Aaron Marc Stein / George Bagby / Hampton Stone

Matt Erridge by "Aaron Marc Stein": Matt Erridge | Sitting Up Dead

A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page

Aaron Marc Stein

Recommended Works:

Inspector Schmidt novels:

Dead on Arrival (1946) (Chapters 1, 2, first third of 7)

Drop Dead (1949) (Chapters 1, 2, 4, end of 7, start and end of 8, second half of 9, 10)

Coffin Corner (1949) (Chapters 1, end of 4, start of 7)

Blood Will Tell (1950)

Death Ain't Commercial (1951) (Chapters 1-5, 10)

Give the Little Corpse a Great Big Hand (1953) (Chapters 1, 2)

The Body in the Basket (1954)

A Dirty Way To Die (1955)

Murder's Little Helper (1963) (Chapters 2, 3, first half of 4, 6, 7, start of 11, 12, last part of 14)

Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt novels:

Death Takes a Paying Guest (1947) (Chapters 1-4, start of 5, second half of 9)

Three - With Blood (1950) (Chapters 1, 2, second half of 4, middle of 5)

Mask for Murder (1952) (Chapters 1-4, 7)

Moonmilk and Murder (1955) (Chapter 1)

Jeremiah X. Gibson novels:

The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead (1952) (Chapters 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 11)

The Real Serendipitous Kill (1964) (Chapters 1, 2, 3, middle section of 4, 6, first third of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse (1972) (Chapters 1, 3-7, first part of 8)

The above is not a complete list of the author's works. Rather, it consists of my picks of his best tales, the ones I enjoyed reading, and recommend to others.

Aaron Marc Stein / George Bagby / Hampton Stone

Aaron Marc Stein was a prolific mystery novelist, publishing books under his own name, and as "George Bagby" and "Hampton Stone". He wrote around 110 detective novels.

Commentary on Aaron Marc Stein:

Mystery*File has a career overview and reminiscence by Francis M. Nevins, and a review and more reviews and another group of reviews of early Bagby.
And a bibliographical survey by Steve Lewis, plus his reviews of I Could Have Died, Guaranteed to Fade, Country and Fatal, The Original Carcase, The Golden Creep, Moonmilk and Murder, Hangman's Row.
Marvin Lachman did an informative survey of the author for Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers.
Jon L. Breen points out in a letter to Old-Time Detection #46 (Autumn 2017) that Stein "was honored with a Grand Master Edgar from Mystery Writers of America, but like several of his fellow recipients (Judson Philips/Hugh Pentecost, Baynard Kendrick, George Harmon Coxe) he has fallen into comparative obscurity since his death. He deserves a rediscovery." (I agree!)
Curtis Evans' articles are at The Passing Tramp.
A bibliography can be found at the Golden Age of Detection Wiki.

The Mystery Story (1976) is a collection of essays edited by John Ball. An essay by Stein, is prefaced by biographical info: "During World War II, Mr. Stein went to work as a propaganda analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence, Office of War Information, and later in the U.S. Army as a Japanese code cryptanalyst." And "Mr. Stein's hobbies are art and archaeology; he delights in 'wandering the world watching other people's digs.'"

A guess:

Stein's interest in art is reflected in The Real Serendipitous Kill, The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse, The Girl with the Hole in Her Head.
Stein's interest in archaeology is seen in his series about archaeologist-detectives Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt. And in Sitting Up Dead.

Inspector Schmidt

As "George Bagby", he wrote a series about Inspector Schmidt, a New York City Homicide detective.

Links to the Van Dine School of Mystery Fiction

The books are vaguely Van Dine-ish in approach:

Like Van Dine, they take place in New York City.
They sometimes take place among prosperous New Yorkers, with a background in the arts or show biz.
Van Dine's disciple Ellery Queen once referred to the Van Dine followers as the "Straightforward American school" of detective fiction. Bagby has a similar straightforward approach as the other Van Dineans: the murder is committed right away, and the detective investigates it throughout the rest of the book, with no elaborate digressions or detours into personal lives, or action or suspense set-pieces.
The investigation sets forth the crime scene, and the movements of the suspects around it at various times.
There are positive non-stereotyped portraits of minorities. Please see my list of Civil Rights in Mystery Fiction, which includes a section on Van Dine School Writers.
Bagby shares the liberal politics generally found in the Van Dine School.
The Van Dine novels are narrated by a self-effacing man named Van Dine; a similar arrangement occurs in Van Dine follower Anthony Abbot's books. The Babgy novels are similarly narrated by a fictitious writer named "George Bagby". In scenes where the crime is being investigated, narrator Bagby is almost as invisible as Van Dine's and Abbot's narrators. However, Inspector Schmidt and Bagby regularly have two-person scenes where they discuss the case. Bagby becomes much more of a presence in these episodes.
The fictitious Bagby is a professional writer, and he narrates in a literate prose style with occasional cultural allusions. This is not as ornate as Van Dine's prose, but it does maintain a literate approach.

"I don't go in for descriptions of what police labs do and that sort of thing. My books pretty much depend on the mental processes of the detective." - Aaron Marc Stein, quoted in his New York Times obituary. Such a focus on detectives using thinking to solve cases, is characteristic of the Intuitionist tradition of detective fiction. The Van Dine School is a prominent part of that Intuitionist tradition.

Police Procedural

However, there are differences in the Bagby books from the Van Dine approach. Inspector Schmidt is not a flamboyant genius - he is a "regular guy", typical cop. And the stories maintain a certain tone of realism, in showing life in New York City. This gives the Bagby novels a "police procedural" quality. People who want to read a "realistic novel of police investigation in a big city" can enjoy the Bagby novels as falling into this paradigm.

There always was a police procedural aspect to the Van Dine school:

Most of the writers have an official New York City Homicide investigation as part of their story.
The chief sleuth is an actual NYC policeman in such Van Dine School writers as Anthony Abbot, C. Daly King, Rufus King, Helen Reilly and John Stephen Strange.

So Bagby's procedural approach can be seen as evolving from Van Dine tradition.

Ring Around a Murder

Ring Around a Murder (1936) is the second Inspector Schmidt mystery novel. It's a mainly disappointing, minor book. It suffers from a nasty racial slur (first half of Chapter 1).

The main characters seem underdeveloped in this early book. Both Schmidt and the narrator will seem more intelligent in later works than they do here. Both will also seem better at their jobs: in later books Schmidt will seem more experienced as a cop, in a seen-it-all way. And the writer-narrator will seem more erudite and more like a literary intellectual. He also seems more like a professional writer.

Best Part: The Opening Investigation

Ring Around a Murder has two decent if small subplots: the footprints, and the fingerprints. These are set forth in the book's best episode: the discovery and initial investigation of the murder (second half of Chapter 1, first half of Chapter 2). This episode, together with later bits that solve the mystery, could have made a good short story. Instead, they are lost within a vast novel.

A later "discovery and initial investigation" of another murder is also solidly told (last part of Chapter 10).

These two sections concentrate strictly on the mystery puzzle, and are full of plot. They also tell a bit about the layout of the house and grounds. The suspects don't appear - only Schmidt and the narrator.

Mystery Plot: The Fingerprints

SPOILERS. Bagby comes up with an original puzzle: the complete absence of fingerprints in the murder mansion (set forth in the middle of Chapter 2). He also provides a logical solution (solved in the middle of Chapter 3). The solution involves clothes: men's clothes are a long term Bagby interest.

Mystery Plot: The Footprints

The footprint mystery is unusual. It has aspects of an "impossible crime". It is set forth at the book's start (second half of Chapter 1), solved at the end (last part of Chapter 15). Footprints also play a role in Pistols for Two.

Mystery Plot: The Locked House

The footprint problem is linked to the book's other impossible crime: how did the killer escape from the the locked house?. This mystery comes to a legitimate but not too brilliant solution (end of Chapter 10, last part of Chapter 15).

Entire buildings that are locked, as opposed to locked rooms, were a staple of Carolyn Wells.

Comedy-Mystery

The blurb says that Ring Around a Murder "has the same combination of comedy, action and baffling clues that made Bagby's Murder at the Piano a great popular success." In other words, Bagby was being promoted by his publisher as an author of comedy-mysteries. I don't recall such explicit promotions of Bagby as a comic writer, by his post-1945 publishers.

The eccentric, comic family members indeed mark Ring Around a Murder as a comic mystery novel. Unfortunately, I found them more obnoxious than amusing.

Gay Subtext

When hunk Christopher gets his clothes wet in the snow, he takes them off to dry, and takes a nude nap on the rug in front of the fireplace (middle of Chapter 6). This happens off-stage - but is discussed suggestively by some women.

In a comedy scene, Schmidt mildly torments the hungover narrator, forcing him to get dressed and accompany him on a case (first half of Chapter 1). There is a slight undertone of dominance. The narrator even comically calls Schmidt a "sadist".

Ebenezer, known to everyone as Knees, is a drunk who is always making bitchy remarks. Unlike many of the other suspects, he has no heterosexual love life. He might well be intended as a "bitchy queen".

Metal Work

Suspect, eccentric elderly lady Beersheba Higley, is a collector of metalware, including rings and bottles. Bagby's books show a long time interest in metalware. It is already present in the early Ring Around a Murder.

Dead on Arrival

Stein stopped publishing during 1944 and 1945, due to his military service in World War II. Dead on Arrival, which appeared early in 1946, seems to be the first book he published after the war.

For similarities between this book and the author's later The Real Serendipitous Kill, please follow the link (the link will keep you in this same article and page).

A Gothic

Dead on Arrival (1946) deals with a bizarre, decayed family who lead isolated lives in a Manhattan brownstone. The characters are deliberately grotesque, and the novel has a Gothic quality.

The book is not much fun, after its well-done opening chapters. This sort of introspective look at a reclusive family is not Bagby's "thing". Bagby's other and better novels instead more often take an interest in the world around him.

Our introduction to Henry (Chapter 2) gives a detailed portrait of Henry's way of life. Bagby's novels often describe some interesting, public social activity or process. This section describes, not such a public process, but an eccentric recluse's private lifestyle.

Henry's enjoyment of toy construction sets, is an example of the metal ware in Bagby.

Science: Ecology And Invention

There are brief but trenchant comments on water pollution caused by sewage disposal (first third of Chapter 7). This is painted as a subject of rising concern. And one that has led to problems harvesting clams and oysters. This anticipates the ecological concerns in Corpse Candle (1967), Two in the Bush (1976).

The same section goes on to give the history of Henry's process for making synthetic rubber. This brings the book into the realm of Scientific Detection.

Architecture

A positive feature of Dead on Arrival is the unusual architecture of the brownstone (Chapter 1). It recalls Bagby architectural traditions:

As is common in Bagby, this architecture involves a stairway.
It centers on one of Bagby's odd rooms.
Bagby likes areas that are ambiguous about being inside or outside a house. This room is clearly inside. But it is a former entrance-way, and is a link between inside and outside.

Unfortunately, the architecture doesn't really play a role in the book's mystery plot. And it is mainly ignored after the opening chapter.

The opening also contains one of Bagby's vivid looks at a New York City neighborhood.

Color

On fairly rare occasions, Bagby breaks out into bright color imagery. He likes multicolored scenarios:

The staircase lights, each one a different eerie color, in Dead on Arrival (Chapter 1). We also read that decades ago there were "multicolored" Tiffany lamps on the stairs (Chapter 1).
The multi-colored pieces of paper used for the letters in The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (Chapter 1).
Alfie Jessup's blue tuxedo with red bow tie and cummerbund, in Give the Little Corpse a Great Big Hand (Chapter 1).
The multicolored farm machinery, in Sitting Up Dead (Chapter 10).
The rainbow clothes of hip coffee shop owner Mocha Milt, in The Real Serendipitous Kill (Chapter 2).

The purple carpet and furniture in the secret room is vivid (Chapter 7). It has a Gothic quality. This echoes the purple light on the stairway (last part of Chapter 1). Bagby claims that the purple light symbolizes (unnamed) depravity: part of the book's creepy, Gothic atmosphere.

Men's Clothes

The corpse wears dressy, interesting clothes. They are well-described (Chapter 1). Men in Bagby are often dressed-up.

Henry wears odd eccentric gear (Chapter 2).

Links to John Dickson Carr

Aspects of Dead on Arrival recall John Dickson Carr.

Henry's extravagant conversation has a Carr-like feel (Chapter 2). His discussion of sanity seems especially in the Carr tradition.

Terry Cromwell recalls the stalwart young heroes who run through Carr's novels.

The setting of Dead on Arrival recalls Carr's Death in Five Boxes (1938). Both take place inside houses that are:

Cut-off from the big-city world around them, filled with bizarre events.
Multi-storied, with a prominent staircase.
Have back entrances that play a role in the plot.

Dead on Arrival also resembles Death in Five Boxes, in that it takes a long time and many chapters, before the reader learns what has been going on in the house.

The Original Carcase

The Original Carcase (1946) centers on a family of rich New Yorkers who collect antiques, and the antique dealer who supplies them. This background among highbrow collectors is in the Van Dine school tradition.

The two places where the body is found have a surreal quality.

Mystery Plot

The opening (Chapters 1-5) tells a colorful tale. But the mystery never develops into a clever puzzle plot.

SPOILER. The people and events behind the crime, turn out to have little to do with the two families we meet in the opening chapters. The book presents the families as the chief suspects, then later on has them unconnected to the killing. This seems disappointing.

Crowds

The opening describes reactions of crowds of people, to the discovery of the body. We see crowds of party goers streaming in from a terrace, and later crowds in a fashionable lobby. Bagby's books often have crowd scenes, in which the reactions of the public to some event is made clear. The crowds are often a "character", with their own public reaction to events.

Male Bonding

The characters include two idealized young men who male bond, ethnic John Bragioni and upper crust Ted Edwards. They were formerly Army buddies - Bagby's male comrades often meet at their work (Chapters 1, 2).

During the war, circumstances, and Bragioni's accomplishments, made Bragioni Ted Edwards' commanding officer. This helped develop what the book calls Edwards' "hero worship" of Bragioni.

What is going on between Bragioni and Edwards is clearly romantic, at least are far as Edwards' feelings go. But it also has dimensions of political commentary. One might speculate that the war has broken down the previously rigid class structure in which Edwards' family had lived, placing him for the first time under the leadership of a man not from his elite social class. The war is seen as a democratizing element, making possible a new equality in American society.

Expertise and Male Bonding

The book mentions that part of Bragioni's appeal to Ted Edwards, is Bragioni's expert knowledge of (unspecified) subjects that are important to young people of the day. One wonders if this is an oblique way of referring to left-of-center political ideas. One wishes there were more about this in the novel.

Expertise of all sorts is an important value in Bagby's fiction. In The Original Carcase, it helps fuel one man's passionate devotion to another.

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (1948) is one of Bagby's dreariest novels. It has a peculiarly lifeless quality, which makes it no fun to read. However, it does have a good if small section (Chapter 2). The book is no relation to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1965-1966), aside from having the same title.

Mystery Plot

One of the better sections reconstructs the events surrounding the killing (Chapter 2, and a later passage in the middle of Chapter 3). If Bagby had published this section as a short story, together with a few later bits and the crime's solution, he would have had a decent work.

The reconstruction leaves open two mysteries about the victim, as the book points out (middle of Chapter 3). In Cold Blood comes up with a sound, mildly ingenious explanation for these mysteries (middle of Chapter 9). SPOILER. These mysteries involve:

The cause of the drunkenness.
The origin of the fur coat.

The solution shows a "hidden scheme" lying behind these riddles. "Hidden schemes" are a standard, solid approach in much mystery fiction. Please see the discussion of hidden schemes in the article on Edward D. Hoch.

The night club (where the crime is reconstructed in Chapter 2) is a bit like the restaurant settings that open other Bagby novels.

Race

Henry, the washroom attendant at the night club, is a positive, non-stereotyped black character. In Cold Blood is clearly signaling a pro-Civil Rights message - although it does not discuss the Civil Rights movement. The book criticizes the racial prejudice Henry faces from a Southerner (Chapter 2).

Henry mainly appears in this same early section that reconstructs the crime (Chapter 2). This is another reason to regard this section as better than the rest of the novel.

Please see my list of Civil Rights in Mystery Fiction, which includes a section on Van Dine School Writers.

Links to Vera Caspary

In Cold Blood shares subject matter with Vera Caspary's novella "The Murder at the Stork Club" (1945). Both works:

Are set in Manhattan night clubs, viewed negatively.
Center on a financially successful working career woman who is unhappy with her poor provider husband, and who leads a largely independent existence.
Have the woman reward herself for her efforts by buying herself a fur coat: a major status symbol of the era.

Despite these similarities, In Cold Blood differs greatly in both its details and its mystery plot from Caspary's tale. It shows an influence in overall subject matter, but is far from being any sort of re-working of Caspary's novella.

Characters and Society

Adding to the unpleasant tone of much of In Cold Blood are some of the characters.

Danny Earle is a young man who works in the victim's dress shop. He is sexually harassed by his woman boss into being her escort and gigolo (Chapters 2, 3). We also learn about his duties in the shop (middle of Chapter 5). These sections cast a light on ugly realities of the era. In Cold Blood predates another look at a gigolo, the film Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950). In both In Cold Blood and Sunset Boulevard the gigolo is a young man pressured by a middle-aged woman who employs him. Both men suffer from self-hate.

Gigolo characters are also found in Bagby's A Dirty Way To Die.

Danny Earle's name anticipates Danny Kirk in Murder's Little Helper. Both are very young men.

A bizarre woman night club singer called The Tramp is highlighted. She is grotesque. I don't know enough about popular music to know if she had any real world analogues. She is much less entertaining and sympathetic than the pop singing group in Bagby's Death Ain't Commercial.

