S. J. Rozan, The Art of Violence

 

S. J. Rozan, The Art of Violence: A Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Novel
Copyrigight (C) 2020
Pegasus Crime 
ISBN 9781643135311

As I read this book--which is totally excellent--I had an experience that I have had occasionally.  A little less than half-way through, I said to myself "I know who did it."  Not "I think I know."  But "I know."  Usually, when I have that reaction, I'm wrong.  This time, I was right.  And *knowing* that I knew whodunit made no difference to me in terms of wanting--needing--to get to the end of the book.  

It is set, obviously, in the world of avante garde are in NYC.  Leaving aside Smith and Chin, the principal character is Sam Tabor, a convicted murder (of a young woman) who has made it out of prison to become the darling of the art scene.  Other young women die, in ways that are very similar to the murder for which he was convicted.  He hires Smith to find out if he is guilty.  Complicating things is Tabor's severe ADHD issues.   And, following a gala at the Whitney celebrating Tabor's art, a young woman is killed, who was part of a protest against Tabor's celebrity., in a way very similar to his victim.

From what I know of the NYC art scene (not a lot, but enough), the settings and the characters are remarkably depicted.  And the resolution is worthy of everything that goes before.  Even if you think you know whodunit.  The best mystery I have read this year.

Is Faking A Kidnapping Worth It: Althea and Jimmy Vail in The Final Deduction, by Rex Stout

 

Is Faking A Kidnapping Worth It:
Althea and Jimmy Vail in
The Final Deduction, by Rex Stout

 

I must begin by warning you that this essay contains serious “spoilers,” so if you are not familiar with the plot of The Final Deduction, you should stop reading now and do something more useful than read a deconstruction of the plot of a mystery novel.

Nero Wolfe’s involvement begins when Althea Vale hires him to assure the safe return of her husband, Jimmy Vail, who has been kidnapped.  Both of them have had very puplic lives prior to their marriage.  Althea Purcell was an actor in a major hit on Broadway; she walked away from the theatre to marry a wealthy man, Harold Tedder (presumably in the late 1930s, as, at the time this episode begin (around 1960), she had a son and daughter, both in their early 20s.  Harold Tedder had died, apparently sometime in the early to mid 1950s, leaving his considerable wealth solely to her.  Jimmy Vail had been a nightclub comedian—highly successful—in NYC.  They married, and he walked away from his career, much as she had walked away from hers.

The kidnapping has been orchestrated by a Mr. Knapp, and his arrangements are thorough and fairly ingenious.  And the ransom demand is $500,000.  (It’s worth knowing, I think, that, adjusted for general inflation, such a ransom today would be around $6 million  Keep in mind that Althea has hired Wolfe to recover her husband, not to identify and bring to justice the kidnapper(s).  He asks for, and receives, a retained of $50,000.

From this point on, I will be discussing aspects of this affair that will be spoilers.  So if you have not read this mystery, or if you have read it and expect to read it again, please stop reading now.

As Wolfe begins to earn his fee, he becomes convinced that the kidnapping might be less than it seems, that the Vails have staged the kidnapping, and anticipate claiming a $500,000 deduction from their taxable income.  We never actually learn what their income is, but, as both have walked away from their careers, their income is based on the fortune inherited by Althea when her first husband died.  This has always seemed to me to be a fairly tricky, and risky, scheme.  As I have thought about this, I began to look at the potential rewards of pulling this fraud off successfully (spoiler: they do not pull it off). 

So.  What are the potential rewards?  Put simply, it’s the anticipated tax saving.  That saving will depend on the (marginal) income tax rates and on whether ransom payments are, in fact, are deductible.  But against that is the risk of being charged with and convicted of tax fraud, a risk that extends to Althea’s personal secretary, Dinah Utley.  (I do not recall, and, during my most recent re-reading of the book, I could not find any indication of what share of the loot Utley would receive.  Presumably it would have to me a significant percentage of the take.)

The following table [Federal Income Tax Brackets for Tax Year 1959 (Filed April 1960) (tax-brackets.org)] shows the income tax rates, by income range, for 1960.*  The amount of the (fraudulent) tax saving follows directly by looking at the tax brackets and rates.  We are not told what the household income is, but the maximum tax saving would accrue only if the family taxable income is greater than $1 million (roughly the equivalent of $12 million accounting for inflation.  The maximum tax saving (ignoring state and local income taxes, which would have been negligible in 1969) would be 91% of $500,000--$455,000 (the equivalent of $5.5 million at today’s general price level), minus Utley’s share.  Or, at most, about half of one year’s income.

Federal Income Tax Brackets, 1960

Income Bracket                      Marginal Tax Rate
$0 - $3,999                                      20%
$4,000 -$ 7,999                               22%
$8,000 -$11,999                              22%
$12,000 – 15,999                            26%
$16,000 - $23,999                           34%
$24,000 - $27,999                           43%
$28,000 - $31,000                           47%
$32,000 - $35,999                           50%
$36,000 - $39,000                           53%
$40,000 - $43.000                           56%
$44,000 - $51,999                           59%
$52,000 - $63,999                           62%
$64,000 - $75,999                           65%
$76,000 - $79,999                           69%
$80,000 - $99,999                           72%
$100,000 – $119,000                              75%
$120,000 – $139,999                              78%
$140,000 - $159,000                               81%
$160,000 - $179,000                               84%
$180,000 - $199.000                               89%
$200,000 -$299,000                                90%
$500,000 +                                      91%

But there is a second consideration.  Would the ransom be an allowable deduction from their taxable income?  My take on this is that it might not be deductible.  Two factors matter.  The first is whether proven ransom payment constitutes a deductible a expenditure.  I have found this very difficult to establish.  What I have been able to find pertains to business ransom payments (e.g., payments to get “ransom wear” cleaned from computer systems.  Or, in some cases, documentable kidnapping and safe return of a business’s employee.  What is clear in these cases is that the relevant law enforcement agency (or agencies) be able to document the denial of service that makes up the ransom demand or the captivity of an employee.  This entails, at the least, law enforcement agencies being informed of the event and being able to monitor the amount of the payment.  I have been unable to determine** whether what we might call private kidnapping and ransom payment constitutes a deductible event under current law and practice.  But the implication of what I have been able to discover about current practice does not present a clear case for the deductibility of ransom paid for private kidnapping.

