Forgotten Book - The Deep End

Fredric Brown had a lot going for him as a crime writer. He had a flair for plotting, was strong on psychological insight, and although he wrote a successful series, he was especially good with stand-alone novels, when one can never be sure what the protagonist's fate will be. His writing was often witty, his story structures innovative, and he had a gift for the short story. What more could any crime fan wish for?

The Deep End was published in 1952, not too long after the admirable The Far Cry, but it's very, very different - and almost equally as good as that fine novel. The setting is this time a small, unnamed city rather than a remote outpost of New Mexico, and the lead character is a young journalist, Sam Evans. One thing he has in common with George Weaver in the earlier book is that his marriage is on the rocks. At the start of the story, his wife Millie has departed on a sort of trial separation.

The story has a low-key beginning, but the tension gradually rises as Sam begins to suspect a connection between a series of apparent accidents that resulted in fatalities. One of the ways that Brown builds suspense is by splitting the book into ten sections, representing the successive days over which the events of the story unfold. As with The Far Cry, the end of the story echoes the opening paragraphs, but the effect is quite different. He really was a clever writer.

Jack Seabrook's excellent biography of Brown, Martians and Misplaced Clues (a recommended read) explains that Brown based the story on an earlier novelette rejoicing in the title of "Obit for Obie". Like many writers of his era, including Chandler and Cornell Woolrich, he was a great one for reworking material that had originally appeared in the pulp magazines. In the case of lesser writers, this can be a sign of laziness or lack of imagination, but the better writers, such as Brown, often showed considerable skill in reworking ideas, and exploiting their potential more fully. Certainly, The Deep End is one of the best books of a very good crime novelist.

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.

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.