Doubleday Crime Club, part 1

Beginning in 1928, the American publisher Doubleday, Doran began issuing titles under the imprint The Crime Club. These books were accompanied by a cute logo that looked, depending on how you stared at it, either like a man holding a gun, or a man falling (after having been shot?). A closer examination reveals that the logo is comprised of stylized versions of the letters C-R-I-M-E.The Doubleday Crime Club was not a book-of-the-month type of enterprise. They did offer a subscription service, and subscribers saved a little bit of money (what amounted to postage). But the books issued by the Crime Club were not inexpensive copies. In fact, they were among the finest hardcover editions of mystery and detective fiction of the time.

(In later years, the Book of the Month Club did work out an arrangement with Doubleday, so you can find Doubleday Crime Club volumes that are also what collectors call "Book Club editions." Confused yet?)

Above and to the right are several Crime Club volumes, mostly from the mid-1930s, showing some of the clever embossed spine art from that period. Even without dustjackets, these were beautiful books.

Here is a sampling of books from my shelves, all with nice dustjackets, and dating from 1928 through 1931.

As time permits, I'll be posting more trivia, artwork, and history of the Crime Club.

Meanwhile, be sure to visit my regular weekly blog-gig over at Criminal Brief. You'll find my column there every Friday.

R.I.P. Danger Man

Just last night I was watching an episode of "Secret Agent," the early 1960s spy ITV television program ("Danger Man" in the UK) with my family. Then today I learn of the passing of Patrick McGoohan at age 80.

I first discovered McGoohan when I was a half-pint devotee of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color every Sunday night in Black and White. McGoohan appeared in two Disney films that I remember well: "The Three Lives of Thomasina" (based on Paul Gallico's novel), and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (based on the swashbuckling character of Russell Thorndike's novels).

As a teenager and college student, I rediscovered McGoohan as "Number Six" in the mind-bending science fiction spy program "The Prisoner."

Apparently AMC is putting together a miniseries remake of The Prisoner starring Jim Caviezel as Number Six and Ian McKellen as Number Two. I look forward to it, but my guess is that most of the mysteriousness of the show, as well as McGoohan's angst, will be missing.

Another Hero Gone!

I've just learned from Bill Crider's blog that the Mystery Community has lost another master. Donald Westlake, creator of the "Parker" novels as well as the "Dortmunder" comic-capers passed away on New Year's Eve.

My strongest memory of Don Westlake is from the first time I met him in person, at the Seattle Bouchercon in 1994 where he moderated a panel on Laughter. He shared the podium with Marissa Piesman, Taylor McCafferty, Parnell Hall, and a newcomer to the mystery world, S.J. Rozan, whose first novel had just come out.

Parnell had laryngitis, and to compensate he brought a cream pie (gasping that without a voice he was stuck with visual humor). He hinted that the pie was destined for Don's face. But as the suspense built, Don elbowed Parnell, and the pie wound up on Parnell's face.

I have an MP3 recording of that panel, and if I can figure out how to do it, I'll post it on this blog.

I'll also remember Donald Westlake for the stories he and Lawrence Block would tell about their apprentice years pumping out soft-core porn novels in the early sixties.

Farewell Don. You brought this reader a lot of smiles. I have a feeling you're still laughing up there somewhere.

Back from the Dead

It's been nearly a year since my last post. If anyone has been missing me here at Vorpal Blade Online, I've been posting a weekly column on Criminal Brief. Stop by every Friday and you'll find me there.

Speaking of Criminal Brief, a while back I told one of my cohorts over there, Leigh Lundin, a story of how I scared the pants off a boring tour guide when I ducked off during a tour of some burial caves in the Hebron hills in Israel. This was back in the 1980s, and I was a little less restrained than I am today. I ditched the tour and snuck ahead. I found a nice limestone sarcofagus and decided to stop for a rest. When the tourguide brought the group into that particular chamber, she stopped right in front of that sarcofagus, and leaned on it while going on ad nauseum. I added some nauseum of my own by rising up. This photo was taken at that very spot on that very day.