In addition, I would suggest that that if ransom payments are deductible, the taxing authority would require proof that the kidnapping had occurred and that the payment had been made.  In the case of the kidnapping of Jimmy Vail, no attempt was made to inform the police that a kidnapping had occurred. In the absence of some sort of proof that a kidnapping and ransom payment had actually occurred, I seriously doubt that any taxing authority accept a claim of deductibility of a ransom.  And, if the “ransom payment” is not deductible, the Vails would have undertaken a risk for no reward

Let me make this clear:  Rex Stout is my favorite author of mystery novels,  I own copies of all of them; I have read all of them multiple times.  And, if one can ignore the technical issues surrounding the kidnapping and subsequent murder, The Final Deduction is at the very least engrossing.  But I am not sure that the premise of the story really holds up.

*A digression.  Two things are striking about the tax table for 1960 and the current tax table.  First of all, there were 22 tax bracket in 1960— compared with7 tax brackets in 2020.  Second, the maximum tax rate in 2020 was only 37%.  Clearly, the risk-reward ratio for a fraudulent kidnapping would be a lot less enticing today. 

**I spent about 3 hours trying to determine either the state of current tax law and practice or the state of law practice as it was in 1960, without success.

Fritz Gets Paid

             Life—and Pay—as Fritz Brenner

While the focus of the books is inevitably on the case and the investigation, and, of course, on the relationship between Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin), life in the old brownstone on West 35^th St. centers on The Meals.  And in giving consideration to them, we need to give consideration to the life—and especially to the working schedule—and compensation—of Fritz Brenner.  In particular, I asked myself, was Fritz compensated as well as it appears he should have been—what would a chef as good and as experienced as Fritz reasonably have expected to earn?

Let’s try to answer that question.  (Briefly, anticipating the answer, Fritz was doing all right.)

What can we say with certainty?  That Wolfe and Fritz have known each other from long before Archie began working for Wolfe.  That Fritz is (according to Wolfe, in Too Many Cooks), competent, if not inspired.  That, at the time of In the Best Families (published in 1950), Fritz was making $1,000 per month.  That Fritz does the shopping for the household.  That Fritz is strongly opposed to having a woman in the place.  And probably more.  But we can also infer what his working schedule must look like.

Wolfe breakfasts at 8:00 (or 8:15); lunch is at 1:00 (or 1:15), and dinner is at 7:15 (or 7:30).  Archie eats breakfast at somewhat irregular times, but usually around 8, and usually lunches with Wolfe.  We don’t know when, where, or if Theodore eats.

If Fritz is going to prepare the food for that schedule, here’s what it seems to me that his day must look like:

7:00 – 9:30:  In the kitchen to prepare breakfast for Wolfe and for Archie.  At about 9 (after Wolfe heads for the plant rooms), he retrieves the tray from Wolfe’s room and finishes any after-breakfast clean-up.  (At some time in this interval, he fixes and eats his own breakfast, and fixes breakfast for Archie.)

11:30 – 2:30:  In the kitchen to prepare lunch.  When Wolfe and Archie finish their meal (by about 2:00), he clears the remaining dishes from the dining room and finishes cleaning up.  (At some time in this interval, he eats his own lunch.)

5:30 – 9:00:  In the kitchen to prepare dinner.  He finishes clearing in the dining room after Wolfe and Archie are done, and finishes up in the kitchen by 9:00.  (Again, he finds time to heat his own meal.)

That’s nine hours per day to prepare and clean up after the three meals served.  We’re not told when he shops, but my guess is that he spends two hours on Monday morning shopping, probably at multiple stores (in the European fashion).  So, for Monday through Friday, we have a 47-hour work week.  We also know that Fritz has Sundays off (or mostly off; sometimes it appears that he prepares breakfast, as is  hinted at by Archie’s reference to his “Sunday morning crescents”).  We don’t know about Saturday, but my suspicion is that he prepares breakfast, and leaves things ready for lunch and dinner, but also has most of Saturday off.

If all this is correct, then Fritz has a roughly 50-hour work week.  How would this compare with the work week of an executive chef in a restaurant, on the assumption that the restaurant does lunch and dinner (as, for example, it seems Rusterman’s does).  Suppose the restaurant opens at 11, serves lunch from noon until 2 and dinner from 5:30 until 10, Monday through Saturday (or, perhaps, Tuesday through Sunday—a fair number of restaurants in Chicago seem to be closed on Monday).  The executive chef may not do all that much line cooking, but must determine the menu (especially weekly specials), order  the food and supplies and attend to its delivery, schedule the rest of the staff, supervise the kitchen, and so on.  This looks like a 12-hour day, 6 days a week, or 72 hours a week.[1]  So, in that respect, Fritz’s work week was perhaps somewhat shorter than that of an executive chef in a first-class restaurant.

