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Fear Stalks the Village by Ethel Lina White, first published in 1932


The Brits love a good detective fiction story, which sparked the genre's huge vogue in the first half of the 20th century. Often set in a quaint village or country house, and usually centering on a murder(s), the juxtaposition of a charming setting and homicide provides the book's frisson.

Author Ethel Lina White makes that juxtaposition the center of her murder mystery tale in Fear Stalks the Village. She first sets up the "perfect" village, almost farcically so, as no village was ever this lovely, and then slowly destroys its equanimity through a series of poison pen letters.

From the town's titular head, the Squire, to its de facto social leader, a stern but kind wealthy widow, to the trusted doctor with his big brood, to the young companions hired by wealthy widows, to the quirky novelists and finally to its pleasant rector, all is good, at first, in the village.

With Tudor cottages, flower gardens, cobblestone streets, and bicycles or walking the main means of transportation, even in the 1930s, the town had a throwback charm. Its quaintness is further protected by not being on a branch line of Britain's extensive rail network.

Then "the letters" start arriving. First the village's avatar of morality receives one, which she destroys, but as news of its existence leaks out – there's always a servant or two who is less discreet than one might hope – the village is a bit disturbed.

The real trouble starts, though, when the novelist receives a letter and is later found dead, putatively of an accidental overdose of a sleeping potion...but could it have been suicide or even murder? After all, she left her estate to the doctor who prescribed the potion.

More letters arrive and, well, fear stalks the once pleasant village. Not that an outsider would notice as all appears normal, but the social life – the garden parties, the tea gatherings, even the informal get-togethers – slows or stops as trust erodes and suspicion spreads.

Things get so uncomfortable that the rector calls in his friend – another literary trope of the era – a wealthy amateur detective with a quirky personality but a whip-smart mind for seeing seemingly small but telling details and connecting, what to most people are, random dots.

The novel from here is all murder mystery investigation as the poison pen letters keep coming and more tragedy strikes, while the intrepid detective keeps probing in his affable but relentless fashion.

The "fun" is in watching the village spasm further as trust erodes and reputations falter. The fun is also watching the detective slowly work toward a solution as feints and obstacles are thrown in his path.

If you're at all familiar with the murder mystery/detective fiction genre from that era, all of this, including the resolution, are to be expected. What White does a bit differently is spend much of her time on atmosphere, which includes creating caricatures more than characters.

White's "perfect" village is an exaggeration of the quaint village of so many murder mysteries. It's all charm with stock characters – a kindly rector, a moral patron, a trusted doctor and an honest solicitor, among others – that one assumes she isn't trying to write them as real people.

Even when their secrets are exposed through the poison pen letters and the happy facades of their lives are shattered, they feel more like examples of stock characters being knocked about than real individuals responding in a real way.

When you step back, nothing really bad was brought down on the village other than a bunch of letters vaguely threatening exposure of embarrassing secrets in people's pasts, but the body count – mainly from suicides – pile up.

So what is White saying? In that era, in England, your reputation, your personal integrity, your "public" face meant almost everything. It's hard to appreciate in our "let all your hangups, problems and emotions out" modern times, how important your perceived rectitude was back then.

Most of the embarrassments – a decades-old nervous breakdown, an early in life divorce, a bit of a drinking problem, etc. – exposed in the poison pen letters seem like nothing, truly nothing, to us today. But in England of that era, they meant a lot to almost everyone.

White appears ahead of her times. She shows that most people have these embarrassments in their past, which begs the question, does it matter? Should we all be living in fear of exposure? Can we not be more forgiving of everyone's lapses and shortcomings?

White does this through contrivance, as no village was ever this perfect; no village was ever populated with such stock characters; and few plots were ever so obviously constructed. You are, clearly, not meant to take it seriously. It is not farce, but exaggeration for a purpose.

White, most famous for her novel The Wheel Spins, which was turned into the noted Alfred Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes, writes in an easy-to-read style that keeps you turning pages quickly.

In Fear Stalks the Village, she gives the public of the 1930s what it wants – a page-turner murder mystery in a quaint village – while subversively she asks that same 1930s public if it isn't too focused on appearances and too unforgiving of human failings?
 

Tiki Tom

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Great review. Sounds like a fun diversion.
And not that far afield from what I just finished: My annual indulgence in the Bruno, Chief of Police series by Martin Walker. A new book is added every year, like clockwork. This years book came out a few weeks ago and is titled “A Grave in the Woods” (#17 in the series.)

