The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1953 mystery includes all the characters required by a noir detective thriller of the Fifties. Trigger-happy bullies. Gambling kingpins. Dope doctors. Elegant women. The idle rich. The hard-pressed poor. The squeezed middle class. Honest cops who use dodgy methods on the good and the bad alike. Drunken artists, tortured writers. In their midst, Philip Marlowe, a tough PI that refuses to be pushed around.

The murder of the daughter of a California mega-millionaire is pinned on Terry Lennox, with whom Marlowe used to share gimlets (half gin, half lime juice) in the Victor Bar. Marlowe is warned by thugs in all stations of life not to meddle in the incident. Philip Marlowe reminds us of a Weimaraner in that while there is a trail to explore, he will follow it until he finds the answer, not caring about who he runs past or over.

Though in his other books Chandler’s incident and plots took a backseat to tone, setting and atmosphere, in this one, the twists and obstacles make sense. Like life and like work, one issue seems resolved only to have another, hydra-like, leap up to take its place. The complexity of the plot drew me in to the point where I could not keep from reading it. The plot turns come to an unexpected and sad end that may leave a bitter taste in the mouth, though it makes me eager to read another novel with Marlowe.

For readers interested in the use and misuse of alcohol, the novel is also about drinking as the basis of relationships and when heavy drinking shades into alcoholism. The book claims “A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all … he will be someone you never met before.” Throw that out for discussion the next time you hit the neighborhood watering hole.

Chandler’s longest, most ambitious novel is still being read after more than half a century. Mysteries like this, I hope, will never get old.

The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant by C. Daly King

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Readers that like Ellery Queen or Philo Vance may also like the stories in The Curious Mr. Tarrant (C. Daly King, 1885-1963). Set in the mid-1930s, Trevis Tarrant is a gentleman of means, filling his leisure with solving strange and scary happenings. He is ably assisted by his Japanese valet-butler Katoh, who, though inconsistent with being a medical doctor and master spy, speaks preposition and article-free English (what was author King thinking?).

This book has eight short stories of bizarre cases and sometimes gruesome killings. By an American author but never published in the US until Dover released a facsimile edition (ISBN 0486235408) that preserves the old font and British English spellings. It’s mildly disconcerting to hear the tone of true-blue American lunk head (narrator Jerry Phelan) but read “recognise” and “kerb.”

This novel survives among hard-core readers of classic mysteries partly because it is listed in Ellery Queen’s Quorum: The 125 Most Important Books of Detective-Crime Mystery Short Stories.

The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Published by Dell in 1967, this pocket paperback bundled about half the pulp magazine long stories that appeared in a collection called The Big Knockover. I re-read these stories in my little free time since I didn’t feel up to reading anything else. The year-end festivities and the end of a semester are exhausting.

Hammett’s hero works in the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency in the 1920s. To make up for not having a name, he has developed an astute sense of how bad guys think. His core competence is using devious, often violent, methods to get the job done.

This King Business (1928). The Op finds himself in a Balkan country where the idealistic son of a rich guy is bankrolling a revolution for a band of crafty Slavs. Seems that the insurrectionists have promised to make the son a king if the revolution is successful. The rousing climax comes out of an action packed series of events which support the notion that the calculations of criminous types and political types aren’t all that different, a fairly common belief in the 1920s.

The Gatewood Caper (1923). A daughter is kidnapped and the desperate father wants her back mainly because it is a blow to his self-made man ego that somebody has the audacity to extort money out of him. “I’ve never been clubbed into doing anything in my life. And I’m too old to start now.” When the daughter doesn’t return even after the ransom is paid, our cunning Op smells something fishy. The story seethes with vindictive feeling and the setting of the Pacific Northwest – lumbering land – is persuasive.

Dead Yellow Women (1925). Très awkward title in our more enlightened era so we must make allowances for the era’s prejudices if that is our inclination. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Op and a Chinese Tong Boss match wits. In places it feels like a parody of a Yellow Peril story, especially the elaborate polite language of the Tong Boss. The description of the maze-like interior of the criminal mastermind’s mansion is a tour de force. Also, a theme pops up: political idealism is exploited by venal crooks as in This King Business.