But Fritz’s working day was longer, from 7 AM until 9 PM (with occasional later duties if Wolfe had clients and others in after dinner)—14 hours a day in which he would have, at best, 2 hours off between breakfast and lunch and 3 off between lunch and dinner.  Having worked, long ago, the occasional split shift, I would argue that those 5 hours would not provide much time for personal activities.

And for this, let’s assume that the $1,500 per month figure noted above represented his compensation (adjusted, of course, for changes in the general level of prices).  In current terms, this translates to about $15,000 per month, or $180,000 per year.  But we need to take account of the fact that his compensation included two major pieces of in-kind pay:  Housing and food.  So we need to take account of the value he received from that. 

For most of the time, Fritz had a large room in the basement (let’s call it the equivalent of a studio apartment, or a small one-bedroom apartment; it’s clearly more space than, for example, Archie had[2]).  Based on some speculation about the floor plans of the brownstone[3], I would put Fritz’s space at about 500 square feet, perhaps 25% to 30% larger than Archie’s.  What I’m finding[4] is current rents of about $2,500 per month for that sort of space in midtown Manhattan.  So the value of his living space would be about $30,000 per year (that would be taxable income today, and was, according to the tax code, taxable income then—but it was basically ignored).

And then there’s the food.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics[5] estimates that average household expenditures on food (both at home and away) in 2014 was about $6,000.  Now, that’s for the entire household.  However, the quality of food served in the brownstone would clearly be higher than that of the average household in the U.S., so I’m going to count the entire amount in estimating the value of meals-at-home for Fritz--$6,000.  (Again, this would be now, and was then, taxable income, but it was generally ignored until sometime in the 1990s.)

So my estimate of the value of Fritz’s annual compensation, including the value of housing and food, would be about $216,000, or about $18,000 per month.  Or, based on my estimate of a 50-hour work-week, and assuming that Fritz got 4 weeks of paid vacation, $90 per hour.  Was Fritz well-paid, or was he underpaid? 

Well, we know that at the time of Too Many Cooks, Philip Lazio was making $60,000 per year, and Jerome Berin was offered as much as $40,000 per year to replace him.  In today’s terms, that would be about $1 million per year for Lazio and about $675,000 for Berin.  That seems fairly reasonable for world-class chefs; one estimate[6] suggests that Mario Batali makes about $3 million a year, and Bobby Flay makes $1.5 million (for both of them, that includes their earnings from television).  (At least Lazio and Berin were being paid close to what one would expect.)

But cooking for 2 people (or 3, counting himself, or 4 if Theodore eats in the kitchen with Fritz) is not as demanding as running a large restaurant.  So a comparison with private chefs is perhaps more relevant.  A quick check[7] suggests that the average annual pay for a private chef in the top 10% of private chefs in the U.S. is about $150,000.  So, as I am rather pleased to discover, it appears that Fritz is being paid what he deserves—as much as the best and most experienced private chefs in America.

---

[1] We knew fairly well a couple who ran a restaurant in Chicago for about 15 years.  They did not do lunches, but their work day was generally from about 2 PM until about 11 PM.  She ran the kitchen and he ran the front of the house; she ordered the food and planned the menu and specials; he ordered all the beverages.  She supervised the kitchen staff; he supervised the table servers, bartenders, and other front-of-the house personnel.  The kitchen staff was usually 3-4 line chefs; the front was staffed, on weekends, with 5 wait staff, 5 bus, 2 bartenders, and 1 hostess.  They were closed on Sundays.  So their typical work week was 54 hours a week, and that was without lunch service.

 [2] I will note, though, that the bedrooms were quite generously sized.  There were 2 bedrooms on each of the second and third floors, each with its own bathroom.  Those appear to have been front-and-back, with a hallway running also front-to-back.  The first floor had 4 rooms—the front room, the office, the dining room, and the kitchen; of these, only the front room was described as small.  The office could accommodate a crown of 16 or so in a pinch, and we know—from Murder By the Book—that the dining room could seat more than a dozen.  And Fritz had, obviously, a fair amount of space to work in. 

 [3] See http://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/tidbits/Brownstone_Floor_Plans.htm.

[4] http://www.nakedapartments.com/nyc/studio-apartments-manhattan

[5] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm

 [6] http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/08/top-10-celebrity-chef-earners-salary.html

 [7] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Private_Chef/Salary

 

Rex Stout, Champagne For One

 Rex Stout, Chamoagne For One
© Copyright 1958 Rex Stout
Bantam reprint 1996

This is one of my favorite, maybe in my top 10, of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books.  There is, however, one big issue (that I will get to).

Louise Robilloti, re-married after the death of her very wealthy husband Alfred Grantham, does not exactly carry on with his philanthropic endeavors.  But she does host, annually, a very special dinner.  One of his charities was Grantham House, a home for unmarried, pregnant young women.  They receive very good pre-natal and post-natal care, and assistance in finding work after the event.  Archie gets roped in (by Mrs. Robilloti’s nephew Austin Byne) to serve as a guest—4 unmarried men, 4 unwed mothers, and 4 members of the family (the Robillotis and Louise’s 2 children, Cecil and Celia Grantham).  Following a lavish dinner, the host, hostess, family members, and guests adjourn to the ballroom for champagne and dancing.

And one of the mothers, Rose Tuttle, decides to tell Archie that another of the mothers, Faith Usher, has with her a bottle of cyanide, and Rose is afraid that she plans to use it to end her life.  Archie promises to watch over her.  And, of course, Faith Usher dies of cyanide poisoning, presumably in a glass of champagne delivered to her by Cecil Grantham.  Everyone (well, almost everyone) is prepared to accept suicide as a verdict, but Archie is adamant that Usher did bot drop anything into the glass of champagne, or put anything into her mouth (except champagne).  So he’s in for it.  And the hosts and guests can’t just write it off because Archie refuses to accept the conclusion that Usher committed suicide, and the police are reluctant just to ignore Archie’s insistence that it was not suicide.

