Short Story: The Case of the Wandering Redhead by Leigh Brackett

I’d never read Leigh Brackett until now, and I’m glad I finally did. I discovered her short story, The Case of the Wandering Redhead, in the February 1951 issue of New Detective Magazine and thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is the introduction to the story.

“Here is the most ruthless man you’ve ever met—a filler whom death could not soften nor bullets stop—yet whose relentless fists battered to their last futile gesture that softest thing a man ever finds—the heart of a woman in love. It is with a definite sense of accomplishment that we welcome Miss Brackett to these pages—which many of you will find unforgettable!”

The “ruthless man” is Marty James, a territorial gangster who lives by his guns and fists and serves as the story’s narrator. He is hopelessly in love with Sheila Burke, a stunning redhead he is determined to marry, even though she detests the very idea. Sheila rejects him outright—just as decisively as he would gun down an adversary. And she has every reason to want nothing to do with him.

“Can I get it through your head? I hate you, Marty. I hate everything you stand for. All I want out of life is decency and peace and maybe a little happiness. You can’t give me any of them.”

But Marty has no intention of leaving Sheila alone. In fact, he is trying to force her into marriage when his sidekick summons him away on urgent business, only to betray him to a rival gangster eager to seize his territory. Marty fights and shoots his way out of captivity before returning to Sheila, carrying a cracked rib and two bullet wounds in his thigh.
 
"Six flights, with thin snow beginning to fall, thinking of Sheila’s voice saying, There’s blood on you, Marty. You’re not in my world.

"I thought, All right. That’s the way it is, Sheila. That’s the way we’ll play it. I was colder than the snow, and numb."

The Case of the Wandering Redhead is a cracker of a story. Its two central characters, Marty and Sheila, are vividly drawn. Marty may be a ruthless gangster, but he is also, in his own words, "human enough to go crazy over a girl."

"I looked at her. She was beautiful. She was like something the wind might cut out of a snowbank, with the red fire of her hair on top. Her eyes met mine, and there was an awful coldness in them, like I’d killed the spark inside her."

The story is a fine example of hard-boiled crime fiction from the Golden Age, though I still have plenty to explore and read in the genre.

Book Review: Memory Man by David Baldacci

Amos Decker is the Memory Man, the protagonist of David Baldacci's eponymous series, which opens with Memory Man.

The bearded and massively built protagonist—a former homicide detective turned private investigator turned police consultant—has a rare gift: he remembers everything and forgets nothing. Events, experiences, people, faces, names, objects, shapes, numbers, dates and places are permanently imprinted on his mind, the result of a collision on the football field when he was twenty-two years old.

The accident ruins Decker's professional football career but leaves him with a super autobiographical memory, the ability to recall virtually everything that has happened in his life.

If you were a student preparing for a Maths or History test, you would probably give anything to have Decker's gift.

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In Memory Man, Decker puts his extraordinary perceptive faculties and deductive reasoning to good use by joining the Burlington Police Department, where he and his partner and friend, Detective Mary Lancaster, form a formidable team of investigators.

One evening, Decker returns home from work to find his wife, young daughter and brother-in-law murdered, his family brutally violated in the process. The tragedy sends his life into a downward spiral. He leaves home, gives up his job and drifts through life on the streets, largely indifferent to what becomes of him. Eventually, he manages to rebuild some semblance of a life as a reclusive private investigator, taking on minor cases, simply to survive. Meanwhile, the murders remain unsolved.

More than a year later, Decker is jolted back to reality by two extraordinary events: the appearance of a mysterious man named Sebastian Leopold, who confesses to the unsolved murders despite having a seemingly watertight alibi, and a carefully planned mass shooting at the local high school. His former boss, Captain Miller, persuades him to assist in the investigation into the shooting. Decker agrees, hoping it may finally help him uncover the truth about his family's deaths.

Decker joins his former partner, Lancaster, in the school library—the investigation's makeshift war room—with the FBI also on the case. But he largely works alone, much to the frustration of Lancaster and Special Agent Sam Bogart, bringing them in only after he has pursued a lead and uncovered something worth sharing.

What he uncovers over the next few days leaves him stunned: the person—or persons—responsible for murdering his family also orchestrated the killings of the students and staff at the school. Yet, even Decker's remarkable mental abilities fail to produce any face or name from his past that might explain the motive behind the crimes.

Amos Decker is one of the most unusual characters I have encountered in crime fiction. The tragedy has left him emotionally scarred and detached, but not devoid of empathy. His extraordinary mind makes him an effective investigator. Decker unravels most of the clues and assembles the missing pieces. Others on the case are largely content to follow his lead.

Memory Man is a well-crafted thriller with an unusual storyline and an intriguing hero. The novel's strength lies in its singular focus on Amos Decker, the Goliath-like protagonist who dominates the narrative from start to end, both as a grieving family man and a razor-sharp homicide detective. 

