Meador Manor

In the autumn of 2020, while our travels were restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to read Keith Robertson’s crime novels. He was the author of the Henry Reed series which I enjoyed as a child, and he published six adult murder mysteries from 1961 to 1968. His children’s books were published from 1948 to 1986.

In a 1972 interview, he explained that the mysteries, for which he reversed his first and middle names to obtain the pseudonym Carlton Keith, were a “welcome relief” from writing children’s books. He said it took much less time to write an adult mystery than a children’s book, sharing that he entirely dictated his adult books. Recently I read the first three Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, and Gardner dictated his books and employed three secretaries to sustain the high output of what he termed his “fiction factory”.

I was interested that Robertson said that one problem with dictation was that he would use entirely too many words, and he would severely cut the word count in revision. He said that he didn’t struggle with plots, although I found some of his plotting overly complicated in the first two of his adult mysteries.

His adult mysteries are out of print and not available for my Kindle, so I purchased his first one as a pulp paperback on eBay. The Diamond-Studded Typerwriter, also published as A Gem of a Murder, had a wonderful pulp cover illustration by Harry Schaare. I have paid more attention to book illustrations since I started watching art director and designer J. Scott Phillips’ wonderful book and story reviews and some of the illustrator retrospectives by Pete Beard.

I enjoyed that first Carlton Keith novel enough to buy the rest of his adult mysteries, which were not available in the Kindle bookstore. So I ordered copies from used bookstores in Illinois, Ohio, New York, Tennessee, and New Zealand via Abebooks.

I read his second mystery in March 2021, and it was mediocre. So I took a long break from the little collection I had acquired. My interest was revived this summer, which has been exceptionally wet and humid. My distaste for sultry weather keeps me indoors, which encourages me to read.

Rather than continue with the Carlton Keith novels in chronological order, I examined the physical format of the four remaining works, deciding I would read whichever was most physically appealing.

So, let’s try judging a book by its cover. Which of these four interests you the most?

Surely you did not pick the green one. That is The Crayfish Dinner of 1966, which was also published as The Elusive Epicure. Here is its spine:

Three of the four were hardbacks, with only 1963’s Rich Uncle having an actual book jacket, although I’m sure The Crayfish Dinner once had one…let’s see what the internet shows.

Ugh; I agree with ditching that. I don’t care for the look of crayfish, and I remember dissecting one in high school Biology I. But it is evidently for dinner, and I have had some tasty Crawfish Étouffée in New Orleans.

I like the book jacket design of Rich Uncle, which is superior to the photograph on the cover of A Taste of Sangria. The latter was his last mystery, and it will probably be the last of the books I take up, as my copy is a cheap paperback with awful pulp paper printed in 1968. That eventual reading experience will be worsened by a tear across a dozen pages. I also don’t care for sangria, or any form of alcohol, for that matter.

In making my choice, I deliberately avoided reading any blurbs or summaries, and I also ignored their apparent lengths. Later, I did weigh the tomes. My Rich Uncle hardback weighed 9.3 ounces, the hardback with three novels, one of which was The Hiding Place, weighed over a pound at 19 ounces, The Crayfish Dinner hardback weighed 14 ounces, and the nasty little paperback was only 3 ounces.

I also didn’t crack open any of the books in making my choice, but here’s a look at the start of a chapter in each novel:

Now which one would you try?

Going only by the covers and the feel of each book in my hands, I selected the heaviest, an anthology of three 1965 “detective” novels: Sniper by Hugh Pentecost, The Hiding Place by Carlton Keith, and Alias His Wife by Stephen Ransome. Here’s a close-up:

My paternal grandparents kept several Reader’s Digest condensed books in the headboard bookcase of the guest bed my parents would use. As a child, I was fascinated how they might have six books in one, until I realized that “condensed” meant abridged. Feeling that I would be missing out, I generally avoided reading them, although I did enjoy examining their covers.

