Timing is everything in the world of writing, as so often it is in many walks of life. John Sladek's misfortune was to demonstrate a mastery of the locked room mystery at a time when that delightful form of detective fiction was deeply unfashionable. He was primarily a science fiction writer, but he published two books of this type before giving up on mysteries.
As Sladek said in an interview with David Langford in 1982, 'those two novels suffered mainly from being written about 50 years after the fashion for puzzles of detection. I enjoyed writing them, planning the absurd crimes and clues, but I found I was turning out a product the supermarket didn't need any more – stove polish or yellow cakes of laundry soap. One could starve very quickly writing locked-room mysteries like those. SF has much more glamour and glitter attached to it, in these high-tech days.' How lucky we fans of detective fiction are that the wheel has turned full circle, and locked room puzzles (genuine locked room puzzles, as well as the 'closed circle' mysteries that are similarly if erroneously badged) are all the rage.
I first came across Sladek's witty and clever detective fiction many moons ago, and my enthusiasm for his work was revived recently when I was lucky enough to acquire inscribed copies of both Black Aura and Invisible Green from the writer Scott Bradfield, who got to know Sladek (who was American) when the latter was in London in the 1990s.
Black Aura was published by Jonathan Cape in 1974. Sladek had won the 1972 Cape/Times short crime story competition, which earned him a prize of £500 and an offer to publish a novel. The short story introduced an American living in London called Thackeray Phin, and in the novel he operates very much in the grand tradition of the Great Detective, solving baffling impossible crimes with aplomb.
The setting of the story is a commune presided over by a very dodgy medium called Viola Webb. Phin believes she is a fraud and moves in with a view to debunking her. The way that the ingenious puzzles in the book are counterpointed by witty vignettes of life in Seventies London makes this book a real treat. It's such a shame that Sladek abandoned the genre. I'm tempted to argue that this book and Invisible Green were the best locked room mysteries of the 1970s.
There wasn't much competition, beside some short stories, but even if there had been, Black Aura and Invisible Green would probably still be regarded as the best locked room mysteries from the 1970s. Sladek bowing out after only two novels and a handful of short stories, because "one could starve very quickly writing locked room mysteries," was a great lost. Just imagine a John Sladek who had continued to write retro-GAD locked room mysteries throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Sladek also wrote two impossible crime short stories without Thackeray Phin. The hilarious short-short "The Locked Room" and "Scenes from the Country of the Blind" about a vanished village. Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek has a section ("Sladek Incognito") with eight crime stories originally published under the name "Dale Johns." My favorite is "You Have a Friend at Fengrove National." The collection also has time travel crime story titled "In the Oligocene." Very much worth a look!
Martin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this review. I am a science fiction fan as well as liking detective stories. I will certainly keep an eye out for these two books.
You mention timing as everything but, I wonder, in this case, if publisher was not also a factor. Jonathan Cape was perhaps more seen as a publisher of literary fiction rather than detective stories, though Cape did publish Ian Fleming. Perhaps Sladek might have had more success had he been published by, say, Collins or Gollancz.
There is certainly some cross over between science fiction and detective fiction. The obvious example would be Isaac Asimov. His novels “The Caves of Steel” and “The Naked Sun” are science fiction detective stories but he also wrote many detective short stories, including the splendid Black Widowers series.
Another good example is “The Demolished Man” by Alfred Bester. This is a thrilling inverted murder story but there is a twist which is clued in such a brazen manner, it takes the breath away.
Michael
Thanks, TomCat. I acquired a copy of Maps recently and look forward to reading those stories.
ReplyDeleteHi Michael. Intriguingly, Invisible Green was indeed published by Gollancz, but I don't think their sales reach in the 1970s was great. I've read some of the Black Widower stories but I don't know The Demolished Man at all. Sounds intriguing.
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