The Case of the Queer Antiques Dealer

The Mystery of Cabin Island
Franklin W. Dixon [Leslie McFarlane]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop [c. 1960]
214 pages

If you ever happen to visit Bayport, home of internationally famous detective Fenton Hardy and his sons Frank and Joe, I recommend you stay away from the water. The Missing Chums, which I read last year, begins with the near collision of a motorboat with two sailboats. The early pages of The Mystery of Cabin Island features the near collision of two ice boats. In both cases, tragedy is averted only due to Frank's quick thinking and piloting skills.

Iceboats date back to 18th-century Holland, but I had no idea that they were so common in 1920s America. Frank and Joe built one themselves. Their chum Biff receives an ice boat from his dad as a Christmas present. Bad Tad Carson and Ike Nash, who are most certainly not chums, have the biggest one by far.

London: Harold Hill & Son, 1953

Is this an American thing? I ask because I don't believe I've ever met anyone who owns an ice boat.

The eighth book in the series, The Mystery of Cabin Island is my third Hardy Boys read. As I'm discovering, backstories often reference the boys' previous adventures. In this case, that previous adventure is book number six, The Shore Road Mystery (1928), which saw the brothers working to expose a gang of car thieves.

One of the cars retrieved was a Pierce-Arrow, belonging to a "queer" antiques dealer named Elroy Jefferson. He was away in Europe at the time and so never had a chance to thank Frank and Joe. Now that Jefferson has returned to Bayport, he rewards them with two crisp hundred dollar bills (roughly $3700 today):

The boys protested, but Elroy Jefferson insisted, and finally they were forced to accept the reward.
   “Now,” said Mr. Jefferson, “if there is anything else I can do for you at any time, don’t hesitate to ask me."

But Frank does hesitate... then asks permission to camp on nearby Cabin Island, which happens to be owned by the antiques dealer. In fact, it was Jefferson who constructed the cabin after which the island is named. Just the previous day, Frank, Joe, Biff, and their chum Chet had landed on Cabin Island in their ice boats, only to be ordered off by a mysterious man named Hanleigh. As it turns out, he's been pressuring Jefferson to sell him the island, but the "queer old chap" won't budge:

I won’t sell him the island at any price, and I told him so. You see, when my wife and son were alive they loved to go there in winter and summer, so Cabin Island has certain associations for me that cannot be estimated in terms of money. They are dead now, and I cannot bear to part with the place.

Jefferson is happy to grant the Hardy boys and their chums Biff and Chet permission to camp on the island, though I must say this doesn't involve camping as I understand it. No tents are involved, rather the four boys settle into the cabin, complete with large living area, kitchen, and bedrooms. Upon arrival, they spy Hanleigh inspecting the cabin's imposing chimney and jotting down figures on the back of an envelope.

What exactly is Hanleigh up to?

The Hardy boys are nowhere near so curious as this reader. After ordering Hanleigh off Cabin Island, the four boys while away the hours skating, skiing, and ice boating. I began to wonder whether Frank and Joe's disinterest in Hanleigh's jottings might best be explained by issues with short-term memory.

Hear me out.

Frank, Joe, Biff, and Chet, spend the following day exploring Barmet Bay on ice boat. Upon returning to the cabin they find that their "grub" has been stolen. The following morning, the Hardy boys set off for in their iceboat for supplies at a general store run by chatty old-timer Amos Grice. Upon learning that the boys are staying on Cabin Island, the storekeep relates a fascinating story about an extremely valuable stamp collection that had been stolen from Elroy Jefferson by his man servant John Sparewell some fifteen or so years earlier.

Back on Cabin Island, Joe comes across a notebook belonging to John Sparewell:

"Sparewell," mused Frank. "Where have I heard that name before?"

It takes a while before Frank and Joe remember the name from the story they'd heard just hours earlier.

There's little in the way of sleuthing here. The mystery of The Mystery of Cabin Island is revealed when the chimney comes down in a winter storm, exposing the missing collection.

The boys are again rewarded, this time to the tune of $200 apiece. Jefferson gives lesser players Biff and Chet $100 each.

My attention had long since been absorbed by Elroy Jefferson as a character, largely because of the repeated use of "queer" in describing the antiques dealer. Now, I do realize that The Mystery of Cabin Island was written at a time when "queer" was commonly used – but not always used – as a synonym for strange or unusual. Still, reading it here did raise a nod, wink, and smile. I could not help but think that Leslie McFarlane was having a bit of fun within the constraints imposed by Hardy Boys creator Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Leaving aside stereotypes associated with Jefferson's occupation, and that he spends most of the year  in Europe rather than provincial Bayport, I might've thought I was reaching had it not been for Grice's reaction upon learning that the antiques dealer had allowed the boys to camp on his island:

“Yes, that’s just like Mr. Jefferson. Got a heart of gold, specially where boys is concerned. But queer — mighty queer in some ways,” said Amos Grice, again wagging his head. "Do you know" — and he leaned forward very confidentially — "I really think he married Mary Bender because of her postage stamp collection.”
   This amazing announcement left the Hardy boys rather at a loss for words. “He married his wife because of her postage stamp collection!” exclaimed Joe.
   “That’s what I said. You’ve heard of the Bender stamp collection, haven’t you?” he demanded.
   The boys shook their heads.

