Forgotten Book - Careless Corpse

My forgotten book today is an obscure but extraordinary novel written by a fascinating, idiosyncratic and sometimes maddening American Golden Age storyteller. The book is Careless Corpse, first published in 1937, and the author C. Daly King. And it included that odd paragraph on economics that I teased you with yesterday.

I’ve mentioned King before in this blog. He was a psychologist who wrote books on the subject, and he drew from his professional expertise for his novels. But this did not take him down the road of “psychological suspense” – his fiction bears no resemblance to that of Francis Iles, say, or C.S. Forester. On the contrary, he specialised in elaborate puzzles, often weighed down by strange digressions into academic debates. An example is the passage I quoted in my quiz question.

In this novel, a series of deaths occur among members of a party of celebrities – including a concert pianist, a violinist, a dancer, a composer, and a musical critic. The party is organised by a wealthy scientist, and the setting is an island amid the ice-floes of the Hudson River.

As so often, King provides helpful diagrams – no fewer than five – and arranges the text in a series of “movements” to underline the musical aspects of the story. The plot is elaborate and wildly ingenious (and, of course, improbable) and there is some entertaining writing mixed in with a bit of padding here and there. I don’t claim this book is great literature, but I really did enjoy it as a light, escapist read.

Forgotten Book - The Complete Curious Mr Tarrant

My entry today for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is a collection that updates a book of short stories that is fondly remembered, I think, by a fair number of Golden Age fans. This is The Complete Curious Mr Tarrant, a Crippen & Landru ‘lost classsic’ which expands The Curious Mr Tarrant, first published in 1935.

The author, C. Daly King, was a psychologist, who wrote on his professional subject as well as venturing into detective fiction in half a dozen novels, some of them now fabulously rare in first edition. I’m still trying to trace Careless Corpse – in any edition. His plotting was labyrinthine, and occasionally eccentric. Obelists Fly High, which I’ve discussed before, is a truly remarkable mystery novel, well worth seeking out.

The original book of stories about Trevis Tarrant were not published in King’s native US until the 70s, but they deserved a better fate, and the expanded book, dating from 2003, contains four additional tales – fascinating finds, making the collection a true cabinet of curiosities. There is a nice introduction by the late Edward D. Hoch, who speaks fondly of King’s ingenuity, and his penchant for impossible crime stories.

The book offers ‘headless torsos, a haunted house, a vanishing harp, a museum mystery and other delights’, as Hoch says, along with a story about a murder solved only by the absence of a fish. ‘The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem’ was admired and anthologised by Dorothy L. Sayers, who knew a clever writer when she saw one. These stories are dated and sometimes quite barmy, but for me they have an irresistible appeal. What a shame that King’s one and only novel about Tarrant never saw the light of day.