Wholesale Produce Market

For no apparent reason, In Cold Blood pokes fun at a produce market (Chapter 1). I think Emma Lathen's detailed, sympathetic treatment of such a market is much superior. See Lathen's Green Grow the Dollars (1982) (Chapter 11).

Men's Clothes and Furniture

The Inspector notes that the truck drivers making deliveries to the huge wholesale produce market tend to wear leather jackets or sweaters (Chapter 1). More elaborate leather clothes will appear in Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser and Sitting Up Dead.

We first see Danny Earle sleeping on a leather settee in the outer men's room (start of Chapter 2). Leather furniture also appears in Dead Drunk.

Well-dressed men in pinstripe suits occur in the author's books:

Danny Earle wears a good chalk-stripe flannel coat. In Cold Blood (start of Chapter 2).
Coach Jake Stand in Coffin Corner (start of Chapter 7).
Young heir Howard Jackson in The Kid Was Last Seen Hanging Ten (start of Chapter 4).
Businessman Ralph Henderson in The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse.

Drop Dead

Drop Dead (1949) is a pleasing if uneven mystery novel.

Background: Housing Shortage

Drop Dead takes place against a Background of the post-war housing shortage in New York City. Many aspects of the story are integrated with this shortage.

In both The Original Carcase (1946) and Drop Dead, there are waiting lists for tenants who want to move to other and better apartments, within their same building.

Mystery Plot

There are good reasons why the first crime should be seen as "a murder, not an accident" (start of Chapter 2, second half of Chapter 10).

SPOILERS. There are some decent Scientific Detection features in the first murder. Drop Dead is careful to have explicit, fair play scientific clues that point to the identity of the killer (middle of Chapter 2, end of Chapter 8).

Scientific material occasionally shows up in Bagby novels: see the salmonella subplot in Murder's Little Helper. That subplot is different in specific details from the main scientific detection about the murder in Drop Dead. However, the subplot about the movements of the cream cake in Drop Dead (middle of Chapter 2, middle of Chapter 4, near the end of Chapter 8) recalls the trail of the pie in Murder's Little Helper.

The Kid

The first section deals light-heartedly with an 11-year-old boy, Richard Holmes, and is quite funny (most of Chapter 1). However, this material has little connection with the rest of the novel. It is in fact something of an unfair coincidence, that it happens to take place at the same time and place as the murder in the story.

Other 1940's mystery authors included dynamic little boys as comic characters:

Mother Finds a Body (1942) by Gypsy Rose Lee (and maybe actually by Craig Rice).
Sailor, Take Warning! (1943-1944) and There Was a Crooked Man (1945) by Kelley Roos.

Later sections of Drop Dead put this kid in frightening, far more suspenseful situations. These sections are fairly absorbing to read. But the idea of a child in danger is distasteful, and should have been avoided.

Radio

The kid (Chapter 1) makes humorous references to real-life radio shows:

Casey, Crime Photographer, based on the Flash Casey tales by George Harmon Coxe.
The Amazing Mr. Malone, based on the John J. Malone tales by Craig Rice.
Counterspy. Created by Phillips H. Lord, best known for the radio show Gang Busters. (See also the Gang Busters comic book.)

One wonders if these are tributes to writers Bagby admires.

Architecture

Drop Dead is one of several books by the author set in various New York City apartment houses, such as The Original Carcase, Blood Will Tell, The Man Who Looked Death in the Eye, Murder's Little Helper. Unlike some Bagby books, there only a little unusual architecture in the building in Drop Dead. We do learn about the architecture of the building in detail, however, and this can be pleasant reading.

The most unusual architectural feature is Scalsi's one-room dwelling of in the basement (middle of Chapter 2). This comes in for some later negative comment, deservedly! (near the start of Chapter 8.)

The twin apartment houses next door to each other recall the twin towers in The Original Carcase. The conditions inside the second apartment building in Drop Dead make an almost surreal contrast with those in the first (middle of Chapter 7).

The little-known door in the basement connects two buildings that are next door to each other (end of Chapter 7, near the start of Chapter 8). Such doors have a long history in mystery fiction:

The Clue in the Air (1917) by Isabel Ostrander.
The Black Curtain (1941) by Cornell Woolrich.

Both in The Clue in the Air and Drop Dead this door enables a suspect to move around unobserved despite a police watch on the building.

The elevator is an important locale. The author's The Real Serendipitous Kill and Dead on Arrival involve construction work on or near their buildings' staircases. The murder in Drop Dead involves work on the elevator's wiring and controls.

Men's Clothes

The "Loiterer" is an idealized well-to-do guy. He is first described in terms of his beautiful clothes. These have a vaguely formal appearance, although they are not actually formal wear (middle of Chapter 4). He anticipates a bit some other upper crust men who are admirably well-dressed, such as John Blake in Murder's Little Helper, and Ralph Henderson in The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse.

He also has a close, military style haircut. We eventually learn he has served in the Navy.

Inspector Schmidt the Bachelor

Inspector Schmidt calls himself "the bachelor-type" and says women are not attracted to him (Chapter 1). He compares himself to Sherlock Holmes in this regard. These remarks can perhaps be read hinting that the Inspector is gay. However, such a conclusion is not proven by these remarks.

In most of the Bagby books I have read, there is little discussion of Inspector Schmidt's personal life. This look at his bachelor status is unusual.

Shortly after this, Bagby-the-narrator is depicted as sleeping overnight at the Inspector's apartment.

The suspects in Drop Dead are generally heterosexual. Many are members of married couples. Few seem to have any gay subtext.

Coffin Corner

Coffin Corner (1949) is a readable but uneven mystery novel. Coffin Corner is at its best in its long opening (Chapter 1). This opening has the book's best mystery plotting, and the best architecture.

Football Recruiting

Coffin Corner has a background in football, especially recruiting. There are no football games or football action in the book. Instead there is a detailed look at an unsavory football recruiting system.

The in-depth look at football recruiting has the "anthropological" feel often found in Bagby, explaining how a society or institution works.

The pro football team in the novel is the Jaguars. This anticipates the Yucatan setting of Mask for Murder.

The Title

"Coffin Corner" was a term used in football. Anthony Boucher had earlier used "Coffin Corner" (1943) as the title of a mystery short story.

The "Coffin Corner" technique has a punter kick the football to a corner of the field. It is rarely used today. But it was clearly popular enough in the 1940's to inspire two mysteries! In Coffin Corner football star Griff Clark has made his entire career off of "Coffin Corner" plays, something the public loves (end of Chapter 1).

Bagby perhaps had the word "Corner" on his mind in this period. His first Jeremiah X. Gibson mystery was titled The Corpse in the Corner Saloon (1948).

Bagby's books often have catchy, inventive titles. He told Eric Pace and the New York Times (7-7-78) "A good title is something that catches the eye and the imagination". The same article reports: "Mr. Stein said he stays relaxed about titles, and they mostly just pop into his head as he works on his novels".

Mystery Plot

The best parts of the mystery mainly come early on (Chapter 1):

The medical examiner does a decent job reconstructing the crime (first part of Chapter 1). He explores a lot of different ideas.
The puzzle about the "Embraceable" powder is good. It has an unusual premise (Chapter 1). Inspector Schmidt has the lab do some solid detective work (Chapter 1). Soon after Schmidt outlines two plausible solutions (Chapter 1). The actual answer is a surprise (end of Chapter 4).

Except for the Embraceable subplot solution, I couldn't see much interesting or creative about the mystery plot of Coffin Corner, after the opening. Bagby shows his usual conscientiousness, with plenty of plot detail. But nothing is inspired.

There are some mildly interesting, but not great, mystery plot developments in the next chapter (Chapter 2):

The maid's discovery (middle of Chapter 2).
This discovery builds on the detailed account of the victim's daily routine. This routine has many steps. First we get an account from Wentworth, then in more detail by the maid (first half of Chapter 2).

The killer's motive, revealed at the end, is weak and far-fetched.

Architecture: The Apartment

The most creative feature of Coffin Corner is the unusual apartment. Its architecture is set forth early on (second half of Chapter 1). There is added description of its layout (middle of Chapter 2), although this extra detail is not too interesting. This apartment shows the Golden Age interest in unusual architecture. The huge apartment of the rich makes a contrast with the housing shortage affecting ordinary people in Drop Dead of the same year.

The apartment has militaristic features in its towers and battlements (Chapter 1). And the building as a whole is compared to an armory. Its living room has an entirely "male" feel.

From the outside, the apartment does not look as if it is there. Instead, it looks like a collection of architectural ornaments (Chapter 1). The way the living room looks more like a men's club lobby is also illusionistic. Buildings that cleverly convey some sort of illusion are a Bagby tradition: see Blood Will Tell, Murder's Little Helper and Corpse Candle.

Ethnics Getting Equality

Football recruiting is seen negatively in Coffin Corner. Significantly, the most sympathetic football player in Coffin Corner is one who did not participate in the recruitment system. Stu Winowski joined a pro football team after graduating college. He is trying to build up a nest egg from his football salary, before starting his career as a lawyer. Stu Winowski thus entered pro football at a far later stage than the other players, who were recruited in college or even high school.

Stu Winowski's Polish name makes a conspicuous contrast with the other characters, who are old-school WASP's. Like John Bragioni in The Original Carcase, he is an ethnic whose ability and character are pushing him towards a leadership position in a changing America. He forms a contrast with the unimpressive J.J. Wentworth, the WASP who has inherited his family's money and football team.

The Case of the Absent-Minded Professor (1943) had included a college football coach with the ethnic name Paul Y. Wiznowsky. He worked for an "appendage to a football stadium that called itself a university".

Men's Clothes

Bagby novels often describe men's clothes. Coffin Corner has a brief passage about the excellent clothes of football coach Jake Stand (start of Chapter 7). Jake Stand is admirably well-dressed, including the pinstripe suit that was de rigueur in the 1940's film noir era. Coffin Corner makes a point of noting that Jake Stand's clothes are much better than condescending stereotypes of how people allegedly dress in farm country (he's from Nebraska). Stand's behavior is also noted as not "provincial". Bagby is a New Yorker - but he's out to shatter stereotypes of people in middle regions of the USA.

The statue of the patriarch shows him as a football player in a turtleneck and "moleskin britches" (Chapter 1). The book points out how odd it is to see a statue of such clothes. (Moleskin is made out of cotton. Despite its name, it is not made from moles.)

The wealthy football stadium owners have security guards. They wear "neat gray uniforms" (Chapter 1). A guard "jerks his thumb": a macho, aggressive gesture. In comic books, such thumb gestures are often made by uniformed men. Please see my list of Thumb Gestures in Comics.

Football star Griff Clark has a "famous number", 17. Off the field, he wears sweat shirts with the number (end of Chapter 1). This is an unusual form of personal swagger. Also 1 and 7 are phallic symbol numbers, common in illustrations and films. Please see my article on Sports Numbers and Their Symbolism.

Blood Will Tell

Blood Will Tell (1950) is an absorbing piece of storytelling. It has richly developed characters. The story is comic, but not a farce. The characters do not run around creating havoc; instead, the book is a series of interviews with the characters by the police, in which the suspects' personalities come to comic light.

Society

Brother-sister pairs are important in Blood Will Tell, as they are in The Original Carcase. Butterfield and his sister both work in design, giving the book a link to the Van Dine tradition of New Yorkers in creative work. These are the two most sympathetic suspects, intended as a rebuke to the pretentious social climbers and parasites on the rich among the other suspects. The ex-chorus girl also has a theater background.

The ex-chorine is basically a courtesan - and more sympathetic than a woman in the novel seeking marriage. One wonders if this aspect is also suggesting sympathy for other kinds of non-standard sexuality.

Architecture

Blood Will Tell shows the architectural interest of Golden Age mystery fiction. Much of it takes place in a fancy Park Avenue apartment building. The author uses the continued architectural exploration of the building as a main structural feature of the plot. One of the book's best plot twists concerns an architectural feature. Blood Will Tell also follows Van Dine School traditions, in investigating the movements of the characters around the crime scene at the time of the murder.

The corpse is found in a "fire stairs", just like sinister discoveries in the next Bagby book Death Ain't Commercial. These are rarely used back stairs, provided mainly for use as escapes from fire. Their doors tend to open on only one side, an interesting feature. Where and how doors are located, is used to add complexity and interest to the architecture.

Mystery Plot: The Murder

The weakest part of Blood Will Tell is the solution of the mystery at the end. The choice of killer is poorly motivated. And there are few clues pointing to the killer. This unimpressive choice makes the end the least good part of an otherwise absorbing book. Bagby would have been better off bringing the murder home to the suspect who was the main inheritor under the will.

However, the finale continues the interaction between the building's architecture and the killing, which is a plus.

Death Ain't Commercial

Pop Idols

Death Ain't Commercial (1951) centers on a pop music group, also an example of the Van Dine School's interest in show biz. The group of six men are well-dressed sophisticates, a bit like the Rat Pack to come. They are that phenomenon of those times, idols of "bobby-soxers" (teenage girls). Bagby's interest is in the men in the group and their personalities. He does not widen his scope to a portrait of the pop music industry as a whole, or its business aspects.

The six men have family ties, and all live and work together in the same office and same home. They resemble the eccentric families of grown-ups found in some Van Dine School writers, especially Ellery Queen. At times the men's bizarre behavior approaches the surrealism of Queen.

The portrait of the men in the opening section (Chapters 1-5) forms the main interest of the book. The men's relationship offers another example of Bagby's interest in men who are closely connected.

Other Bagby mysteries include popular music singers:

A nightclub chanteuse in In Cold Blood.
The folk rock types in Corpse Candle.
Country musicians in Country and Fatal (1980).

The song lyrics (end of Chapter 1) anticipate the song lyrics in Corpse Candle.

Men's Clothes: Pop Stars

The men all dress the same, being part of a singing group, and Bagby develops this for maximum surreal effect.

In addition to anticipating the Rat Pack, the group also foreshadows such late 1990's pop ensembles as "98 Degrees" in the USA and "2Be3" in France. Such groups were regularly photographed wearing common or coordinated clothes, like the pop group in Death Ain't Commercial. The standard music industry classification of "98 Degrees" and "2Be3" as "boy bands" is misleading: both groups contained men in their twenties, who dressed and acted as adults, not teenagers. The pop group in Death Ain't Commercial similarly consists of grown-ups.

Such groups as "98 Degrees" and "2Be3" resemble in their image and clothes such "well-dressed singers in their twenties" solo acts as Vanilla Ice and Ricky Martin. Vanilla Ice and Ricky Martin also very much dress and look like adults.

It was also fairly common for rock groups in the 1960's to be dressed alike on stage.

While this is not explicit in Death Ain't Commercial, shared clothes for men often express a gay subtext. So do the close relationships between the men in the group.

Men's Clothes: Wolf Suit

A wolf suit costume at the end, a briefly seen piece of imagery, also offers a striking touch. Ellery Queen solved a Halloween mystery while wearing a cat costume in "The Dead Cat" (1946; based on a 1939 radio play) in Calendar of Crime. See my list of Animal Costumes in Fiction.

Offices

The offices (Chapter 1) anticipate imagery to come in The Real Serendipitous Kill:

Two offices are full of photographs montages on the walls. This anticipates the art in The Real Serendipitous Kill.
The scrawled writing in red anticipates the calligraphy in The Real Serendipitous Kill.
The crowd events where the singer was mobbed by fans, displayed in photos on the inside wall, anticipate the (far more artistic) Happening in The Real Serendipitous Kill.
Each office has a different approach to decor, revealing something about its occupant. Similarly each studio has a veery different approach to art in The Real Serendipitous Kill.

All such ideas are more elaborately developed in The Real Serendipitous Kill.

Threat

The "sick" threatening letter will return in The Funniest Killer in Town (1967). In both books the letters are typewritten. Anonymous threatening letters also play a major role in The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (1949).

Mystery Plot

The solution involves a puzzle plot. However, the solution's ideas are none too creative. An alibi centers an an old, old gimmick, although Babgy provides a slightly new twist.

Scared to Death

Scared to Death (1952) is a minor book, more subdued and restrained than Bagby's better fiction. The characters are ordinary, there is neither architectural nor New York detail, and little surrealism.

Bagby gets comedy from weary policeman Schmidt's desire to take off his shoes. Both The Original Carcase and Scared to Death have Inspector Schmidt running around crime scenes shoeless in his socks. This can seem surreal. It leads to strange effects, and often has bystanders gawking.

Expertise, Thoughtful Observation and Male Bonding

An observant young doctor who treats the victim, does some bonding with Inspector Schmidt. This shows the way this era valued brains in men, and the way people took pride in the mental skills with which they performed their job.

Mystery Plot

On the plus side, the subplot about the cab driver shows mild ingenuity. It is set forth in the start of Chapter 2, solved in the last section of Chapter 5.

The choice of killer surprised me. However, this is partly due to the choice being really implausible!

SPOILER. Running through the main mystery plot, are developments involving men's clothes. They are in the same broad tradition as the "men's clothes" plot ideas in Ellery Queen beginning with the hats in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). Bagby is in there trying to create a puzzle plot, but his version just seems labored. It does bring together several disparate pieces of data scattered throughout the story, weaving them into a hidden pattern: always a nice development.

The Corpse With Sticky Fingers

The Corpse With Sticky Fingers (1952) is one of Bagby's lesser books. It does have a couple of decent mystery plot ideas: see below.

Stereotypes

Biggest problem: a negatively stereotyped gay man, among the suspects. This guy starts out as a humorous figure, but his depiction throughout the book just keeps getting more and more negative. It is unclear why Bagby, whose books are full of sympathetic portraits of male bonding, would then create such a negative portrait of a gay man.

The gay man is a big city department store window dresser. This in fact was a profession often associated with gay men in that era. The great film director Vincente Minnelli had a job early in his career, creating window displays for a Chicago department store. See Mark Griffin's book A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli (2010).