   “Well, I ain’t a stamp collector and I’ve heard of it. The Bender collection is supposed to be one of the greatest collections of postage stamps in the world. Why, I’ve heard tell that it’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars.”
   “And Mrs. Jefferson owned it?”
   “Yep. Her name was Mary Bender then, and she inherited it from her father. I got parts of the story from people who knew Mr. Jefferson well. It seems he has always been a collector of antiques and old coins and stamps and things, but one thing he had set his heart on was the Bender stamp collection. But he couldn’t buy it. Either Mr. Bender wouldn’t sell or Elroy Jefferson couldn’t raise the money — but somehow he could never buy them."

"Queerest story I ever did hear," says Amos Grice in concluding his account of the theft, adding:

"Mary Bender died just a short time after. And ever since the stamps were lost, Elroy Jefferson ain’t been the same. [...] It seemed to break Elroy Jefferson all up, because that collection was the pride of his heart, and when it disappeared so strangely, he just didn’t seem to take any more interest in anything."

I may be reading too much into this. 

Now, if McFarlane had written "so queerly" instead of "so strangely" I might be more certain.

Caution: Of the four ice boats that feature in the novel, two are destroyed in accidents. Fortunately, no lives were lost.

London: Armada, 1982

That said, it does seem a dangerous mode of transportation.

Object: This one was purchased eight years ago for one dollar. It once belonged to a girl named Pamela who lived on Blasdell Avenue in Ottawa. That she wrote her name and address in the book using a fountain pen gives some indication as to its age. A further clue is found in the book's list of previous Hardy Boys Mysteries, the most recent being The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (1960).

Sadly, my copy lacks the dust jacket. It would've featured this illustration:

The cabin is roughly a sixth the size that described in the text. The chimney is far too short and should be wide enough to easily accommodate a sixteen-year-old boy. The depiction in the original 1929 edition is more accurate, though the cabin is far too close to the water:

Access: The Mystery of Cabin Island was first published in 1929 by Grosset & Dunlop. As I write, two first editions with dust jackets are listed for sale online. The cheaper is going for US$700.

The novel was rewritten in 1966 by Anne Shultes, Andrew E. Svenson, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. This is the version in print today.

I'm not familiar with the revision, though as I understand it involves a missing grandchild, medals, and a smattering of racism. How much of Leslie McFarlane's original remains I cannot say, but I'm guessing it isn't much. 

As far as I can tell, there had been three translations – French (Le mystère de l'Île de la Cabane), Swedish (Mysteriet i jakstugan), and Norwegian (Hardy-guttene og den stjålne frimerkesamlingen) – though I expect all are of the revision.

Related posts:

Here's to Missing Chums

Gone Fishin' (without Frank and Joe Hardy)

The Boy Who Cried Truth

The Calgary Herald, 26 October 1963

The Weird World of Wes Beattie
John Norman Harris
New York: Harper & Row, 1963
216 pages

Wes Beattie was born with a Woolworths spoon in his mouth; father Rupert's came from Birks. The vast difference in fortune is best explained by youthful folly and libido. Rupert had been the favourite son of Toronto's wealthy Beattie family until he had the misfortune of attending a stag party during his sophomore year at Trinity College. There he met a sixteen-year-old tap dancing accordion player named Doreen. She was so unlike the Rosedale girls he'd grown up with that he couldn't help but be captivated. Within nine months, Mr Maggs, Doreen's dad, came calling at the opulent Beattie home demanding money. Ever the romantic, Rupert thwarted the wishes of both sets of parents by marrying Doreen. She gave birth to a baby girl, and Rupert went from golden child to black sheep. Disowned, he became a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman and Doreen turned to drink. When war was declared in 1939, he was only too happy to enlist and be shipped overseas. Son Wes may have been the result of a fond farewell.

Wes Beattie never met his father, though he'd come to know all sorts of very nice servicemen who visited his mother. After Rupert was killed in Italy, his remorseful mother gave Doreen a nice payout and brought the her grandchildren into her home. Jane, the baby girl whose existence had caused the rift, rebelled, while younger brother Wes just wanted his mummy.

Backstory, all of the above is relayed in much more detail – and much more entertainingly – in the seventh of this novel's eighteen chapters. That it comes roughly half-way through the novel, speaks to its complexity.

Wes Beattie himself is a complex character. Though just twenty-three, recent adventures have made his life such a tangled mess that he has drawn the attention of psychiatrist Milton Heber, who lays all out in a seminar attended by doctors, lawyers and social workers. Heber's assertion is that Wes lives in a "weird world" of his own making; he is a fabulist unable to differentiate fantasy from reality. Wes has been charged with two crimes, the first involving a purse he took from a car parked outside the Midtown Motel. He served two months for that offence. The second, much more serious, is the charge that he murdered his beloved Uncle Edgar for fear of being cut out of his will. Lawyer Sidney "Gargoyle" Grant, one of the attendees, is so bothered by a seemingly insignificant detail in Heber's talk that he begins his own investigation.