And one of the guests, Edwin Laidlaw (a wealthy, reformed rake) hires Wolfe to find out what really happened.  He has several reasons for seeking Wolfe’s services, but high on his list is to prevent it coming out that he is the father of Faith Usher’s child.  And he has enough money to make the job worthwhile to Wolfe.  And, from Archie’s point of view, to prove that he’s right, that Usher was murdered.  Although, initially, it seems likely to be impossible, or next to it, to prove that it was murder and to identify the murderer

.

One of the reasons I am drawn to this book is that it is, in my opinion, the best depiction of women in the entire series.  While the women are largely shown as more or less dependent in one way or another, only Louise Robilloti is depicted negatively (and much of that stems from her physical appearance on the one hand and her snobery on the other).  Not only are all four of the young women/mothers depicted in a generally positive way, Celia Grantham is also treated positively. 

But…as the investigation unfolds, we learn that Faith Usher’s mother, Elaine Usher, had an affair with Alfred Grantham, and that Faith is one of the outcomes on that affair.  And here I had a problem.  Assuming that someone has a motive for murder, I have always thought that the more likely subject would have been Elaine Usher.  While it would, obviously, have been impossible to get Elaine Usher into the dinner party, she seems to me to have been the most likely murderee.  The denouement is handled well, however, and the discovery of how the murder was committed is very well handled. 

In my opinion, well worth reading—and re-reading.

 

Raymond Postgate, "Somebody At the Door"

 Just in case you thought I only read books that turn out to be good:

Raymond Postgate, "Somebody At the Door"

Originally published 1943

Reprint in the British Library Crime Classics series2017

I have been a fan of the British Library Crime Classic series from its inception; I've bought and read with pleasure a large number of them (20+, I'm estimating). Bit I have begun to wonder whether the series is running out of high quality material.

The last half dozen or so that I've read have been pedestrian at best, and the one I just finished--Raymond Postgate's "Somebody At the Door" (originally published in 1943)--was at best mediocre (starting with the title which actually doesn't even make sense, given the story). There is a 70+ page section (30% of the book) that provides unnecessary--irrelevant, really--backstory, for example. And the ending seems tacked on just to come up with a conclusion. One oft he least rewarding books I have ever read.

Rex Stout, Prisoner's Base

Rex Stout, Prisoner’s Base
Copyright © 1952 Rex Stout
Bantam Books reprint 1992
ISBN0-553-24269-5

A young and attractive young woman shows up at Nero Wolfe’s house, carrying luggage.  Wolfe is not available—he’s tending to his orchids.  The young woman, Pricilla Eads (as we late discover when her guardian, Perry Helmar, shows up, seeking to hire Wolfe to find her) wishes to remain secluded until her 25^th birthday has passed.  Also, as we learn from Helmar when he is seeking to hire Wolfe to(for $10,000—roughly $150,000 in inflation-adjusted terms), on her 25^th birthday his guardianship will terminate and she will come into control of a fortune, including a majority ownership of a textile design and manufacturing firm (SoftDown).

Wolfe chooses not to reveal her presence in his house, and persuades Helmar to let him consider whether to take the case until the next morning.  He then confronts Eads, saying that she has a choice:  Pay him $10,000 keep her hidden until her 25^th birthday, or leave the brownstone.  Should she leave, he tells her, he will call Helmar the next morning to accept the job he has been offered.  (He also points out that all she has to do is go home and phone Helmar.)

She leaves, and is found the next morning in her apartment, dead—strangled.  And her long-time maid, Margaret Fomos (who does not live in) has been found, also strangled, with her key to Eads’ apartment missing.  It’s not hard to reach the conclusion that Fomos was killed ti get the key, and that the same person has killed them both.  Archie tries to convince Wolfe to investigate the Eads’ murder; Wolfe refuses.  And Archie takes it upon himself to find the killer.

Complications ensue.  Archie crashes a board of directors meeting (identifying himself as a detective); before he has accomplished much, the cops show up and arrest him of a charge of impersonating a police officer.  After some back-and-forth, Archie overhears Wolfe—who was also arrested—describing the events to the police higher-ups, and announces that he does have a client—Archie Goodwin.  Like it or not, Wolfe will investigate the murders.

One of the complications has to do with Eads’ marriage, to Eric Hagh, several years earlier, in Caracas, Venezuela.  She has apparently signed an agreement to share equally any assets she inherits with Hagh.  Which means millions, as of her 25^th birthday.  And Hagh has hired a lawyer who has informed Helmar that 50% of Eads’ SoftDown stock should be, as of her 25^th birthday, when she formally inherits it, should be transferred to him.

So we have a tangle.  And there is one of Stout’s best-ever scenes.  Wolfe manages to Helmar get the four highest executives of SoftDown to come to his office to discuss the situation.  He asks them to—no, let me quote Wolfe:

I say to you…there is a suspicion current that you had something to do with the murder of Pricilla Eads, and also of Margaret Fomos, and even that you may have actually committed those crimes with your own hands.  What have you to say to remove or discredit that suspicion?

The responses of three of the four executives (Jay Brucker, president; Viola Duday, assistant secretary to the corporation; Oliver Pitkin, corporate treasurer; and Bernard Quest, VP) are among the best set pieces I have ever read in a mystery novel.  (Only Brucker’s is uninteresting.)  And all four of their “voices are distinct and captivating.  These are at the very least among the best conceived characters in any of the books.