Instead of taking place in an ideal English village, Bruno’s cases take place in the perfect little village of St. Dennis in the Dordogne region of France, where everything is vineyards and forests and castles and country markets. Every book is pretty much the same and features a mystery, some international intrigue, history, lots of good food and wine, and the ongoing saga of Bruno’s never-quite-resolved love life. What keeps me coming back for more is the tight community of St. Dennis and Bruno’s dependable circle of good friends. After 17 books I know all these characters quite well and it is almost as if they are my friends too. (Yes, I need to get a life of my own!) Bruno himself is a little too good to be true, but he is never obnoxious about it. I just hope they sort out Bruno’s love life before we all die of old age.

Anyway, these books are my annual guilty pleasure.
 
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Finished "A dictator for dessert"/"La cuisinère d’Himmler" (2013) by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, yesterday. Altogether, it was good. Entertaining, educational, upsetting, very adult, but partly implausible.

Now starting "Rubyfruit jungle" (1973) by Rita Mae Brown. A society novel.
 
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Finished "Rubyfruit jungle" (1973) by Rita Mae Brown.

Hm, I don't know really, what I should think about it. A society novel with a lesbian coming-of-age story, located in the 50s and 60s USA. Of course, this was a different time.

But the female protagonist seems too overdone egoistic personated to me. Not that realistic, I think. But the german edition maybe falsifies the whole impression.

But in the 70s, the book had probably dynamite potential?
 
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Now starting "Ein Vampir kommt selten allein/Zen and the Art of Vampires" (Dark Ones #6, 2008) by Katie MacAlister.

It was also a faulty exemplar/remaindered book from our smalltown's central grocery store. Just let's see, what the story is about. :)
 
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The Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute, first published in 1960


Nevil Shute is a storyteller. In The Trustee From the Toolroom, Shute spins an engaging and enjoyable yarn around a "simple" man, a modest engineer who builds miniature engines, clocks, etc. - models - and then writes about them in a hobbyist magazine. It's a living, but just barely.

Keith Stewart, the engineer, is happy with his kind wife and humble lifestyle. But when he unexpectedly becomes the trustee and guardian for his niece Janice, his sister's daughter, he's forced out of his simple world and sent on a journey halfway around the world for her benefit.

Janice's parents died sailing near Tahiti with their life's savings and Janice's legacy in a strong box built into the boat's frame. Done to avoid British taxes on exit capital, Keith has to either find the box or Janice will grow up without the educational advantages the money would provide.

Keith's selfless quest - he will only spend the money on Janice and not on himself - is done with marginal funds. It takes him on an odyssey that has him deadheading it on a cargo plane to Honolulu and then sailing to Tahiti with an oddball captain on an antiquated sailing ship.

It's a wonderful fish-out-of-water story that has your respect growing by the page for this kind and intelligent man who simply didn't have the experience to know how to undertake such a journey.

Yet his journey, driven by selflessness and integrity, transforms Keith and inspires readers with its heartfelt message. His innate decency and smarts have him, fortunately, making friends along the way.

People just want to help this little guy who is so clearly in over his head. Still, it's Keith alone until the story of his travails makes it to a fan of his articles. In the nichest of niches - the world of model engineering hobbyists - Keith is a well-respected man.

Now Shute takes his tale to another level as a wealthy, intelligent and kind-hearted businessman starts moving pieces around the world's chessboard to find and help unassuming Keith, presently floating somewhere between Honolulu and Tahiti in a sail-powered boat.

The rescue, Keith's attempt to complete his quest, a subsequent meeting with his new benefactor and his return home compose the final chapters of the book. It's a Homeric journey of sorts, without all the Ancient Greek angst.

Shute's many talents include creating characters you simply like. Keith's late-to-the-game guardian angel, Sol Hirzhorn, is a self-made pulp and paper tycoon who took up model engineering on the advice of his doctor after a few health problems.

You can't help loving Hirzhorn and his intelligent and diligent "illegitimate" granddaughter (it's a messy fact that HIrzhon just takes in stride) who serves as his personal secretary. Once they learn of Keith's predicament, they work together like a well-oiled machine to help the missing engineer.

Shute's characters, which also include a shrewd and professional ship captain who untangles a huge mess for Keith in Tahiti and a freighter ship's engineer who teaches Keith how to use a sextant on the fly, are people you want to know.

If you ever need a lawyer, you want Keith's sister's lawyer who works with Keith to settle the estate. He is sincerely trying to help Keith do right by his deceased sister and brother-in-law, and their orphaned child. He is a fiduciary first and a lawyer worried about billable hours second.

The relatability and universal appeal of all of these characters' engaging personalities and inspiring virtues draw readers in, making them root for their success. These well-limned characters show us how the world should work.

If there is a message here, it's that probity exists in people from all walks of life. A humble engineer, a trust attorney, a wealthy tycoon and many others succeed in their own ways because their moral northstars are firmly set for integrity and honor.

Character isn't created by money, position, education or birth. It's something anyone can have, if he or she is willing to make the hard decision demanded of it. The "illegitimate" granddaughter, the humble engineer, the trust attorney and the tycoon are all moral equals.