Grant's efforts bring such small rewards that it would be easy to write at length about The Weird World of Wes Beattie without revealing much. To detail how it all fits together would take thousands of words. Your time is better spent reading the novel.

The Weird World of Wes Beattie is not "The First truly CANADIAN Mystery" as current publisher claims, but it is one of the very best.

What's more, it will make you laugh.

About the author: The life of John Norman Harris (1915-64) is worthy of a biography; consider the introduction to the John Norman Harris fonds housed at the University of Toronto. Is the "Wooden Horse" escape from Stallaf Ludt III not enough?

The author died alone on 28 July 1964, not one year after The Weird World of Wes Beattie was published, suffering a heart attack during an early morning walk in rural Vermont. This brief bio, attached to the 13 October 1963 Star Weekly bowdlerization of The Weird World of Wes Beattie hints at what we missed.

Trivia I: Though the novel makes much about Wes Beattie facing the gallows, the last execution in Canada took place on December 11, 1962. Capital punishment was abolished for murder in 1976. In 1999, it was abolished for all other crimes. 

Trivia II:

The Globe & Mail, 14 March 1964

Trivia III: Announced by Warner Brothers in 1965 as a forthcoming Merwin Gerard production.

And still we wait.
 
Trivia IV: John Norman Harris's last address was 45 Nanton Avenue in Toronto's Rosedale, the very same neighborhood in which Wes Beattie is raised.

The house, described in the 17 September 2004 Globe & Mail 'Home of the Week' real estate column as a being of a "rambling English-cottage-style," has had several notable inhabitants. Its first owner, lawyer Edward Brown, was the son of John Brown, who became editor of the Globe after his brother George (Edward's uncle) was shot by a disgruntled former employee.

Future Pearson Minister of Finance Walter L. Gordon lived in the house during the Great Depression, only to leave after a ten percent increase in the rent. 

It was at 45 Nanton that Harris wrote The Weird World of Wes Beattie, though you wouldn't know that from the Globe piece:

In 1959, it was owned by John Norman Harris, a writer who was also a public relations officer for the Canadian Bank of Commerce, which was poised to merge with the Imperial Bank to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. 

Mr. Harris offered the home as a venue for the secret negotiations, and the deal was signed in a large second-floor bedroom in 1961.

Bankers in bedrooms! Meeting secretly! Do tell!

The address's connection to things literary doesn't end with Harris. Apparently, playwright Tom Hendry rented a third floor room in the 'seventies. The only reason for the Globe piece is that the house had been put up for sale by children's author Kati Rekai.

This is the house as it was ten years ago.

Note the Heritage Toronto plaque on the fence. It has nothing to do with Harris, Hendry or Reikai, rather J.J.R. MacLeod. Because it's hard to read, I share this template from the Heritage Toronto site.

A man worthy of more than this honour alone.

Object: A solidly constructed hardcover with burgundy cloth and pale orange boards. The endpapers remind that this is a HARPER NOVEL OF SUSPENSE, which explains why the back jacket features no author photo, rather promos for other novels in the series:

Love in Amsterdam - Nicholas Freeling

The Fifth Passenger - Edward Young

A Dragon for Christmas - Gavin Black

It's Different Abroad - Henry Calvin

Access: First published in Canada by Macmillan, in the United States by Harper & Row, and in the United Kingdom by Faber & Faber. I see no evidence of second printings for any of of these editions, though as noted in the previous post the novel has reappeared a few times through the years, French and Spanish translations included.

The book isn't easily found in Canadian bookstores; online booksellers are your best bet. At £2, the cheapest edition is the 1966 Corgi, listed by a bookseller in Boat of Garten, Scotland who dares charge the equivalent of $35 to ship a mass market paperback to Canada.

The cheapest Faber & Faber edition – "Condition: Good" – is offered at €14.90 by a Dublin bookshop. It will ship to Canada for roughly $24.50.

The Harper & Row, with jacket, can be purchased for US$40 from a New Jersey bookseller.  

If I were a rich man, or reasonably comfortable, I'd buy the signed copy of the Macmillan offered at US$150 by a Stoney Creek, Ontario bookseller. There can't be many signed copies out there.

Underpriced, if not sold by this time tomorrow I will be greatly disappointed.

Related post:

The Weird Covers of Wes Beattie

The Murder of George Brown: He Died with Grit

A Feminine Jimmie Dale?

The White Moll
Frank L. Packard
New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1931
306 pages

Walt Disney failed to interest NBC in Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal. His biographers haven't made much of this, but evidence suggests it irked. He'd first read Jimmie Dale's adventures in adolescence, and would act them out with childhood chum Walt Pieffer. What roles they'd played are unknown. I like to think one of the Walts played Marie Lasalle, the Tocsin, but that's just me.