When I was in junior high, I checked out a translation of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, having enjoyed the Disney film. Boy howdy, was I ever bored! Its passages on undersea life seemed interminable. I don’t know if I was reading the first English translation in 1872, by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier, but I suspect not since Mercier cut nearly a quarter of Verne’s French text (while committing hundreds of translating errors), and I couldn’t imagine the text being any longer. The full version is supposedly about 152,000 words, and at the time I would have loved to try a condensed version. I didn’t try reading another Verne novel for decades.

Seeing that The Hiding Place was in some sort of book club anthology, I was concerned that it might be abridged. The Detective Book Club anthologies were issued from 1942 through perhaps 2000. They were initially produced by Walter J. Black, who made a career in reprints, popularizing classics along with anthologies of Westerns and detective stories.

His son, Theodore M. Black, took over the business after Walter’s death in 1958, and he was a smart cookie. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton in 1941 and was that year’s valedictorian. After graduation, he was a captain in the army, serving in Europe in World War II, and he then served in the army reserves for 22 years, retiring as a reserve lieutenant colonel. As an educator, I’m mildly interested that he authored Straight Talk About American Education in 1982, but not enough to read it. Theodore died in 1994, and he was buried with his parents in Westbury, NY.

Some of the novels in the Detective Book Club anthologies were abridged, but an online image of a paperback edition of The Hiding Place shows what appears to be a thin tome. (If you search for this book online, you’ll be inundated with results for the Corrie ten Boom autobiography which I read in my youth. I had to use “-Boom” to filter my searches.)

I searched for but couldn’t find a larger or color reproduction of the tiny book illustration used on the front and back covers of the Detective Book Club anthology for The Hiding Place. Whether it was intentional or not, I like how the artistic depiction of leaves on some trees, and what might be a cloud, are reminiscent of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

As for The Hiding Place, I was relieved to find it did not feature Jeff Smith, the handwriting expert protagonist of Robertson/Keith’s first two novels. The Jeff Smith characterization and some of his antics reminded me of Gardner’s early Perry Mason, and I’ll admit that I am a bit done with Perry Mason after the third book in that series. They were too hardboiled and plot-driven for my taste.

I was glad to find the protagonist of The Hiding Place was a completely different character, Alex Olszak. He was described as a big, hulking man with long, dangling arms and ham-like hands with a stolid face devoid of expression except when he smiled. Somewhat unexpectedly, his profession was industrial design, creating hubcaps, toasters, and other items, using modeling clay and plaster.

I appreciated how Robertson/Keith put some effort into characterization for Olszak, although almost all of the other characters were stereotypes. The story read like an adult version of one of the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mysteries, with hidden “treasure”, a secret room and tunnel, knockout blows to the head with no concussions, being tied up by crooks, and the like. It was simple and fun, and despite its utter lack of sophistication, I enjoyed it far more than the earlier Jeff Green mysteries.

Since it appeared in the Detective Book Club, I wondered if an actual detective would be a character or not. Indeed, a private detective did appear and played a role in the plot. I presume Robertson/Keith was trying out different forms of mysteries to see what might sell, or perhaps he was entertaining himself by writing in different styles within the genre.

Hugh Pentecost

I found that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Detective Club Book in terms of its look and feel. It was comfortable to hold and read, with clear and well-laid-out text. In fact, I enjoyed it enough that after finishing The Hiding Place, I contemplated the one-page synopsis of its three novels on an opening page to see if I might read another of the tales.

The blurbs were poorly written, with far too many EXCLAMATIONS! However, the first one sounded like a cozy read in a familiar subgenre and was credited to Hugh Pentecost.

That pseudonym was used by author Judson Pentecost Philips, who wrote over 100 mystery and detective novels, along with many pulp sports novels back in the 1930s. It is said that his novels had strong characterization, fair play with the reader, and unstilted language. Sniper was the first of seven books in his John Jericho series. I suspect it being first in the anthology might indicate the publisher thought it was the best of the trio.

