2014 The Year in Vintage Books - History, Mystery, and Biography

So here it is my year of reading vintage books. I managed to read some things I'd said I'd get to and make new finds. Out of the 20 or so books that I read there are few regrets. So here is the list in no special order.

Counterfeit Kill - Gordon Davis (aka E. Howard Hunt) - (1963)  I enjoyed it and thought the Washington D.C. setting was well done. I think of Hunt's character as a kind of American James Bond just as sophisticated (but in a more real way) and without the misogyny.

"Dear Mr. President ..." The story of fifty years in the White House mail room -  (1949) Ira R.T. Smith - Breezy and relaxing. I had never really thought about all the mail the presidents get from the citizens of the U.S.A.

The Man Who Paid His Way - Walt Sheldon (1955) - The story of a corrupt city police department and the officer who could not play along. Much better than I expected. Sheldon is a good writer but some of his characters are a little too stilted.

Too Dead to Swing : A Katy Green Mystery by Hal Glatzer - (2002 ok so its not really vintage) - A mystery story set in the 1940's that concerns an all girl swing band called the Ultra Belles. A premise loosely based upon Phil Spitalny's and Hour of Charm All Girl Orchestra. A so-so mystery. Somehow I found it a little hard to get through.

Murder in Stained Glass - Margaret Armstrong - (1939) Another passable mystery that I would rate as just ok. While reading I kept thinking that the action was actually taking place in 1900 not the 1930's, how odd. I have learned to be wary of these Bestseller Library editions as many are abridged versions of the original novel.

John Sloan: Painter and Rebel - John Loughery - (1997, not vintage reading either) A good biography of the painter and ashcan school member. It left me more informed about turn of the century radical politics and John Sloan's complex relationship with this wife Dolly.

The Counrty Kitchen - Della Lutes - (1936) - Lovely and well written about the author's rural 1800's childhood in Michigan and the food they ate. This book is half autobiography and half cookbook. It went through 22 printings to many copies are out there.

The Coffee Train - Margarethe Erdahl Shank - (1953) Another fine autobiographical book about about growing up in a close knit Norwegian community in North Dakota. Like the Country kitchen it contains many references to food and provides a view of life as it was.

My Year of Reading Vintage Novels / Vintage Mystery Books - Issue #3 - The Last Adam - James Gould Cozzens

The Last Adam - James Gould Cozzens

The Last Adam is about a small town in Connecticut as seen through the eyes of all its inhabitants, though chiefly through the eyes of the town doctor. To quote Kirkus Reviews "The central character is the country doctor, not the usual glorified, sentimentalized figure, but a rather surprisingly shoddy and at the same time appealing human being."

The major story line in The Last Adam concerns a typhoid epidemic that sweeps through the town. The epidemic is caused by unsanitary conditions in a workers camp. The workers have come to the town to erect steel towers and hang overhead power lines. The electric company is bringing progress to the town. The irony is that progress causes the outbreak of a disease only the doctor's elderly aunt can remember. Other major themes in this books include not only change and progress, but rich vs poor and "modern medicine".

Cozzens' writing can be positively lyrical at times as in this passage that describes a sunset and the cold weather: "It was perfectly light still, a sunless lucid light with no direct source. The sky was a hard northern blue; sun itself shone a bright sad orange on the crest of the cobble. Increasing cold could be guessed from an elusive, fragile clarity of air in the valley shadows."

Please don't miss this good book by another once well regarded and now largely forgotten author. I am looking forward to reading another of his books, a court room drama titled The Just and the Unjust, later this year.

My Year of Reading Just Vintage Novels and Vintage Mystery Books - 2014 - Issue #2

The Dark Wood - (period book club edition)

Photo of author Christine Weston

I recently completed The Dark Wood by Christine Weston originally published in 1946 by Scribner's. The story centers upon three people who lives intersect during one summer in NYC. First, we are introduced to Regan and Mark Bycroft. Mark is a returning WWII veteran who comes back to find that his wife wants a divorce because she has fallen in love with someone else.

Next, the reader encounters Stella Harmon, a war widow who can not get over the loss of her husband Alec. Depressed and listless, she can hardly makes an effort to get through the day. She's been a widow for two years now.