In 1952, fifty-one-year-old Disney purchased the rights to Jimmie Dale – “motion picture, photoplay, television, radio and/or any other adaptations of every kind and character” – and held onto them, even after NBC declined.

In an alternate universe, Disney managed to convince the network and Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal became a cathode-ray tube hit. The adventures of a millionaire masked crimefighter, it would've pre-dated and perhaps even inspired ABC's Batman and The Green Hornet. A Gold Key comic was pretty much guaranteed. In this alternate universe, it might've spawned spin-offs, some featuring the White Moll, which publisher George H. Doran positioned as "a Feminine Jimmie Dale."     

The White Moll
Frank L. Packard
New York: Doran, 1920

The White Moll is not Jimmy Dale en femme, though the two share the talent of impersonation. Both move though a grotty New York beset by poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism, and crime. The Gray Seal, Jimmy Dale is heir to a great fortune, while the White Moll, Rhoda Gray – note the surname – is of the lowly upper middle class. Her mining engineer father had worked for an English concern in South America until ill-health forced him to New York for medical consultation. Papa required an operation, but before it could take place petty thief  Pete "the Bussard" McGee broke into the Grays' flat. He was caught by father and daughter, spilled some sob story starring a sickly wife and hungry, unclothed kiddies, and was let go. The following morning, a curious Rhonda investigates to find Pete was telling the truth about his godawful life.

Sadly, Rhoda's father does not survive his operation. Left an orphan of modest means, she dedicates her young self to saving people like Pete from a life of poverty and crime. Rhoda comes to be known amongst the down and out as "The White Moll," the name coming from the Bussard, who'd introduced her to his invalid wife with these words:

“Meet de moll I was tellin’ youse about, Mag. She’s white – all de way up. She’s white, Mag; she’s a white moll – take it from me!”

Rhonda is about three years into her do-gooding when she visits a dying old hag known as Gypsy Nan. She soon learns that Nan is not the woman's true name, nor is she an old hag... but she is dying. In her final hours, the unnamed woman removes her disguise. As life slips away, the woman known as Gypsy Nan seeks salvation by telling the White Moll of a heist that will go down that very night. Rhonda tries to thwart the crooks, but is nabbed by Rough Rorke of the NYPD. She's saved by a seemingly drunken passerby who wrenches Rhonda from Rorke. Fleeing, she ends up in Gypsy Nan's hovel and adopts the role of the old hag.

The set-up, the only thing to add is that the seemingly drunken passerby was more than likely sober. The man who rescued Rhonda, referred to as "the Adventurer," weaves in and out of the novel, much like the Tocsin does in the adventures of Jimmie Dale.

I expect you know where that relationship will lead. Packard was a commercial writer and knew how to please his audience. 

Disney take note.

Trivia (or not): In 1920, the Fox Film Corporation released a film adaptation that that owed very little to the novel. The subject of next week's post.

Access: First published in the pages of The Blue Book Magazine (August 1919 - January 1920), the novel's first  edition is either the Copp, Clark (Canada) and Doran (United States). Both can be read online through the Internet Archive. My copy is one volume in the 1931 Gray Seal Edition set of Packard's works.

Two copies of Copp, Clark's Canadian first edition are currently listed for sale online, but no copies of the Doran.

Related post:

Whatever Happened to Jimmie Dale?

Murder at Expo 67: A Complete Mystery Novel?

A short follow-up to last week's post on Janet Gregory Vermandel's

So Long at the Fair.

So Long at the Fair, Janet Gregory Vermandel's debut novel, made its own debut as "Murder at Expo 67" in the October 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan. "A Complete, Stunning Mystery Novel" says the cover, a claim that is more or less repeated in the magazine itself. But look carefully at the bottom of the page. 

Did you catch it?

cliquez pour agrandir

"Murder at Expo 67" is "from" So Long at the Fair in much the same way the American version of XTC's English Settlement is "from" the British. Nowhere near complete, at roughly 33,000 words, it's not sixty percent the length of So Long at the Fair. 

Skimming "Murder at Expo 67," I missed most of the cuts, which only made me more curious as to how it was done. Long-suffering readers are all too aware that abridgements and bowdlerizations are something of an obsession of mine. Marshall Saunders, Arthur Stringer, R.T.M. Scott, Margaret Millar, Dan Keller, Joan Walker, Max Brathwaite, and Ezra Levant... I do go on, I know, and so will limit myself to five pages, the first being the beginning as published by Dodd, Mead:

There's not a lot to see here, but I find it interesting in that the first sentence is different: "Goodbye Brian" in Cosmo, is "Good-by, Brian" in So Long at the Fair.

Personally, I'm more accustomed to "Good-bye, Brian."