I confirmed online that the tiny book cover depiction on the anthology edition matched the book jacket on a hardcover edition of the novel, and I found a couple of other covers for it. I would not have even picked up this book based on its paperback cover, with its artwork of what appears to be a dangerous red-haired relative of Grizzly Adams, “Giant John Jericho”.

As a man with a smaller frame and no athleticism outside of fitness aerobics and day hiking, with a career based on science and technology, I don’t identify with big hulking male characters who are artistic. However, the book was in hand, and Philips/Pentecost had earned a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, so what the heck.

John Jericho had some superficial similaries to Alex, the protagonist of The Hiding Place: another guy with a large frame, “hamlike” yet oddly dextrous hands used for artistic endeavors, and an appreciation for aesthetics more often stereotyped as a characteristic of homosexual males than straight he-men. Both gentlemen were also experienced in firearms.

The first chapter was a rough start, an introduction to the two lead characters which I found hard to believe: a woman was proposing intercourse with Jericho shortly after meeting him. He rejected that, and the story had no graphic scenes, but it immediately came across as distinct from Robertson/Keith’s contribution to the anthology, where a man and woman had some very conventional dates, a few kisses, and then agreed to marriage, with the reader only aware of them having reached first base.

Philips/Pentecost’s novel had more deft characterizations and a whodunit plot that offered up plenty of suspects with the inevitable twists and turns. He wasn’t Agatha Christie, but he was certainly more skilled than Robertson/Keith in the mystery genre.

I doubt I will seek them out, but I’d read another Hugh Pentecost book. Also, despite his evident inferiority in the genre, I’ve made it a project to read all of Robertson/Keith’s crime novels, and I suspect I will tackle Rich Uncle next…but that won’t be for awhile. Over the past four months, four of the eleven books I’ve read have been mysteries.

So I’ve started listening to director William Friedkin’s memoir on my walks, and I think I’ll pick up my Kindle, read the remaining essays in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and then try reading another of Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century: A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul. I’m grateful to have varied options to distract me during this sultry summer.

My least favorite months have always been July and August, as Joklahoma’s sweltering and oppressively muggy summers drive me off the trails and pathways, except for early morning walks on weekends.

One of my escapes is to read literature. In the summer of 2011, I read Lolita and Under the Volcano. Emma helped me through the summer of 2012. In 2018, I read Pride and Prejudice in the Utah desert. For 2025, I listened to Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara.

O’Hara’s works were once popular and highly acclaimed. He wrote twelve novels, hundreds of short stories, along with essays, novellas, and plays. His prose was tough and sparse with crackling dialogue. He was explicit in his inclusion and treatment of sex in his stories, in an era when that was somewhat scandalous. His tales were elliptical, presenting slices of life without explicit explanations of what they meant. Respect for him was professional, but not personal.

Fran Lebowitz’s take on O’Hara: “Every single person I know who knew him, and there are quite a few, loathed him. He was probably such an unlikable person that nobody could judge him that way in his own era. My editor, for instance, knew him and we’re constantly battling, because he thinks I way overrate him and I say that’s because you knew him. So, he was a jerk. Except for pornographers, I think he’s the only writer who writes about sex in a way that it’s possible to read about it. I think John O’Hara’s the real Fitzgerald. O’Hara’s a cause to me. I have every single thing that he wrote.”

In 1966, John Updike’s take was, “He has more genius than talent. Very little censoring went on in his head, but his best stories have the flowing ease and surprisingness of poems.”

O’Hara’s reputation faded over the decades, but I was led to him several different ways. The first came when I recalled the movie title BUtterfield 8 when writing about telephone exchanges, only to discover it was based on O’Hara’s second novel. Then Another Bibliophile Reads mentioned one of his later, larger novels. Finally, while scanning the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels of the 20th century, I noticed O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra was ranked #22.

Some critics mocked Modern Library for including O’Hara’s debut novel in its list. As I wrote this post, The Greatest Books only ranked Appointment in Samarra as the 2,314th greatest book of all time. Not at all shabby, but he’s clearly fallen from grace.

