1001 Books to Read Before You Die

Book #664

Reviewer: Ms Oh Waily

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I have been lucky enough to get hold of an omnibus of Dashiell Hammett’s work and Red Harvest was one of the novels included in it.  With uncharacteristic hours at my disposal I whipped through the 160 pages of the story in less than two days, enjoying every minute of it.  Published in book form in 1929 it is apparently based on Hammett’s own experiences working as a Pinkerton.

In Red Harvest I get to meet The Continental Op for the first time.  He is the unnamed narrator of the story and works for The Continental Detective Agency, based out of San Francisco.  He is a repeat character in Hammett’s stories and is apparently one of the first major hardboiled detectives.  He becomes something of a template from which Sam Spade and others develop.

We join the Op when he arrives in Personville to meet with Donald Willsson, a local newspaper publisher, and to receive instructions for work he wants carried out.  The locals call the town Poisonville and as we progress through the story it is quite clear why.  The Op has walked in to a town with a power struggle about to play out.  Willsson is shot dead while the Op waits to meet him, and that sets him off looking in to his death.  Willsson is the son of the industrial magnate who once ran the city but through his own making handed over much of the power to competing gangs of criminals.

The Op ends up working, sort of, for Elihu Willsson – looking in to his son’s death, and cleaning up Poisonville for him.  This allows us to follow the Op on a trip through the underbelly of the city – corrupt police, criminal gangs and all of the unsavoury behaviour they indulge in.

There is much murder, mayhem and playing of dirty tricks.  The Op clearly being a master at manipulating people and situations, some of his actions are questionable at best.  It is a brutal story, with plenty of “lead” being thrown about, snitching, gangland violence and it only escalates as the story goes on.  Remarkably, it is quite readable, with no really gruesome descriptions.  The scale of the violence is pretty damning and the Op is certainly not a saint in any sort of guise.

Hammett’s language and writing style is very easy work.  I still feel like I’m watching an old Bogart movie as I read.  Here are a couple of examples of the sort of writing that peppers the story.

Describing the hurtling of a police car through traffic, with the Op ensconced amongst officers in the back seat:

Pat twisted us around a frightened woman’s coupé, put us through a slot between street car and laundry wagon – a narrow slot that we couldn’t have slipped through if our car hadn’t been so smoothly enameled – and said :
“All right, but the brakes ain’t no good.”
“That’s nice,” the grey-moustached sleuth on my left said. He didn’t sound sincere.

Out of the centre of the city there wasn’t much traffic to bother us, but the paving was rougher.  It was a nice half-hour’s ride, with everybody getting a chance to sit in everybody else’s lap.  The last ten minutes of it was over an uneven road that had hills enough to keep us from forgetting what Pat had said about the brakes.

While trying to escape a group of gangsters following a shoot-out at a remote location:

I spread the blanket there and we settled down.
The girl leaned against me and complained that the ground was damp, that she was cold in spite of her fur coat, that she had a cramp in her leg, and that she wanted a cigarette.
I gave her another drink from the flask.  That bought me ten minutes of peace.
Then she said:
“I’m catching cold.  By the time anybody comes, if they ever do, I’ll be sneezing and coughing loud enough to be heard in the city.”
“Just once,” I told her. “Then you’ll be all strangled.”
“There’s a mouse or something crawling under the blanket.”
“Probably only a snake.”
“Are you married?”
“Don’t start that.”
“Then you are?”
“No.”
“I’ll bet your wife’s glad of it.”
I was trying to find a suitable come-back to that wise-crack when a distant light gleamed up the road.

As you can see, we’re back in to the same style and territory as The Thin Man, only this time with more violence and dubious ethics.
All up I’d say it was a good retro read.  Quick and easy; the perfect short read if you love noir and tough guy detectives.

Happy reading everyone!

 

Book#797

Reviewer: Ms Oh Waily

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The Time Machine was first published in serial format in 1895 and was subsequently collated as a book.
This, to my embarrassment, is the very first of H.G.Wells’ works that I have read despite having seen many screen adaptations of his various stories since childhood.  It is a short work, my edition being 81 pages in total, and takes very little time to read.