Corkscrew (1925). In this unexpected mixture of western and noir, the Op is a fish out of water when he is assigned to clean up remote dusty Corkscrew, Arizona. This ought to remind the shrewd reader of the Hammett’s novel Red Harvest, an exercise in violence and horror that rivals Tarantino. A gunslinger remarks, “A hombre might guess that you was playing the Circle H. A. R. against Bardell’s crew, encouraging each side to eat up the other, and save you the trouble.” The Op replies, “You could be either right or wrong. Do you think that’d be a dumb play?”

$106,000 Blood Money (1927). This presents the sequel to the story The Big Knockover. Like many aftermath stories, it is overall less satisfying than the original. The best part of the story is how the Op neatly solves a complicated problem. Again like Red Harvest, the plot is complicated with vivid characters and motivations. The Op slyly manipulates events to tidy conclusion.

The 1967 Dell paperback has an introduction by Lillian Hellman. It’s interesting but it tells more about her and Dash’s rocky relationship more than the stories. She makes a provocative point about the difficulty of living with somebody who is too stoically proud to complain when they are hurting.

Edwin of the Iron Shoes by Marcia Muller

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Mystery writers as skillful as Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton give Marcia Muller credit for being the pioneer of the female hard-boiled private investigator. Even in Edwin of the Iron Shoes, her first novel released in 1977, Muller deftly narrates a fast-paced story, with concise exposition that might be too telegraphic for readers that like an author who stretches out. The style is taut like a short Simenon thriller, the prose plain and wooden in spots. PI Sharon McCone investigates for the All Souls legal services cooperative in San Francisco. Antique dealer Joan Albritton has been slashed to death. McCone pokes around Joan’s neighborhood which has an assortment of dealers of antiques and junk. Muller effectively captures the edgy mood of McCone staking out the victim’s shop at night. Other plusses: the human interest and local color are interesting for once; it’s a San Francisco that scarcely exists anymore. Readers into old school mysteries or ones who’ve read only the later, longer McCone novels may like this one.

The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Billie Letts

Review by Mirah W. (mwelday)

From page two I was hooked on this The Honk and Holler Opening Soon.  Molly O is decorating The Honk for Christmas and ‘frizzy- haired Barbies’ are now positioned doing splits, taped down on every napkin holder.  I laughed out loud at this decorating description and realized I was in for quite a unique story with this novel by Billie Letts

Set in the 1980s in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, Letts has created a world for her unique, yet totally relatable, characters.  Caney, wheelchair-bound diner owner, and Molly O, his mother figure and friend, own and operate The Honk and Holler Opening Soon diner (don’t worry, the name is explained in the book).  The diner is a big part of the community and is part of the daily lives of many of the locals.

One day Vena Takes Horse walks into the diner inquiring about a job and she’s carrying a three-legged dog with her.  Soon after Bui Khanh, a Vietnamese immigrant, arrives and wants to work at the diner, too.  What had become a hum drum existence at The Honk is now a place where new faces are making a big difference in the business and the lives of those in the town.

Billie Letts has a way of creating characters (I love all of the character names she comes up with in her books) that have unique personalities but life experiences that are totally relatable.  She writes stories that have pain and hope swirling together an emotional mix that helps the reader understand the character and their challenges. I got swept in the lives of Caney, Molly O, Vena and Bui and even though I was satisfied in the end, I was also left wanting more and that’s what makes The Honk and Holler Opening Soon a 5-star read for me.

I would also recommend Where the Heart Is and Made in the U.S.A. by Billie Letts. You can read my review of Made in the U.S.A. here.

The Case of the Reluctant Model by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Millionaire collector of pictures Otto Olney wants to sue art maven Colin Durant for slander, claiming that Durant is saying that a painting purchased by Olney is a fake.

Lawyer-series hero Perry Mason discourages the slander suit but provides his usual sage legal advice. He later realizes that Durant might be plotting an intricate scam with the coerced help of model Maxine Lindsay. Maxine ends up in trouble deep after Mason and Della Street find a body in her apartment and Maxine seeming to take flight. DA Burger and Homicide Detective Lt. Tragg are not amused.

I liked this one because it did not follow the lockstep stages of a typical Mason novel. Also, I clearly shouldn’t read these because Gardner’s antique Americanisms – “no doubt of it on earth” or “take a powder” or “as dead as a mackerel” – seep into my vocabulary and make middle-aged women at work say to me, “You sound like my dad.”