For some reason, which I shall not overanalyze, I decided to first read a later O’Hara novel, Hope of Heaven. It was a slice of the life of a Hollywood screenwriter, a topic which brings to my mind Fitzgerald’s unfinished The Last Tycoon, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, and David Fincher’s Mank.

Hope of Heaven was O’Hara’s third novel, and it only cost $2 to download to my Kindle. It was interesting for its frank treatment of sex among its characters and featured superb dialogue, but it was definitely elliptical. There was little lyrical prose, heavy symbolism, or explicit messaging. I wouldn’t have guessed it was published in 1938…it seemed more modern, and I was sufficiently intrigued to embark upon listening to Appointment in Samarra, which critics agree was both his first and best novel.

Given that both books are about the final days of wealthy men, in 1922 and 1930 respectively, comparisons are inevitable between my favorite novel, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby of 1925 and Appointment in Samarra. Gatsby is in now in the public domain, while Samarra won’t become free to all until 2030.

The title of O’Hara’s 1934 book comes from an old story retold by W. Somerset Maugham in 1933:

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that had jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.”

The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.

Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd and he came to Death and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”

“That was not a threatening gesture,” Death said, “it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

You might think Julian English in Appointment in Samarra is an alternate take on Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s greater novel. However, O’Hara biographer Frank MacShane noted, “Julian doesn’t belong to Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age; he is ten years younger and belongs to what came to be called the hangover generation, the young people who grew up accustomed to the good life without having to earn it. This is the generation that had so little to defend itself with when the depression came in 1929.”

While Fitzgerald’s prose is lyrical and his novel is pregnant with symbolism, O’Hara’s first novel is an adept work of realism. The Library of America noted that while both authors “dramatize the longings and dashed hopes of a lost generation, seduced and betrayed by the glittering temptations of the modern age”, “O’Hara remained always very much grounded in the real world, in ‘society,’ exposing its fine details and unspoken rules.”

On successive days, Julian English performs several impulsive acts which are serious enough to damage his reputation, his business, and his relationship with his wife. O’Hara as the omniscient narrator never actually shows us the details of each incident, and I was fascinated with how the second event was related almost entirely through dialogue.

Given the power of his dialogue, I would recommend listening to O’Hara’s novel over reading the text, with the opposite advice for partaking of Fitzgerald.

Philip B. Eppard summarized the reader’s impression of Julian English: “drinking too much, charming with the opposite sex, constantly at odds with his parents, flouting conventional behavior in ways that lead him to be perceived by respectable society as something of a bad seed, and ultimately self-centered and insensitive to others.”

While The Great Gatsby is structured to have us perceive him through the narration of Nick Carraway, Appointment in Samarra is more direct. Julian English is less likable, but we have direct access to his thoughts. However, they remain somewhat shallow and superficial, like Julian’s life and those of most of his acquaintances.

One of the hallmarks of John O’Hara’s realism is that it faithfully reproduces the inconclusiveness of life itself, and this has sometimes been frustrating to critics, reviewers, and readers. The case of Julian English does not and never will have a neat explanation.

I enjoyed listening to this novel, much as I enjoy reading the New Journalism that Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion pioneered in the 1960s and 1970s. I was not at all surprised to find Didion referring to Julian English in one of her essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Like O’Hara, she was a keen observer, and she embraced his elliptical style of describing without explaining. I deeply appreciate Didion’s early essays, but they often end abruptly, with no denouement. O’Hara can be similarly abrupt.

While I appreciate his skill, I don’t plan to read more of his novels. It is said that his short stories were his best work, and he sold hundreds of them to The New Yorker. I’ve bought a hardcover book, The Hat on the Bed, with a couple dozen of them that he wrote decades after his early novels. I’m told to expect character sketches and comments on the social fabric of early to mid-20th century America, with unexpected and dramatic conclusions.

Gibbsville awaits.