I had a lot more hair back then.

The Passing of a Master

Edward D. Hoch, February 22, 1930 - January 17, 2008

It's a rare gift to meet a legend. I had that opportunity when I met Edward Dentinger Hoch. But Ed was much more than a legend. He was a joker, a keen conversationalist, a dear friend, and one of the nicest men I've ever known.

Ed's first published short story, "Village of the Dead," appeared in the December, 1955 issue of Famous Detective Stories. It introduced one of the most unusual fictional detectives in all literature, Simon Ark, a former Coptic priest on a constant mission to correct supernatural evil, and in the process, like the cartoon characters of Scooby-Doo and his friends, discovering a very human face beneath the mask of supernatural. And lest I forget, Simon Ark was over two thousand years old.

For some reason I always thought Ed would live forever, like his creation. And in a sense, he will. During his lifetime, he published five novels, and nearly a thousand short stories. Beginning with the May, 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Ed has had a story in every issue of that magazine up to and including the one that shipped last week.

Ed had a knack for finding uncanny puzzles where the rest of us saw ordinary objects. Wherever Ed went, and whatever he was doing, his mind was hatching the bizarrest of plots. Nothing was impossible for him. He once looked at a covered bridge, and wondered how a carriage could enter it and disappear, never coming out the other end. That idea became one of his most famous stories, "The Problem of the Covered Bridge," featuring Dr. Sam Hawthorne. He created a fictional thief who only stole worthless objects, giving Ed the challenge of figuring out a rational reason why someone would need to steal a playing card, a slipper, an overdue library book, or an old man's comb.

Ed once told me a true story of how a foreign government once hired Ed to consult on a real life impossible crime: cargo was apparently stolen from an airplane's locked cargo hold - while the airplane was in flight! Ed wasn't able to catch the thieves, but the incident was the inspiration for his story "The Liverpool Kiss" featuring master spy Jeffery Rand.

Ed was a legend, but I'll remember him as a friend.

I met Ed and Patricia in 1994 through our mutual friend, Doug Greene. In 1996 the four of us began a tradition of meeting for dinner, usually on the Friday evening during the annual Bouchercon, during which we discussed everything from literature to current movies, politics, and religion. In fact, it was religion that provided a framing in-joke to our friendship. Doug (and Episcopalian) and I (a Jew) were in the lobby of a convention hotel discussing some matter of Church doctrine. Doug suddenly said, "You know, we need a Catholic to solve this." Then he saw Ed and Pat across the lobby and yelled, "Ed, come over here, we need a Catholic!"

Our dinners (and often lunches and breakfasts) were lively and loving. It was during meals that I saw the sweet little boy that was inside this brilliant grandfatherly figure. Ed enjoyed his food simple. A plain steak with french fries would keep him happy. Exotic sauces or funky vegetables were a distraction. And Ed followed every dinner with a glass of milk.

A word has to be said about Pat. I won't pull out any cliches about "behind every great man. . ." even though this might be one time when it's appropriate. Throughout the time I knew them, wherever there was Ed, there was Pat. During the fifty years that they were married, they were away from each other one night! And what's more, Pat always seemed to legitimately fit when she was there. She belonged. Doug Greene and I are both married to wonderful women. But a mystery convention is not their idea of a good time. Pat, on the other hand, attended every event with Ed, knew all the people, and enjoyed herself. It's my hope that Pat will continue to be a part of the mystery community.

Ed touched so many of us. Josh Pachter, Jiro Kimura, June Moffatt, Mary Frisque, Janet Hutchings. These are a few of the people I know primarily through the Hochs, and for whom Ed was an important part of our lives who will be missed. So long, dear friend.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

I collect books. I read them, too. If you've read my previous postings, you've probably surmised as much.

I collect books by certain authors (Fredric Brown, Jacques Futrelle, R. Austin Freeman, Lawrence Block, etc.) and books of certain publishers' imprints (Doubleday Crime Club, Dell Mapbacks).