The story starts with a weekly meeting of men over dinner in an unnamed scientist’s home.  Most of those attending are described by their profession.  The scientist himself is described as the Time Traveller.
The others are the narrator, who is never identified by name or profession; the Psychologist, the Provincial Mayor, the Medical Man, the Very Young Man, and a man called Filby. The discussion is about things scientific and especially the dimension of time.
One of the men states, “And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.” To which the Time Traveller replies, “My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.”

As the conversation continues the Time Traveller then presents the men with a model – a metal framework containing ivory and crystal parts, the size of a small clock – which he proclaims to be his plan for a machine to travel through time. He then demonstrates it to the men, “We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second, perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone – vanished!” After a small discussion the Time Traveller invites his guests to see the actual, full-sized, machine in his laboratory and states to the assembled group, “Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, “I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life.”

The men, unsurprisingly, are more than a little dubious of the scientist’s claims and leave for the night in varying senses of humour over the disappearing model and claims of the impending exploration of time.

The following Thursday evening the narrator travels again to Richmond and the home of the Time Traveller. By the time he arrives there are several fellows already present, the Medical Man, the Editor, the Psychologist, a quiet man and a certain journalist. The Time Traveller was absent but had left a note saying to begin without him should he not be there. Just as dinner is about to begin, in staggers a rough and tumble version of the Time Traveller, shocking those assembled. Like a good middle class Victorian, he throws back a couple of glasses of wine to revive himself and begs off to wash and dress for dinner. Upon his return he begins the remarkable tale of his journey to the future.

The journey takes him to the year 802,701 where he meets the “Eloi”, tiny and beautiful humans all alike.  He describes his experiences with the less enticing Morlocks. The story muses on the future of man and society, reflecting a late Victorian view of the rich and the poor or the upper and lower classes translated into a future decay. It also retains a measure of the adventure story about it; a brave traveller exploring new territory – in this case, the future – and despite the story aging it is still intriguing to follow the Time Traveller’s story to its end.

I found the novel to be incredibly easy to read.  Although by the end I thought perhaps he could and should have used the word “incontinently” a little less frequently. Also, naturally, over a century later many of the ideas are dated, but as an early science fiction story about time travel it is well written and certainly puts out the some initial ideas of utopia and even dystopia in the same small volume.

It is a quick and untaxing way to spend a few hours.

Happy reading!

Book #632

Reviewer: Ms Oh Waily

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A goodly number of years ago I was mildly obsessed with 1920s and ’30s British crime fiction.  Specifically the grand dame, Agatha Christie.  When I had dispensed with her canon, I was left rather wondering what to do.  Thankfully for me, I learned about Dorothy L. Sayers and her creation, Lord Peter Wimsey.

I happily sat down to re-read The Nine Tailors recently and it was like walking in to a past world all over again.

The book opens with Wimsey driving his Daimler into a ditch on New Year’s Eve, having missed a rather nasty turn.  There is little else to do, but get out and walk in the miserable snowy landscape of the Fens, so that is what Wimsey and his manservant Bunter do.  They make their way to the village of Fenchurch St. Paul and become the guests of the local rector – Mr Venables – and his wife.

It turns out that there is something of an influenza epidemic going through the local populace and this threatens the good Reverend and assorted parishioners’ attempt at an impressive 15,840 Kent Treble Bob Majors.
The church of Fenchurch St Paul is a fine one, with eight bells.  Yes, this mystery is to be laid down in the most English of activities – change-ringing – and because of that I shall introduce you to the bells.

Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul.

Naturally Lord Peter is a bit of a dab-hand at bell ringing and takes the place of the ill man – Will Thoday.  Nine hours of ringing later and the goal is achieved.  Sadly the wife of the local squire, Lady Thorpe, dies the next day and as a result of her death Wimsey is acquainted with the tale of the theft of an emerald necklace of a distant, wealthy, and eccentric family member some twenty years earlier.  The Thorpe family having been haunted by this unsolved and unresolved case ever since it occurred in their home.

