The Van Dine school of detective fiction holds a special, albeit curious interest for me. I find much of it flawed, what with its thinner-than-paper characterization, often annoying detective figures, and sleep-inducing pacing. Yet somehow, the sum of its parts is much, much greater than the whole. Although I would argue that only about two-thirds of the 9 original Ellery Queen “Nationality Mysteries” are really worth reading, I think that the ennealogy as a whole stands as one of the most impressive stretches of crime writing. I wouldn’t say that any of the first four Philo Vance mysteries that I’ve read are anything to call home about on their own (besides maybe Bishop or Greene,) but put together I really appreciate what Van Dine did for the genre as a whole an I’m excited to read more of his books. Thankfully, the “Van Dine school” does actually comprise a good amount of authors, although these days only Van Dine and Queen really stand as the time-tested members of that group (somewhat similar, you could say, to Debussy and Ravel’s standing in our modern view of the musical Impressionist era.)
So it was that I found myself eager to dive into the work of Anthony Abbot, one of the best contenders for a “third pillar” of Van Dinian writing (besides Rex Stout, who technically was part of this school, but I feel like his style is more a hybrid of Van Dine and Erle Stanley Gardner.) Abbot was the pseudonym of writer Fulton Oursler, and in good Van Dine fashion, is also the name of the series narrator, who serves as personal secretary to NYPD Commissioner Thatcher Colt. Colt himself serves as an interesting departure from many of the more well-known literary detectives; although he has the wits of the genius amateur, he is the highest rung on the NYPD ladder and has more resources at his hands than other well-known police-force detectives, such as Alleyn or Cockrill. This leads to a focus on procedural and forensic methods, although (at least here) Colt relies just as much on psychological clues as Philo Vance does. Colt’s position also allows Abbot to explore the more mundane and political details of police work in the city which if often left unmentioned by other authors:
Apparently the line-up of the morning after the New Year’s Eve celebration had been full of surprises. Two Italian Troubadours who sang and played for the raiders on the Dyckman Street ferry boats had been caught with several ounces of morphine hidden in the bellies of their guitars. Through them the head of the narcotic squad was working to trace back the drugs to the source—a never-ending quest that seemingly succeeds only in spots; the hardest of all wars waged by the police. There is an immeasurable distance between the arrest of the lowly dope-peddler and the conviction of the man higher up. Beneath the type-written report on the ferry-boat minstrels appeared a clipping from one of the daily tabloids in New York—a vicious attack on the Police Department and on Colt personally, and demanding that politics be thrown out of the department. With a brief smile, Colt thrust this aside. Ever since he had been in public life he had known, as does every other strong administrator, constant assaults like these.
About the Murder of the Night Club Lady, Chapter XV
And with only eight titles to the fake name (the last two of which I’m told are ghostwritten,) it’s a surprise that the series started in the early 1930s, essentially dying out of the popular zeitgeist the same time as the school of writing in general.
Another benefit of Colt’s position as commissioner is that it is much easier to write him into the scenario of the plot. Such is the case in About the Murder of the Night Club Lady, which begins with Colt, Abbot, and District Attorney Merle K. Dougherty meeting in a night club just hours before the new year rings in during a snow-clad December 31st. Dougherty is eager to discuss his theories about a jewelry-thief ring that has been plaguing Manhattan; he believes that Lola Carewe – former film actress, current rich widow, and the titular Night Club Lady – is the mastermind behind it all. Colt, who has actually had work done on the case, knows that Dougherty is very far off, but this doesn’t matter because all of a sudden Lola Carewe, one table over, sends a note to Colt asking for his urgent help. Lola explains that she has been the recipient of a string of threatening anonymous notes claiming that she must pay for her wrongs and will die very soon. The latest note, just received, claims that her expiration is scheduled for 3 a.m. precisely. Colt takes this threat very seriously and decides that what he is doing on New Years’ Eve is protecting Lola Carewe in her Upper West Side high-rise with a full police squadron.