Department Store Window

Another problem: by 1952, the "corpse in the department store window" gambit was old hat. It had already appeared in The French Powder Mystery (1930) by Ellery Queen, Death Demands an Audience (1940) by Helen Reilly, and in Bagby's own The Original Carcase (1946). In terms of story and dramatic situation, Bagby does not do much that had not already been done in these previous works.

The windows in Reilly's Death Demands an Audience and The Corpse With Sticky Fingers are both kinetic: both are raised out of a basement region, where they can be accessed by a corridor. I suspect that both Reilly and Bagby were inspired by a real life department store. Workers load up the window displays with mannequins and props in the basement, then raise them to ground level so they can be seen by people in the street.

Bagby does get architectural interest, out of the moving display windows. The windows are highly rectilinear. This recalls another rectilinear area for a crime, the milpas in Mask for Murder.

Department Store Window: Mystery Sub-Plot

Bagby also comes up with a mystery plot reason, to explain why crimes are taking place in the windows. This is not brilliant, but it is sound enough (explained in the solution in Chapter 10). On the negative side, such windows seem awfully public for any criminal activity to occur there. One would think the culprit would have found a more secluded place.

SPOILER. On the positive side, the reason behind the window crimes is linked to an interesting, creative clue: the corpse with sticky fingers mentioned in the title (set forth in the first half of Chapter 6, solved in Chapter 10).

Mystery Sub-Plot: The Silver

The other good mystery subplot involves the silver sold in the department store. This fun plot is set forth in the middle of the book (first half of Chapter 6) and solved long before the ending (second half of Chapter 7). It is zany and full of surreal imagery. It adds a note of pleasant comedy to the story. It is not enormously plausible - but its comic tone asks us to grant a slightly implausible plot development indulgence.

I wish this fun bit of mystery were in a better novel. It is the main reason one might want to seek out a copy of The Corpse With Sticky Fingers.

Give the Little Corpse a Great Big Hand

Give the Little Corpse a Great Big Hand (1953) is a mystery with a nightclub setting, like In Cold Blood. It is best in its opening (Chapters 1, 2). This opening is colorful, the rest of the novel is conventional. Unfortunately, there is nothing much interesting about the book's mystery plots.

Race

Give the Little Corpse a Great Big Hand also resembles In Cold Blood, in that both books look at race relations. Both:

Have non-stereotyped, dignified black characters working at the nightclub.
Denounce racism.

Please see my list of Civil Rights in Mystery Fiction, which includes a section on Van Dine School Writers.

Men's Clothes

The black men are interrupted by the police while changing back into regular clothes after their nightclub act. One is therefore still barefoot (Chapter 2). This links this sympathetic character to imagery usually associated with hero Inspector Schmidt himself, who loves to remove his shoes.

Shady operator Alfie Jessup wears a blue tuxedo with a red bow tie and cummerbund (Chapter 1). Such brilliantly colored, non-black evening wear marks him as strictly non-U. It conveys that he is a cheap but flashy low-life.

By contrast, much is made of how clean the college crowd looks. We learn that young romantic hero Tony Graham, one of this clean and clean-cut group, is expensively well-dressed (Chapter 1). But we don't learn details of his outfit, or his friends' clothes.

The Rich

Tony Graham turns out to be a self-made success story, who worked hard at a career (start of Chapter 6). He is contrasted with his rival for the heroine's affections Alex Harper, a rich kid who regards the idea of work with horror. Harper is under the thumb of his even worse tycoon older brother. This anticipates the look at rich rotten families in Bagby's next book Dead Drunk. However, these Harpers are more conventional and thus less interesting than the father and son in Dead Drunk.

Dead Drunk

Dead Drunk (1953) is a minor and mainly unpleasant book. It does have moments of social commentary.

Permutations of Crime

Dead Drunk has an unusual plot construction for a Bagby book. It mainly consists of an endless series of permutations, of various kinds of corruption among a small group of rich people. Bagby keeps twisting the plot, exposing new layers of crime, relationships, evil and criminal schemes among this well-to-do set. These schemes stretch through this group's 10-year history with each other.

This plot takes a certain amount of ingenuity. It has the merit of being a large design, with a huge number of details fitting into the overall pattern.

Unfortunately, I think this sort of plot has limitations:

I'm less impressed with "plot twists" than many readers seem to be.
And the book lacks "fair play": it is hard to see how readers could predict and/or deduce these twists, based on any clues in the story.

I prefer more standard kinds of mysteries-with-solutions plots.

The Macho vs the Un-Macho

A key contrast is between the macho, well-built father Bill Ledbury, and his skinny, painfully un-macho, un-athletic son Curt Ledbury (Chapter 3).

Fiction of all sorts is rife with such contrasts and comparisons. In our culture, the athletic is often seen as healthy and normal, the un-macho as abnormal or diseased. Furthermore, macho men are seen as competent and practical.

SPOILERS. Dead Drunk shatters all stereotypes, by having the un-macho son be highly competent at business, and the macho father be an incompetent fool. This is presented as a surprise twist (start of Chapter 5). It certainly surprised me.

SPOILERS. Later, we get an in-depth look showing the lifestyle obsessions of the macho father. This B.M.O.C. lifestyle is highly unappealing. This too has an element of social criticism (middle of Chapter 8). The inside look at corrupt football recruiting recalls the more detailed accounts in Coffin Corner, a novel whose main subject is football.

Corruption in a Financial Firm

Dead Drunk centers on a major Wall Street stock brokerage, Ledbury and Curtis. It is depicted as perhaps the most famous of Wall Street financial houses (Chapter 1).

SPOILERS. We eventually learn the firm has a massive, decades-long history of corruption (start of Chapter 5). This reminds one of the criticism of Wall Street houses often made during the financial crisis that began in 2007.

Architecture

The alley shows Bagby getting drama out of a seemingly minimalistic environment (end of Chapter 1, start of Chapter 2).

The victim's apartment is vividly described (Chapter 2, start of Chapter 3). While simple, it is integrated in interesting ways with the rest of the building.

The gambler Morton's house has some unusual features (Chapter 4). It is "defensible": capable of standing up to an armed attack. And it has an unusual front door.

Men's Clothes

Our first view of the victim shows him wearing what the well-dressed businessman of the era wore (near start of Chapter 1). Both the covert overcoat and the well-shined shoes recall the spiffy rich guy called the Loiterer in Drop Dead. Well-dressed Jake Stand in Coffin Corner (start of Chapter 7) also wears a covert coat.

Two scenes depict white tie and tails. This is always the dressiest possible look for men:

The victim is well-dressed. At one point, he appears in white tie and tails that have been especially tailored for him (Chapter 1).
Later we get a view of the evening shirt the father wears with his white tie and tails (middle of Chapter 3). The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends (1953) of the same year also looks at expensive men's shirts - although those shirts are day wear to be worn with suits.

See Gordon Hobbes in Two in the Bush, who also wears tails.

The Body in the Basket

The Body in the Basket (1954) is a key Bagby book.

An Unusual Setting for Inspector Schmidt

The Body in the Basket is unusual in the Bagby works, in that it takes Inspector Schmidt out of his home territory of New York City. Instead it moves him to Spain, far out of his jurisdiction: a setting we might more likely find in one of the Stein books about globetrotters like Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt or Matt Erridge.

What might Bagby's reasons be, for choosing Inspector Schmidt as his sleuth instead of Mulligan, Hunt or Erridge? Tim Mulligan, Elsie Mae Hunt and Matt Erridge are all amateur detectives. None has any official standing. By contrast, Inspector Schmidt can bill himself in Spain as a "visiting US official". Schmidt can request the cooperation of the Spanish Government. Schmidt is not in charge of the homicide investigation in Spain, but he can maintain an official presence and standing. This plays a key role throughout The Body in the Basket. It is especially important in the virtuosic central section of The Body in the Basket (Chapters 5 - 7), where Schmidt conducts a long, intricate negotiation with Spanish officials.

In addition, Schmidt has a certain moral gravitas that the other sleuths lack - although they are highly moral characters. Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt are zany, eccentric sleuths, who often plunge into events with a feel of comic adventure. And Matt Erridge is a two-fisted action figure with a yen for fighting. By contrast, Inspector Schmidt represents the official New York police, and by extension, the United States Government. He is a Moral Authority figure. While there is plenty of wry commentary and humor in the Inspector Schmidt books, they also represent a man who offers an official moral viewpoint. This allows The Body in the Basket a moral "place to stand", it its critique of the dictatorial Franco regime in Spain.

The Opening: The Restaurant

The Body in the Basket opens in a prestige restaurant in Madrid, Spain. Other Stein novels begin in restaurants abroad, too: Three - With Blood, Mask for Murder. Such settings allow:

Rich "foreign atmosphere", detailing in concrete terms what life is like in a foreign country.
Glamour and escapism, showing us a tourist site where the books' readers might want to go - or at least fantasize about as armchair travelers.
An upbeat, "safe" locale, contrasting with later danger-filled suspense passages in the novel. "Change of mood" is an important aspect of fiction structure.
The introduction of a multitude of characters.

The sheer concreteness of detail in Bagby books suggests real-life experience. One suspects either Bagby has frequently eaten in such restaurants himself, or intensively quizzed a friend who has. The detail goes beyond what might be gleaned from guidebooks. It thus gives a "you are there", inside look at foreign countries. It also ties in with the "anthropological" feel often found in Bagby, where characters explain how a society or institution works.

The Opening: Men's Clothes

The first page gives us a look a waiter's spiffy formal wear. Stein/Bagby has a long-term interest in fancy men's clothes.

The fancy but sinister uniforms worn by the secret police, also gain in resonance by recurring at key intervals in the novel.

Male Bonding

Englishman David Horsham is the sort of nice young foreign man, that the heroes of Bagby books like to male bond with. In his quiet way Horsham is upper crust, recalling the young foreign hero in Three - With Blood. Both men combine upper class polish with a fiery dynamism.

The narrator suggests approvingly that Horsham likes to get into fights (Chapter 1). Horsham anticipates Stein's later hero Matt Erridge, who is a two-fisted adventurer who loves to get into scraps. This cult of the manly fistfight was big in the 1950's, when TV private eyes and cowboys all excelled at fisticuffs. However, it has dated badly today, when any sort of fight is likely to erupt into deadly, life-ruining gun violence.

The narrator thinks Horsham looks better when Horsham is angry (Chapter 1). The linking of attractiveness to anger and fiery qualities is sometimes seen in other works:

The fashion spread "Formal Yves" in GQ magazine, December 1988, photographed by Matthew Rolston. Most of the shoot shows the smiling hero, very well-dressed in black tuxedos that also recall prestige business suits. He looks extraordinarily powerful and upper crust. But the last photo shows the angry, furious hero (Olivier Debray) in a pared-down, minimalist tuxedo, captioned "In a Hot Debate, Formal Finery Commands Attention". This guy is arguing and aggressively making a point and taking a stand, not physically fighting. He looks like he is in a high-powered confrontation in the business world. Photos.
The photo shoot as a whole opens with the standing tuxedoed hero staring up from below at the viewer, saluting him. This turns the viewer into the hero's commanding officer. It's as if the entire photo shoot is being carried out in obedience to the viewer's orders.
In the episode The Judgement (1968) of Cimarron Strip, handsome villain Burr DeBenning often glares angrily at the hero.
The cover paintings of pulp magazines 12 Sports Aces (Vol 7 #2, January 1943) and Ace Sports (Vol 16 #2, January 1948) show hockey player #7 in a spectacular red uniform yelling aggressively. Photo.
Roy Lichtenstein's Pop Art painting Okay Hot-Shot, Okay! (1963) shows its handsome pilot hero expressing intense emotion. It's based on a comic book tale drawn by Russ Heath, "The Haunted Tank vs Killer Tank" (G.I. Combat #94, June-July 1962). Heath is the primary creator of this portrait, although Lichtenstein enhanced it. See Wikipedia.
Seagram's Gin had a long series of magazine ads, in which well-dressed men tell their cocktail-making secrets. Usually the men are smiling. But the hero is glaring angrily in "Our martini secret? Dip a lemon peel in Vermouth." (Sports Illustrated, 11-15-1971). This man is in dressy-but-conventional clothes that seem designed to show both success and business aggression. A blue business suit and heavy cufflinks with his dress shirt: both standard businessman items. He looks like he's laying down the law in a corporate boardroom. The knife this wealthy, authoritative young man has used to cut the lemon peel, adds a further note of threat. He's giving the viewer an angry order. His perfectly coiffed black hair adds to his image as a tough authority figure. Photo.
The above was likely modeled on an earlier Seagram's ad "My perfect gin and tonic? Add a slice of cucumber." (August 1970). The unsmiling executive doesn't look angry, but he sure looks serious. He's giving a order to the viewer. His expensive blue suit has big businessman features: pinstripes, peaked lapels, big aggressive shoulders. Like the hero of the later ad, a phallic knife adds a sense of threat.
A follow-up Seagram's ad also has its hero giving an order: "Our summer drink secret? Pre-chill the glasses in the freezer." (July 1972). But this hero is not angry. Instead he looks earnest, as if he were trying to be persuasive. He's not in business gear. Instead his velvet sports coat and shirt are among the best Mod clothes of the era. The numerous tall glasses he's ordered chilled are vigorously phallic, but in a non-violent way.
See my list of Thumb Gestures in Comics, often used by sexy angry men.

Business Abroad

As a Britisher, Horsham has strict limits on the currency he can take out of England while traveling. This inside look at business abroad will recur in the Matt Erridge books.

Works, not by Bagby, that mention British currency restrictions of the era:

The film Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954).
The thriller novel Destination Unknown (1955) by Agatha Christie.

Mystery Plot

The mystery plot is not the most interesting aspect of The Body in the Basket. The political critique of Franco, the intricate negotiations, the background are all more interesting.

Still, Bagby has not neglected to provide a formal murder mystery puzzle. It has a pair of virtues. SPOILERS:

The choice of villain is well-concealed.
This surprise about the choice of villain depends on a mildly ingenious twist, re-interpreting an event we witnessed earlier in the novel, giving it a new meaning (seen in Chapter 2, reinterpreted at the end).

A Dirty Way To Die

A Dirty Way To Die (1955) is a middling mystery. Its first half is lively, and makes entertaining reading (Chapter 1 to middle of Chapter 6). Then the book largely runs out of inspiration, and comes to a none-too-brilliant solution.

Mystery Plot

The solution has many different criminals acting more or less independently to commit the crimes. There are two murderers, plus a third villain who is engaged in a hidden Criminal Scheme. This sort of solution is second rate. Instead of coming up with a single culprit and one over-arching explanation of the crimes, they are explained as the actions of a whole series of criminals. This is disappointing.

On the positive side, the identity of one of the murderers surprised me.

There are some decent medical aspects to the crimes, including some revealed by forensic work (second half of Chapter 4, end of Chapter 5).

The Criminal Scheme is fairly clever and entertaining, one of the book's more enjoyable ideas. (The set-up and mysterious aspects of the situation are set forth in Chapter 8, building on material in Chapters 2-3; the hidden Criminal Scheme that explains all this is revealed towards the end of Chapter 9.) Events we have seen one way throughout the tale, are given a new interpretation during the book's solution: always a good thing in a mystery. Unfortunately, the Scheme also seems implausible. SPOILERS. I just don't believe a villain making all this money would lead such a hard-working lifestyle. (Just to be clear, the Criminal Scheme affects the financial arrangements between Andrew Simms, Beryl Tucker and Brian Williams.)

Background

Unlike some of the better Stein/Bagby books, A Dirty Way To Die lacks a Background: in other words, it doesn't paint a portrait of some aspect of life or society. So you will not learn much by reading A Dirty Way To Die.

However, there is a detailed description of the store, its operation, and the life history of the little old lady who runs it (Chapter 5). This section can be considered a mini-Background. It forms the sort of entertaining digression that sometimes appears in Bagby novels. As is typical of Bagby, he has developed it in elaborate, logically consistent and carefully thought through detail.

SPOILER. I was hoping the sweet little old lady would turn out to be the secret head of organized crime in New York. But she actually turns out to be just as innocent as she looks.

Architecture and Cityscapes

The first half of A Dirty Way To Die greatly benefits from its detailed descriptions of buildings, all in Manhattan:

Streets in Chelsea (a Manhattan neighborhood) driven through by a cab (Chapter 1).
The tenement (end of Chapter 3, Chapter 4).
The store (Chapter 5).
The house (Chapter 2) and garage (first half of Chapter 6).
The seminary in Chelsea (briefly seen near the end of Chapter 4). The famous real-life General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church is located in Chelsea. The seminary in A Dirty Way To Die is never named or explicitly identified.

The tenement and the house-garage form detailed, large scale "landscapes". This kind of elaborate cityscape is always interesting. Even the much smaller store is situated within a cityscape that affects it.

The store has unique features, and is the most original architecture in the novel. The other architecture in A Dirty Way To Die is more standard. Still, it is fun to read about.

We see the evolution of the tenement and the garage over time, describing their history.

The Manhattan streets and buildings in A Dirty Way To Die are rectilinear. This is hardly surprising: after all, Manhattan is laid out on a grid. Still, the architecture in A Dirty Way To Die shows Bagby's enthusiasm for rectilinear environments.

Satire

Babgy is observant of New York City lifestyles. There are some pleasant moments of satire:

A hotel full of intellectual painters and poets is briefly lampooned. It's in Chelsea, in 1955 a run-down section of New York. (Today Chelsea is an upscale tourist destination, and a center of the art and fashion worlds.) The hotel is not named, but it sure sounds like the real-life Hotel Chelsea (start of Chapter 1).
The hit-man Happy Nelson masquerades as an upper middle class businessman (middle of Chapter 9). The satire here is directed at such slick Madison Avenue business types, not the Mob. The hit-man has their "look" down cold.

Men's Clothes

The soda jerk's jacket is worn by two different men. Their different builds affect its appearance (middle of Chapter 3, early in Chapter 9).

