Forgotten Book - Too Many Bottles

I share with Raymond Chandler and Ed Gorman, among others, an admiration for the work of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, a crime novelist who has long been under-rated. Domestic suspense was her forte and it's at the heart of Too Many Bottles, published in 1951, towards the end of her career. This is a swift read, a short book that ranks as a minor work compared to her best novels, but not without interest (yes, I know that's damning with faint praise, but I think it's a fair summary).

We see things from the point of view of a youngish man called Brophy. He writes pulp fiction and for the past year he's been living with his new wife Lulu and her sister Norma. Lulu is good-looking and possesses a superficial charm, but she's also nervy and needy and Brophy isn't in love with her. The Brophys hold a party which goes badly and after it's over, Lulu is found dead. At first it seems as if she may have consumed a poison by mistake, but it soon becomes clear she was murdered.

Holding piles on a number of complications, and in due course there is another death. However,  I formed an opinion about what was going on during the early chapters and I was disappointed to find that I was right. The mystery isn't as complex as it might have been, and Brophy's denseness becomes rather irritating.

Yet there are some nice touches, especially during a conversation about the merits, or otherwise, of creative writing classes and in Brophy's ruminations about his own crime writing. And I did enjoy the ironic passage where Brophy thinks: 'I couldn't write a psychological novel. I wouldn't know how to motivate my people. I'm too healthy. Or maybe too dumb.'

Forgotten Book - Murder is a Kill-Joy

My copy of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's Murder is a Kill-Joy is a little Dell mapback paperback. Mapbacks have a depiction of a key crime scene on the back of the book and are highly collectible. This one features an attractive depiction of "the house in the marshes" which is a murder scene in the novel, which was originally called Kill Joy. I wish that someone would compile an illustrated book featuring all the mapbacks; I'm sure it would be fascinating.

I've talked before about my admiration for Holding, a very good writer. When this book first came out, Kirkus Reviews said, in effect, that it was ok but not up with her best work, and that's essentially my view too. But it's a pacy story with plenty of twists and turns, even if the central situation didn't interest me quite as much as it evidently appealed to Holding.

Maggie Macgowan, a 19 year-old woman, is working in domestic service, trying to find her way in the world, when out of the blue Dolly Camford, for whose family Maggie works, persuades her to join her in a new career. They leave home in a hurry -  Dolly says she is fleeing from a menacing man, but it soon becomes clear to Maggie that Dolly's word is not to be relied upon. And they end up at the house in the marshes.

The complications come thick and fast, but in many ways the most appealing aspect of the book is the way Maggie matures as she experiences a whirl of conflicting emotions. Holding portrays her with a good deal of skill. Not a masterpiece, but any crime novel by Holding is worth a read.

Forgotten Book - The Unfinished Crime

Why hasn't Elisabeth Sanxay Holding featured more prominently in histories of the genre? It's a mystery in itself. The late Ed Gorman, a very good novelist as well as a considerable authority on crime writing, once commented on this blog about his admiration for her work. And the more of it that I've read, the more I've come to appreciate that he was, as usual, right. So, for that matter, were other Holding fans such as Anthony Boucher and Raymond Chandler.

The Unfinished Crime was one of her earlier crime novels. It appeared in 1934, and my US edition, published by Dodd, Mead, under their Red Badge imprint, has a splendid blurb which says that the story's quality "makes the usual array of fingerprints, weapons, alibis setc, look like claptrap". Talk about not pulling your punches! And surprise, surprise, the promise of the blurb is borne out by the story.

It's a story of suburban life. Andrew Branscombe is a well-off, conventional fellow who is contemplating marriage. He's not old, but he's rather staid and selfish. At first, though, he seems decent enough. However, an encounter with his beloved's estranged husband leads to his committing a crazy act of violence. The rest of the story is about his attempt to escape the consequences of his actions.

Holding's study of criminal psychology is compelling, and she cleverly shows the effect that the crime has on Branscombe's personality, drawing out the darker side that he had kept hidden until now. There's a touch of Francis Iles about it, but really Holding was a distinctive writer who needs to be judged on her own, very considerable merits. Yes, I was impressed by this story.

Forgotten Book - The Innocent Mrs Duff

I've mentioned several times my admiration for the pioneering work of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding in the field of domestic suspense. That field is very crowded now, but Holding was writing incisive stories about people under stress in domestic surroundings back in the 30s and 40s, and her work was of high quality. That's certainly true of The Innocent Mrs Duff, which first appeared in 1946.

The protagonist is Jacob Duff, 42, relatively prosperous, and rather handsome, but putting on weight. It quickly becomes clear that he's an extremely discontented man, and a particular focus of his unhappiness is his wife Regina, always known as Reggie. She's his second wife, and half his age. She's pretty and charming, and I waited some time to discover what dark secrets might lie behind the charming exterior. But really, with Reggie, what you see is what you get.

Jacob is a lucky guy, but he doesn't realise it. Worse, he sets about trying to extricate himself from Reggie in a very unwise manner. He starts drinking heavily, while persuading himself that his alcohol intake is moderate. His judgement is erratic, and gets worse, as his behaviour leads to catastrophic consequences.

There are quite a few similarities between this book and the rather less well-known but impressive The Unfinished Crime, not only in terms of the nature of the protagonist (a stupid man, who doesn't appreciate the admirable women around him; Holding's message on this is very clear), but also in terms of plot structure. But there are also enough differences to make both books a rewarding read.

Forgotten Book - Speak of the Devil

I've written more than once on this blog about the excellence of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, a pioneering American author of domestic suspense. Long before Patricia Highsmith came on the scene, Holding was producing unorthodox and compelling studies of criminal psychology which deserve to be better-known. A case in point is Speak of the Devil, first published in 1941, and expanded from a novella called Fearful Night.