Saul Panzer also plays a pivotal role in identifying the murderer.  As is generally the case with the continuing PI characters (excluding Archie) in the saga, we hear what Saul has discovered, but we don’t see or hear him actually doing the work.  (I’ll admit to wishing that Stoup had gotten around to writing a book about Saul as a detective.)

The narrative (the plot, if you will) is among the best Stout ever wrote.  The people involved in this particular situation are well, eve, brilliantly conceived and presented.  It’s the best conceived and presented cast of characters, I think, in the entire body of work.  The events leading up to the murders, and the detective work leading to the climax, are as good as anything Stout ever wrote.  It’s not the book that has moved me most (that would be A Family Affair).  It’s not the book that deals with the weightiest issued (The Doorbell Rang).  But it is very nearly the best thing Stout wrote.

Rex Stout, Too Many Clients

 Rex Stout, Too Many Clients
© Copyright 1960 (and probably renewed by the Estate of Rex Stout)
Bantam Books reprint 1994
ISBN 0-553-25423-5

I’ve read Too Many Clients many times, and have written about it more tan once.  Having just re-read it, I feel obliged (to myself; everyone else in the world should feel free to ignore this) to write about it again.  So here I go.

Thomas Yeager, (one of?) the VPs of the Continental Plastics corporation has been murdered, his body found underneath a tarp at street construction site, n a relatively undesirable part of Manhattan.  Wolfe winds up with three clients:  The Perez family (property managers living in the basement apartment of a residential building near the where the body was found); Yeager’s wife (who knew about his extramarital activities); and the corporation at which Yeager had worked.  The first discovery is that Yeager had owned the building in which the Perez family lived and worked.  He had constructed, on the top floor, what can best be described as the setting for serial extramarital activities.  (There’s some evidence that the activities involved Yeager and a fairly large number of women,)  Keep in mind that this is in what would generally be referred to as a slum.  And Yeager was killed there.

Wolfe and Goodwin manage to discover the murderer.  But what I want to discuss is something entirely different.

Yeager, one would think, would be at pains to keep both the place and the activities.  But consider:  The top floor had to be essentially rebuilt (walls removed; windows as well; an expensive, unpickable lock installed on the basement level.  And an expensive elevator with only 2 stops—the basement and the bower.  Leave aside the cost.  This would have taken a fair amount of time and a fairly large number of constructions.  The residents of the building, and of the surrounding neighborhood, might not know exactly what was being done.  But they would certainly know that something was in the works.  This would certainly attract the attention of the residents and, I would think, of the neighborhood as a whole.  They would wonder who had done this, and why.  They would be curious about the people entering and leaving.  So it is likely that people would be watching, and, if any of t hem had cameras (Kodak Brownies were relatively cheap, it’s likely that someone would be taking photos.  One source (Kodak Eastman: Brownie Flashmite 20 Price Guide: estimate a camera value (collectiblend.com)) puts the price at $15 in the early 1950s, so maybe not so cheap.  But, still, it only takes one…)

Now, to be sure, Yeager might not have been all that concerned about people in the neighborhood knowing something was going on, or even the highly likely knowledge about what was going on.  And the women who made the trip to this apartment building in a slum might not have felt all that insecure (although I would suspect that they would have called for a cab prior to leaving, rather than hailing a cab at the curb.) 

After the Yeager’s murder, things might have changed.  His picture would have appeared in the papers.  Some people in the neighborhood might have recognized this visitor (Yeager).  While most of Yeager’s guests would be anonymous, at least one (Meg Duncan, a well-known actress) might well have been noticed and identified by someone.  Among those recognizing Yeager as the murdered man, someone would likely have called the police.  And then everything would have played out differently.  The police would have discovered Yeager’s ownership of the building, and of the nature of the top floor (and, by the way, how is it that Sgt. Stebbins managed to overlook the presence of an elevator?).  Yet there is not even a suggestion that anyone in the neighborhood noticed or cared.  No suggestion that any of the residents—except the Perez family, and Stebbins came to see them because their daughter had been murdered, not because the bower was discovered—had even been asked if they had seen the body being dumped in the hole.  (I would have thought that canvassing the neighborhood would have been automatic in any event, in an effort to determine if anyone had seen Yeager’s body being dumped.)

A secondary issue is the choice of a slum to begin with, so I’m going to touch on that as well.  Yeager bought the entire building (if memory serves, a 3  or 4 story building, likely with 4 apartments to a floor, so probably 12 apartments (excluding the Perez family’s quarters in the basement).  Yeager’s alternative, it seems to me, would have been to purchase a single co-op (or condo) unit and have it remodeled to suit his needs.  I can’t believe that such a choice would have been more expensive than buying an entire apartment building and remodeling as we know it was.  Furthermore, his guests would not face the same (perhaps small) risks to their personal safety were they to visit him in a mid-town residence (even buying a small single family house in the Village couldn’t have been that much more expensive, even if it needed to be remodeled).  Remodeling a co-op unit wouldn’t attract as much attention as would remodeling a unit in a slum.  The attention that might be paid to his visitors would also probably not have attracted as much neighborhood attention.  So the risk associated with the slum location must, for Yeager, and possibly for his guests as well, have been part of the attraction.  To me, that seems to be a stretch, but I still always find myself why selecting a more obviously unusual site is something that Yeager would have chosen.

I have two additional bones to pick, about the motive of the murderer and about Archie’s reaction to the fate of Dinah Hough, but I’ll leave that for another day.  And that discussion will involve revealing the identity of the murderer, and the murder’s motive.