Murder's Little Helper

Murder's Little Helper (1963) is a murder mystery. It's a police procedural set among fairly ordinary people and locales, and fairly colorless compared to some of the author's other books. However, I wound up enjoying it anyway. Among the book's better sections: Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, plus a brief bit on medical detection in chapter 4. These sections are discussed below.

Mystery Plot: The Murder

Murder's Little Helper has the merit of sticking strictly to detection: Inspector Schmidt starts trying to solve the murder on the very first page, and he never lets up. Unfortunately, most of this detective work is routine.

There is a small but decent puzzle plot about the killer's first names and nicknames - we know from witnesses what the victim called him, but these don't seem to match any of the suspects well (set forth in Chapters 3, 7). This turns into the main clue to the killer's identity, when the solution is given at the end. While not a Dying Message, this has affinities to a Dying Message puzzle: remarks by the victim give clues to the identity of a killer, but only after clever interpretation by the detective.

A second clue involves interpreting a photograph (set forth at the end of Chapter 3, solved near the end of Chapter 14). SPOILER. This type of clue recalls Helen McCloy, and plot twists she included in Cue for Murder (1942) and The Further Side of Fear (1967). While these clues all fall into the same category, the specific ideas in Murder's Little Helper are original and pleasant.

Mystery Plot: The Disappearance

A subplot about a man who disappears has a solution I'd didn't expect (set forth start of Chapter 6, solved start of Chapter 11). The solution is logical and fairly based on what the reader knows. SPOILER. This subplot has little relationship to the main murder mystery.

Science and Detection

A brief but absorbing account is given about how the causes of a salmonella outbreak are typically tracked down (first half of Chapter 4). This would have made a good subject for a longer discussion.

Unfortunately, when the detectives track down the book's own salmonella case, it adds little to this approach (Chapter 11). It also tracks the salmonella down to a routine, uninteresting source.

Detective Danny Kirk

Inspector Schmidt is assisted by a likable but brand-new young detective officer, Detective Danny Kirk. Kirk is believable, but could use more character development and personality.

Kirk does some simple but sound detective work, indicating he has the solid beginnings of a detective, at least (Chapters 2, 7). Kirk in fact makes all the key discoveries early in the book, identifying both the unknown victim (Chapter 2) and identifying and finding the suspects (Chapter 7). By contrast Inspector Schmidt solves the mystery at the end of the book.

We do learn that Kirk grew up in crowded, working class apartments. He is expert on every type of bed that can be folded up and concealed as a couch, after sleeping on them as a kid (middle of Chapter 2). His enumeration of such devices is fun. Bagby liked beds. See:

The unusual hotel room in Mask for Murder,
A suspect's bed in The Corpse in the Corner Saloon (Chapter 2),
The subplot about the sofa in The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends.

There are signs that Murder's Little Helper might be trying to appeal to the "youth market", or perhaps to a movie or TV sale. In addition to the young, brand-new detective Kirk, quite a few of the suspects are glamorized young people. For the last five years, the author had been writing his series about hip, glamorous young detective Matt Erridge. Either Bagby or his editors or both might have believed that young characters were a commercial asset for his books.

Kirk is now what would be described as a "hunk", although that contemporary word is not used in this 1963 novel. The book emphasizes how well-built he is (Chapter 2). A hip young woman rhapsodizes about his build (end of Chapter 6, start of Chapter 7). Witnesses who saw the killer also describe him as well-built: so men's builds become a running topic in the story (Chapters 3, 6).

Inspector Schmidt compares a photo of a very well-built male swimmer a woman witness is enthusing over, to the sort of "art studies" one can purchase in Times Square (end of Chapter 3). Although it not mentioned explicitly in the novel, such muscle-man photos were presumably bought by gay men. This links the much-expressed-in-the-novel enthusiasm of heterosexual women for well-built men, to the desires of gay men for such hunks. It is a daringly open comment for 1963. (The Real Serendipitous Kill (1964) (start of Chapter 8) also mentions Times Square bookstores selling racy photos.)

Careers: Trouble-Shooters in Factories

One of the livelier passages in Murder's Little Helper recounts the suspects' careers (Chapter 12). The most interesting is John Blake's rise as a factory manager. He is frequently sent to "trouble spots" in steel factories, to straighten them out. This recalls the author's series detective Matt Erridge, a young engineer who trouble-shoots technical problems in factories, and who makes a good living at it.

Both Matt Erridge and John Blake are glamorous young men with similar careers. However, John Blake is a much darker character, being a suspect in a murder mystery.

Suspect Anderson is a successful architect, recalling the architectural firm in The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends.

Information

One of the suspects systematically saves all the photos he takes, in well-organized files (middle of Chapter 8). He has built up an archive of photos, in his home. In some ways, this is simply designed to make a plot point plausible: otherwise, an obscure photo useful to the plot, might not have been saved.

But it also makes for a source of information. Information deposits like newspaper morgues, police files, archives and libraries fascinated people in this era. They were important repositories of knowledge, in a period before the rise of computer databases and the Internet. Even in the Internet age, they are still crucially important!

Gossip

The middle section of the book is full of gossip about characters' sex lives (Chapters 6, 8). This is lurid, and contains some original peccadillos (especially Chapter 8). It isn't boring. But it isn't elevated, either. Its mild originality is not enough to make it worth reading.

A woman turns out likely to be a prostitute (Chapters 6, 7). She is unusual among fictional prostitutes in that she does not run to extremes: she is neither a high class, glamorized call girl, nor a sordid street corner hooker. She seems like just another lower middle class or working class woman.

A fun-loving but respectable woman witness gives reasons why women avoid social contact with prostitutes. This is less puritanical and more practical than one might expect (Chapter 7). The witness makes it clear that she does not personally condemn prostitutes - but wants nothing to do with them either. This section makes an interesting companion piece to the sympathetic depiction of a courtesan in Blood Will Tell.

The same witness explains how a charity fund-raising effort for the Heart Fund in her apartment building works (Chapter 7). This is one of the little sidelights found in Bagby, where he describes some institution or process. It turns out to have nothing to do with the plot. Yet this account preserves a social custom that otherwise might well be forgotten today.

Links to The Man Who Looked Death in the Eye

Murder's Little Helper shares subjects and settings with The Man Who Looked Death in the Eye (1961), an earlier mystery the author wrote as "Hampton Stone". Both books:

Take place in a small Manhattan apartment building, filled with middle class people.
Have a none-too-respectable woman resident there as the victim.
Are full of gossip about the woman's numerous affairs.
Have well-built male hunks serving as suspects, including one man with red hair.

Despite these similarities, The Man Who Looked Death in the Eye is a poor novel.

Architecture: Deceptive

A patio is cunningly constructed so that the outside seems to be coming indoors (middle of Chapter 7). Bagby is precise about the details of how this is done.

This piece of architecture plays no role in the mystery plot, and is not connected with anything else in the book. However, in some other Bagby works, deceptive architecture, designed to foster illusions, plays a role in the story. BIG SPOILERS. See Blood Will Tell.

Men's Clothes

A photo shows a group of women dressed all alike; it also includes men dressed in common clothes. Inspector Schmidt makes a sound deduction about where the photo was taken (Chapter 2). This recalls Death Ain't Commercial, and its elaborate depiction of groups of men in common clothes.

An observation is made about the pockets of a well-tailored dinner jacket (near the end of Chapter 7). It allows the sleuths to make an obvious but sound deduction.

We get an account of wealthy young John Blake's clothes (start of Chapter 3). These are typical of the well-to-do New York business types that sometimes show up in Bagby books. These clothes are pleasant, but their components are quite conventional.

Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser

Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser (1965) is more of a thriller than a mystery - and it suffers for it. Mystery plotting and puzzles are skimped. There is indeed a murder mystery, but it turns out to have been committed by a fairly obvious suspect. The book is also utterly implausible.

The best parts are mainly in a fairly early section (last part of Chapter 3 through start of Chapter 5):

The history of a burglar's criminal career is one of the little mini-essays or disquisitions on a subject, that run through Bagby (last six pages of Chapter 3). The keys the burglar uses are another example of the metal objects that sometimes occur in the author. We learn about the construction of the buildings he robs: a reflection of the architectural in Bagby's tales.
Photographs provide information about the case. The photographs are from unusual sources: the police (end of Chapter 3), a professional Central Park photographer (end of Chapter 4). We learn a little bit about photos from such sources, in general. Photos sometimes play a role in Bagby books.
Richard Brown is one of Babgy's spectacularly well-built men (first part of Chapter 4), like Danny Kirk in Murder's Little Helper. And as a successful young businessman he recalls John Blake in Murder's Little Helper. He is also a devoted father. Richard Brown is a likable character - but I wish he were in a better novel.
The room with the Alice in Wonderland wallpaper is an unusual idea (end of Chapter 4).
SPOILERS. Bagby gets a certain surrealist charge by the sudden appearance of Richard Brown's Evil Twin (first part of Chapter 5). The lookalike wears a leather jacket and a ducktail haircut: rebel's clothes in that era. The Good Twin Richard Brown one-ups this at the end, by buying a Swiss mountaineer's outfit including leather pants (middle of Chapter 10). Like the Italian Lambretta driver's padded leather jacket in Sitting Up Dead, this views leather clothes as European.

Muscle-man Richard Brown has no trouble rising up out of a deep sofa that normally entraps most people (first third of Chapter 6). This is an example of the deep chairs that pop up in accounts.

Switzerland

Richard Brown's unexpected trip to Switzerland (middle of Chapter 10) makes pleasant if brief reading. This European episode is atypical of Bagby's Schmidt books, which are usually set in New York City - although The Body in the Basket is set in Spain. Richard Brown's trip abroad is far more common in the globe-trotting books the author wrote as Aaron Marc Stein.

Richard Brown's trip to Switzerland is viewed as the sort of thing a successful businessman might undertake. There is a sense of pride in the new opportunities Americans had to travel.

Title

The book's title is a play on the Alice in Wonderland phrase "curiouser and curiouser". The book opens at the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. This real-life statue was built in 1959, and was fairly new when Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser was written. References to Alice in Wonderland run through Ellery Queen. They are less typical of Bagby. Ellery Queen's Alice references are more interesting than Bagby's.

Corpse Candle

Corpse Candle (1967) is one of Bagby's least enjoyable books. It has a grim, depressing quality. However, it does have a few good sections.

Corpse Candle tries to keep up with the times, showing various with-it 1960's types and topics.

Corpse Candle is a change of pace for Bagby. It takes him outside of New York City, and away from its sophisticated denizens, instead concentrating on students and working class types around a New England university campus. Bagby's change of venue to Spain in The Body in the Basket led to one of his best books. But Corpse Candle falls flat.

I could go on to a long wailing litany, about how poor I thought characters, atmosphere, story-telling, etc. in Corpse Candle all are. Instead, this review will concentrate on a few good aspects. Corpse Candle is best in its opening (Chapter 1, start of Chapter 2), a conversation between Inspector Schmidt and the narrator (second half of Chapter 9), and the finale, with solution (Chapter 15). These sections could have made a good short story.

Mystery Plot

Corpse Candle is a full scale whodunit murder mystery, like Bagby's other books - but its mystery plot mainly lacks ingenuity.

SPOILERS. The best part of the murder mystery: a clever motive for the crime (end of Chapter 15). This motive explains why the narrator Bagby gets attacked, at the book's start. Up to this point, the attack has seemed impossible to explain. It just seems pointless. The motive gives a clever, logical and unexpected reason for the attack. It also motivates the crimes in general. Showing good mystery craftsmanship, the motive is logically linked to events earlier in the book, events fully explained to the reader.

Nature and Ecology

One of the better 1960's topics in Corpse Candle is its discovery of ecology. Many Americans were just becoming aware of ecology as an idea in the 1960's. Corpse Candle has a professor who specializes in it.

The unspoiled woods around the professor's house are a key topic in the novel:

We get a vivid portrait of them (Chapter 1).
Then learn about how the professor is preserving them for his research (start of Chapter 2).
More is learned about them and the prof, in the conversation between Inspector Schmidt and the narrator (second half of Chapter 9).
The finale returns us to the woods, in scenes that echo the opening (Chapter 15).

These passages are all interesting. They could have made part of a good short story.

The professor is only talked about. He never appears "on stage". He is more interesting than the book's characters who do appear.

The woods and the isolated house are duly linked to Thoreau and his book Walden (1854) (Chapter 1). Thoreau was one of the major touchstones of 1950's and 1960's American counter-culture. The same opening refers to a classic poem about a forest: Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" (1819). Although this is not discussed in Corpse Candle, both Shelley and Thoreau were major early advocates of non-violent resistance to social evil.

Architecture

The same passage that discusses the professor's woods (second half of Chapter 9), also discusses the architecture of his house. The house is full of glass windows, giving it a peculiar "see through" quality. This quality is deceptive: which echoes the deceptive architecture of the patio in Murder's Little Helper, which seems to mix inside and outside. The deceptive quality of the architecture in the two novels, is different but related.

Folk-Rock

A young woman folk-rock singer is a major character, echoing the current real-life folk-rock craze. I didn't like this woman at all. Another one of Bagby's most lifeless books, In Cold Blood, contains a bizarre woman night club singer. The folk-rock singer in Corpse Candle is less bizarre, but still quite eccentric.

On the whole, Bagby's treatment of the folk-rock scene is not embarrassing or un-hip, but it is not interesting either. It specifically looks at folk-rock, rather than folk music as a whole: this singer never sings any genuine folk songs, or shows the slightest interest in them. She uses newly composed music, that the narrator compares to the Beatles and their rock music.

The Wikipedia says the term "folk-rock" was first used by the press in June 1965, to describe The Byrds and their version of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man". Such excellent folk-rock albums as If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966) with The Mamas & the Papas, and The Sounds of Silence (1966) and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966) with Simon & Garfunkel followed. Don McLean's "American Pie" (1971) was still a few years in the future. I wish to avoid the hype of some rock critics, who hail every competent rock tune as the greatest cultural achievement since the Sistine Chapel. But one can say fairly and without exaggeration, that the best songs on such folk-rock albums are solid achievements in song-writing.

When Bagby wrote about folk-rock in Corpse Candle (1967), it was a red hot, current craze. Bagby deserves a bit of credit for keeping up with current events. However, Corpse Candle shows little insight into folk-rock. The woman performer is the only folk-rock creator depicted, and she seems like a failure both as a musician and a human being. Corpse Candle doesn't actually say that folk-rock is worthless. But it doesn't show anything positive about the folk-rock movement either. The best real-life folk-rock is a positive achievement, that deserves a better treatment than Corpse Candle. UPDATE: Since I first wrote this, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe was an Elizabethan poet and playwright, universally considered a major writer. His poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is quoted in detail (Chapter 2). It is also the subject of a folk-rock composition by the woman singer. The narrator seems underwhelmed by this musical version, regarding it as dismal. This folk-rock musical version becomes a subject referred to throughout Corpse Candle.

"Turn! Turn! Turn!" (1965), recorded by the Byrds, was a folk-rock version of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Perhaps the setting of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", is a satire on folk-rock's enthusiasm for mod musical versions of classic texts. In any case, I don't think the comedy-satire material on "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" in Corpse Candle works very well.

Marlowe is also linked to the Greek myth that plays a key role in the solution of Murder's Little Helper. These mid-1960's mysteries of Bagby stress literary allusions.

Christopher Marlowe is widely seen as gay. This aspect of his life is not discussed in Corpse Candle. Still, it is perhaps yet another example of the numerous gay subtexts in Bagby's work.

Other verses are quoted in the same section of Corpse Candle (Chapter 2). These begin "My love can pipe, my love can sing". These are by George Peele, a contemporary of Marlowe. They play a more limited role in the story.

Men's Clothes

A passage looks at clothes worn by narrator Bagby (middle of Chapter 15). This starts out with a discussion of how black tie is sometimes worn at the University. This is one of only a few passages in Corpse Candle dealing with faculty life. I could have used more of this - the novel looks at some students, but only rarely at the faculty or campus institutions, aside from the ecology professor.

Immediately following in the same discussion, there is a look at how such clothes can be transformed.

Two in the Bush

Two in the Bush (1976) is a late novel with the Inspector. It has mainly unlikable characters, and is not much fun to read. But it has a few interesting touches. It is at its best in the opening (Chapters 1, 2) and when Schmidt is reasoning out the solution (Chapter 8).

Two in the Bush recalls Corpse Candle, in that it opens with narrator Bagby's account of his own personal life and living arrangements. These form the setting for the crime.

Ecology

Like Corpse Candle, Two in the Bush raises ecological concerns. These are less central than in Corpse Candle. Still, they show awareness. SPOILERS:

The hawk is an endangered species (middle of Chapter 1). This scene also gives Two in the Bush its title. (A different idea related to the title is provided near the book's end, with the English company "Bird in Hand".)
The energy crisis, and conserving energy (end of Chapter 4).

Architecture

This is a variant on the author's books where all of the suspects live in one apartment house. Here, the suspects all live in one city block. They have easy access to each others' homes through a shared back garden.

The garden surrounded by houses and apartments forms an architectural setting for the case (Chapter 1). The garden was made by merging all the backyards of the houses into one shared space. There is a similar communal garden in Helen McCloy's Panic (1944). I also liked the spiral staircases going down from balconies into the garden (last part of Chapter 2).

People can look from one building into another, across the garden. This recalls the ability to see one tower from another in The Original Carcase.

Cooperatives

The common garden, shared by all the homes in the block, is run as a cooperative (start of Chapter 1). This recalls the cooperative kitchen in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead (1952) (Chapter 5). See my list of Cooperatives and Worker-owned Businesses in mystery fiction and science fiction.