One day she encounters Mark sitting in a bar and is shocked by the physical resemblance between him and her dead husband. Her friend Miriam also sees the resemblance but not as strongly.

Here is how Weston describes one of Mark and Stella's early meetings: "She met his gaze, and to Mark it seemed as is she were perilously near to committing herself, and to him, to further responsibilities. In another mood, with another woman, he might have welcomed the danger out of sheer loneliness, but while this woman attracted him, she strangely repelled him. His feeling towards her were not whole feelings, and passion for her died almost at the moment of inspiration."

The lives of Stella and Mark now begin to intertwine and eventually they start a relationship. Of course all is not smooth sailing. Mark does not want Stella and her friends to see / treat him as some carbon copy of her deceased husband. Does she really love him or is he just a stand in for Alec?

Weston weaves together the characters' inner thoughts with dialogue and description in a seamless and non-obtrusive way. You get to know their inner thoughts and feelings but only as it relates to the plot. The Dark Wood is not a stream of consciousness novel! Reviewers of the day classified it as a psychological novel. I agree and would simply say it's a very good read.

My Year of Reading Just Vintage Novels and Vintage Mystery Books - 2014

This year I'm going to only read vintage novels and vintage mystery books. Hopefully I can find enough interesting ones!

Books I've Read in 2014:

The first novel of the year was A House - Boat on the River Styx by John Kendrick Bangs, published in 1895. It's a fantasy novel based upon the premise that a group of famous, but now deceased literary figures, gather together at a men's club afloat on the river Styx. In Greek mythology The Styx is a river that formed the boundary between Earth and the Underworld (also called Hades). The group on the house boat includes William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Baron Munchhausen, Noah, Adam, Napoleon, and Homer.

The book has no real plot but is instead made up of encounters between these literary figures, which elicit conversations or arguments centered around several topics. There are running jokes that weave their way through the story and help to tie it together. The main joke being that Shakespeare never wrote his own plays, the actual authors of course are present to to testify to this truth, and there's Baron Von Munchhausen who tells many unbelievable but totally amusing stories.

The novel is 171 pages long and at times I struggled to finish it. The premise wore thin and many a conversation was a little too precious and not so deep. It reminded me of watching Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which asks the viewer to pat themselves on the back for their knowledge of history and literature and for getting all the jokes. I think if Bangs had chosen to explore more serious ideas, along with the jokes, this vintage novel would have been a much better read. If you have an ebook reader A House - Boat on the River Styx can be downloaded for free.

Vintage Mystery Books - Finds - 8/23/13

My partner, Robin, and I took a short trip to Derby, CT to visit a shop called Books By the Falls. It's a used book and record store.We spent about and hour poking around and I was able to pick up 3 vintage murder mystery books. I thought I'd share my finds and see what information is on the net about these books.

Purchase # 1 - Women Are Skin Deep by Paul Whelton - a Gary Dean Mystery

This 1940's mystery promises to be a true hard-boiled detective story. According to the back of the dust jacket the authors former occupations include military pilot, reporter, and cartoonist. "He has personally figured in almost as many imbroglios as his alter ego, Gary Dean, ...."  

There are six books in the Gary Dean series. Some were written directly for Graphic Books, a rather notorious publisher of "alternative classics." Wow, I think that was said with tongue firmly in cheek.

Update:
After reading Women Are Skin Deep I can say that the author background as a reporter was used to its best and worst advantage. Whelton's experience in the field of journalism allowed him to create a very authentic character, Gary Dean reporter for the Press-Bulletin. However, the author slows down the action by providing the reader with seemingly all of the ins and outs of the profession. I would rate it B-.

Women Are Skin Deep - Paul Whelton - Garry Dean

Purchase #2 - Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Another book from the 1940s, this copy has a movie tie-in cover that features Tyrone Power. It's about an ambitious young man who starts out as a phony mentalist on the carnival circuit and ends up becoming a spiritualist leading seances for New York's upper crust.

William Lindsay Gresham attributed the origin of Nightmare Alley to conversations he had with a former carnival worker while they were both serving as volunteers with the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. (fr. Wikipedia)

Movie Cover with Tyrone Power

Purchase #3 Nita's Place by Harry Whittington

The cover of this book features a review blurb from The New York Times, a rariety for this type of book. This is a fairly rare book that actually commands some decent money in the secondary market. 

