Far Cry Man: The Far Cry (1951), by Fredric Brown

Black Lizard paperback edition (1991)

Opinions differ over the matter of what is "the best" crime novel by Fredric Brown (1906-1972). Some people say The Fabulous Clipjoint, some Night of the Jabberwock, some say The Screaming Mimi, some The Far Cry, some yet something else.

Me, I'm a Far Cry man.

In the 1990s Vintage's excellent Black Lizard imprint reprinted some Fredric Brown titles, including The Far Cry, but it has since let him lapse.*

*(last year a $75 edition of The Far Cry was issued by Centipede Press in a limited edition of 300 copies, now sold out; that is very nice, but surely there is some middle ground between high-end and dead-end!).

Now people tend to be more familiar, among notable mid-century crime writers, with Patricia Highsmith, Jim Thompson, and David Goodis.

This is good for these writers, but too bad for Brown!  I think Brown's comparative neglect is a shame, because he is my personal favorite of the bunch.

Bantam paperback edition (1953)
a typically salacious cover
in the manner of the period

It is hard to see why a book like The Far Cry is so overlooked today. Unlike Brown's Murder Can Be Fun, reviewed here last week, The Far Cry is not remotely humorous or "light."

The Far Cry has that "noir" quality of despair and impending doom that is all the modern rage, combined with a Christiesque plotting skill that is rather less respected today (among Brown's contemporaries, I would compare his plotting deftness to that great psychological suspense writer Margaret Millar).

In his critical biography of Fredric Brown, Martians and Misplaced Clues (1993), Jack Seabrook has written acutely about The Far Cry, though he gives away plot spoilers right and left and I can't do this, here, on a blog.  So I will try to be circumspect!

George Weaver, a Kansas City real estate man--married, rather unhappily, with two kids--is recovering from a nervous breakdown near Taos, New Mexico (there appears to be quite a bit of autobiographical detail in The Far Cry, as well as Brown's usual depiction of nearly non-stop alcohol consumption among his characters, which also may well be autobiographical).

In Taos George comes across an eight-year old local mystery in the "Lonely Hearts" knifing murder of pretty Jenny Ames by an artist named Nelson. He sees a chance of making some money by writing an article about the murder, but he becomes increasingly fascinated with the case for its own sake--or, really, for the sake of Jenny Ames. Meanwhile George's slovenly wife, Vi, comes to join him in New Mexico, and the novel develops two wicked prongs of interest. At this point, it takes an abstemious reader indeed to stop reading.

With its strongly-conveyed setting, high degree of narrative suspense and deft plotting, The Far Cry is a classic among crime novels.  Why it does not get the attention of a number of Jim Thompson or David Goodis titles I don't know (the two latter authors have now both been canonized by the Library of America). Could it be Brown's plotting genius that is held against him? In some literary circles it seems that cleverness can be a crime.

And How! Murder Can Be Fun (1948), Fredric Brown

"Why, Baldy, are detective stories so popular?"
"Because people read 'em?"
"And people read them because they like them.  Because murder can be fun--if it's fictional and not factual murder."

Murder Can Be Fun (1948) is the third mystery novel by the great American mid-century crime and science fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906-1972).

The novel, which is an expansion of Brown's 1942 short story "The Santa Claus Murders," has the qualities of classic Fredric Brown: an intriguing plot, a strong setting, touches of surrealism and an astonishing amount of drinking.

If the characters in Fredric Brown novels don't quite make those in the books of Craig Rice look like amateurs at the fine art of alcohol consumption, it's not for want of trying.  Many a Fredric Brown tale, including this one, might also be tiled Murder Makes You Thirsty.

The surrealistic quality in Brown's work comes to fore immediately in Murder Can Be Fun when on a sweltering August day a Manhattan man is shot to death by a person incongruously clad in a Santa suit. Another murder follows, although this time there are no witnesses to say whether Santa was the one who dun it.

slivovitz
one of many distilled beverages
quaffed in Murder Can Be Fun

Both murders are linked to radio scripts that former-journalist-now-radio-hack Bill Tracy wrote for his proposed radio mystery series, Murder Can Be Fun. Are Bill's scripted murders coming real?!

This surrealistic element is something that Brown would develop more powerfully in the novel some people regard as his masterpiece, Night of the Jabberwock (1950).*

*(in Murder Can Be Fun, incidentally, Brown actually makes a couple references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and to animated chess pieces)

Bill's current job is writing scripts for the popular radio soap opera, Millie's Millions.  Fredric Brown's portrait of a forties radio show is for me the most appealing part of this appealing book (and probably will be to as you as well if you love old-time radio).

The author of Murder Can Be Fun doesn't think too much of radio soap opera:

In moments of fairness, [Bill] would admit that the formula the soap operas used was the basic formula of all great literature.  The only difference, really, between Millie's Millions and, say, the Odyssey of Homer was that Ulysses suffered for a limited time only, whereas Millie went on forever, because her public demanded that they should. She couldn't get married happily and settle down, nor yet could she die and get her troubles over with.  That, of course, is the real reason why the radio serial must become a bane to the discriminating ear; instead of being a story with a beginning and an end, it goes on and on until it becomes a palpable and palpitating absurdity.

"[A] ghastly travesty of life," Brown terms radio soap opera (even more horribly, today we have "reality" television, which actually claims to be real life).

Of course in Murder Can Be Fun there's a mystery to be solved and there's a nice fair play puzzle embedded in the text.  There's also a winsome little romantic subplot, involving Bill with two fetching ladies, next door neighbor Millie (a hosiery model, not the Millie of Millie's Millions) and the lovely and ambitious blonde stenographer, Dotty. In fact Murder Can Be Fun could almost be called a cozy of sorts (a cocktail cozy, if you will)--though I wasn't altogether sure that that last line bode all that well for Bill!  Read it and see for yourself.  It's a swell mystery tale.