An Angry Man

In The Body in the Basket, narrator Bagby thinks Horsham looks better when Horsham is angry (Chapter 1). But John Jackson in Two in the Bush undergoes the reverse effect. Bagby starts out by noting how attractive Jackson is, during their first meeting (middle of Chapter 2). But later, as Jackson gets meaner and meaner in his comments, Bagby doesn't have anything good to say about him.

The situation of Horsham and Jackson are not exactly the same. Horsham is genuinely angry, whereas Jackson is more cold-bloodedly mean. Bagby also links Jackson's attitudes to "law and order" politics, something Bagby disdains (middle of Chapter 3).

Men's Clothes

The grandnephew Gordon Hobbes is well-dressed. We first see him in a tuxedo (Chapter 1). Then he enters the novel as an active character, dressed to the nines in white tie and tails (middle of Chapter 5). The book stresses how elegant he looks. This recalls the tails worn in Dead Drunk (middle of Chapter 1). Both books emphasize how great these men appear.

When not in formal wear, Gordon is elaborately casual, in shorts without a shirt (Chapter 1).

There is an elaborate account in the solution, of how one of the suspects manages his clothes (Chapter 8). This is one of Bagby's patented detailed explorations of a subject. It involves a comparison with another man's behavior with his own apparel. We get a look at how some men managed their clothes in 1976. This recalls another detailed snapshot account of a contemporary custom, the charity fund-raising effort for the Heart Fund in Murder's Little Helper.

Jeremiah X. Gibson

Detective Heroes

As "Hampton Stone", the author wrote a series of 17 books about Assistant District Attorney Jeremiah X. Gibson, who investigates criminals in Manhattan. Strictly speaking, Gibson is employed by New York County, the county which consists of Manhattan.

The Stone books are often narrated by another Van Dine style "invisible narrator": although Malcolm T. Macauley is a fellow Asst. District Attorney like Gibson, there are whole scenes where he rarely says anything, simply accompanying Gibson on their investigations and recording what he sees.

The two men are usually referred to by their nicknames of Gibby and Mac. Their District Attorney boss is called the Old Man, like the boss of the detective agency in Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op tales.

Relationship and Ethnicity

In The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse (Chapter 1) Gibby refers to Mac and himself as "the canny Scot and the uncanny Irishman". However, I don't much recall the pair's ethnicity being stressed in other books. This would make Mac be a WASP and Gibby an ethnic man. Idealized male bonding between WASPs and talented ethnics occurs in other books by the author, such as The Original Carcase, The Real Serendipitous Kill.

In The Original Carcase the ethnic is the dominating man in the relationship: just as Gibby is dominant in the Gibby - Mac pair. The WASP worships the talented ethnic man in The Original Carcase. And WASP Mac greatly admires ethnic Gibby.

The first Gibby book The Corpse in the Corner Saloon explores the class differences between Gibby (working class) and Mac (maybe upper class). This too recalls The Original Carcase.

Gibby and Mac share an office. A frightened witness talking to Mac in the office is scared that Gibby will enter. We learn that Gibby always enters without knocking. See The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse (Chapter 1). Such "turf invasions" were seen as a form of dominance in the era's business manuals. The manuals gave detailed accounts of how powerful men carried them out. (A line of dialogue suggests Mac always enters without knocking, too, but this is not discussed.)

Religion

In The Kid Was Last Seen Hanging Ten (Chapter 1), we learn that the X in Jeremiah X. Gibson stands for Xavier. Gibby calls Xavier his "saint's name". This likely refers to Roman Catholic Saint Francis Xavier. All this is signaling that Gibby is Catholic.

In the 1940's when Gibby was created, his background as a Catholic Irish-American who started his career as a New York policeman, would have seemed pretty standard to readers.

Interpreting New York City as a Social System

Gibby and Mac are experts on life in New York City, including its business, political and sociological systems. They resemble a bit the archaeologist heroes of another of the author's series, Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt. Just as Mulligan and Hunt are authorities about the culture of many traditional societies they explore around the world, so are Gibby and Mac similarly deeply knowledgeable about contemporary New York.

Gibby and Mac frequently "interpret" for the reader, people and events they meet in New York. Gibby and Mac can meet a businessman, cop or government official, and offer the reader a detailed account of the subtleties of that person's behavior, attitudes and roles within New York's social system. Similarly, the Mulligan & Hunt books are full of scenes where the pair offer interpretations of people and events in some traditional culture. Mulligan and Hunt can do this because they are professional anthropologists; Gibby and Mac's expertise is based on their years of exploring New York as Assistant District Attorneys. In practice, Gibby and Mac might be said to be unofficial "anthropologists" too, experts in the culture of New York.

Title Patterns

Most of the Hampton Stone titles have the same pattern. It involves stressed and unstressed syllables: The DUH duh duh DUH duh duh DUH. For example (with stressed syllables in CAPITALS):

The CORPSE in the CORNer saLOON.
The NEEDle that WOULDn't hold STILL.
The CORPSE who had TOO many FRIENDS.
The REAL serenDIPitous KILL.
The KID who came HOME with a CORPSE.

Patterns for the titles of mystery series are common, in other authors. But such metrical patterns of stressed syllables are rare, in series titles.

A pulp magazine short story earlier followed nearly the same pattern: "The Corpse That Couldn't Keep Cool" (1942) by John K. Butler. I have no idea if Hampton Stone ever saw this story or not. In the 1940's, its sole appearance was in the pulp magazine Dime Detective (March 1942).

Cover Illustrations

When the Hampton Stone novels were reprinted in the early 1970's in Paper Library paperback editions, Gibson was depicted on the covers as a hip, cool dude in seventies fashions, apparently modeled after actor Steve McQueen. He looks great - but utterly unlike the character in the novel, a sober young District Attorney who is always looking for a chance to loosen his tie and collar. The Paper Library editions (mainly 1971-1972) feature simple but form-fitting shirts that show off the hero's muscles, and dramatic bell-bottom pants. The clothes are a form of Mod fashion.

The same publishers reprinted Kendell Foster Crossen's Milo March novels, with March modeled on the covers after another hip actor, James Coburn.

The Corpse in the Corner Saloon

The Corpse in the Corner Saloon (1948) is the first Gibby novel.

The Corpse in the Corner Saloon has serious problems with sexism. Both a suspect (end of Chapter 2) and narrator Mac (near start of Chapter 3) justify men slapping women. This is just wrong. And makes the novel impossible to recommend. The book is far from good, anyway. It is mainly routine.

Sleuths: Differences between this Debut and Later Novels

Gibby and Mac have features not included or much emphasized in later novels (most aspects below come from Chapter 1).

In this first novel, as well as later ones, the fact that Gibby is a former cop who eventually went to law school is emphasized. What is not as much mentioned in later books is narrator Mac's background as a lawyer with a degree from Columbia, part of the Ivy League. This makes Mac sound upper middle class or upper class. Gibby and Mac thus become an idealized working class hero, and his upper class partner/friend/admirer. This recalls The Original Carcase, with its ethnic hero John Bragioni and upper crust Ted Edwards who admires him. Edwards is clearly in love with Bragioni, and the gay subtext in The Original Carcase is strong. One wonders if there is a similar subtext between Gibby and Mac in The Corpse in the Corner Saloon.

Mac is depicted as the only fellow worker who can influence or restrain Gibby's excesses. This is part of their long-term characterization. In later books, this is played a bit for laughs. But here one wonders if this "influence" of Mac on Gibby suggests that Gibby too has feelings for Mac.

Narrator Mac is briefly depicted as a man who writes up Gibby's cases into books (Chapter ). This is exactly what narrator Bagby does with Inspector Schmidt's cases in the author's other series. I don't recall references to this idea in most later Gibby novels.

Gibby has a past incident where he hit a fellow prosecutor, a man with political connections. This is rarely mentioned in later novels. The "two-fisted hero" was a cultural ideal in this era. But one suspects that even in 1948, readers were none too enthused about a "hero" who failed to control violent impulses. And the incident lacks believability: in real life, slugging a colleague would get you fired and unable to find other employment. It is thus good that this bit of Gibby's history did not become part of his permanent persona.

Another problem: Gibby is shown as indifferent to getting a search warrant before searching a suspect's home (Chapter 2). This is bad all around: immoral, a violation of democratic rights and traditions, and bad for getting evidence that will stand up in court.

The Old Man

The Old Man, Gibby and Mac's boss and New York's District Attorney, is depicted as a man with Society connections, and very well dressed in an expensive suit (Chapter 5). This is plausible: many District Attorneys of great cities in the past were drawn from elites.

Mystery Plot

The Corpse in the Corner Saloon has some decent, although not brilliant, mystery ideas:

Gibby comes up with two clues that suggest the poisoning was murder and not suicide (Chapter 1).
There is a steady series of revelations about a photograph (Chapter 2). Photography also plays a role in Murder's Little Helper.

Men's Clothes

A victim wears a loud checked overcoat. It is conspicuous, and its loudness is in poor taste (Chapter 1). In fact, it is stated that no other man would wear such a coat (near start of Chapter 3). This reflects an era when nearly everyone wanted to be well-dressed. It is clear that neither Stein nor his characters had any idea of how flamboyant clothes would become in the future. A loud checked overcoat would be mild compared to later fashions.

Bartenders Bucky and Jocko are men who dress alike (Chapter 2), a feature sometimes found in Stein novels:

See especially Death Ain't Commercial, in which a pop band pushes common clothes to comic extremes.
The photograph in Murder's Little Helper.
The brutal macho men in tuxedos for the fancy banquet in The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still.

Bucky and Jocko have a young assistant bartender Jerry, who also dresses exactly like them. This is ascribed to Jerry's "hero worship" of them (near start of Chapter 3). This is clearly a polite euphemism for a gay attraction Jerry has for Bucky and Jocko. Unfortunately Bucky is an extremely unlikable person, and this sinks any fun to be found in the men's common clothes. The entertaining possibilities of common apparel will be explored much more successfully in the more light-hearted Death Ain't Commercial.

The Girl with the Hole in Her Head

The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (1949) is a Gibson novel.

Murder in a Mansion

The Girl with the Hole in Her Head is apparently written to incorporate some Golden Age mystery fiction traditions into a more modern mystery novel:

The Girl with the Hole in Her Head mainly takes place in the Manhattan mansion of a wealthy family. This takes the book into the "murder among the elite" approach of countless detective novels. The mansion setting gives the book a "Golden Age, traditional mystery among the upper crust" feel.
The family members are eccentric-to-bizarre, like several such upscale families in detective literature.
Gibby is not really authorized to investigate this crime. He is there purely because of his own curiosity. So he is treading carefully, and acting essentially like an amateur detective making cautious inquiries into Murder at the Manor.
The book will have a locked room mystery: also a feature popular in traditional mystery fiction.

The elite mansion setting, eccentric characters, and Gibby's near-amateur sleuthing, show Hampton Stone incorporating a traditional school of detective fiction, into the ordinarily tougher Gibby books.

However, while these elite people have money and social position, they are never quite 100% genteel. There are suggestions that they might have nasty secrets or seriously warped personalities. No one would ever describe The Girl with the Hole in Her Head as "cozy". Its atmosphere is too ominous.

A later novel by the author, set among a wealthy-but-perverse family is Dead Drunk.

Plot Structure

The murder doesn't occur until just before the midpoint of the book (end of Chapter 4).

Among other things, this prolongs Gibby's status as essentially an amateur detective. Until the murder occurs, he is just a curious onlooker trying to ask illuminating questions. He has no official standing to investigate the case.

Mystery Plot: The Letters

Gibby makes some good inferences about the letters, half-way through the book (middle of Chapter 4). His deductions remind one of Ellery Queen. So does the way he defies authority to present his conclusions. This is one of the best sections of the book.

Mac admires the argument too. He calls its approach "science": meaning its logic-based-on-evidence approach, I think. I agree with Mac's claims. Mac's comments are meta-reasoning: reasoning about ideas in the book.

Architecture

Dead on Arrival is set in a creepy family home that is in full Gothic mode. However, there is nothing Gothic or antique about the mansion in The Girl with the Hole in Her Head. It's in full Modern Architecture style (last part of Chapter 1).

The hallway and its big window are set up, so that the garden outside seems to be extending into the indoors (last part of Chapter 1). Such illusions about outdoors extending to indoors recur in Murder's Little Helper.

Metalwork

The mansion's numerous avant-garde sculptures and decorations often involve metal wire, and other pieces of metal (last part of Chapter 1).

The sculptor is a suspect in the novel. He and his work are an example of the Van Dine School's interest in the arts. So is the Modernist mansion as a whole.

Men

Two of the men are Adonis-like in their looks and clothes (described in the middle of Chapter 2, start of Chapter 4).

Men's Clothes

Gibby and Mac don't dress alike for their big trip to the nightclub. But they do get identical treatments at the barbershop in preparation. And they do look like a pair at the nightclub (Chapter 3).

The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still

The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still (1950) is a Gibson novel.

Realism and Social Problems

The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still takes place among crooked cops, government officials and mobsters in Brooklyn. Such portraits of civic corruption were long a speciality of Black Mask magazine. The novel keeps the depiction "realistic": the heroes don't get much involved in fights, gunplay or big action scenes, but stick to investigation; the gangsters are definitely not glamorized; we don't go to nightclubs or meet gun-molls. Instead, there is a sober look at the costs of civic corruption. We are in the underworld setting of many hard-boiled novels, but the book avoids the flamboyant flourishes of much hard-boiled fiction.

I wish I could like The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still better. It deserves some credit for exploring a social problem. However, the book lacks inventiveness, and often seems dull. The comedy and surrealism that is so pleasant in some of the Bagby books is also missing here.

Political notes: Hero Gibson admirably condemns prejudice against ethic groups (Chapter 1). Unfortunately, the narrator comes close to suggesting that it's fine for men to hit their girlfriends (Chapter 6).

Anthropology of New York City

The first chapter of The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still offers a detailed look at some aspects of New York City. It is almost "anthropological" in scope, offering an analysis of government, corruption and idealistic social reformers. This is one of the best parts of the novel. Like other such looks in Stone novels, we get plenty of "interpretation" from Gibby and Mac, pointing out subtleties of the social system.

Architecture

The opening also includes a portrait of old slum buildings on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The crime scene building is so old, that it still has water pumps in its back yard, from the days before Manhattan had running water! This is a nice detail. It has an anthropological feel.

As in other books by Stein, the architecture of the crime scene and its backyard landscape are described in detail. And the events of the crime are carefully depicted against these locales. Unfortunately, this architecture is quite simple, compared with some other books by the author.

The victim and the heroine both live in the same building. Their rooms are near duplicates of each other (start of Chapter 2). This is a surreal touch.

Sports: A Skeptical View

A philanthropist runs a Boys Club for slum kids in Brooklyn. It emphasizes sports for these kids. Gibby is skeptical that such sports training does any good in their lives (Chapter 1). This is consistent with the skepticism about football in Coffin Corner and Dead Drunk. All of these works are especially critical of the adults who run sports programs and recruit youth for them.

A Play

An early section (middle of Chapter 1) is structured like a play. It consists of pure dialogue, preceded by the name of the person speaking: just like a printed play. Such play sections occasionally turn up in mystery fiction. See my list of Dramatic Dialogues.

Cafeteria

An all-night cafeteria is the hangout of both Brooklyn politicians and cops (first half of Chapter 3). It has an all-male clientele, at this time of night. Death Takes a Paying Guest included a Washington DC cafeteria, that was considerably more "respectable".

Men's Clothes

A testimonial banquet the suspects attend, filled with racketeers, is a symbol of civic corruption. A policeman Schaefer is wearing a tuxedo, like other officials that came from the banquet (Chapters 1, 2). His formal wear is a symbol of his involvement in dirty politics. The evening clothes suggest a sense of swagger. And also that the cop has stepped over the line and is involved in big-money enterprises that are contrary to his duty.

Later, a racketeer's henchman, Pete Stewart, is similarly seen in evening clothes after the banquet (Chapter 3). The men at the banquet are a group of men who dress alike, like the pop group in Death Ain't Commercial. The policeman and the henchman are brutal macho men though, unlike the pop singers.

Gibby disapproves of brutal cop Schaefer, even though he is dressed up in a tuxedo. Similarly Inspector Schmidt disapproves of the victim in Dead Drunk, even though he is dressed up in white tie and tails.

Mystery Plot

The Needle That Wouldn't Hold Still is a whodunit. It opens with a murder by an unknown killer, although clearly committed by one of the book's criminal or corrupt characters, and identifies the murderer in the last chapter. Other authors have mixed hard-boiled settings and a whodunit plot: not only Dashiell Hammett, but Baynard Kendrick's The Last Express (1937) come to mind.

Gibby identifies the killer for a simple but sound reason in the last chapter, mainly dealing with who has a realistic opportunity for pulling off the crime.

The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead

The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead (1952) starts out decently, but becomes uneven. Best parts: Chapters 1, 2, 5. There is some good character portrayal later on (Chapters 7, 8). The solution has points too (Chapter 11).

The book's title is catchy and clever. But it has nothing to do with the actual plot of the book, as far as I can tell. Every corpse in the novel stays dead! This is not the author's only book with a title that doesn't actually describe the book.

Setting

The setting anticipates a much better Gibby novel, The Real Serendipitous Kill (1964). Both are set in older Manhattan buildings, that are now full of young people in the arts: both their living spaces and their studios. The building in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead houses musicians, mainly classical. The building in The Real Serendipitous Kill houses experimental artists. These artists are more colorful and interesting than the conventional musicians in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead.

Both books have a character who is more financially successful than the aspiring creative types around them. In The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead this is the victim Leah Cobb. In The Real Serendipitous Kill it is Ken.

We learn that the neighborhood around the building in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead is also full of many buildings catering to musicians (Chapter 1). Looks at New York neighborhoods were a specialty of the author.

Architecture

The building has a mildly unusual architecture (Chapters 1, 5). It allows an unexpected exit pathway from the building (Chapter 5).