So Long at the Fair is more liberal in its use of commas, though I don't imagine that this would've had much effect on the Cosmo layout. The most notable difference between the two texts occurs about a third of the way through the novel, where heroine and narrator Lisa accepts a ride from a excitable aluminium foil salesman named Patrick Goulet:

again, cliquez pour agrandir

An awkward, unnecessary information dump, this is So Long at the Fair at it's very worst. Small wonder that the bulk didn't make it into the pages of Cosmo. I see this is a good thing. Goulet's fanaticism might've been  be a turn-off to anyone considering a visit in the fair's final month.

An Expo fanatic myself, it was the promise of the fair that led to me purchase So Long at the Fair. Though I was disappointed in that it takes place three months before the the gates opened, there were things that held my interest, like this description of the disruption caused by its construction. 

and again

The Administration and News Pavilion and its staff seem right out of Mad Men.

The "Z-shaped" Administration and News Pavilion, now home to the Port of Montreal
October 2020

It swung.

Fifty-seven years later, Montreal is swinging still.

Trivia I: To put it politely, "Murder at Expo 67" is a misleading title. The plot features two murder victims, both women. The body of the first is found on a golf course north of the city. There is no reason to suspect that the murder took place at the Expo 67 site. The second body is found at the scene of the murder, a motel on Upper Lachine Road.   

Trivia II: The Cosmo illustration is by the great Bob Peak. It's in keeping with the American, German, and Dutch book covers to come in that it features a scene that does not appear in the novel.

Related posts:

An Expo 67 Murder Mystery?
Beautiful Joe: Now with 30% Less Violence!
Arthur Stringer Unshackled (then bowdlerized)
That Old Black Magician
Margaret Millar Simplified and Spoiled
Montreal Noir, Toronto Noir, and the Road Between
The Incomplete Repent at Leisure
Condensed Canlit
Ezra Levant and the Crude Art of Bowdlerization

An Expo 67 Murder Mystery?

So Long at the Fair

Janet Gregory Vermandel

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1968

186 pages

Canadian publishers really messed up with Expo 67; McClelland & Stewart, Macmillan, Ryerson, and Copp Clarke published nothing related to the fair. Swan, so small a paperback house that it is pretty much forgotten today, sought to cash in with Instant French, its penultimate title.

Meanwhile, newspapers, magazines, and news agents seized the opportunity by publishing guides to the fair. MacLean-Hunter's official guide is by far the most common, followed by Bill Bantey's Expo 67, published by the Montreal Gazette.

American book publishers were far more savvy, giving us a memoir (Expo Summer), a work of pornography (Sexpo '69), and this novel of suspense.

So Long at the Fair was Janet Gregory Vermandel's debut. She shares something with memoirist Eileen Fitzgerald and pornographer Charles E. Fritch in being American. That she actually lived in Montreal sets her apart. The publisher's author bio (right) is one of the most unusual I've ever read.

I like it.

Vermande would go on to write five more novels, most of which were set in Montreal. She eventually returned to the United States and her home town of Buffalo, dying in 2002 at age 79, another victim of Alzheimer's.

The first sentence of So Long at the Fair shook me cold:

"Good-by, Brian."

Brian is narrator Lisa Bentham's ex-fiancé. They'd worked together at a Buffalo advertising agency until office gossip of his affair with a lithe, blonde co-worker reached her ears. Seems everyone knew but her. So Long at the Fair begins with Lisa, all of twenty-two, flying off to Montreal for a fresh start. 

Why Montreal?

Lisa preferred Paris or New York, but her mother did not approve. Montreal was a neat compromise. Mrs Bentham insists that her daughter room with Victoria Lester, niece to a bridge partner, until she finds her footing. And so, Lisa's journey from Buffalo to Montreal ends with a walk through a polished marble lobby lit by crystal chandeliers.

Victoria's apartment is luxurious and spacious – more than enough room for a guest – which is surprising for a woman who does occasional work at a temp agency. She and Lisa have known each other since childhood, but were never quite friends. After some awkwardness, they spend the evening catching up. The next morning Victoria heads off to work, leaving her guest alone to explore a foreign city.

Lisa returns in late afternoon to an empty apartment, waits for Victoria, gives up, makes herself an omelette, and then turns in. She's awoken after midnight by the sound of someone moving about the apartment. When she calls out Victoria's name all goes quiet.

It's not her.

Lisa next sees Victoria at the city morgue.

Maybe New York wasn't such a bad idea, Mrs Bentham.

So Long at the Fair features two murders, an attempted murder, an assault, break-ins, extortion, and various other crimes committed by seven different characters, not all of whom are connected – and yet, Montreal comes off rather well. Vermandel, clearly loved her adopted city, and has her heroine share the love by treating her to evenings out at Altitude 737, La Bonne Femme, and La Reserve in the Windsor Hotel. The Buffalo gal makes her way with surprising ease. Jobs are plentiful. The afternoon Lisa quits her first job, with printer Ross-Fairchild, she's hired as a secretary at the Expo 67 Administration and News Pavilion.