Having said all that, I will say that, if one accepts the premise, both Goodwin’s actions (with one exception) and Wolfe’s deductions make Too Many Clients a fairly compelling read.

Josh Pachter (ed.), The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe

 Josh Pachter (ed.), The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe
Copyright © 202  Rex Stout Literary Properties
Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1504-059-862

I have found that, generally, compilations like this tend to be disappointing, either because the concept doesn’t work or because the individual stories don’t measure up.  And, being something of a Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe devotee, I was inclined to be skeptical.  But, I am happy to be able to say, this was, as Mr. Wolfe would have said, satisfactory.

The book is divided into four sections:
“Tribute in Triplicate: Introductions” (3 introductions)
“Part I: Pastiches” (6 shorter pieces in which Wolfe appears explicitly or implicitly as a character))
“Part II: Parodies” (7 longer pieces whose main characters are more-or-less homages to Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe)
“Part III: Potpourri” (5 shorter, unclassifiable pieces)

Speaking solely for myself, I found the stories in Part II to be the most interesting and best realized, with the material in Parts I and III being interesting and readable, but not as interesting.  So I’m going to focus mostly on Part II. 

The seven parodies are, as I have already suggested, really homages.  In all seven, there is a detective whose adventure is chronicled by his employee/assistant in the detective business.  In several of them, Wolfe (and Archie) are off-stage presences.  Of the seven, a few really stand out.  For example, “The Case of the Disposable Jalop, (by Mack Reynolds)” in which three scientists (Clarke, Aldiss, and Brunner—and if you have read much SF, you’ll know where those guys came from)  need is assistance in recovering a rather remarkable motor vehicle in a world that reminded me of Frederik Pohl’s story “The Midas Plague.”  It’s a world in which work as we know it  has more-or-less been eliminated, but greed continues.  They want to hire him to find yet another scientist, named Azimov and another guy named Asimov(hint, hint).  And a secretary named Mata Hari Le Guin.

And there’s Lawrence Block’s story of a Christmas party (“As Dark As Christmas Gets)” in Wolfe is hired to recover a stolen manuscript written by Cornell Wolrich that appears to have been stolen from a mystery bookstore in Manhattan.  Our narrator is Chip Harrison, and our detective is Leo Haig (formerly a breeder of tropical fish for a living, but, as a result of a large legacy, a detective—who wants to be so successful that Wolfe invites him to dinner).  (They also appear in novels by Block)  Of course you know exactly which mystery bookstore in Manhattan this is based on.  Right?

Loren Estleman’s contribution features Claudius Lyon (chronicled by a small-time con man trying to go straight, Arnie Woodbine),a detective (unlicensed) who works for free, to avoid having to get a license.  Lyon is “hired” to find a past winner (Noah Ward) of a prestigious poetry award, in order to be able to include the poet’s prize-winning poem in an anthology.  In the course of things, they run afoul of one of the nastier members of the NYPD’s finest.  The solution is what one might call poetic justice.  (Or maybe not.()

Dave Zeltserman [who is, for some reason, not indexed on SYKM, but can be found at a Wikipedia entry (Dave Zeltserman - Wikipedia)] has written a series of stories featuring a wealthy sometime PI named Julius Katz and his virtual assistant.  This is considerably darker (and with higher stakes) than the others.  Katz is in imminent danger of being killed, as his Boston townhouse has been bombed.  And that is aa consequence of his being paid being paid a $20 K retained by the dog food king, Allen Luther.  Someone is apparently trying to kill him, and he wants Katz to make sure that, should he be killed, the perp is caught. 

Michael Bracken presents us with what might be termed the last days of his take on the  duo in “The Possibly Last Case of Tiberius Dingo.”  Dingo is old, in failing health (the office has been turned into a bedroom), and, basically, waiting to die.  His aging assistant (Jughead, which is a nice touch) has arranged for Ruth Entemann to seem Dingo (he declines to take her case (she thinks she’s being stalked, but Jughead has his ways).  Dingo winds up in the hospital.  Jughead pursues the stalking case, and something in Ruth Entemann’s past seems to be involved.

The final section had, for me, somewhat less interest—except for Robert Lopresti’s take on what it might have been like to live next door to Wolfe.  What with one thing (machine gunners destroying the greenhouse) and another (J. Edgar Hoover turning up at the wrong brownstone), I could see that Wolfe might be less than the perfect neighbor, even if it could also lead to Interesting times.

I enjoyed this book a lot.  I think that any fan of Nero Wolfe (or Archie Goodwin) would also.

13 May 2021

As sunset draws near,
I look up and see a tree
Beginning to bud

13 May 2021

 

Mark Kurlansky, Ready for a Brand New Beat

Mark Kurlansky. Ready for a Brand Ne Beat: How “Dancing in the Street” became the Anthem for a Changing America
Copyright © 2031 M rk Kurlansky
 Riverhead Books/Penguin Books
ISBN 978-59448-722-4

I finished reading Mark Kurlansky’s Ready for a Brand New Beat, his attempt to convince us (and, perhaps,, himself)of the cultural and political importance of a pop-rock song, “Dancing in the Street.  Composed by a team of Motown songwriters (Marvin Gays, Willian “Mickey” Stevenson, and Ivy Jo Hunter) and initially released by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.  Clocking in at 2:46, it peaked at #4 on the pop charts and was #17 on the 1964 year-end rankings according to Billboard.  Looking at the 1964 year-end list, I think there is a case to be made for it (although I personally would pick The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk,” which Billboard has at #20.  (It’s clearly a better song than any of the top 100 from 1963, although Sam Cooke’s “It’s Another Saturday Night” is terrific.  I’d put two songs from 1965 ahead of it-The Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction (#3 for the year) and Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (#41). Still, “Dancing in the Street” is a remarkable song and deserves the praise it gets.
Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1964 - Wikipedia
Martha & The Vandellas "Dancing in the Streets" - YouTube

Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1963 - Wikipedia
Sam Cooke - Another Saturday Night (Official Lyric Video) - YouTube


Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1965 - Wikipedia
[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - YouTube
Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Audio) - YouTube

But Kurlansky wants to do much more than assert the musical merits of “Dancing in the Street.”  His thesis is that “Dancing…” is much more than a great rock song.  It is, he argues, a song whose origins (consciously or not) come out of the political and civic unrest that marked the summer of 1964 and that it continued to resonate in the summers that follow.  An important part of this part of the story is white flight generally and the very real destruction of Detroit as a major American city.  He also, I think, wants to make a case for the importance of Motown (and by extension Berry Gordy) in changing the musical world and providing the soundtrack to the social and political changes that became clear in 1964 and shaped a narrative that helped define the ‘60s.

Detroit got its nickname (The Motor City) because the growth of the population, and the wealth (largely of whites) were driven by the automobile industry.  IN 1880, the population of Detroit was about 116,000.  It nearly triples—to 285,000—in 1900, nearly doubled between 1900 and 1910, doubled again by 1920 (now over 900,000), and, although the city’s growth slowed, it doubled again by 1950 (reaching 1,8 million,  .That, again, is the city of Detroit.  After 1950, the city has shrunk,, almost as fast as it grew; the 2020 Census puts the city’s population at 670,000.  The Detroit metropolitan area has continued to grow.  At 3 million (about 1.1 million outside the city limits) in 1950 (the earliest official data), it’s now at 5.3 million (about 4.6 million outside the city limits.  The city is majority Black, while the suburbs are mostly white.

Kurlansky doesn’t treat this population changes in much detail, although he does sketch the outlines.

The Motown story is actually pretty amazing on its own, without any of the political weight that Kurlansky adds to it.  The incredible blossoming of talent, and the ability of that talent to break out of being only a niche of the music business—the breakthrough of Black music and performers into the pop charts is an important story, and he tells it well.  And telling it requires making it clear that Gordy made household names out of an extraordinary group of talented men and women.  Here, he makes it clear than Gordy did not treat his talent very well, leaving some of the most talented basically in poverty while he got rich (at least for a while).

But Kurlansky wants to do much more than tell the story of Motown and the story of a song.  He wants to convince us that the song was a catalyst for the rise of a political movement—a galvanizing force behind at least part of the civil rights movement.  Especially of the Freedom Rides and the struggle to force states in the south to allow Blacks to register and vote.  The outlines of the events themselves are pretty well handled, and, if that part of the struggle obviously continues (with 30or more states now trying to make voter registration and actual voting harder—and not just in the south).  I don’t think he makes his case.  The argument is that “Dancing in the Street” was heard as (whether it was intended to be heard this way is a much harder case) a call to activism, even to violence.  That “dancing in the street” was not—was not thought to be by political activists in 1964 and later to be a nice dance song, but was, indeed, a call to revolution.  He cites a few activists who claim (if only in hindsight) to see it that way.  But it reads as a stretch, not as an evident truth.

The strangest part of the book is his discussion of the huge number of recorded versions of the song (including, somewhat weirdly, David Bowie and Mick Jagger doing a duet).  I think he’s trying to make a claim for the continued vitality of the song.  And it has been covered and recorded over and over again.  Including a number of weird attempts (the Mamas and Papas?  I don’t recommend it.  Van Halen?  Don’t recommend that either.  The Grateful Dead?).  I can’t find even an estimate of the number of recorded versions, but it seems to be in the hundreds.

I was absorbed by the book, even as I argued with it frequently.  “Dancing in the Street” is a seminal achievement in rock literature.  Bu in the end it’s just a great song.  It did not change the world.  It did not even, really, change the music business.  It probably did not make the singers and players rich.  But it was an important moment for Motown, making the label ubiquitous and helping to make Berry Gordy rich.

Dolores Gordon-Smith, As If By Magic

 Dolores Gordon-Smith, As If By Magic
Copyright © 2009
Constable & Robinson Ltd.

The 3rd of (so far) 10 mysteries featuring Jack Haldean, who, following his service in the Great War, is making a (surprisingly good) living as a writer.  He becomes involved in actual mysteries, working with his friend Chief Detective Inspector Bill Rackham.  In this case, George Lassiter, whom Haldean met during the War, is the catalyst for his involvement.

Lassiter has come to England to find out what has happened to a legacy he should have received—but appears to have been stolen.  Broke, suffering from malnutrition and recurrent bouts of malaria and shell-shock, he breaks into a home after watching the servants leave to see a play.  And he falls asleep/passes out in the warmth of the kitchen.  He awakens, but, hearing voiced, he hides until he can leave without being discovered.  As he prepares to leave, he sees a young woman on the floor of the kitchen—apparently dead.  As he hurries out of the house, he encounters the police, tries to convince them that there’s a death in the house.  But there is no body.

And, instead of arresting him, he winds up in the hospital, suffering from malnutrition and malaria and (so they thing) hallucinations.  He is released into the custody of Haldean until he has recovered sufficiently to be on his own.

The home he invaded is, as it turns out, owned by his grandfather and occupied by the old man, two of his sons, and the widow of a third son.  The family is involved in the nascent airplane business, and is in the process of building a large plane capable of long distance fights (the project is building up to a flight (not non-stop) to India,  Also involved in the business—indeed, its chief executive, is Alexander Culverton, who has disappeared—until reappearing as a corpse in the Thames.  Rackham is on the case (which he thinks might be linked to a series of “Jack the Ripper” slayings of young women, also found in the Thames.