Metalwork

The chandelier in Iris' room (Chapter 1) is an example of the metalwork that runs through the author's books.

Both buildings in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead and The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead have open elevator shafts with metal grillwork.

The Cobb house has a wrought-iron porch railing (start of Chapter 4).

The can that contained the poison (Chapter 5) is of metal.

Leah Cobb

Leah Cobb is in her thirties, and composing an opera: a full-fledged classical music opera. She is also studying classical composition. This seems remarkably ambitious. Composing an opera is a formidable task in any circumstances. But Leah Cobb is a woman in the sexist 1950's, single, and without fame, much money or looks.

Despite this, she gets almost no credit or respect from most of the other characters. Only Miss Dedham admires her. The other characters dismiss Leah Cobb as a hard-working hack without talent, or anything personal to give to her music (middle of Chapter 3).

I'm no expert on composing music, and what it takes. But Leah Cobb's hard work, study and ambition were in fact shared by most of the great classical composers in history.

Pete Silvio

Aspiring violinist Pete Silvio, recalls the hero of the play Golden Boy (1937) by Clifford Odets. Like Odets' hero, Pete is a gifted classical violinist from a background of desperate poverty, has a boxer's build, and expresses virility.

In many ways Pete Silvio is one of the ethnic men that are admired in the author's books. Pete Silvio is an enormously talented violinist, who is poised for a great career, perhaps. The book constantly stresses Pete Silvio's brain power - he's the smartest of the musicians in the novel. Like fellow ethnic John Bragioni in The Original Carcase, Pete Silvio also has a great war record in World War II.

But unlike Bragioni, Pete Silvio has serious problems in his past (Chapter 6). These failures cast a dark shadow over him as a man, making him much less sympathetic. I wish Hampton Stone had not included these negative aspects in the novel.

Henry Collins

In The Original Carcase, ethnic John Bragioni is hero-worshipped by an elite WASP, who served under his command in World War II.

Henry Collins is a likable WASP young man in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead. Henry Collins is certainly a WASP: his father is a Presbyterian minister. Henry Collins does have less status than Pete Silvio. He's far less talented musically. And has an honorable but far less heroic war record than Pete Silvio. All of this recalls the men in The Original Carcase.

However, Henry Collins is middle class, not elite, and not wealthy. He doesn't hero-worship Pete Silvio, and is in fact straight and interested in women. So Henry Collins is far from an exact replica of the WASP in The Original Carcase.

G.I. Bill

The G.I. Bill paid for Pete Silvio's musical training (Chapter 6) and Henry Collins' musical schooling (end of Chapter 7). It is good to see this all-important piece of Government legislation remembered.

A section (Chapter 7) looks at the financial aspects of classical music study and careers for young people. The section gives a cross section of young musicians with various degrees of talent, background and financial support. It's a systematic look inside the financial problems of classical music careers for the young.

This section suggests the musicians' problems are tough. But the section is not cynical. It is not an expose. It is rather an inside look at how a musical environment works.

Poem

The poem (Chapter 1) anticipates the poems in Corpse Candle (1967).

Mystery Subplot: The Poison

The movements of the poison in The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead (Chapters: 5, start of 6) somewhat resemble the movements of the cream cake in Drop Dead and the trail of the pie in Murder's Little Helper.

Mystery Plot: Who Done It?

The book includes few if any clues to the identity of the killer. At the book's end, Gibby first emotionally traps the killer into a confession. Then he traps the killer into saying a lie, which Gibby can refute. Neither of these constitute "a solution figured out by a detective using clues and reasoning" - which is the best way to end a good mystery.

The solution at the end (Chapter 11) does have one good feature. Gibby comes up with a motive for the murder, that is both unexpected and logical.

Mystery Plot: A Theory of Who Done It

A character propounds a proposed solution to the crime (Chapter 9). It's mildly clever. It is far from original: earlier mysteries had similar solutions.

At the book's end (Chapter 11) Gibby disproves this solution. His reasoning is sound.

Mystery Subplot: Miss Dedham

A brief subplot about Miss Dedham comes to a surprising but logical conclusion (first half of Chapter 2). This is not presented as a mystery at first: neither the sleuths nor the reader know that anything mysterious is going on. But the surprising idea that first Gibby then Mac comes up with, is very much structured like the solution to a mystery. This idea explains and ties together, all the events and facts that the sleuths and the reader have been seeing: just like the solution to a mystery.

During the solution Mac stresses that he is just a Watson to the brainy Gibby. Mac has a submissive quality about all of this.

Gay Subtext: Well-built Men

Aspiring singer Henry Collins is well-built (last part of Chapter 2). Narrator Mac thinks Henry looks great with his shirt off (first part of Chapter 5). Henry is a baritone, and his great build anticipates today's "barihunk" movement in opera ("barihunk" is short for "baritone hunk").

The apartment building has elaborate sculptures on its facade. These include "Sculptured torsos bulging with muscle" (Chapter 1).

The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends

The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends (1953) is a minor, mainly routine Gibson novel. It has some inventiveness in its middle section (Chapters 4, 5, 6, beginning of 7).

It doesn't take much advantage of its detective hero; this generic book might just as easily have been an Inspector Schmidt mystery.

It seems implausible that an experienced government official like Gibby would behave with such a reckless disregard for danger, when exploring a crime scene.

Banking: Simple

Many books centered on the banking industry look at high finance. Complex financial activities, honest and crooked, are their subjects. The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends takes the opposite tack: its banking activities are of the simplest, most low-level kind. There is satire about how simple-minded this bank department's work is, and how low-skilled its employees are. It is pointed out that most people in the department don't have to think: probably the ultimate insult for a rationalist, idea-oriented detective writer like Stein.

Society

The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends contains an earnest plea, about why it is better to have ex-convicts out on parole, and employed in jobs, rather than in prison (Chapter 7). This argument seems more relevant than ever today. The businessman who makes the argument sees ex-convicts as people with career potential: men who can succeed at professions and make a contribution to society.

Both the victim and Jeb Wilberforce are middle-aged men, who spend time helping less fortunate people in trouble. Neither has any sign of a heterosexual romantic life or marriage. Perhaps these are portraits of "quietly gay" men.

Mystery Plot: Crime Scheme

SPOILERS. In The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends a bank official is murdered, and most of the suspects work for the bank. Most readers will immediately guess that something crooked is going on at the bank, which has led to the killing. The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends duly creates such a Criminal Scheme as its main motive. Strangely, however, the possibility that such a scheme might be transpiring is not broached until the finale, when it is treated as a Big Surprise. Unfortunately, the existence of such a scheme is going to be obvious to most readers from the beginning.

The work of the bank department where the crime is centered, is set forth early on (first half of Chapter 3). The crime scheme itself, based on this work, is revealed during the solution (end of Chapter 9). It is a simple, low tech, but plausible scheme.

Checks, the subject of the department's work, were a subject of perennial interest in mystery fiction of the era. See "Withers and Malone, Brain-Stormers" (1959) in People Vs. Withers & Malone by Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice.

Mystery Plot: Clues

The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends skillfully embeds clues to a couple of mystery subplots:

The lines in the dust on the desk. This is pleasantly geometric (Chapter 4). The author sometimes used geometry-based clues in other books, such as the clue to the gold statuette mystery in Three - With Blood. The footprints in Pistols for Two are also in simple geometric lines.
SPOILER. The data about the sofa, hidden in the mass of information about the chaotic search in the secretary's apartment (clues set forth in end of Chapter 5, solved in Chapter 6).

Both of these subsidiary subplots are solved almost immediately. Neither has much to do with the book's main murder mystery.

The Necklace

The necklace hoop is a nice idea (start of Chapter 5). It is metalwork that serves two functions: in this it recalls the ingenious use of the silver in The Corpse With Sticky Fingers. (The two functions of the hoop in The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends are as jewelry, and as impediment to a killing.)

Another metal object, more distantly related to the above, is the gold statuette in Three - With Blood.

Male Image

The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends has some brief but amusing comments on the creation of the right male image for the business world:

The imposing buildings and dress code of a stuffy bank (start of Chapter 1).
A photographer enhances his business executive subjects to look "more masculine" (Chapter 4).
An architectural firm specializes in dignified, impressive looks for business offices (end of Chapter 6). This firm seems more genuinely talented than the other image-providers, and more sympathetic.
The use of Jermyn Street shirts to look good while in shirt sleeves (near the start of Chapter 7).

The young ex-con works as a draftsman for the architectural firm. Draftsmen occasionally show up in other Stein novels.

Architecture

The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends does a decent enough job describing the settings of its crimes:

A hotel suite, with a sitting room and two bedrooms opening off it (Chapters 1, 2).
The banker victim's old, traditional Manhattan house (Chapters 3, 4).
The secretary's small apartment (end of Chapter 5, Chapter 6).

However, none of these is unusual, and don't have much bearing on the crimes or mystery plot. They are thus less impressive than the architectural settings of better mysteries.

The basement entrance to the victim's house is carefully described (middle of Chapter 4). It recalls the fact that the author liked underground settings.

The Real Serendipitous Kill

Art World

The Real Serendipitous Kill (1964) takes place in New York City's art world.

The depiction of the art world is like the anthropological portraits of society in other Stone books.

The depiction of the art world also embodies a Van Dine School tradition: A Background showing intellectuals and the arts.

The Real Serendipitous Kill depicts Happenings as a brand new phenomenon. Actually Allan Kaprow's pioneer 18 Happenings in 6 Parts was first staged in 1959, so Happenings were already a five-year-old tradition by 1964. Still, they were impressively contemporary to show up in a novel.

The way the audience at the Happening are required to take their shoes off, recalls Inspector Schmidt taking off his shoes in his cases (his feet hurt).

Most of the artists in The Real Serendipitous Kill have their own individual approach to art. These seem to be invented for the novel, rather than being standard art world tropes. These approaches are imaginative. They are not an "inside" look at the real life art world; they are something created for the book. This makes the art world aspects of the novel less of a Background, and more of a work of imagination. These ideas are among the best aspects of the novel.

Bug and Hank

The two artists Bug and Hank who are buddies have nicknames that recall the nicknames Gibby and Mac. "Bug" has "g" and "b" sounds, like "Gibby"; "Hank" is one syllable with "a" as its vowel, like "Mac". This makes the artists doubles for Gibby and Mac, in some ways.

All four men's nicknames are based on their actual names. These are NOT the sort of nicknames based on personal characteristics, such as "Red" or "Slim".

Bug has an ethnic full name (Adam Bogoscz) and Hank a WASP one (Henry Clay). This makes them one of the ethnic-WASP male duos that run through the author's books.

Bug and Hank wear similar artist's work clothes (first part of Chapter 1). They are another example in the author, of men who dress alike.

Later, artists Bug and Gilbert buy and wear really good suits for an important business party (Chapter 9). Bug and Gilbert are also men who dress alike. Bug is impressed by his new suit, and by his shiny new shoes with "high polish". (More elaborate leather clothes will soon appear in Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser (1965).) Gilbert's new suit is also described as "impressive" (Chapter 9).

Ken always dresses like a banker in a suit and tie, which the book suggests is unusual for artists (end of Chapter 1). But in real-life his junior-executive look was often considered highly erotic: see the TV series Mad Men, for example. Ken's full name is Kenneth Carson Wicks.

BIG SPOILERS. Hero Gibby eventually goes undercover as an artist, halfway through the book (Chapter 8). Gibby's role is an imitation of Hank's, with both men studying calligraphy. Furthermore Bug is the main character who is friendly to Gibby in the new role. It is as if the Bug-Hank relationship is being reborn in the Bug-Gibby one. This reaches a symbolic extreme in the novel's final passage.

If there is something gay about Bug and Hank, there is a similar gay undercurrent in Bug and Gibby. Also, Gibby is a Good Guy, and he lacks the negative sides of Hank.

Tobey's Place (Paul Wendkos, 1961) is an episode of the TV police series The Detectives. Its cop hero doubles as a poet who performs at a hip coffee house. He's a writer among writers at the coffee house, while Gibby is an artist among artists. But there are the same "law official among the hip creative types" premises in the two works. And in both works the hero's involvement leads to criticism by senior officials at headquarters. However, the cop in Tobey's Place is not undercover. He sincerely wants to be a poet.

Art Symbolism

Bug is associated with finger and hand imagery in his art: the giant pointing forefinger he's painted on the wall, the seeming gray fur on his hands in the Happening (Chapter 1). These are phallic symbols.

Also phallic: the skyscraper tower being built by the giant muscle-men, in Ken's painting (Chapter 4). The men are later compared to "Greek gods" (Chapter 5). The imagery is homoerotic. Ken's art is compared to the Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). David's work is also often seen as gay. I like Ken more than several of the book's other characters seem to. And regret his absence from most of the book's second half.

The metal pipes in Gilbert's sculpture are phallic (Chapter 1, second half of 6).

Metalwork

Artist Jim Gilbert creates complex metal sculptures and devices (Chapters 1, start of 3, second half of 6). This is an example of the metalwork the author likes. Gilbert and his work are among the most elaborate and inventive such metalwork in the author.

The stairs are also an elaborate metalwork object (Chapters 1, 9).

Text

Hank Clay has painted an avant-garde text on the wall (Chapter 1). It is a variant on Gertrude Stein's "a rose is a rose is a rose". A (less interesting) avant-garde text will later be included in Corpse Candle (1967).

Architecture

Many of the characters live or have lived in a building full of artists' studios. This recalls the author's mystery novels, in which most of the characters live in one big apartment house.

Once again in a book by Stone, the building's stairs are prominent.

The author's fondness for rectilinear geometry appears:

The staircase.
The villain's crooked gimmick that leads to the motive for murder.

The stairs wind their way around an elevator shaft: also important in the plot. It recalls the elevator shaft in Drop Dead.

Links to Dead on Arrival

The Real Serendipitous Kill has features that recall Bagby's Dead on Arrival:

Multi-story Manhattan dwellings whose staircase is the most prominent feature.
Construction work that has modified the staircase or adjacent parts of the building.
A history of how something intellectual was treated in the news media: Happenings in The Real Serendipitous Kill (start of Chapter 2), Henry in Dead on Arrival (first third of Chapter 7).
Unusual, non-conformist people living in the building: the avant-garde artists in The Real Serendipitous Kill, the odd family in Dead on Arrival.
A contrasting young man character who dresses like a conventional business worker: Kenneth Carson Wicks in suit and tie, in The Real Serendipitous Kill (last part of Chapter 1), Carter Ganson in Dead on Arrival (last part of Chapter 4). Both men have "car" and "son" in their names.
Hank's avant-garde text in The Real Serendipitous Kill (Chapter 1) resembles (at first glance) the code message in Dead on Arrival (Chapter 7).
Gilbert's building sculpture out of metal parts in The Real Serendipitous Kill (Chapter 1) resembles Henry building things with toy construction sets in Dead on Arrival (Chapter 2).
The darkness during parts of the happening in The Real Serendipitous Kill (Chapter 3) recalls the low lighting in the house in Dead on Arrival.

All of these aspects mainly affect the book's five living artists, rather than the subplot about late artist Tompkins Wilder and his friends.

Color

The objects on the floor in the happening (Chapter 3) are mainly red and black. This recalls the bedroom decor in Dead Drunk (Chapter 2). In both books the objects have a racy quality.

Links to Death of a Ghost

Death of a Ghost (1934) by Margery Allingham is perhaps still the most famous mystery novel set in the art world. It also is likely a model for a major subplot in The Real Serendipitous Kill. This is the subplot involving the famous, late artist Tompkins Wilder, his widow Ella Sue, his art dealer Walter Allery, and his ultra-wealthy collector Craig Stanley. Features in common between this subplot and Death of a Ghost:

A famous, successful, recently deceased painter whose works are worth a lot of money.
Attempts to maximize commercial potential of the late artist's estate.
A dealer who is selling the artist's paintings.
The artist's lurid relationships with women: heterosexual and consensual but non-standard.

I didn't find anything in this subplot anywhere as interesting, as the sections dealing with the five living artists. For one thing, Tompkins Wilder's paintings are simply conventional abstractions. The book has little of substance to say about them as art. By contrast, the novel's depiction of the work of the living artists is imaginative and inventive.

Another problem: the way this subplot seems derivative of Death of a Ghost - a book I didn't like that much in the first place.

BIG SPOILERS. Much of the actual mystery puzzle in The Real Serendipitous Kill turns out to center on this "Tompkins Wilder" subplot. The mystery puzzle turns out to have much less to do with the book's living artists. One has to admit this is plausible: the living artists are just getting by financially, while there is Big Money in Wilder's paintings. And Big Money is often the main motive for murder.

Ella Sue Wilder's firs two names recall the author's series sleuth Elsie Mae Hunt.

The Kid Was Last Seen Hanging Ten

The Kid Was Last Seen Hanging Ten (1966) is a relentlessly grim, downbeat tale. It has unpleasant characters:

A vicious gang of juvenile delinquents (Chapter 2).
A sports-obsessed father who torments his sons (Chapter 4). This recalls Dead Drunk.
A gold-digging kept woman (Chapter 5).

I don't like The Kid Was Last Seen Hanging Ten at all. It is one of the author's least enjoyable books.

Mystery Plot

There is a decent plot idea, in the subplot about mysterious gang leader Al Dente.

Steve Jackson hero worships Al Dente. At first this looks like the author's standard topic, "WASP man hero-worships ethnic man". But the book eventually develops a non-standard approach to this subject.

Men's Clothes

Steve Jackson is a surfer, and owns a wetsuit. The wetsuit is made of rubber. The book's tone suggests that most readers of the time weren't familiar with wetsuits. However, television series featured them:

Sea Hunt (1958-1961) was an underwater adventure series. Photo. Guest star Ron Hayes: Photo. (Ron Hayes also guest-starred in Six Years and a Day (Paul Wendkos, 1961), an episode of The Rifleman: Photo. Photo. Ron Hayes would have made good casting in a TV version of Gibby or Matt Erridge.)
The Aquanauts (1960-1961) starred handsome young actors in gleaming black rubber wetsuits. Photo.

