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