Publisher Dodd, Mead positioned So Long at the Fair as a "story of murder and romance, set against the fabulous background of Montreal's Expo '67." Certainly "background" – as opposed to "backdrop" – was intentional. The novel takes place in January 1967, ending with the fair still three months away. Set during the planning of Expo, it's to Vermandel's credit that she captures something of the excitement that until now I'd read about only in old newspaper and magazines.

Leave it to an American expat.

Trivia: As "Murder at Expo 67," a condensed version appeared in the October 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan (the subject of next week's post). 

Object: A typical Red Badge Mystery in that it is a cheaply produced hardcover. In this case, the boards are blue. The jacket is by Alan Peckolick, best-known for the GM logo.

I purchased my copy earlier this year from a bookseller located in League City, Texas. Price: US11.75.

Access: A few copies are listed online. At US$7.41, the least expensive is described as being in good condition. Seems a bargain.

The most expensive – £31 – is the UK edition published in 1968 by Herbert Jenkins as Murder Most Fair. 

Not sure about the title, but I do prefer its cover to the American.

There has never been a Canadian edition.

There have been two translations, the earliest being the German Kastanien aus dem Feuer (1968), which was followed by the Dutch Het rode paspoort (1969).

Neither cover depicts a scene found in the novel. Of the two, I like Het rode paspoort more, but only because it imagines a Montreal that has never existed.

Sadly, there has never been a French translation.

What is wrong with us?

Related posts:

Summer of a Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

A McGill Student's Mild Summer of Love

The Little People of Expo 67

A Mid-Century Modern Country House Mystery

Harsh Evidence
Pamela Fry

London: Wingate, 1953

172 pages

Because this is a Canadian country house mystery, the house isn't terribly old and servants not so numerous. Rocky Crest is located on a private island in a lake somewhere in Northern Ontario. Belonging to wealthy Toronto businessman J.H. Charleston, it is a two-storey mid-century modern, complete with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows and – here I assume – Danish furniture.

J.H. has invited employees and their spouses for a relaxing weekend, though no one is at all relaxed. Guests include:

• Randy Matthews, the top copywriter with Charleston & Synge Advertising. He's here with wife Ann, who worries that his time at the company is limited.
• Iris Martin, dress designer, owns a Bloor Street shop in which J.H. has chosen to invest. She is the latest in in Randy's "long string of entanglements."
• Peter Fairweather, a commercial artist working within the Charleston business empire, has brought his wife Lois, "a small, bird-like woman in her mid-thirties."
• Gordon Goodman, an accounts executive with Charleston & Co is also present, with his wife, "that silly Marion," in tow.

And then there's protagonist Beth Manley. The daughter of a "Toronto University" professor who died far too young, she's the editor of Glitter, J.H.'s latest and most ambitious publishing venture. Unlike the others, this is her first visit to Rocky Crest. Very much outside her element, she's found a friend in Ann, who warns against "Charlestonitis":

"New arrivals to Rocky Crest are particularly susceptible. First symptoms are a dampness in the palms and an irresistible urge to say 'Yes' every time J.H. opens his mouth."

A cautious soul who is very much outside her comfort zone, Beth is made more tense upon learning that her former lover, journalist Paul Manning, is due to arrive.

She awaits Paul's arrival, just was the reader awaits the discovery of the dead body described in the italicized first paragraph: 

In time she would be found—but not yet. The shock and terror of her discovery were still to come. Now she floated peacefully at the edge of the island, the spreading web of blonde hair framing her clear, pale face, the wet green silk of her dress clinging to breast and thigh. Her ballerina slippers were gone—it had been easy for the water to pull them away. And as the small waves lapped her cheeks, her head moved as though she turned it in her sleep. But she was not sleeping.

It's Beth who finds the body. She'd given liquor to steady herself as things begin spinning out of control.

De döda talar ej [Harsh Evidence]
1956

Harris, Charleston's handyman, fishes the lady from the lake. He takes the body to the toolshed, which everyone somehow agrees is appropriate, and then sets out for the mainland and the police. His departure is followed by a sudden storm, leading all to wonder if he'll be coming back at all.

But, look, a boat!

It's not Harris, nor the police, rather late arrival Paul:

Marion flung herself upon him.
   "Paul, darling! We're so glad to see you! We've had the most dreadful time!

Harsh Evidence may be a Canadian country house mystery, but the characters speak like proper Brits.

Marion's slobbering excitement at Paul's arrival is tempered somewhat by J.H., who tells the journalist about the drowned woman. No sooner has his story ended than Marion stumbles upon a heart-shaped locket in the grass. It would appear to have fallen while Harris was carrying the body to the toolshed. Paul inspects it and turns a whiter shade of pale:

"I think she was my wife." 

Turns out he's right.

Beth had no idea that Paul was once wed. When the two are alone, he relates a sad, sordid story of love and betrayal... and then it's off to dress for dinner!