According to the web site Florida Authors: "Harry Benjamin Whittington (1915-1989) was a native Floridian and a prolific writer. Besides writing over 150 novels, he also wrote screenplays, television scripts, and short stories. A collection of Whittington's manuscripts is at Florida State University, Tallahassee."

Update:
Having read Nita's Place I now know that this is not a mystery novel, but a pot boiler with a fair amount of sex (tame 1960 sex that is). Most of the action takes place around the swimming pool of the Cape View Hotel, situated near Cape Canaveral Florida. Rocket launches and the beginning of the space program provide a unique back drop for the various goings on. Gotta say it held my attention and kept me reading.

Nita's Place - Harry Whittington

Ursula Curtiss - Mystery Writer - Biography

Deadly Climate - Ursula Curtiss

The House on Plymouth Street - Urusla Curtiss

I’m a huge fan of vintage mystery books! So a few months ago, a friend who had just returned from shopping at a local flea market loaned me a book he had purchased entitled  The Deadly Climate. The book had a wonderful dust jacket with a graphic style reminiscent of covers on pulp fiction magazines. It proved to be a fine introduction to the work of Ursula Curtiss. Her type of crime writing falls in the category called domestic malice. Some loosely define this genre as mysteries that contain no explicit sex, or violence.

In The Deadly Climate the main character Caroline Emmett takes a trip to a small New England town to escape from a romantic disappointment and to recuperate from a bout of pneumonia. Here she is a witness to murder, while taking a walk on a lonely country road at dusk. All the action takes place in the course of a single night; Caroline pursued by the murder, seeks refuge in the first house she finds. Her character is smart and resourceful, not a victim. She manages to survive several attempts on her life and get through the long night. The book has plenty of suspense and great 1950’s small town atmosphere.

I liked it enough to seek out other mysteries by Ursula Curtiss and ordered a copy of The House on Plymouth Street. The title story grabbed my attention right away with well-drawn characters and creepy atmosphere. This book is a collection of short stories with a wonderful introduction written by the authors' sister, mystery writer Mary McMullen.

In the introduction her sister Mary writes about their childhood in Westport, CT and presents an affectionate and humorous portrait of Ursula’s life as writer, mother of 5, and wife. She and Ursula came from a long line of writers; their mother Helen Reilly wrote over 40 mysteries and 3 of her uncles were staff writers employed by The New York Times.

Ursula Curtiss did not start writing books until after her marriage, but less than a year later her 1st book ''Voice out of Darkness'' won the Red Badge Award for the best new mystery of 1948.

In her lifetime she had 29 books published and two of her novels become the basis for American motion pictures (What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? and I Saw What You Did). Sadly, Ursula Curtiss passed away at the age of 61 in 1984. Still, to quote her sister "no one who has written down valuable and enjoyable words ever really say good-bye, to anyone".

1934 Beggars in Ermine - Movie Review

Finally got to see 1934's Beggars in Ermine staring Lionel Atwell and a very young Betty Furness (just 18 at the time). The plot of the movie concerns a steel mill owner and his business rival. Atwill's rival causes an "accident" that cripples him and then he steals his wife and business. Reduced to becoming a beggar who sells phamlets that contain his business ideas, he comes to see the worth and power of others like him. Atwill meets a blind man who befriends him and encounters characters like Milligan the Miner who survives by selling soap, the sign on his sales tray reads "If I had hands I'd use this soap". In time his character decides to found a national fraternal organization to empower the disabled. The only requirement for membership is that you have to have a real disability.

I won't tell the rest of the plot but the script contains some wonderful old fashioned ideas; ideas like fair treatment of workers by big business, business knowledge gained from starting at the bottom and working your way to the top, and the film had characters who showed what can be achieved by working together for a common cause. Beggars in Ermine has a running time of 72 minutes and contains good performances by all concerned. Of note is Henry B. Walthall, whose career began in the silent era, he was especially good as Marchant the Blind Man. We watched this movie via Roku on the Movie Vault channel.