Here's another interesting bit from Julian Symons' Bloody Murder:
Successful comic crime stories, short or long, are rare. One turns away with a shudder from the many Holmes parodies, and with not so much more cheerfulness from the conscientiously crazy detective stories of the English Pamela Branch and the Americans Craig Rice and Eliot Paul....
Symons did allow that "the post-war period has produced two successful writers of crime comedy," Joyce Porter (1924-1991) and Colin Watson (1920-1982). I agree heartily about these two latter authors, although Symons essentially views Porter as a one-hit wonder (Dover One) and I think she wrote about a half-dozen excellent Dover novels, as well as a volume of Dover short stories.
I haven't read the crime novels of Pamela Branch or Eliot Paul, but I like Craig Rice's work, as well as that of Phoebe Atwood Taylor (also Alice Tilton) and Rupert Croft Cooke (Leo Bruce), neither of whom Symons mentions.
How do you feel about comic crime? I know Tom Schantz over at Rue Morgue Press is a great fan and that he has in fact reprinted Pamela Branch, as well as Conyth Little, another "zany" author, whom Symons mentions only is passing , along with other "American Golden Age" authors "whose work was highly regarded," Mignon Eberhart, Mabel Seeley, Helen Reilly and Elizabeth Daly (actually rather a disparate group).
Does comedy cut it with crime? Does mirth mix with murder? What do you think?
I like incidental social satire. I like a LOT of incidental social satire. Fortunately many detective story writers supply it. More of it than you find in many straight novels or in other forms of literature. Detective story writers dare to say that people run true to type - a less flattering view than you find in straight novels that tell us we're all utterly unique.
ReplyDeleteYes, Lucy I do too and I agree the classical detective story often supplies lots of it. That's one of the things I love in Leo Bruce. The Crime Queens of course are good at it, including Christie in some of her books, to an underappreciated degree, I think.
DeleteI laughed a lot at Murder every Monday by Branch first time I read it, but going back to it a few years ago i found it and Wooden overcoat hard going. I also noticed the similarities between this and Waugh's Decline and Fall, with its shifting and shifty characters.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Symons oin the Dover books though I think it might be that the joke is only good enough to be told once.
I would say Watson is a gentle satirst - he tells a good story and the humour while important is not the main point of the books
If I could recommend another in a similar vein from a similar era it would be Stanley Hyland's excellent Green grow the tresses oh, which was available as a penguin in the late 60s.
The descriptions of Branch's plot have tended to put me off! On the other hand, I loved about six of the Dover books. Part of that, however, is that they have genuinely good plots!
DeleteNothing makes me wary so much as the description of a book as comedy crime: they are often crass and very unfunny. But, as with everything, there are always exceptions. I've recently re-read both Pamela Branch (did NOT enjoy) and Max Murray (very entertaining). I'll have to try to pin down why one was acceptable and the other just tiresome - apart from just personal taste, which of course plays a part.
ReplyDeleteOh, I like Max Murray too. I love the humor of RCC's Leo Bruce mysteries, but it's not really madcap. Lately though I've quite gotten to like Craig Rice, who is the full madcap I would say, or quite close.
DeleteI quite enjoy comic crime novels, as I find them an interesting palate cleanser (if a book can be such a thing) from the more conventional golden age crime novels. I've read lion in the cellar by Pamela Branch and I thought it was quite good, especially since I haven't really read a crime novel so bizarre before. I was wondering whether Joan Coggin's Lady Lupin novels and Torrey Chanslor's two crime novels could be counted as comic crime novels too? as they definitely made me laugh, especially the Lady Lupin novels
ReplyDeleteKate, is Joan Coggin another Rue Morgue reprint, it sounds familiar.
DeleteIn recent years I have avoided comic crime novels, but years ago I loved Donald Westlake's comic novels, and not just the Dortmunder books. I have several to try... Pamela Branch, Craig Rice. But I would say in general I want my crime novels serious.
ReplyDeleteI think I tend to like drier satire, but I've been sticking my toe into madcap more lately.
DeleteI'm definitely coming out of this feeling like I should read Pamela Branch!
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