The women go all out. Ann dons on a white dinner dress that possesses "a rakish charm," Lois engulfs herself in yards of grey velvet topped by a little pearl cap, and Iris has "poured herself into a strapless dress which appeared to be made of black sequins." You'd think the dress designer would have the advantage, but it's Beth who makes the biggest splash:

Gentlemen! Lady! I remind you that this very afternoon a woman, Paul's ex-wife Lizette, was found dead floating not far from this very house. Beth, you were the one who found her. Randy, Gordon, you walked down to the shoreline to help retrieve the body. 

The 26 September 1953 Globe and Mail review features some backhanded praise:

I didn't think much of J.H.'s guests, Beth included, but these intolerable four-flushing types are what makes Harsh Evidence worth reading. Careerists all, we dodge them in life, but are drawn to them in print.

All enjoy a perfectly lovely dinner, after which Peter tinkles the ivories and Iris does a substandard Dietrich imitation. The host waltzes with Lois in all her velvet, then suggests a game of Kidnapped.

Kidnapped?

Kidnapped is one of Randy's creations. It's something like Hide and Go Seek, but with teams and rhyming clues.

What fun! But how strange.

The novel's great flaw lies in the callous and peculiarly uniform behaviour by a group of people who had mere hours earlier witnessed Harris retrieve of the body of a dead woman. Some of this may be explained away by the slow reveal that Paul was not the only member of the party to have, let's say, known Lizette.

Kuolleet eivät puhu [Harsh Evidence]
1957

It's not often that I share a spoiler. I do so here because Harsh Evidence is unique in Canadian mystery writing of the time.

As the novel's mid-point approaches, Ann tells tells Beth about Iris's tragic history. The father was disinherited for marrying a chorus girl, Iris's mother. After losing what remained of his money in the crash of '29, he took a drive out a window. J.H., a friend of the family, paid for an exclusive girls' boarding school from which Iris was subsequently expelled. It's only in recent years that the two resumed cordial relations:

"It's certainly romantic," Beth said. "Positively Victorian. Somehow it doesn't fit Iris."
   "There are a lot of things about Iris that don't fit," Ann said slowly.
   "Oh? What, for example?"
   "Well, the men she collects – considering how hard she works at being a glamour girl – they're a pretty queer bunch."

I identified the last sentence as a bloomer, but the final chapters led me to reconsider. By this point, the reader has come to see Lizette Manning (née Lily Roberts) for what she was, a femme fatale who had mined men for money and sex. The twist comes when it is revealed that Lizette saw another mark in Iris, who confronts her on the morning of the afternoon her body would be found.

Ultimately, it's Gordon who exposes the murderer:

Interestingly, Iris herself had used sex – or the promise of sex – to get Randy to agree to a scheme involving the sale of insider information to J.H.'s competitors.

For these reasons alone, Harsh Evidence is worth a careful second reading. 

About the author: Following early, lazy research on Miss Fry, the newly released 1931 census provides a touch more information. Pamela Fry is recorded as the 14-year-old English-born daughter of John and Charlotte Fry. The family had emigrated to Canada in 1928. The Frys lived at 46 Spencer Avenue in Toronto, sharing the house with Edward and Freda Jones and their three daughters.

The house still stands, though you can't see much of it in this 2020 Google Maps Street View.

Object and Access: A hardcover consisting of pale green boards and post-war paper, only the dust jacket illustration renders it attractive. Credit goes to Patric O'Keeffe, about whom I know very little.

The novel can be found at Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the University of Toronto, McMaster University, New York University, Occidental University, Trinity College Dublin and, most remarkably, the Atmore Public Library in Atmore, Alabama.

Here's to the Atmore Public Library! 

I purchased my copy earlier this year from a UK bookseller. Price: £7.50.  As I write, one copy of the Wingate edition is listed at the very same price I paid. Though lacking the jacket, it seems a good buy.

In 1956, New York's Roy Publishers published the first and only American edition. I've never seen a copy.

Harsh Evidence has enjoyed two translations, the first being the Swedish De döda tala ej (1956). This was followed by a Finnish translation titled Kuolleet eivät puhu (1957). Neither cover depicts a scene that features in the novel. Ditto the frocks.

Harsh Evidence has never been published in Canada. 

Related posts:

Keeping an Eye Out for Pamela Fry

The Mystery Writer Mystery Unravels
Susanna Moodie's Bloomers

Here's to Absent Chums

The Missing Chums
Franklin W. Dixon [Leslie McFarlane]
New York: Grosset & Dunlop, [c. 1960]
214 pages

The fourth Hardy Boys book, I read The Missing Chums for the title alone. "Chums" is so dated a word that I'm not sure I've so much as typed it until just now. The novel features characters with names like "Biff" and "Slim," teenage boys who spend rainy days in a barn walking on their hands and practicing their boxing skills. They might take to the trapeze, as does Jerry Gilroy, performing something known as "skinning the cat":

As every boy knows, ‘‘skinning the cat" is an acrobatic feat that does not necessarily embrace cruelty to animals. 

This boy knew nothing about skinning the cat, and isn't sure what to make of the reassurance that it "does not necessarily embrace cruelty to animals [emphasis mine]."