The Rome Express by Arthur Griffiths, 1907

I offer this review for Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase as well as my self-imposed challenge to read 1850-1950 vintage books in five categories this year. This is the first of five books in mystery-detective which supersedes spy-espionage for now.

The Rome Express, the direttissimo, or most direct, was approaching Paris one morning in March, when it became known to the occupants of the sleeping-car that there was something amiss, very much amiss, in the car.

The Rome Express by English author Arthur Griffiths has some of the ingredients of Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. A man is brutally murdered on an express train, half-a-dozen people of different nationalities are suspects, and the detective investigating the crime seems like Hercule Poirot’s twin. Except for one thing: Griffiths wrote his novel 27 years before Christie wrote hers. Did Christie borrow the idea from Griffiths? We'll never know.

Unlike Poirot who investigates Ratchett’s murder on the Orient Express, M. Floçon, the Chef de la Surêté, or Chief of the Detective Service of the French police, investigates the mysterious death of Francis A. Quadling, a disreputable banker on the run from Rome, after the express train reaches Lyons station in Paris.

Floçon wastes no time in questioning the seven suspects—the beautiful Contessa Sabine di Castagneto, an Englishwoman by birth, and her attractive maid Hortense Petitpré, a Frenchwoman; the upright and indignant General Sir Charles Collingham, an officer in the British army, and his brother Reverend Silas Collingham, a rector in Norfolk county; Natale Ripaldi, a police detective from Rome; and two unknown Frenchmen.

The other passengers in the adjoining cars are allowed to go on the ground that they’d no access to the one in which the murder took place.

© www.christies.com

In his interrogations Floçon gets a lot of help from M. Beaumont le Hardi, the instructing judge who does as much of the questioning, and a commissary of police, who is at best a mute spectator. Two first inspectors, Galipaud and Block, bungle their way through the field work.

Floçon somewhat resembles Poirot in attire and appearance but not in attitude. I liked Arthur Griffiths’ description of M. Floçon. It says:

“He lived just round the corner in the Rue des Arcs, and had not far to go to the Prefecture. But even now, soon after daylight, he was correctly dressed, as became a responsible ministerial officer. He wore a tight frock coat and an immaculate white tie; under his arm he carried the regulation portfolio, or lawyer's bag, stuffed full of reports, dispositions, and documents dealing with cases in hand. He was altogether a very precise and natty little personage, quiet and unpretending in demeanour, with a mild, thoughtful face in which two small ferrety eyes blinked and twinkled behind gold-rimmed glasses. But when things went wrong, when he had to deal with fools, or when scent was keen, or the enemy near, he would become as fierce and eager as any terrier.”

A lithograph in colours, 1900,
by R. De Ochoa

The French detective is overzealous in his frantic effort to nail the murderer, to the extent that he accuses nearly all the seven people of committing the crime. A mere word or two from someone is enough for the Chief of the Detective Service to zoom in on a suspect, as he does in the case of the countess, her maid, the general, and the Roman officer, often with hilarious results. His accusations swing from one suspect to another like a pendulum.

In the end General Collingham, who is smitten by Contessa Castagneto, saves the day, and much embarrassment, for Floçon, as he perceives a trail of blackmail involving the Italian detective Ripaldi and correctly reasons that the murdered man is not Quadling, the banker.

Final word
The British like poking fun at the French and Arthur Griffith does in ample measure in his delightful novel which is laced with French and Italian exclamations. He has portrayed the French police as a bunch of nitwits who can’t do their job right. For instance, when the general learns that the countess has been arrested, he blurts out, “I don't believe it! Not from these chaps, a pack of idiots, always on the wrong tack! I don't believe a word, not if they swear.”

The Rome Express lacks the suspense and seriousness of Murder on the Orient Express but makes up with a dose of unintended humour through the antics of Floçon and his investigation. Except for the French detective, the other characters are quite ordinary. In short, a nice and light read.

The book is not to be confused with the 1932 film Rome Express by Walter Forde and starring Esther Ralston and Conrad Veidt. The story, by Clifford Grey, an English songwriter, actor, and Olympic medalist, takes place on the train and revolves around a valuable painting that is stolen.

About the author
Arthur Griffiths (1838-1908) was an inspector of prisons and author who has published over 50 books. He is believed to have descended from a long line of military men and served as a Second Lieutenant during the Crimean War in mid-19th century. His books include both fiction and non-fiction, notably The Passenger from Calais, Mysteries of Police and Crime: A General Survey of Wrongdoing and Its Pursuit, The Mediterranean: It’s Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins, The Thin Red Line, Life of Napoleon, Victorian Murders: Mysteries of Police and Crime, In Old French Prisons, and In Spanish Prisons: The Inquisition at Home and Abroad, Prisons Past and Present, among many others.