The protagonist is Karen Peterson, a tall and attractive young woman, who is (and remains throughout the book) rather mysterious. She's very different in some ways from my own character Rachel Savernake, and yet there are one or two points of comparison that I noticed with interest. Karen is sailing for Havana when she is urged to take a job in a hotel by a man called Fernandez who has wants to marry. She decides, on the spur of the moment, and against her better judgement, to accept the offer of job, but not the offer of marriage .

The hotel is on the island of Riquezas, and given that Holding lived for some years on Bermuda, I wondered (without finding out the answer) whether to some extent the setting was based on Bermuda. Soon, a young woman called Cecily claims to have killed a man who was about to attack her. A body is found, but Miss Peterson doesn't think that Cecily is a killer. She starts to play the amateur sleuth, and encounters a sympathetic detective.

For a long time, I was unsure where this story was going. The cast of characters is small, and I was not clear how Holding was going to resolve the situation that she had created. But in a sequence of unpredictable (but not unreasonable) plot developments, she reminds us that, in a crime novel, nothing is what it seems. I found it all quite gripping, and another good example of Holding's quiet literary accomplishment.

The Reckless Moment - 1949 film review

Eight years ago (blimey!) I reviewed on this blog The Deep End, a film starring Tilda Swinton and based on Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's novel The Blank Wall. I was underwhelmed by that version of the story, I'm afraid, but when the chance came along to watch an earlier movie adaptation of the book, I decided to take a look. And I'm glad I did.

The Reckless Moment, released in 1949 is a domestic film noir of real merit. Joan Bennett, in her day quite a star, plays Lucia, a wife and mother who is preoccupied by family responsibilities at a time when her beloved husband is working abroad. She's a bossy mum, really, constantly chiding her son about his clothes, and taking it upon herself to tell an unpleasant unsuitable man who is seeing her 17 year old daughter that he must stop. She is even willing to offer him money to make himself scarce. It's not my idea of great parenting, and it doesn't work well. The chap, who is admittedly loathsome, turns up at the family home, where he and Lucia's daughter quarrel. She strikes him and then runs for it, and in a freak accident he winds up dead.

Lucia discovers his body, and in another desperately unwise move, decides to conceal the death. Needless to say, things soon start to unravel. The body is found, and the police start a murder hunt. Meanwhile, an unsavoury duo who have got hold of the girl's letters to the deceased set about blackmailing Lucia.

This is where the film becomes interesting, and it's all due to the relationship between James Mason, one of the bad guys, and Lucia. He finds himself falling in love with her, while she desperately tries to raise the money to buy him and his partner off. Although Mason's character behaves with improbable decency, he is such a charismatic actor that it's not too hard to suspend disbelief, while Lucia's valiant determination to keep her family safe makes up for her intermittent recklessness. A well-made film, and one I enjoyed rather more than The Deep End.

Forgotten Book - The Death Wish

Elizabeth Sanxay Holding is quite a memorable name, and she was quite a memorable writer, yet she is one of many talented practitoners of the past who nowadays suffer a considerable degree of neglect.  However, I know that Ed Gorman, one of the most knowledgeable of today's commentators on American crime fiction (as well as one of its most entertaining exponents) is a big fan of Holding, and I was prompted to read The Death Wish, my Forgotten Book for today, by a review on John Norris's superb blog, which constantly draws attention to neglected work of genuine quality.

John made the point in his insightful comments that, although published in 1935, this book was in some ways rather ahead of its time, given the focus on the psychological motivations of the characters.The key players are two men, an artist called Robert Whitestone and his friend Shawe Delancey, both of whom are  unhappily married. A very attractive young woman called Elsie falls for Robert, and the consequences prove to be tragic.

Holding had written a number of novels in the romance genre before she turned to crime, and I felt this was evident in her approach to the story. There isn't a great deal of action, and there were times when the behaviour and conversations of Elsie and others was rather over-wrought, to the point where I almost became irritated, in particular with Elsie. The plot didn't seem to me to be strong enough to compensate fully for this.

And yet despite my reservations, there was something about the novel that held my attention, and I certainly agree that, for its time, it was quite a notable piece of work. I didn't care for it as much as, say, Helen McCloy's debut, published three years later, but I suspect that at this point in her career, Holding was to some extent feeling her way, pushing out the boundaries in the way that talented and innovative writers do. I suspect her later books show further development, and I look forward to reading more of her work.

The Deep End

The Deep End is a 2001 movie starring Tilda Swinton which is sometimes described as a re-make of a James Mason film called This Reckless Moment. In fact, both are based on The Blank Wall, a novel by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.

I haven’t read the book, but I was first alerted to Holding’s qualities as a crime writer by Ed Gorman’s blog, and it turns out that her other admirers included Raymond Chandler and the legendary critic Anthony Boucher. She started out writing romances, with titles including The Invincible Minnie, before turning to novels of suspense, apparently as a way of making more money after the Wall Street Crash. She died in 1955.

As for the movie, I have to say I was underwhelmed. The basic premise is that Tilda plays Margaret Hall, whose son is in a relationship with an unsavoury older man. When the older man dies, and her son is implicated, Margaret tries to cover things up, only to become embroiled in a blackmail scam.

The raw material of the story is strong (the book and the James Mason film were successful) but I did find it difficult to care much for either Margaret Hall or her son, and in a story like this, it is almost always essential to have some form of empathy for the main characters. The production values of the film are high, and the Lake Tahoe area looks attractive, but I am afraid this was a thriller which thrilled me much less than I had hoped. I would, however, be very interested to learn the views of other Holding fans about her best books.