We learn what well-dressed young man Howard Jackson wears (first part of Chapter 4). This is one of the more cheerful parts of the novel. He's in a suit and tie - nothing avant-garde.

The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse

The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse (1972) is the last of the Gibson novels. It is not structured as a farewell appearance though - just as another book in the series.

While the title is catchy and strongly alliterative, it doesn't have much to do with the actual events of the book.

Mac is not an "invisible narrator" here. Instead, he is the active focus of the first two thirds of the novel, narrating his own dramatic adventures. Gibson hardly appears till the end, when he shows up and helps solve the mystery. There are SPOILERS in the rest of this article.

Male Bonding

Male bonding is evoked in the first chapter, when a mere acquaintance (Ralph Henderson) from Mac's Club pretends to be a close buddy. He makes a series of hand and arm gestures indicating buddyhood. These gestures are compared to those football stars make with fellow players. This might not be positive: Dead Drunk and Coffin Corner offer negative views of football institutions.

This fairly young man is later depicted as being "fatherly" in his concerns for other men, an interesting piece of characterization (start of Chapter 2).

Male bonding also appears later, when that character's male secretary Dryden appears, and we learn about the two men's close relationship. The secretary is depicted as actually being in love with his boss. The word "love" is explicitly used (Chapter 8, end of Chapter 9). The secretary is depicted as attracted to women, however, and it is not clear if his feelings towards his boss are sexual. The secretary is one of the book's most interesting characters.

Men's Clothes

Two kinds of men's clothes are evoked in detail: men's clothes and fashion being a perennial interest of the author:

Business clothes. The handsome business man Ralph Henderson in the opening is described as wearing pinstripe suits. The novel states this is conservative attire, in a fashion sense, and linked to conventional opinions. However by 1972, both US television and comic books were depicting pinstripes as hot stuff for men. And in 1975 pinstripes were the center of the "dress for success" look, although that phrase isn't used in this novel.
Mod, hippie or swinging fashions of the era. These are related to a whole series of "hip" New York City professions (end of Chapter 5). Although the book never makes this explicit, many of these professions are often associated with gay men.

SPOILER. The book develops a nice mini-mystery about the two kinds of clothes, and the secretary's involvement with them (end of Chapter 5, Chapter 8, solved in the start of Chapter 10). It has a surreal feel, in its premises, and is vivid and colorful. It is easily solved. But the presence of this mystery subplot is a Good Thing.

A different kind of clothes are briefly mentioned: a "unisex boutique" (Chapter 4). Such clothes were a craze in the period, attempting to be the same for men and women.

Exploring the Office: A Mystery

After Mac is attacked, he has to learn about the place where he has been captured (Chapters 3, 4). This section is set up like a mystery story. The mystery is "What is the nature of the place where Mac is held prisoner?" Mac gets the answers to this, through systematic exploration of the office building. This exploration is basically a kind of detective work. Mac learns more and more about the building and his situation, through his efforts.

The steadily widening information Mac (and the reader) get, makes for a satisfying rhythm and momentum. The expansion of information can feel like a piece of classical music. Like classical music, it has an inner logical structure.

This section mainly takes place in the dark. The darkness recalls the Happening in The Real Serendipitous Kill, which also transpires in darkness. Both this section and the Happening are showpieces, that take place fairly early on in their books.

Submission

While exploring the building, hero Mac is put though experiences, that place him in a subservient or submissive role. SPOILERS:

He is bound up and undergoes physical restraint (Chapter 3).
He is imprisoned (Chapter 3 and 4).
He is put into a subservient role, by the dominating, aggressive uniformed cop (Chapter 4).
He is briefly put into a sexually subservient role with Dryden (end of Chapter 4).

These all have a masochistic side.

Mac is likely dominated by Gibby in their relationship. Here he is put into submissive situations by other men.

Mac is a highly intelligent man. He uses his intellect to try to get out of these situations. But every time he gets out of one, after a substantial struggle, he finds himself stuck in the next one.

Architecture: the Office Building

The architecture of the office building is simple. But all the many events of its long section play out within it (Chapters 2-6). SPOILER. The book gets milage out of the building's three locked doors.

The office building turns out to be full of technological networks. The structure recalls other tech-filled buildings in the author's work:

The elevator in Drop Dead.
The bottling factory in Three - With Blood.

Architecture: the Apartment Building

A visit to an apartment building, includes a good mini-mystery about how a character made a sudden exit from an apartment and apparently the building, without making a sound (Chapter 7). This has a howdunit or even "impossible crime" feel. The solution is given within a few pages. SPOILER. The building's layout includes one of the author's favorite subjects, fire stairs.

The elevator handle is an example of the metalwork found in the author (Chapter 7).

Architecture: A Real Location

A brief but nice thriller set-piece takes place at a real New York City location (first part of Chapter 8). It recalls earlier books by the author:

Like The Real Serendipitous Kill, the setting has Art aspects. Art makes a welcome return in the author's fiction.
Pistols for Two was also set at a real New York place. However, The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse does a better job utilizing such a locale. The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse does NOT involve the location as an institution, so there are no legal constraints inhibiting the author's tale.

The outdoor locations seems rectilinear. The author likes rectilinear geometry.

The location was fairly new, at the time The Kid Who Came Home with a Corpse was written.

Mystery Plot

The opening sections have the characters behaving mysteriously. Two thirds through the book, a killing suddenly occurs (Chapter 8). We also immediately learn more about the characters and their situation. This drastically changes the rest of the book into a crime investigation into these events. This final section is competently crafted, but not especially good.

It is one of those mysteries where the sleuth investigates in turn the possibility that each suspect is guilty. We get a nearly mechanical permutation, looking at possible patterns of guilt and innocence among the suspects. While one can applaud the author's attempt to write a real mystery, in which plot is explored in depth and taken seriously, one also has to recognize that this section is not deeply imaginative.

Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt

Under his own name Aaron Marc Stein, the author published eighteen mystery novels (1940 - 1955) about archeologists Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt. The pair travel to archeological sites all over the world, solving mysteries as amateur sleuths. They also solve crimes in the United States. Tim Mulligan's full name is Timothy Francis Mulligan: see Three - With Blood (Chapter 1). Both archeologists have Ph. D.'s, and are sometimes called Dr. Mulligan and Dr. Hunt. The duo seem to have equal archaeological skills and expertise on the countries they visit.

Both Tim and Elsie are intelligent, and they seem to share in the detective work equally. They often discuss their cases together, in scenes that recall the detective heroes of other Stein series discussing the case with their Watsons. These scenes show us the sleuths' evolving ideas throughout the book. They sometimes contain the detectives' partial solutions to the crimes and various mystery subplots, long before the book's final chapter.

Elsie and Tim also like to analyze the intriguing non-crime events and settings around them, sometime coming up with surprising insights into and interpretations of these as well. These events might not involve crime, but they are structured as tiny little mysteries, things the reader sees that soon get interpreted by Tim and Elsie.

Elsie Mae Hunt's hair is always getting loose, and falling down around her head. As a recurring bit of business, this recalls Inspector Schmidt taking off his shoes because his feet hurt: both make a sleuth look more casual. But it also reflects that Elsie is far more interested in the fascinating world around her, than she is in her appearance. There is a feminist subtext.

Couples as Detectives

When Mulligan and Hunt were first created in 1940, couples as amateur detectives were becoming a big deal. Craig Rice, The Lockridges, Kelley Roos all published books starring such couples. Perhaps coincidentally, all of these writers had ties to the Van Dine School, as did Stein himself.

Just before this, in the 1930's, pulp writers liked tales about couples, often having them as not-too-hard-boiled private eyes: Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man (1933), T.T. Flynn, Theodore Tinsley, Hugh Pentecost's Carole Trevor and Maxwell Blythe.

The "couples" tales were often full of comedy, with the couples being zany-but-sophisticated figures who lead glamorous lives and who find light-hearted adventure. Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt are somewhat in this mode, with a light touch and an occasional zest for mischief. But they also have a serious side, being first-rate archaeologists with formidable archeological, historical and linguistic skills.

Latin America

But all of these other "couples" authors usually set their tales in the big cities that were the typical stomping grounds of Van Dine School detectives. Stein's tales were different, sometimes being set in remote, exotic locations.

In this period, several mystery writers turned to Caribbean or Latin American settings: Lawrence G. Blochman's Blow-Down (1939), Richard Sale's Destination Unknown (1940) and his novellas, "Home Is the Hangman" (1940) and "Beam to Brazil" (1943) in Home Is the Hangman, Norbert Davis' The Mouse in the Mountain (1943), and Helen McCloy's The Goblin Market (1943). These provided glamorous settings for mystery and adventure, yet avoided the World War II war zones in Europe and Asia. Stein's work might be part of this trend.

Death Takes a Paying Guest

Death Takes a Paying Guest (1947) is the second of two Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt mysteries Stein published in 1947. It was preceded by We Saw Him Die, a mystery involving cryptography, reportedly Stein's real-life specialty during his US Army service in World War II. (See the career overview and reminiscence by Francis M. Nevins.)

Quality

The first half of Death Takes a Paying Guest (Chapters 1-4, start of 5) is much better than the book's second half. The first half is a sparkling comic novel, with odd characters and colorful settings. It also has pleasant plot developments. The author is in there trying in the second half, but nothing works as well. There is a decent mystery plot idea in the solution at the book's end though (second half of Chapter 9).

Mystery Plot: The Motive

The motive and main action in Death Takes a Paying Guest are based on a hackneyed mystery cliche. Admittedly, this cliche is logically sound, and its treatment in Death Takes a Paying Guest is reasonably plausible. But no one needs yet one more book based on this idea. BIG SPOILERS. We are talking about a room in a hotel where something valuable is hidden, and to which everyone tries to get access.

Mystery Subplot: The Disposal of the Body

SPOILERS. Elsie Mae Hunt does good detective work early on, when she comes up with an explanation for the disposal of the body (first part of Chapter 4). This solution builds pleasantly on the architecture and settings of the crime scene.

Mystery Subplot: The Handwriting

The other best mystery subplot concerns the victim's handwriting (set forth in the last part of Chapter 4). The book offers four different solutions:

Elsie Mae has a one-sentence suggestion that the documents might be forged (first part of Chapter 5).
David Weaver's solution is mildly ingenious, but has problems, as Elsie Mae points out (first part of Chapter 5).
Mrs. Purnell's solution is fun, but far-fetched. It leads to a lot of enjoyable hypothesis-spinning by Elsie Mae (first part of Chapter 5). BIG SPOILERS. This solution depends on doubles: men who look alike. Doubles return as a plot possibility in Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser (first part of Chapter 5). They are a Stein theme.
Tim Mulligan's solution (at the book's end) offers a "simple idea that ingeniously solves and explains an impossible looking situation". Such solutions are always most admirable and welcome in mystery fiction (second half of Chapter 9).

This mystery subplot is linked to identity and to what we now call identity theft. However, it is not a straightforward case of someone stealing someone's else's identity.

A somewhat related mystery subplot involving handwriting and identity is in Calamity Town (1942) by Ellery Queen.

Mystery Subplot: Who Done It

There is a sound clue to the killer, set forth in the solution at the book's end. SPOILERS. This involves duplicate objects. Tim gives an intelligent, original speech where he expresses skepticism about duplicate objects, whether he finds them in his anthropological work or in a mystery investigation. This is an interesting example of a "principle of reasoning", one I don't recall in other books.

Women

Death Takes a Paying Guest is one of the most female-centric of Stein's books. Apart from Mr. Sang, David Weaver and the police, most of the characters are women. Most scenes are from the Point-of-View of Elsie Mae Hunt.

However, at the end it is Tim Mulligan who solves the mystery. Elsie Mae Hunt chimes in during the solution to add a few points, but mainly it is Tim's ideas that crack the case. However, Elsie Mae Hunt does some good detective work in the novel's first half.

Satire: Washington D.C.

Death Takes a Paying Guest takes a satiric view of the housing situation in Washington D.C. In that desperately overcrowded town, visitors have to stay in private homes that take in "paying guests" as roomers. Stein had served in the Army in World War II, and he might well have seen this situation at first hand. Death Takes a Paying Guest is set after the 1945 end of the war - but book describes the housing problem as a continuation of the situation in the war years.

From a perspective of many decades later, there are intriguing paradoxes about how Washington lived. These people are elite officials in the world's most powerful nation. But they live in single rooms in dubious private homes, share bathrooms, and eat in basement cafeterias. They are there to perform Government service, not to be big shots or high-livers.

Death Takes a Paying Guest also takes a satiric jab at some government institutions. The US State Department is satirized in its ultra-correct employee David Weaver. One suspects the State Department doesn't actually mind such satire, which depicts its employees as perfect and polished in every way. It's part of the mystique of State. The Black Mountain (1954) by Rex Stout offers a related look at polished young State Department staffers.

Anthropology: Washington D.C.

The book's look at Washington DC has the anthropological feel of many Stein/Bagby books, an informative look inside a way of life. Typically the city examined in his books is New York; here it is Washington.

Stein also includes a mini-essay on how men juggle cafeteria trays (middle of Chapter 3). This is a tiny passage. But like other Stein.Bagby mini-essays, it records and preserves a bit of lore about how people lived in that era.

Architecture

The floor of the house where the murder takes place, has the complex architecture Stein likes (first part of Chapter 2). This gets extended, with another house where one can see the murder house (last part of Chapter 2).

The murder house is an old building, that has been renovated with new floor plans and extensions. Such renovations also show up in other Stein books, such as Dead on Arrival, The Corpse that Refused to Stay Dead.

All the architectural areas in Death Takes a Paying Guest are rectilinear. This is common in real life, and might just be a coincidence. But it might also reflect Stein's interest in rectilinear regions.

Three - With Blood

Three - With Blood (1950) is a Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt mystery.

Background

It takes place in Jalisco, Mexico, at the real-life Semana Santa (Holy Week) festival in the real city of Chapala, near the famed Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest freshwater lake.

Three - With Blood has the same structure as the later Mask for Murder, at least as far as setting and story elements go:

Both start out in a cosmopolitan Mexican town that caters to international tourists: Guadalajara in Three - With Blood, Merida in Mask for Murder.
Both then move to a nearby smaller, more traditional town during a local festival, for the bulk of the novel: Chapala in Three - With Blood, Tizimin in Mask for Murder.
In both Tim and Elsie go there to track down a rumored archeological treasure that reportedly has been unearthed, but whose whereabouts are unknown.

Three - With Blood opens in the big Jalisco city of Guadalajara (Chapter 1). The novel is full of imagery associated with Jalisco and Guadalajara: mariachi music, tequila, sombreros (Chapter 2). The novel accurately portrays the area as a magnet for international tourists. Already, in the late 1940's Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) during a stay in Chapala. The English writers known as "Dale Chandos" would write about Lake Chapala in Village in the Sun (1945) and House in the Sun (1949). Later one of the same team would publish mysteries as Bruce Buckingham.

The depiction of foreign countries and cultures in Three - With Blood and Mask for Murder recalls "The Purple Emperor" (circa 1897) by Robert W. Chambers. "The Purple Emperor" looks at small towns and traditional lifestyles in Brittany, just as Stein does in Mexico. Both are filled with eccentric characters. And "The Purple Emperor" has a recently discovered "treasure" found in an unknown location, just as Stein will later. In "The Purple Emperor" this is a rare butterfly, in Stein we have archeological treasures.

Male Bonding

Three - With Blood has Tim Mulligan male-bonding with a young Mexican man (Chapter 2). The man is intelligent, good looking and articulate. He has lived in both Mexico and the United States, and like Tim, is bilingual and multi-cultural. The bonding involves the institution of cuate: men who regard each other as "twins". We also see two sympathetic Indian servants who call each other cuate. Throughout the novel, cuate is treated in idealized fashion as a positive experience.

An interesting discussion looks at how Elsie Mae, Tim's long-time partner, fits into this sort of male-bonding between Tim and another man (middle of Chapter 4).

A different sort of male bonding is also depicted: that between master (patron) and personal servant (mozo). This is shown as extremely close, but not necessarily good for either man involved. It get a tribute paid to it as an idealized relationship (Chapter 5), but much of the rest of the novel looks at its dark side (Chapter 2).

The book says "The Chapala fiesta is among the gayest" (opening of Chapter 4). Literally, it is only saying the festival is bright and lively. But one wonders if there is a hidden reference. The real life presence of Tennessee Williams a few years earlier makes one wonder if the city were attracting gay tourists.

Science, Reason and the Imaginative

Three - With Blood opens with a fine passage describing rumors of a golden statuette, and Tim and Elsie's attitude towards this. The book stresses that Tim and Elsie's world view is grounded in science. They are admired and praised for this science-based approach. This was from an era, in which there was a consensus among educated people of the worth of science. The book also praises Tim and Elsie for their science-based willingness to investigate, to take active steps in pursuit of truth.

Three - With Blood recognizes the joy and imagination that stories like the golden statue can bring to people. It does not take an anti-imagination attitude, or suggest life should be lived among dour dullness. But it also recognizes that imagination is to be seen as what it is: the imaginative. And that reality is based in scientific truth, learned through investigating evidence.

Manufacturing

Jesus Guadalupe is associated with the production of drinks. Much of the time he works as the town's leading and most graceful barkeeper. But he also runs the town's soda pop bottling plant. He does this all by himself - the machinery at the plant is a one-man operation. This is a rare look at manufacturing in a classical era detective novel. It reminds us that Matt Erridge, Stein's later series detective, is a skilled professional engineer who sometimes works at upgrading factories and their production machinery.

The crooked Porfirio is billed as the region's leading manufacturer of fake antiquities. He must have technical methods of producing these - but they are not discussed in the novel.