Lola takes Colt & Friends back to her abode, an apartment that, while on the whole shows a fine and expensive taste, has some striking changes of tone between rooms. Colt stations policemen at every possible entrance, including balconies and windows that lead to a 17-story drop, and inspects the whole apartment. Lola has some family, friends, and guests inside and out of the apartment. Rooms have been given to her mother and her best friend Christine Quires, who is currently out partying with esteemed actor Guy Everett. Lola’s own guest from the night club, aquiline lawyer and artistic benefactor Vincent Rowland, has come back to the apartment as well. There is also a butler, Chung, and a maid, Eunice. Everything seems locked down and safe, and nothing has piqued Colt’s interest besides an old photograph of a young man in Lola’s bedroom. However, tragedy strikes at 3 when, having stepped out of Colt & Co.’s view for only a few seconds, Lola screams and collapses in the living room. Attempts at resuscitation by Lola’s physician, Dr. Hugh Baldwin, prove unfruitful, and Colt now has an impossible murder on his hands. Suspects and motives abound, but Colt must deal with an invisible method of Murder and a second corpse that increases the impossibilities twofold.
I will say it’s a testament to Abbot’s skills in plotting that everything up to Lola’s death takes place in the first 30 or so pages, out of around 170 in my Green Dragon edition (which is the only Green Dragon paperback I own and the only one I’m aware that exists…) There’s a quality to this mystery that almost feels pulpy, with its different strands of possible plot points, set of completely untrustworthy characters, and the beautiful damsel at the center of it all. Abbot is sure, however, to affirm that this whole thing will be fair play, as Colt immediately dives into an extended search of the apartment in order to find not only a possible murder method, but also the whereabouts of Christine Quires, who was seen to return to the building around midnight but has since vanished. On top of this is a series of interrogations of the possible suspects, which take up a good chunk of the story but were all engaging and suspenseful, and the introduction of Colt’s forensic methods, which include an autopsy, the paging of multiple experts, and the vacuuming – yes, vacuuming – of the crime scene to catch and minuscule clues. It’s clear that one of Abbot’s skills above Van Dine or early Queen is that he knows how to keep the pace going during the initial investigation, without resorting to those latter authors’ devices of prolonging the section with the most boring possible asides or tedious searches.
The main reason why the interrogation section works so well is because the characters under interrogation are actually quite interesting. Perhaps I’ve become accustomed to Van Dinian novels having many of the most forgettable, paper-thin characters in the history of literature, but when the majority of the suspects actually have one or more unique aspects that make them memorable to me I’m like a parched man in the desert who has finally found an oasis. Although they may fall under such tried and true stereotypes as the frail, scared old woman, the dashing Prince Charming with a secretive past, and (to the novel’s detriment) the untrustworthy Chinese butler, Abbot is able to make all these people feel real given the fantastic circumstances they find themselves in. Even Lola Carewe, the fated Night Club Lady who, after only a few chapters is seen in the recollections of others, comes across as a woman hounded by outside forces, but nonetheless self-serving and conceited. The more personal each character gets about their relationship with her, the less unfortunate her death feels. On the other hand, although she is never shown “on-page” alive, the second victim Christine Quires only becomes more sympathetic as Abbot reveals more about her past and the ways she had been manipulated by Lola and others.
I feel like I harp on how effective a novel’s setting is quite often, but here it is very important to understanding everything that goes on, and Abbot’s treatment of the lavish 23rd-floor apartment is indeed effective. The constant snow outside serves not only to create a chilling atmosphere, but increases the tightness of the mystery and its impossibilities, both in how Lola and Christine’s murders were achieved, and in how Christine’s body suddenly appears out of thin air. I was surprised at how well Abbot mixed the prose and the different moods of the weather during the story to highlight the changes in mood:
But now a change had come over town and sky, as, indeed, a change had come into my own suspicion-haunted brain. From Long Island Sound a fog of brown and silver mist had fallen over the rooftops. The trailing folds of vapor fell in ecru masses from the terrace railing of apartment houses, rolled in clouds through the canyons of east-west streets and hovered, damp and billowing, in cellar doorways. When we had entered the drug-store to telephone, we had left behind us crisp, yellow sunshine. Fifteen minutes later the light and warmth of the winter morning were gone. We were embraced in a damp plague of fog.
About the Murder of the Night Club Lady, Chapter XI
My only qualm about the apartment is that it really deserves a map of some kind, although it was pretty clear that the murderer couldn’t have entered or exited the room where Lola died when it happened, I wasn’t entirely sure about where each room was in relation to the others, as well as other details about the floors adjacent to the apartment and the stairs, etc. I think I could have appreciated the entirety of the solution a bit more (since it is rather dependent on the movements of different people in and around the apartment) with a map to reference.