Shute spins this incredible tale with such ease that you just go along for the ride rooting for Keith while engrossed in his many challenges. When Hirzhorn's cavalry comes charging in, you are cheering.

The Trustee From the Toolroom is a page-turner that, for modern readers, also provides some fun time travel to the early 1960s.

The book inspires, though, because it is old-fashioned storytelling at its best. It will still be a fun read a hundred years from now, in part because its message of integrity and decency remains timeless and relevant.
 
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A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1934


Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust doesn't fit squarely into one genre as this short book has elements of comedy, satire, soap opera and farce – so it's basically life. It’s also Waugh’s way of saying that England’s gentry in the pre-war 1930s are often ridiculous and selfish.

As the book opens, Brenda and Tony's marriage seems fine, until you notice that young, attractive Brenda is a bit bored living on a country estate whose maintenance absorbs most of their time and money. It’s a pretty-looking world, but a lot of work goes on behind the scenes.

Tony loves his family's estate, seeing its caretaking as his responsibility, legacy and life's work. So when Brenda starts spending more time in London, even taking a flat there, he's disappointed because he misses her, but not concerned as he knows his marriage is rock solid.

Tony is wrong: Brenda has taken a lover, John Beever, a young bounder and social boor. It seems almost de rigueur in this class for one partner in a marriage to have a lover, with an understood-by-all etiquette to be followed to make it appear "proper" on the surface.

So while Tony is out in the country busy care-taking the estate and their young son, Brenda spends most of her time in London socializing and sleeping with Beever. It’s quite amazing how everyone accepts this arrangement, as long as they abide by the right social customs.

It might have gone on a long time that way, as the "rule" was to stay silent – but then a family tragedy changes everything. After that, Brenda asks for a divorce, which would have gone smoothly as Tony is a good guy, but Brenda's family got greedy and Brenda went along.

The story then takes several twists as Tony has to fake an affair—a standard requirement at the time—to allow the divorce to proceed. The staging of the affair is a disaster because Tony is simply not good at being insincere – it just isn't in his DNA.

The money moment of the story comes when docile and kind Tony fights back in an honorable way and reshuffles the deck fiercely on Brenda. It's a wonderful moment of saying, if you won't play fair with me, I'll not go along with all this rigmarole needed for the divorce you want.

Waugh is at his absolute best here as you're cheering while turning pages because you care about these characters and want to see some justice done. There’s more to the story after that, as it wades into farce, but it’s very much of-the-era British.

What stands out most is the futility of it all. Waugh saw the uselessness of having a legacy monied class that did not much more than care for antiquated estates and run around cafe society waking up in different people's beds.

Tony is a good guy - he's the apotheosis of the British gentleman - but his efforts are spent fixing bathrooms in a huge house no one wants. Brenda isn't evil, but money and boredom have not served her well. Beever, the worst of the lot, only aspires to have money and do nothing.

Waugh scholars debate, to this day, the meaning of A Handful of Dust, but that's what they are paid to do. Heck, they even manage to see penumbras of Waugh's aborning Catholicism in the characters' religious ambivalence. They are right, but it's also a bit of a "so what" to the story.

The rest of us are free to see the novel as an entertaining indictment of a class on its way out. There would be rich after the war, of course, but the "he's not one of 'us' / old money / look down on those who work" class lost power to the new mercantile class that actually earned its money.

Waugh couldn't know it, and it would take a few decades for Britain to unwind its Empire and the burden of its post-war experiment with socialism, but the country’s revival would come in the 1980s when people began earning money the old-fashioned way: by working hard for it.

A Handful of Dust is a fun quick read that entertains as it denounces the Empire's upper class in its twilight. Waugh's insights feel prescient, but it’s his nuances – his ability to portray real people, their thoughts, problems, and contradictions – that bring this oft-told tale to life.

There is a very pretty movie version of the novel that was made in 1988 (comments on the movie here: #31,641 ). It captures the look and feel of the novel and is well-acted, but the true searing commentary and cynicism of Waugh’s work are best appreciated on the printed page (or in ebook format).
 
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The Great Man by Al Morgan, first published in 1955


The Great Man does two things that a good popular novel should do: It entertains and it provides insight into something – in this case, the midcentury broadcasting industry in America. Today, it's still a fun page-turner and excellent time travel to post-war New York City.

The titular Great Man, Herb Fuller, was a radio and TV "personality" who "came into your home each week" with wit, a smile, a heartwarming story, a touch of sarcasm, and a warmth that made him a beloved national figure.

He dies at the opening of the novel, thrusting Ed Harris, the broadcast company's putative choice to replace Fuller, into the limelight as the man tagged to host the much anticipated Herb Fuller Memorial show.

