Tuesday, December 17, 2013

James M. Fox (1908-1989)

James M. Fox (1908-1989)
aka Johannes Knipscheer
Dutch by birth (his original name was Johannes Willem Mathijs Knipscheer), James M. Fox, a lawyer by profession, settled in Los Angeles after World War Two, where he began writing the hard-boiled Johnny and Suzy Marshall series for which he was, I believe, best known (though he wrote some well-regarded non-series titles like The Wheel Is Fixed, 1951, as well as four espionage thrillers before 1945).

There were nine of these Marshall mysteries, which combine the hard-boiled PI first person narrative with smart mystery couple banter, published between 1947 and 1953.  I am currently reading The Gentle Hangman (1950) and should have the full piece up tomorrow.

While not without some irritations characteristic of the period, it so far seems a literate and intelligent detective novel--though I do find myself missing the genius of Raymond Chandler, with whom Fox was a correspondent in the 1950s, as well as the originality of Ross Macdonald.  But then that is why Chandler and Macdonald, along with Dashiell Hammett, are the ones who constitute the great hard-boiled triumvirate.

Fox also corresponded with Percival M. Stone, a Massachusetts mystery collector and tremendous R. Austin Freeman enthusiast (Freeman, a contemporary of Arthur Conan Doyle and creator of the medical sleuth Dr. Thorndyke, was one of the great English detective fiction authors).

Happily, I happen to have one of the letters.  Stone had written Fox on January 4, 1954 canvassing Fox's opinions of crime writers.  From his Studio City abode (I think the place where he lived has been replaced by a Petco) Fox responded two weeks later, on January 17:

I can find no fault with your credo on the subject of R. A. Freeman, who will probably always rank at the top of the English school, with Dorothy Sayers a close second.  I'm somewhat undecided about the stature of Mr. [Freeman Wills] Crofts, whom I have at times suspected of certain deficiencies in plotting and characterization.  But my views are not really worth taking into account, since I've always belonged to the American school myself, and more particularly to that branch of it which is forever kicking over the traces or committing outright iconoclasm in some form or other....

Interestingly, as we see, Fox admired R. Austin Freeman, who also had a great fan in Chandler (though Chandler did not enjoy Sayers' work).  I share Fox's admiration for both Freeman and Sayers and have to admit that Crofts, of whom I have written at length in Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery, did have certain deficiencies in characterization (though I greatly enjoy some of his books).

What do I think of Fox's own work?  Come see tomorrow.

7 comments:

  1. I've not read anything by Fox/Knipscheer, but I came across the name before on this blog and you dug up far more intersting information on him. Your review may put Fox higher on my wishlist.

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  2. Thanks Curt for all the info about Fox. I know I have one of his books in an omnibus volume I bought because it had a Fredric Brown I wanted but can't remember what it is - shall have to find out when I get home, though I think it's THE SCALET SLIPPERS, one of the Marshalls books

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  3. Another author I've never encountered. He sounds like one that I would really enjoy. I looked him up on the Fantastic Fiction website and they list thirteen books in the John and Suzy Marshall series with four of them being published prior to 1947.

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    1. Hi, Ron, I think those four earlier books are not Marshall books but if anyone knows definitively, let me know!

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  4. Sergio, TomCat, thanks for the comments, hope to have the review up by tonight! I'm trying to get some more blog pieces done this month.

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  5. Only read one book by him FREE RIDE, a thriller set on board a train about an ex-con being transported to his impending trial and the two cops who are assigned as his bodyguards. Review is here. It didn't send me looking for any of the Marshall books. He implies that he's one fo the iconoclastic writers in that letter you have, but the book I read seemed like a very familiar B movie.

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    1. Running late with the review, but let me comment here I think he meant iconoclastic in terms of the rules for detective fiction of the so-called English school (with wasn't strictly English, but never mind). But, yeah, I don't find the book I'm reading innovative, unless you count introducing the couple motif into the mix, but he's not the first to do that either.

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