Murderers Move In On Montreal

The Executioners

Brian Moore

Toronto: Harlequin, 1951

One year later, another Brian Moore pulp. The Executioners was the author's second novel, published just months after Wreath for a Redhead. Not nearly as much fun or as interesting, it lacks the quirkiness and much of the noirish language of his debut. This isn't to say that these are typical elements in the author's recognized oeuvre – there's not much wackiness in Black Robe, and while its nights were dark, they weren't "as black as a showgirl's mascara" – but here Moore's great strengths are also absent.

While the scenario is fairly pedestrian – a group of foreign agents arrive in Montreal with orders to kidnap or kill an exiled leader – the greatest weakness is that the characters have no flesh. The hero, Mike Farrell, seems to have had some background in boxing, and we know he served in the Second World War. What else can we say about Farrell? Well, we're told that he's a native Montrealer – but this comes from the jacket copy, not the author. Small samplings of candy are provided by Janina, the beautiful blonde niece of the exiled leader. She is "everything you want and don't get, and most of it encased in a sheer blue dress", but not much more.

And then there's the leader himself, who Moore biographer Denis Sampson tells us was inspired by Stanislaw Mikołajczyk, the subject of the author's very first piece of journalism.

The statesman is described as a man with a "huge head". Seems right to me.

The Executioners shows signs of a rushed job. The first chapter, which begins in a pick-up joint frequented by buxom joy kids, is the strongest. In fact, the best line, concerning that same night club, appears on the first page: "The vice squad had closed it up as tight as a ballet dancer's pants two months before and I figured the girls had moved their trade." After this, like the joy kids' clients, we encounter more and more padding – in a book of only 157 pages – provided by frequent drives around town, trips out to Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue and talk of detailed schemes that are never put into action.

It's not at all surprising that Moore's agent succeeded in placing Wreath for a Redhead with an American publisher, but failed with The Executioners. I'm betting that the next pulp, French for Murder (1954) is better, but won't know for sure for another year. After The Executioners, it'll be an easy wait.

Object: A typical Harlequin. Printed on cheap paper, reading may lead to destruction. My copy, bought for two dollars at a bookstore that has since been swallowed up by the Palais des congrès, is in rotten shape. I handle it with loving care.

The cover image depicts two of the ne'r-do-wells outside the statesman's safe house, 26 Chablee Avenue. Though the street doesn't exist outside fiction, I think anyone who knows Montreal will agree that the architecture is, to put it politely, atypical.

Access: A non-circulating item found in rare book rooms and the like. The cheapest copy on offer, which looks to be in as rough shape as my own, will set you back C$50. There are much worse copies that go for even more. In fact, none of the nine currently listed online can be said to be anything better than Good. Most go for between C$60 and C$75. The most expensive copy – C$128 – comes with a signed slip of paper. An insult to both author and collector.

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Brian Moore's True First

Parisian French, not Québécois French

No Lady Before Judith Hearne

No Gun for Gloria

Not Really So Fantastique

One Issue Wonder?

I was going to include this artifact from 1980 in the previous post, but does it not deserve one of its own? Amongst contemporary Montreal music mags Mode & Musik stands out in so very many ways, not the least of which is its use of a typesetting machine in place of a typewriter. I bought this thing as a teenager, but otherwise know nothing about it. Looking at the masthead, only Yves Thériault's name is familiar – but I very much doubt that this is the same man who wrote Agaguk. That said, there is an piece by Jacques Lee Pelletier, who was "New Wave's first cosmetician". How do I know this? Because his article is preceded by one on... Jacques Lee Pelletier.

There's a good deal of mode and muzik here, but precious little Montreal. In mode, M Pelletier is the lone Canadian, presented beside designers Betsey Johnson and Thierry Mugler. In music, there are articles on XTC, the Specials and the Boomtown Rats, but aside from a lone, blurry photograph of sixteen-year-old disco diva France Joli and producer Tony Green, there's not a sign of the city's music scene.

Could it be that they sensed the mirror ball was about to drop?

Something is going on here. Publisher les Éditions Alquint has spilled an awful lot of expensive ink on something called "le Salon Disco" and the awkwardly named "Long Night of the disco... New Wave". Running through the magazine is a peculiar, seemingly desperate attempt to somehow link New Wave with disco and, more than anything else, the discotheque:

The New Wave phenomenon is spreading... in one way or another, it touches almost everyone. But it's still in the discotheques that it finds its natural habitat.