Non-violence

SPOILER. There is a non-violent action taken by the townspeople (end of Chapter 4). This is far from a portrait of full scale Gandhi-like passive resistance: It is not politically motivated, not organized, and is comic in tone. Still, it is suggestive, unusual and dramatic. It offers hints of echoing real non-violent resistance.

Architecture

The apartment used by Cardito and the street outside it are discussed in pleasing detail (Chapter 2). However, there is nothing too eccentric or unusual about this structure. Still, it is an example of the Golden Age interest in architecture.

Mystery Plot

The main murder mystery is not very good. None of the book's murders lead to an interesting puzzle. We get an elaborate investigation of where various suspects were before, during and after the first murder (Chapters 3, first half of 4). This is highly detailed, but not very clever. The book explores different scenarios of how various suspects might have been involved in the killing, looking at both their motives and possible movements. The finale includes another such scenario, this time with the true killer. All of these scenarios involve detailed story telling, which might please readers, a little. But most of this material is not really creative.

The third murder is the best clued of the book's killings, with aspects pointing to the killer. It also has some mildly interesting features of movement of the killer.

Better is the subplot about the treasure: a statue of a cockerel made out of gold. The cockerel statues are well imagined and described. They also show an ingenuity of plot treatment, with a genuine and unusual clue embedded in the tale. (Puzzle situation set forth in Chapter 2, solved during the brief discussion with the police chief in the middle of Chapter 5).

Cardito's romantic problems form another subplot. They have a mystery too: why is he behaving this way, and what lies behind it? (His odd behavior set forth in the second half of Chapter 2, solved in second half of Chapter 4). This non-murder mystery also shows pleasant ingenuity, and is more interesting that the book's murder mysteries. Unfortunately, the explanation also shows callous behavior on Cardito's part. I agree with Elsie's criticisms of this behavior, of which she disapproves.

Three - With Blood is best in its two long opening chapters, which take place before the murder. These set up the characters, background, and mysteries about Cardito's behavior and the cockerel statue. After the murder occurs at the end of Chapter 2, the book takes a nosedive, into a mainly routine murder mystery. There are some good sections later which extend and solve the ideas and riddles in the opening (second half of Chapter 4, middle of 5).

Pistols for Two

Pistols for Two (1951) is a Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt mystery. It's a minor work, lacking much substance as a mystery plot or as a story.

Background

Pistols for Two takes place in Manhattan. It is set in the world of high-priced art and antiquities. It doesn't have much of interest to say about this world. And the book lacks the interesting settings of foreign countries or archaeological sites that grace better Mulligan-Hunt novels.

Pistols for Two includes some real-life New York institutions: The Cloisters museum, and the Princeton Club. This seems cute, at first. But the author is treating these real places gingerly, perhaps to avoid lawsuits or giving offense, and we never learn much about them at all. For example, the depiction of The Cloisters is limited to a single basement workroom; we never see the museum as a whole, meet its staff other than a night watchman, or learn much about its activities. Author Stein might have been better off if he'd invented an imaginary museum in a fictitious city, and explored it in detail.

Stereotypes

Pistols for Two suffers from stereotypes. Two art dealers are reported Levantine (Chapter 2). Their provincial clothes and manners (Chapter 2), their sexual mores (middle of Chapter 5), and their morals as dealers (Chapter 6), come in for criticism. This sort of ethnic stereotyping is deplorable.

A comedy sequence involves a woman getting pinched on the subway (Chapter 3). Pistols for Two doesn't defend such pinching. But it does take a pretty frivolous attitude towards what is after all sexual harassment.

Class and the Police

Some aspects of Pistols for Two are supposed to be comic; but they fall flat because they lack plausibility.

Mulligan and Hunt have just spent the night working as the book opens. They are covered with grime from artifacts, and in work clothes. They look terrible. All the police they encounter immediately conclude Mulligan and Hunt are street thugs. This is played for comedy. Some of the cops persist in this view, despite Mulligan and Hunt telling who they are.

I didn't find this plausible. Studies show that most Americans can look at another American, and tell their yearly income within ten thousand dollars. You can cover archaeologists in dirt, like Mulligan and Hunt here, and most people would still recognize them as professional people, educated and socially prestigious. No one would think they were hoodlums or Bowery tramps. This should be especially true of the police, who meet dozens of diverse people every day, and who should recognize educated professional types like Mulligan and Hunt when they see them.

The main police homicide investigator Lt. Gregory is depicted as quite stupid throughout Pistols for Two. I didn't find this plausible, either. Novels can include honest or crooked policemen, decent or mean ones, and I'll find them believable. But a man this inept, whose sole investigative technique seems to be yelling at people, just doesn't make sense as a major New York cop: he's head of detectives in his Manhattan precinct.

Mystery Plot

Mystery plot elements in Pistols for Two are unusually skimpy for a Stein novel. They would hardly fill up a short story. The book is a full-fledged whodunit, with two murders and a culprit revealed at the end. But the mystery shows only a little creativity.

Footprints are found around the crime scene (Chapter 1) and explained at the end (Chapter 6). The original prints tell a colorful story (Chapter 1). They are also fun to read about.

The prints are unusual for a mystery novel, in that they are tracks through dewy grass, rather than in dirt. SPOILER. Pistols for Two duly exploits this difference in its explanation (Chapter 6). The dew aspects are mildly inventive. But this subplot is only mildly creative as a whole: after all, footprint investigations have a huge history in mystery fiction.

SPOILER. The revelation about where the murders took place is mildly inventive (Chapter 6).

SPOILER. Pistols for Two gets one of the suspects involved with aspects of dueling, in a couple of incidents (end of Chapter 2, end of Chapter 5). Connecting a modern day character plausibly with the antique practice of dueling takes imagination.

Mask for Murder

Mask for Murder (1952) is a Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt mystery.

Background

It takes place in Yucatan, Mexico, at the real-life Three Kings festival in the real city of Tizimin.

The festival reflects ancient Mayan religious traditions. Stein incorporates these customs into his plot (Chapter 4 is especially detailed). The look at a city with many unusual beliefs and activities, recalls fantasy and science fiction novels such as Ursula K. Le Guin'ss Voices (2006). It is unusual to read a mystery novel so thoroughly grounded outside of contemporary Western culture.

Train

A vividly detailed comic set-piece depicts a journey on a train (Chapters 2, 3). Trains are a much-loved part of the mystery fiction of the era.

Also colorful: the description of hotel rooms in Tizimin (middle of Chapter 7). They are startlingly minimalistic.

Architecture

The Tizimin setting (Chapter 4) includes the architectural features and unusual buildings popular in mystery fiction's Golden Age: the catacombs and patio.

The same chapter also has the landscape architecture popular in Golden Age mysteries: the milpas, a rectangular cornfield with special features linked to Mayan traditions. The milpas is in turn part of a larger rural landscape centering on a traditional small house.

Mystery Plot

The mystery aspects of Mask for Murder are the book's weakest aspect. The mystery events are elaborate and detailed. Stein doesn't skimp on mystery plotting: there is a lot of it. But it doesn't seem very creative. It is therefore unclear whether the whole later section of the book (Chapters 5 to the end) has much merit.

There are two not-closely-related puzzles:

One puzzle involves the valuable Mayan mask: who took it, and how and why is a sympathetic young Indian caught up in the mask theft? This puzzle is OK. Stein at least provides a logical choice of thief. And a moderately interesting, fairly complex backstory of the theft of the mask.
The other puzzle is who is committing the murders. This is linked to a "surprise" motive, that seemed awfully obvious to me. The murder events are logical, but otherwise uncreative. There is a small, rather vague clue to the killer's identity, which is the very last thing 'pointed out at the end of the novel.

Both culprits, thief and killer, are people whose lack of morals and poor character has been stressed throughout the novel. This is logical and sensible.

Moonmilk and Murder

Moonmilk and Murder (1955) is the last Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt mystery. It is not structured in any way as a finale for the characters. It is "just another" adventure for the duo.

The Caves

The best part of Moonmilk and Murder is the opening, set in a cave in France (Chapter 1). Tim and Elsie have gone there to look for Paleolithic cave paintings. The chapter mixes vivid descriptions of exploring such caves, with imaginative thriller elements.

This opening explains what moonmilk is.

Later sections extend the ideas of the opening, a bit:

The end of Chapter 1 has Tim and Elsie making a deduction from the blowing air in the cave. While this section hints broadly at their reasoning, their ideas are not spelled out in full till later (middle of Chapter 2).
The architecture of the caves is extended (second half of Chapter 4).

Stein likes underground settings.

The opening chapter has only Tim and Elsie as characters. We have not yet met any of the book's suspects, and we know nothing of the background or plot situations of the story. Since the suspects, characters and plot background of Moonmilk and Murder will turn out to be not that good, their absence in the opening is a Good Thing.

Male Bonding

Male bonding is often depicted positively in Stein. But Moonmilk and Murder offers a strongly negative take on relations between men (end of Chapter 2, start of Chapter 4).

In The Original Carcase, a character develops a huge crush on an outstanding man he met in the service during World War II. This is seen as a good thing. SPOILERS. Suspect Mike Jackson in Moonmilk and Murder develops a similar crush on a handsome Frenchman while they are both working in the French Underground during the war. But in Jackson's case, this is negative. He marries a woman after the war, but spends all his time mooning over his lost relationship with the Frenchman. This comes close to wrecking his marriage, and torments his wife. There is no explicit gay plot or characterization, but the story reads as a thinly disguised account of a love triangle. It comes across as a Brokeback Mountain type of relationship, of a gay man who has married a woman but who spends all his time and feelings lamenting a lost gay relationship he had in his past.

The relationship between men in Moonmilk and Murder is seen unsympathetically. The French male lover is characterized negatively. The husband's rejection of the wife is seen as a victimization of her, one linked to sexism and misogyny.

Many of Stein's books offer positive accounts of men's clothes. However, in Moonmilk and Murder the matching shirts worn by the two men are a symbol of their relationship, and seen negatively (end of Chapter 2).

I confess I did not enjoy the triangle plot in Moonmilk and Murder. It is pretty grim.

France

Moonmilk and Murder offers a highly negative picture of traditional French life in remote rural regions. By any standards, this depiction is unpleasant to read: enough to sink the novel. Whether it is accurate or prejudiced is beyond my competence to assess. Men of the region are depicted as violent, lowbrow, incompetent and misogynistic.

This remote rural region of France, informally known as Gascony, is seen as another of Stein's "primitive" areas. However, it is not given any sort of traditional culture, beyond a bit of French country cooking.

Matt Erridge

Matt Erridge was created in 1958, and became the star of a long running series of crime novels by Aaron Marc Stein. Matt Erridge is a young American engineer, whose skill at factories and their machinery takes him around the world. He leads a glamorous life: a sports car, world travel, lots of exciting experiences.

Matt Erridge is more an "action hero", than a detective. Erridge loves to get into fist fights and knife fights. He seems to wander around, looking for trouble. As an amateur - he is NOT a private eye or a cop or a spy - he seems to poke around and get involved with violent activities that are really none of his business. These activities then form the center of one of the crime novels starring Matt Erridge.

I confess that I just don't like Matt Erridge. He seems like an obnoxiously violent guy. Plus, I would much rather read a detective story, than a crime thriller about a bunch of fights.

The Crime Club, Stein's publishers, put out the first Matt Erridge book under their "Chase and Adventure" category, while they published his Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt novels in their category "Favorite Sleuths".

Ancestors

Matt Erridge has a number of possible ancestors. The first chapter of Sitting Up Dead, the first Matt Erridge book, shows Erridge in his "ordinary life", making plans to go on a blind date. Matt Erridge resembles Archie Goodwin in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books, in this opening. He is a fresh young urban sophisticate, self-made, perhaps from an "ordinary American" background, who is smart, articulate, breezy, well-dressed, an expert on gourmet food and sophisticated society, and with an eye for pretty women. Matt Erridge narrates his books, and his "voice" and style of expression in this opening chapter distinctly recall Archie.

However, later chapters show Matt Erridge with a lust for violence and fighting, that is very different from Archie. Archie Goodwin on rare occasions gets involved with rough stuff. But mainly Archie is a practical man who is trying to get a job done - and with no interest in violence. Matt Erridge with a yen for violence, recalls more the tough private eyes and spies of the era.

Matt Erridge replaced Stein's own detective heroes Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt: Stein stopped writing about Tim and Elsie, when he began the Matt Erridge series. Matt Erridge shares some features in common with Tim and Elsie, though. Like them, he is a globe-trotter, allowing Stein to set novels around the world. The first Matt Erridge book Sitting Up Dead shows Matt with a fondness for historic sites in Italy. This recalls the way that Tim and Elsie being archaeologists allowed Stein to write about sites of traditional culture.

Sitting Up Dead

Sitting Up Dead (1958) is the first novel about action hero Matt Erridge. It is set in Italy.

Poetry

The poem quoted (Chapter 2) that expresses the hero's philosophy of life, is "Could man be drunk forever" by A. E. Housman. One might note that the gay Housman was a favorite of later gay writers, giving titles to such books as Patrick White's The Tree of Man and Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night.

Matt Erridge links the poem to male bonding: he learned it from a Lieutenant who served with him in World War II.

Part of Sitting Up Dead is set in the real-life town of Eboli. The novel (Chapter 3) refers to Carlo Levi's book Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945).

Male Bonding

Sitting Up Dead has a little of Stein's male bonding. But it has a sour tinge, compared to the idealistic male bonding in some of his prior books.

The Original Carcase (1946) featured a young good-natured WASP rich kid, who falls in love with his glamorous Italian-American commanding officer from World War II. The officer is a good guy, and awesomely capable, leading to hero worship from the WASP. This plot allowed a well-to-do WASP to look up to a low social status, but gifted, Italian-American good guy, reversing the traditional and very bad social hierarchies of the time.

In Sitting Up Dead, Matt Erridge is a hero with a WASP name and a glamorous well-to-do life. And he has a friendship with an Italian-American he first meets in the service in World War II. But there is little admirable about the Italian-American. He is a private court-martialed out of the service for criminal activities. After the service, the Italian-American becomes a sleazy low level member of the Mob. Meanwhile Matt Erridge is an Army Captain and combat hero. This whole plot plays like a dark variation on that of The Original Carcase.

More pleasing is Matt Erridge's encounter with a decent young Italian priest. Erridge wows the priest, by giving him a ride in his sports car: the priest has a yen for machinery. This whole scene oddly recalls a French film, Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson, 1951), where the suffering young priest gets a moment of joy when a young motorcyclist gives him a ride.

The hero gets a letter from his sister at the start. Brother-sister relationships are frequent in Stein.

Men's Clothes

There is a nice passage when Matt is getting dressed to go out and meet trouble, and he is trying to conceal a gun in his dapper Italian clothes (middle of Chapter 4). Even in the 1950's, there is a realization that Italian clothes are some of the finest in the world.

A Lambretta driver's padded leather jacket helps identify his vehicle (Chapter 10).

Mystery Plot

Sitting Up Dead is mainly a suspense novel, or "good guy battles crime" adventure tale. But it does have a bit of mystery. This centers on the question: "What lucrative crime are the bad guys up to, and how does it involve a priceless statue?" This is not one of the great crime puzzles of mystery fiction, but it is pleasant to think about, and involves some of Stein's vivid writing evoking Italian locations. The puzzle goes through stages:

The first encounter with the building a crook lives in, and the statue (second half of Chapter 4, first half of Chapter 5). The building with its scaffolding recalls the Golden Age interest in architecture.
More about the behavior of Renata during her night with the hero (end of Chapter 7, middle of Chapter 9). The end of Chapter 7 also contains some dramatic writing.
The solution to the puzzle (Chapter 10). SPOILER. The solution gives some new insights into the behavior of the criminals, that makes their actions seem slightly different from how they first appeared. It ties three different actions into an underlying hidden criminal activity. This sort of "re-interpretation of actions" is a standard, admirable kind of mystery puzzle and solution.

SPOILER: The solution centers on archaeology, which is vividly described (Chapter 10). This links Sitting Up Dead to the Tim and Elsie archaeology-mystery series Matt Erridge replaced. Some Tim and Elsie books have mystery subplots about mysterious archaeological artifacts, such as the golden cockerel statue in Three - With Blood. The statue in Sitting Up Dead plays a somewhat similar role, although there is not a specific mystery puzzle tied to the statue itself, the way there is to the golden cockerel in Three - With Blood.

In addition to archaeology, Chapter 10 also has a fun description of multi-colored farm machinery. The whole chapter is highly visual, allowing the reader to "see" the events.

The above mystery plot sections contain the best writing in Sitting Up Dead, with their mystery puzzle, architecture, and archaeological background.

Towards the book's end (middle of Chapter 11), there is a solution to a second mystery puzzle: which of the book's crooks is the "big boy", i.e. head of the crime operation? This is pretty mild, but it does draw on putting together pieces of the story, and interpreting them in a new way, as a history of the big crook's involvement. This simple mystery shows Stein's attempt to preserve a who-done-it structure in the novel.

Television Version?

Aaron Marc Stein has only one film or television credit in the IMDb. This is for A Bargain in Tombs, an episode of the detective TV series 77 Sunset Strip, first shown April 24, 1959. Stein is credited with being the author of the "novel" on which the episode is based. This novel is not named in the IMDb.

Plot descriptions of the episode recall in broad terms Stein's Sitting Up Dead. One wonders if A Bargain in Tombs is in fact an adaptation of Sitting Up Dead.

Matt Erridge does not appear in A Bargain in Tombs. Instead the detective hero of A Bargain in Tombs is Stuart Bailey, the regular hero of the TV series 77 Sunset Strip. This sort of substitution of heroes, is common practice in film and TV adaptations of crime novels.

Talented actor Ray Danton plays the Italian-American the hero first meets in the service in World War II.