The main focus is always on the incredible mystery at hand, and to their credit Colt & Co. make quick bounds in coming closer to the truth. Although there is purportedly a big focus on the forensic methods Colt embraces, and these methods are shown and explained often, they do not factor into the actual solution nearly as much as pure reasoning and the more obvious physical and psychological clues at hand. Mainly, the forensic investigation serves to help Colt realize the method with which the victims were killed, which up to its reveal is clued about as well as something as specific as said method could be. If you are interested in About the Murder of the Night Club Lady because it seems to promise a “how-were-they-murdered” puzzle in the vein of Green for Danger or many of John Rhode’s novels, you may be a bit disappointed. The impossibility of Christine Quires’ suddenly appearing corpse is just as memorable for its haunting simplicity, aided by two clues that were blindingly obvious but (at least for me) forgotten in the place of general perplexment. Where Abbot’s mystery skills shine best is in the whodunit and whydunit. Especially from a generally small set of suspects, the true killer is well-hidden by a series of unexpected twists, a plethora of possible motives, and a good ol’ false solution or two. All I will say is that, while the jewel-robbery ring seems to be the main possible motives in the beginning, that is quickly shown not to be the case. For what it’s worth, I was on the right track as to what the motive had to do with in general, but went a bit too far in connecting that to the killer. Most of the physical clues end up unconnected to the identity of the murderer, but a good series of psychological inferences and easy-to-miss moments of double-entendre make this solution as a whole worth it – certainly more entrancing than the average Vance solution (perhaps not Queen, though.)
I was glad to realize that, at least here, Abbot’s writing style was more enthralling than I’ve come to expect from a paragon of the Van Dine school. I thoroughly enjoyed this entire novel, not only for the plot but for how much I liked Thatcher Colt as a central detective. He’s unusual in terms of his relationship to the police, sure, but at the same time he showed many of the hallmarks of the genius amateur, albeit muted in a way that is refreshing in how likable it makes Colt most of the time. Anthony Abbot is an author I am glad to add to this ever-so-slowly-growing list of first-time reads on the blog, and to eventually come back to. I’m especially excited to read About the Murder of the Circus Queen and About the Murder of a Startled Lady which have been praised for their impossibilities, as well as About the Murder of the Clergyman’s Mistress which also gets generally good marks.
I decided to watch the 1932 film adaptation of this novel, with the shortened title The Night Club Lady. I will give the film this, that it’s surprisingly close to its source material up until Christine’s body is discovered. However, they decide to reveal how her body was hidden right away, removing the mystique of that impossibility, and then meddle with Colt’s investigation techniques as well as the different backstories of the suspects. Plus, they change a very important aspect of a later death and make a certain character much more involved in the solution than they were in the novel. The cinematography was surprisingly good for a ’30s Hollywood film, but on the flipside, the editing was laughably bad. Adolphe Menjou portrayed Thatcher Colt, and he just did not work as Colt for me – much of the restrained emotion and cool introspection Colt has is ruined by a more gregarious personality and an awkwardly-added love interest (the film’s counterpart to the female officer Dorothy Lox.) Abbot’s character is included as well, but he’s a rather annoying comic relief who just kind of makes every other scene slow down with his unnecessary jokes. Apparently they nixed him in the second Colt film, an adaptation of Circus Queen—good. Mayo Methot (probably most famous for having been married to Humphrey Bogart) gives a nice turn as Lola Carewe. On the whole, it was not by any means a bad film, but I would not recommend it unless you want to be mildly bored for an hour.
Also, I realized there’s an interesting connection between this and my last read, The Lost Gallows, which I’ll leave here in ROT-13 for any interested parties who have read both titles: Gur zheqreref va obgu obbxf ner fubpxvatyl fvzvyne: Gurl ner obgu cneragf tevrivat n ybfg puvyq, jub ungpu n cybg gb zheqre gur crefba(f) gurl oryvrir erfcbafvoyr sbe gurve fba’f fhvpvqr. Va obgu pnfrf nf jryy gur eryngvbafuvc vf jryy uvqqra, va Tnyybjf ol gur hfr bs gur cfrhqbalz W. Y. Xrnar sbe Ynaqreibear’f fba, naq va Avtug Pyho Ynql ol Znqnzr Obhpure’f nffhzrq ebyr nf fbzrbar ryfr’f zbgure – Zef. Pnerjr. Jurer gur gjb xvyyref qvssre vf va ubj fhpprffshy gurve cynaf ner…
New Horizons Challenge: 18 works out of 25
Author: Anthony Abbot
The Challenge Requirements so far:
2/3 works translated into English
4/3 works written in English after 1970
3/2 works that are hardboiled or noir
2/2 works written by an American minority author
2/2 works with a musical setting
Other Reviews:
The Grandest Game in the World
Tangled Yarns 