That setup puts Harris — the book's narrator, a mildly successful local radio personality — on the cusp of national stardom and a massive leap in income. He then delves into Fuller's past, while attempting to swim the shark-infested water of the C-suite.

Those two storylines form the backbone of the book. It's no surprise, and you'll learn this early on, that Fuller turns out to have had a private life that did not align with his pleasant public persona; nor is it a surprise that the network didn't care as long as the ad dollars flowed in.

That story is a good one, which will still have you turning the pages quickly today, but what really works are the personalities. Ed Harris is that particular breed of New Yorker – mildly successful, mildly immoral (but maybe not), quite cynical, and very sarcastic – that still exists today.

His secretary Ginny – young, pretty, smart and only a touch-less cynical and sarcastic – calls Harris out on his BS, and he knows he couldn't do his job without her. You only wish Morgan had written a sequel, The Ginny Story.

Sid Moore, Harris’s slick agent; Philip Carlton, the company’s CEO; and Paul Beaseley, the “hick” local radio station owner – among others – prove to be more than archetypes, as Morgan rounds his characters out in quick, revealing moments.

Sex in midcentury America, especially in New York City, isn't locked-down here the way it is in movies of the era. Harris, Fuller and others toss the sheet around with several women who are neither shamed nor excised from politie company for their actions.

It's refreshing to see life closer to how it was lived than the sanitized version – forced on the public by the Motion Picture Production Code – that made it to the movie screens in that period.

It's also fun today to see New York City at its mid-century full-of-energy best. Fans of the early '00s TV show Mad Men will recognize the elegant restaurants, casual diners, smart-aleck cabbies, uniformed elevator operators, and throngs of people that made New York, New York.

Billed as an expose, The Great Man is just that: a book that says the public images of our celebrities can easily be a fraud, a fraud the broadcast and advertising industries are happy to go along with if it keeps the revenues flowing.

Morgan does an excellent job of taking you inside the broadcast industry to reveal the sinews of power, the backroom deals, and the utter venality of it all. The top of the house is particularly nasty and Machiavellian, but it is fun as heck to be a fly on the wall there.

The good employees try to find a small island of decency where they can do their jobs and go home at night with a clean conscience. That's the challenge Harris faces at the book's climax: he was a decent person as a local broadcaster, but can he be one in a national role?

Was any of this truly a revelation at the time? Maybe a bit, but you’d have to have buried your head deep in the sand to believe, by 1955, that broadcasting and advertising were sincere businesses or that celebrities’ public images aligned with their personal behavior.

Newspaper headlines, going back to the beginning of radio and later TV, are replete with tales of corruption, dirty deals, and fake public images – especially when advertising was in the mix. Even ugly corporate boardroom fights occasionally spilled into the press.

This was also not the first book to put the industry under the microscope. Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press by Silas Bent (1927) was one of many early efforts to show the venal side of the business.

Morgan's style is breezy but not flippant; the pages turn quickly, yet there’s depth in his analysis. He knows the industry so well, he explains more by showing than telling, as he lets his characters' experiences and comments reveal the good and bad parts of the business.

While not groundbreaking, The Great Man is a sincere and entertaining-as-heck effort, full of characters you'll remember – some you'll hate, some you'll love – to expose the seedier side of the midcentury broadcast industry.

Even now, in our era of curated social media personas, the book’s insights into the gap between public image and private reality remain strikingly relevant. Today, it's also a fun trip back to midcentury New York City.


N.B. While it was toned-down for the movie screen owing to the Motion Picture Production Code, José Ferrer 1956 film based on the book - he co-wrote the screenplay, directed and starred in the picture – is equally entertaining and condemning. Ferrer also wonderfully captures the lead character's sardonic, world-weary wit. Comments on the movie here: #31,626 .
 

Michiganiac

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Lately I've read Fleming's first six Bond novels, Chandler's The Big Sleep, Farewell my Lovely, The Little Sister, and his short collection Trouble is my Business.

And of course The Maltese Falcon.

Also read Spillane's Vengeance is Mine and My Gun is Quick. Currently working through The Girl Hunters.

Cheap escapist fiction, but entertaining reads all.

Currently bemoaning the fact there's no novelization of Casablanca, as fast as I know...
 
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Lately I've read Fleming's first six Bond novels, Chandler's The Big Sleep, Farewell my Lovely, The Little Sister, and his short collection Trouble is my Business.

And of course The Maltese Falcon.

Also read Spillane's Vengeance is Mine and My Gun is Quick. Currently working through The Girl Hunters.

Cheap escapist fiction, but entertaining reads all.

Currently bemoaning the fact there's no novelization of Casablanca, as fast as I know...

Years ago, I did a similar tour of Bond and noir lit. You might enjoy the novels of James M. Cain who wrote "Double Indemnity," "The Postman Always Ring Twice," and several others classic noir stories.
 

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