at Book Passage in Corte Madera several years ago.  He mentioned that his shoulder injury kept him from bench pressing three hundred pounds.  His Spenser books were different in that he had a regular Jewish girlfriend Susan instead of a series of affairs, and he had Hawk, a black man, as his muscle.  The stories were a little tedious in their “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” refrain.

One new guy.

Dennis Lehane may be the writer of this group that I read that is still alive.  He has done several different things, but I’m mostly acquainted with his Kenzie and Gennaro stories and two movies:  Mystic River, and Shuttle Island. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are private detectives who end up together after Angie’s ne’er do well husband dies.  Mystic River is about murder involving several childhood friends.  Shuttle Island is something of a phantasmagoria of confused memories.

Her own category.

Not much to say about Agatha Christie known as the queen of the mysteries.  Her disappearance in 1926 which may have been caused by her husband’s request is fairly well known.  Something which is rarely mentioned, and speaks poorly of her is her original name for the well known “And Then There Were None” was “Ten Little N______”.    

Note – This is patched together from books and movies from the authors, biographies of them, and other sources.  Because the Men In Black have corrupted my memory, feel free to correct any of my error and comment or add to the narrative.  I didn’t include pioneers in the field like Poe and Conan Doyle, or the newer writers – newer to me is the last forty years.  This will be put into my blog, and it will be expanded and corrected as time permits.   

Doug Hawley

Image: A book store with overcrowded shelves from pixabay.com