While all this is going on Wimsey’s car is hauled out of the ditch and repaired.  He thanks the good Reverend for his hospitality and heads on to his original destination in Walbeach.

Some months later, just after Easter, Sir Henry Thorpe joins his wife in the hereafter and is due to be buried with her.  Unfortunately when the sexton, Harry Gotobed, and his son are preparing the ground they come across something rather unexpected in the grave.  A body.  Or as Harry refers to it when talking to Mr Venables, ‘a corpus’.

“Well, sir, it’s about this here grave. I thought I better come and see you, being as it’s a church matter, like.  You see, when Dick and me come to open it up, we found a corpus a-laying inside of it, and Dick says to me —”
“A corpse?  Well, of course there’s a corpse.  Lady Thorpe is buried there.  You buried her yourself.”
“Yes, sir, but this here corpus ain’t Lady Thorpe’s corpus.  It’s a man’s corpus, that’s what it is, and it du seem as though it didn’t have no right to be there.”

As you can see, Sayers has a lovely turn of wit, even with the discovery of the body.  It is this body that begins the mystery, and the Reverend requests Lord Peter’s aid and advice in Fenchurch St Paul over the matter of ‘the corpus’.  From here we follow the trail of the Wilbraham jewel theft in tandem with the murder investigation.  In the process we get to know a little more about a few key villagers and perhaps less appealing, we also learn a bit about change-ringing.  And as is nearly always the case with this genre of crime fiction, the hero solves the puzzle of the dead man and the missing emeralds.

I will be honest with you, the change-ringing jargon is quite hard going if you are not an aficionado.  Luckily it does not extend too much past the first few chapters of the book in any great detail.  Each section is begun with a nod to it, and there are more understandable references scattered throughout the remainder of the story.  The bells are almost like eight extra characters, showing up throughout the story.

The writing is crisp, clear and often full of sly humour.  The solution to the mystery is not given away too early, but lead up to, and yet the ending is not completely predictable either.  Here are two more examples of Sayers’ writing style and humour.  The first, when she is introducing the subject of change-ringing and elaborating on it.

By the English campanologist, the playing of tunes is considered to be a childish game, only fit for foreigners; the proper use of bells is to work out mathematical permutations and combinations.  When he speaks of the music of his bells, he does not mean musician’s music – still less what the ordinary man calls music.  To the ordinary man, in fact, the pealing of bells is a monotonous jangle and a nuisance, tolerable only when mitigated by remote distance and sentimental association.

The second occurs when the local policeman, Jack Priest, arrives on the scene of the exhumation of the unexpected body.

“Half a minute, half a minute, sir,” interrupted the policeman. “What day was it you said you buried Lady Thorpe, Harry?”
“January 4th, it were,” said Mr. Gotobed, after a short interval for reflection.
“And was this here body in the grave when you filled it up?”
“Now don’t you be a fool, Jack Priest,” retorted Mr. Gotobed. ” ‘Owever can you suppose as we’d fill up a grave with this here corpus in it? It ain’t a thing as a man might drop in careless like, without noticing.  If it was a pocket-knife or a penny-piece, that’d be another thing, but when it comes to the corpus of a full-grown man, that there question ain’t reasonable.”

So, if you enjoy the golden age of detective fiction but have not yet come around to Dorothy Sayers, then it’s about time you did.  It is a great read.

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An explanation:

The title The Nine Tailors comes from an old tradition in small villages of ringing the church bell to announce the death of a person.  From Wikipedia:

In some parishes in England the centuries old tradition of announcing a death on a church bell is upheld. In a small village most people would be aware of who was ill, and so broadcasting the age and sex of the deceased would identify them. To this end the death was announced by telling (i.e. single blows with the bell down) the sex and then striking off the years. Three blows meant a child, twice three a woman and thrice three a man. After a pause the years were counted out at approximately half-minute intervals. The word teller in some dialects becomes tailor, hence the old saying “Nine tailors maketh a man”.