Fashion has been refashioned, clothes becoming as it were the elements of disguise. Anything goes... the wilder, the more outlandish the better! But one can still see blue jeans side by side with the latest New Wave craze like gold and red running shoes.

Clothes... make-up... hairdos... whatever turns you on!

The urge for disguises, to go dancing, to let it all hang out, is slowly but surely infecting the masses...

The hapless reader is told that New Wave is bringing great changes: "Some discotheques have pulled out all the stops to satisfy their clients' taste for the bizarre, some even transforming their dance floors into roller skate-dancing tracks!"

Can't say I remember Andy Partridge or Jerry Dammers on roller skates... but then, I don't remember France Joli on wheels either.

She's perched on stilettos here. Enjoy.

One Band Wonder?

The Gazette, 28 November 1980

I remember Daniel Richler as lead singer of the Alpha Jerks. Did I see them at Cinema V? Was his nom de punk Kenny Lingus? Was Richler in other bands? It all seems a fog. Digging through old Montreal newspapers brings no clarity. Thomas Schnurmacher's little write-up on the Alpha Jerks is unique, an oddity that exists only because the lead singer's dad wrote Joshua Then and Now.

In those days, children – when there wasn't so much as a Montreal Mirror – we old timers relied on our student newspapers for coverage of the alternative scene. But, every once in a while, someone took a stab at starting a local music magazine. I checked these, too. Still no Alpha Jerks!

The first and only issue of Going Underground. No publication date is listed, but reviews of Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret and Architecture & Morality by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark suggest the dying days of 1981.

The first issue of Clea Notar's Red She Said, published – photocopied, actually – in August 1982.

The Summer 1983 issue. I'm pretty certain that this was the end.

From 1984, "JUST ABOUT FIVE GOD DAMN YEARS IN THE MAKING", the first issue of Sugar Diet. Belated congratulations to Rick Trembles.

Q: What is Mark Hamill's photo doing in a piece on Fonda Peters (Lindalee Tracey) and the Alpha Jerks?

A: Later in Schnurmacher's column we're told that "the star of Star Wars is filming a comedy with George Burns in the wilds of Vermont, but he occasionally finds the time to party in Montreal." Apparently Hamill had drinks at Disco Charly with owner Johnny Battista, and even asked some girls to dance. How'd he do? "Most of them accepted even though they did not recognize him."

I can find no record of a Hamill/Burns collaboration.
Pity.

Related post:

One Book Wonder?

One Book Wonder?

I've been reading Kicking Tomorrow, Daniel Richler's literary debut, published nearly two decades ago by McClelland and Stewart. Like many a first novel, it's a coming of age story... and, the author being several years older than myself, provides glimpses of a heady, trippy Anglo-Montreal scene that I just missed. I like Kicking Tomorrow, find much to admire in Richler's writing, and I want more. So, a question nags: Where is Richer's second novel? Don't get me wrong, hardly anyone has one novel in them, never mind two, it's just that the author's bio tells us to expect another.

The last I saw of "Daniel Richler, novelist" was in a 1996 episode of The Newsroom. Five years after Kicking Tomorrow was published, and it seems Richler is still obliged to do publicity. Here he has to put up with a brain-numbing interview with anchor Jim Walcott (Peter Keleghan), which in turn leads to this rant leveled at executive producer George Findlay (Ken Finkleman):

RICHLER: First, I said I would come on this show on the condition that my father is not mentioned. Not only does he mention my father, but he obsesses over this Morde-kai, Morde-hai shit. I mean, he's a fucking idiot.

FINDLAY: I know he's an idiot, but you were great. You were great.

RICHLER: The only thing he knows about my novel are the number of pages that are in it. Did he count that himself, or did somebody do that for him? Then he goes on about I took a shot at fiction. I did not take a fucking shot at fiction. I wrote a fucking novel for which I received a substantial fucking advance.

Will someone not give this man another substantial fucking advance?

Trivia: During the interview, Walcott holds up the shorter American edition, but gives the Canadian page count: "... and has taken a shot at fiction himself with a new book, which I haven't read yet, but I hear is terrific. Uh, what is it? 370... 376 pages. Almost 400 pages."

Related post:

One Band Wonder?