There is also one quirky thematic collection in my library: mystery and detective novels with Lewis Carroll motifs. Often these are books that derive their titles from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through The Looking Glass. Occasionally the connection goes deeper. I wrote about the books I've found, and provide a long list on Criminal Brief, a mystery short story blog for which I write a column every Friday. Read the column here. (Scroll down about 6 paragraphs to get to the Alice stuff).

After hunting off and on for a couple years, I finally found a copy of Murder Through the Looking Glass by Craig Rice (writing as Michael Venning). This is a brilliant story involving a guy who, after an alcoholic bender (it is Craig Rice, after all), learns that he's wanted for a murder he might have committed while suffering multiple personality disorder. It's a scarce book, and very pricey in good condition. (I have a Japanese copy, translated by Hidetoshi Mori. But my Japanese isn't quite up to par). The copy I found has no jacket, but it's a First, and is in reasonably good shape. (Here's a scan of the title page).

Imagine my surprise when I opened the book for the first time and saw the library stamp on the front loose endpaper:

If you recall the poem Alice tried to read that was only legible in a looking glass, it contains the nonsensical line:

All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

Mome raths? Womraths? Had I stepped through the looking glass?

I did a search and learned that Womrath is a real place, and I presume my book was once on the shelves of its popular library.

I guess you can add serendipitous findings to my list of collections.

When I saw on the cover of Jewish World Digest (June 2007) that Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union was being reviewed in its pages, I quickly turned to page 52. Having just finished the book, I was excited to read what others had to say. While Goldie Goldbloom accurately touched on some of the positive points of the book, I was dismayed at several faux pas that she made as a reviewer.

I should point out my own biases and credentials. I’ve been following Chabon’s career since his The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was issued in trade paperback in 1988; I’ve been reviewing books for several magazines and newspapers for over a decade and am review editor for one magazine; I am a staunch defender of mystery/detective fiction as literature.

Ms. Goldbloom’s criticisms of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union can be boiled down to four complaints: 1. it wasn’t as good as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay; 2. it was inaccurate; 3. it was “hard-boiled detective fiction” and not “literature”; and 4. the ending was “confusing and labored.” Goldbloom has her facts mostly straight, and she is, of course, entitled to her opinions. But as a reviewer she overstepped the line, being unfair to the book, its author, and most importantly, to her own readers. I’ll take each of her points in turn, and lastly will discuss the unforgivable sin of exposing the surprises of the novel.

First point: Goldbloom approached The Yiddish Policeman’s Union “hoping that Michael Chabon had finally pulled off another book of the caliber of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.” but found “To my dismay, his new venture is no Kavalier and Clay.” This sounds a lot like the old man who bit into a banana and said, “This ain’t no apple.” Of course it’s not. It may be fair to compare the relative merits of two books from Robert Parker’s “Spenser” series. But no critic would try to evaluate Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row using the same criteria. Imagine how absurd it would sound if 17th century critics said of “Hamlet” that “it is no ‘Twelfth Night.’” Kavalier and Clay and Yiddish Policeman’s Union are not the same book. They’re not even the same genre. Comparing them is to compare apples and bananas.

In her opening paragraph, Goldbloom was also subtly critical of two of Chabon’s prior books, The Final Solution and Summerland. Of course, neither of these books was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. But both are fine books in their own right. Summerland in particular I found to be a delightful and engaging young adult fantasy adventure that was hardly “overloaded” and involved a lot more than “baseball and fairies.” I would highly recommend that book to anyone, old or young, male or female, Jew or Gentile, but particularly to any man aged 8 to 80 who has ever felt like an outsider.

Point two: Goldbloom tells us that The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is unlikely and “is studded with errors.” “If that wasn’t enough of a stretch,” she tells us after describing the criminal activities of the Verbover Hassidim in the novel, “the setting for this novel is a fictitious Jewish homeland called Sitka.” Of course it’s a stretch, Goldie. That’s why it’s called “fiction.”