Jerry's attempt at skinning the cat is interrupted by a swat on the butt administered by Chet Morton. Jerry returns the favour after using a sash window to restrain Chet:

Read nothing into this.

Biff, Slim, Jerry, and Chet are but four of the Hardys' chums; Phil Cohen and Tony Prito, the latter owning a motorboat boat called the Napoli, round out their number. As every boy knows, Frank and Joe Hardy have a motorboat of their own, the Sleuth, which they purchased with reward money received in solving The Tower Treasure mystery. Biff Hooper doesn't have a motorboat himself, but his father does. Named the Envoy, it was purchased not long ago, which may explain the chum's ineptitude in piloting the craft. 

Grossett & Dunlop, 1944

This novel is in many ways a nautical adventure, with Biff and Chet as the titular chums. The former had long dreamed of "motorboating along the coast," and now has his chance. The Hardy boys would like to join them, but their father, "internationally famous detective" Fenton Hardy, is about to leave town and Mrs Hardy cannot be alone. Mr Hardy is on the trail of bank robber Baldy Turk who he believes to be in Chicago, the "thieves' paradise." 

Biff and Chet receive a nice send-off from Frank, Joe, and the rest of the chums. Iola Morton and Callie Shaw are also present, but they're girls, not chums. As the Sleuth and Napoli escort the Envoy towards open water a thunderstorm rolls in. The Sleuth and Napoli return to port, while the Envoy motors on into the Atlantic Ocean.

Have I mentioned Biff's incompetence? It's a matter of comedy in the novel's earliest pages, but by the end of the first chapter he's on course to collide with two sailboats.

The second chapter begins with Frank grabbing the wheel, thus averting loss of life. "Thanks," Biff says, "I'd have never got out of that mess if you hadn't taken the wheel. I was so rattled that I didn't know what to do." Frank is magnanimous: "After you've run the boat a few more weeks you'll get so used to it that it'll be second nature to you."

A few more weeks do not pass.

A day or two later, the Envoy is on its way, heading into a storm that saw more seasoned seaman like Frank Hardy and Tony Prito return to the shelter of the port.

There's some concern about Biff and Chet, which is elevated when a promised postcard fails to arrive. The Hardy boys would like to head out in the Sleuth to see what they can find, but what of mother?

Grossett & Dunlop, 1928

Hartley boy L.P. once noted: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Ignoring the obvious – that The Missing Chums is set in a foreign country – the novel was written nearly one hundred years ago. Was this really a time in which an intelligent, able-bodied middle-aged woman could not take care of herself? Would parents of missing children really let days go by before alerting authorities? Children who were last seen heading out into the Atlantic? During a violent thunderstorm? In a motorboat piloted by a novice? Would those same parents have relied on their children's chums to find them, even if those chums were the Hardy boys?

Beginning in 1959, the thirty-eight earliest Hardy Boys titles underwent extensive revisions so as to bring them up to date. No more roadsters. Ethnic stereotypes were toned down.

I've found no evidence that Republican politicians were at all concerned. 

Revisions to The Missing Chums were done in 1962 by James Buechler. They are more radical than most in that the plot is done away with entirely. I won't go into details for fear of spoiling it for readers of the either version. What I find most interesting is that no one thought to replace the title, which seems so... well, it seems foreign to me. And yet, Grossett and Dunlop chose to maintain it, and continues to so do today.

Why not The Missing Friends? Was "chum" still so common in 1962?

I can't say. I pretty much missed the first eight months of that year.

Favourite sentence:

“I’ll say!’’ Iola replied, slangily.

Favourite exchange:

"Just a little while before they went on their trip I was talking to Chet and Biff and I remember that Biff said he had always wanted to visit Blacksnake Island.’’
   "Blacksnake Island!’’ exclaimed Frank. “That’s the place that is overrun with big blacksnakes, isn’t it?"

Fun fact: The word "chum" appears in the text fifty-one  times, roughly once every four pages. "Hardy boys" appears even more frequently – a total of eighty-eight times – which I'm supposing has everything to do with branding. And so, my second favourite exchange:

Trivia: In 1982, Armada, which owned the paperback rights to the Hardy Boys books in the UK, retitled the adventure The Mystery of the Missing Friends.     

Object and Access: An unattractive, cheaply produced hardcover lacking dustjacket, I purchased my copy for one dollar twelve years ago in London, Ontario. The previous books in its "HARDY BOYS Mystery Stories" list suggests it was published in or about 1960. Its frontispiece is a bit of a spoiler.

As I write this, the most expensive copy of The Missing Chums listed online is going for US$950.

It is not a first edition.

In 1960 Dutch publisher Van Goor Zonen gave us De verdwenen vrienden (left) based on McFarlane's text. The jacket illustration, by the late Dutch artist Rudy van Giffen (1929-2005), is the best I've seen. It's easy to imagine it being used today.

There have been other translations – Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese –  but I'm fairly certain all are of the Buechler rewrite.

Related post:
Gone Fishin' (without Frank and Joe Hardy)