Rackham makes little progress.  And much of the narrative revolves around preparations for the test flight of the airplane (aeroplane?), including a lavish dinner and test flight for the press.  As Rackham deals with both the “Ripper” killings and Culverton’s death, Haldean’s role is to keep George out of trouble, while trying to do his own writing.  He is, unsurprisingly, swept into the investigations.

The story moves briskly enough, but I found myself less interested than I had expected to be.  The theft of George’s legacy is resolved, and in a not very startling coincidence, ties into the machinations over control of the airplane business.  A lengthy “adventure” sequence that ties a number of things up seemed to me to be unnecessary, and, essentially, an excuse for the inclusion of some not very interesting sex scenes.  And hypnotism plays a significant role in the denouement.  More than anything else, reading As If By Magic reminded me why I had not picked it up before (I have also read, some years ago, the first two books in the series). 

Iain Pears, Death and Restoration

 Iain Pears, Death and Restoration
Copyright © 1996 Iain Pears
Berkley Prime Crime Books (reprint)
ISBN0-425-19042-0

I’ve been re-reading, and in some cases reading for the first time, Iain Pears’ series of art world mysteries, of which there are, regrettably, only seven (Iain Pears (stopyourekillingme.com).  I have, I think, only two more to read:  The Last Judgment and The Immaculate Deception.  There are three principal characters:  Jonathon Argyll, an art historian and occasional dealer; Flavia Di Stefano, an officer in Rome’s art crimes division; and Taddeo Bottano, the head of the art squad.  Bottano has only a fleeting role in this story, as he is involved in the possible creation of a continent-wide art theft bureau (Di Stefano is the acting head of the Rome operation).

This is, I think, the longest of these art mysteries, and perhaps the best. 

Early one morning, one of the priests of the monastery San Giovanni has been assaulted and a 15^th century icon has vanished.  Di Stefano, in place of Bottano, has to deal with it.  And, as old icons are a hot item on the art market (licit and illicit), this icon could have great monetary value.  It already has great religious significance to many of the people in the area, who view the icon (of St. Teresa and the baby Jesus) as the protector of their part of Rome.

And, recently arrived from England, is Mary Verney, whom Argyll and Di Stefano encountered in an earlier adventure set in the English countryside (Giotto’s Hand).  Verny has something of a checkered past, and her presence in Rome poses some issues for Di Stefano.  I I must not overlook the organized crime family from Greece, the Charanis clan.  Argyll has given up his “career” as a dealer and has become an academic, teaching art history to a class of less than enthusiastic students.  And he and Di Stefano have too little time together.  And I should not overlook the art scholar and restoration guy, Dan Menzies, who is restoring some works at San Giovanni, and becomes enmeshed with the theft and recovery of the icon/

Early on, an art dealer (whose business ethics might be all they should be) is murdered.  Verney’s granddaughter has been kidnapped, and she is being coerced into stealing the icon from San Giovanni.  The monastery faces a financial (and spiritual) crisis.  Di Stefano feels over-worked and perhaps in over her head.  Argyll takes on the task of tracing (with the assistance of an elderly monk whose mental state is unsteady) the history of the icon.  Rome itself is a character, focusing mostly—not exclusively--on the neighborhood around the monastery.  [I have spent some time in Rome, mostly not in the lower income parts of the city; it is my favorite city, and, if I spoke Italian—and had a somewhat larger income (the cost of living in Rome is, well, maybe less than New York, but not by much), I think we’d be living there.)

I love the characters, and I love the setting,  And Pears’ ability to weave contemporary Rome with the collapse of the Constantinople is a key element of what happened in the 15^th century and what has just happened. 

Walter Mosley, Blood Grove

Walter Mosley, Blood Grove
Copyright © 2021 The Thing Itself, Inc.
Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company
ISBN978-0-316-49118-1

Ezekiel (Easy) Rawlins is, in 1969, a success, running his own investigations firm (with a handful of employees), driving in a Rolls Royce (not his but collateral for payment), and with a teenage step-daughter.  As it happens, everyone else in the agency is out of the office when Craig Killian, a veteran of the war in Viet Nam and suffering the after-effects of his time there, comes in, to ask for Rawlins’ help.  He’s afraid that he may have killed a man in a blood orange grove and he needs to know.  Rawlins, who had served in World War II, in the ETO, and who knows what traumas can linger, takes the case.

Rawlins narrates the events, from what might be years after the events.  And it is a complicated story.  In addition to this investigation, he’s responsible for his adopted teenage daughter Feather, and has to cope with her (early 20s uncle Milo showing up).  And that’s not the end of the complications, which include the LAPD (which does not come off well—and, from everything I have read about the LAPD in the 1960s and later, is deserved).

And “complicated” is perhaps an understatement.  The cast of characters is large and varied, and Mosley handles it well.  The investigation itself—which turns out to involve an armored-car heist (and, it seems, the murder of the guards) of something around a half a million dollars (about $4 million, these days, adjusted for inflation).  His client dies, but he feels an obligation to continue the investigation.  He is threatened by a…well, I guess psychotic mob boss is perhaps the best description, for one thing.  And even finding a thread to begin his investigation seems all but impossible.

Maybe not a masterpiece, but a book I found hard to put down, and people who will, for good or evil, remain in my memory.  This pretty well sums things up:  “Every now and then I think that the closest I ever came to death was at the hands of that woman.  She was a nearly perfect predator in a world that scared the shit out of me.”