Without bothering to point out the various very real cases of money laundering, smuggling, and mob ties engaged by ultra-Orthodox movements, I would remind Goldbloom that Theodore Herzl explored many settlement options for his “Jewish State” that included Uganda and Argentina. The ITO, led by Israel Zangwill (a mystery novelists, I should note), in 1903 sought to establish a Jewish homeland wherever it could, be it Australia, Asia, or Galveston, Texas. (These were all real considerations). The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established in Eastern Russia (not too far from Sitka) and still exists to this day! I’m grateful that the 1948 War of Israel’s Independence turned out the way it did. But it is a fiction writer’s job to ask “What If?”

Goldbloom is concerned that Chabon refers to a wig as a shaydel rather than a shaitel, and that Jews are called Yids rather than Yidden. As an expert in the language, I’m sure Goldbloom knows that Yiddish is such a vibrant language precisely because of its suppleness and its ability to evolve. The Yiddish of Goldbloom’s Galitzianers differs in vocabulary and pronunciation from the Yiddish of Vilna, Odessa, Berlin, the Lower East Side, and I would presume, of Sitka, Alaska.

Point three: Goldbloom ends her review by telling us, “I am sorry to say it read far more like pot-boiler than literature.” I’ll admit: this is the criticism that set my pot a-boiling. Historically, the term “pot boiler” refers to hack-writing, fiction that is slapped together quickly, according to a set formula, intended brain-candy for the masses and a quick source of cast for the creator. I don’t think anyone would suggest Chabon is guilty of any of these things. If Goldbloom wants to call The Yiddish Policeman’s Union a work of genre fiction, I say bring it on. Genre may be shorthand used by publishers and booksellers to categorize, shelve, and market books. But the detective fiction genre is one that I am proud to celebrate.

Far from being the hack-writing that literary snobs condescendingly accuse it of being, detective fiction may be the last vestige of writing that still observes the principles of Aristotle’s Poetics. Unlike a lot of high literature, mystery novels have beginnings, middles, and endings and a plot that takes the reader from one end to the other in an interesting and entertaining manner. Mystery and detective fiction (I use the terms interchangeably) begin with a problem and end with a solution. Like the creation story in Genesis, they begin with chaos and end with order. One needn’t look farther than the novels of Laura Lippman, Reed Farrel Coleman, or Stuart Kaminsky (particularly his “Leiberman” books), to find beautiful writing, profound depth of human experience and moral struggle, and Judaic themes woven into detective story plots. The books of these authors are pot-boilers only in the sense that readers actually enjoy reading them.

Point four: “The greatest weakness of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, however, is the confusing and labored ending.” I’m not sure Ms. Goldbloom and I were reading the same book. Did I find ambiguity in the ending? Yes. Did the ending leave me with a certain political discomfort? Sure, in fact, the whole novel did. That’s the sign of good literature. But was it labored or confusing? As a detective story, all the crimes were clearly resolved; the final one brilliantly. But I think, in a subtle way, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union was more a story of love and redemption than one of crime solving. And in the end, Meyer Landsman found both love and redemption in a tender, touching, and quiet fulfillment of the novel’s promise.

Having responded to Goldbloom’s four criticisms, I have one final concern about her review of Chabon’s novel. The review spoiled the experience of the book for anyone who hasn’t read it by exposing several of the major surprises and plot twists of the book. I recall coming out of a movie theater in 1973, having just watched “The Sting,” the new film with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and still reeling from the surprise ending. A joker several yards in front of me yelled to the long queue of theater-goers lined up to buy tickets, “Hey, at the end they aren’t really ____!” I felt the same reaction when I read Goldbloom’s fourth paragraph, in which she spills all of the surprises of the first half of the book. What’s more, the editors of Jewish World Review used that spoiler as a pull quote!

I wish Goldie Goldbloom the best. She writes well and I sense that she has a good eye for literature. I don’t think she wrote “A Yiddisher Cop and an Argentine Elegy” with any malice intent. My goal is not to convert mystery-bashers into fans. I would only hope that Ms. Goldbloom, the editors of Jewish World Review, and anyone who would consider reviewing a book to remember that the purpose of a book review is neither to ridicule a book not to show how clever we are, but to share enough thoughtful information about the book to allow readers to decide for themselves whether the book merits their time.