Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly (1948) is an odd, accomplished noir, almost as effective as Bardin’s earlier The Deadly Percheron (1946), but this time B Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly (1948) is an odd, accomplished noir, almost as effective as Bardin’s earlier The Deadly Percheron (1946), but this time Bardin draws his inspiration not from the detective thriller but instead from the brooding “women’s pictures” of the post WW II period.
It begins its journey in the land of The Snake Pit, where our heroine, the gifted harpsichordist Ellen, waits for her husband Basil the conductor to bring her home from the mental hospital, but it soon takes a detour to the neighborhood of Gaslight as Ellen begins a feverish search for her harpsichord key, convinced Basil is hiding it from her. But soon Ellen encounters her old lover, the professional folksinger Jimmy Shad (his signature song is “The Blue Tail Fly”) and Bardin’s novel takes a darker, crazier turn into a funhouse featuring hallucinatory variations on a few feverish Joan Crawford and Bette Davis themes.
The book is not without flaws. For example, like many of the movies and books of the period, its psychologizing seems naive, its Freudianism outmoded. But in spite of all the twists and turns, all the craziness and flaws, the book is held together by two things: Bardin’s honest, deeply sympathetic portrayal of mental illness and his vivid writing about music as a craft and an inspiration.
One of the great sorrows of John Franklin Bardin’s life was that his mother, who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was confined to a mental hospital and remained there until her death. He never forgot her, though, or her continual obsession with “going home,” which he used as an inspiration for both Percheron and Blue Tail Fly. His obvious sympathy with the character of Ellen makes this book more than a mere thriller.
The most important factor that unifies Devil Take the Blue Tail Fly, however, are the continual passages about the challenges and joys of music, for it is music that gives Ellen’s life its shape and meaning:
This was now, here and undeniable, an eternal instant. Irrevocable, irrefutable, it had a strength and a reality that defied oblivion. With it she was unique, just as it was unique; without it she ceased to exist, just as it was nothing. Rthis power to evoke music depended upon her reading of black marks on a ruled page, upon the dexterity of her fingers and her body’s sense of rhythm, upon her knowledge of the way it was, the quality of its sound. But she depended upon it too, for without it she did not know herself. Outside its orbit she was a bundle of sensations, a walking fear, an appetite, a lawless creature. But when this sound esited, she undertood, her life had meaning, order, morality. This was her end, she was its means.
Because I hate spoilers, but also have a visceral loathing for spoiler alerts, I can’t say much about this wonderful book without giving too much of i Because I hate spoilers, but also have a visceral loathing for spoiler alerts, I can’t say much about this wonderful book without giving too much of it away. But if I’m careful, I think I can say something.
It tells us the story of Hugh Densmore, a young doctor with an internship at U.C.L.A., who—in the summer of 1962—is driving through the New Mexico desert on his way to a niece’s wedding in Phoenix. Against his better judgment, he picks up a young girl hitchhiking in an isolated spot, and this one act, innocent though imprudent, eventually leads him to be suspected of murder.
At first, it is hard to like Hugh, for, although he is an upright, well-behaved young man, he seems overly scrupulous, too concerned with appearances and affronts to his dignity to be a sympathetic character. But then, about a quarter of the way through the novel, we learn one simple fact about Hugh which Dorothy Hughes has been withholding from her reader, and this fact makes us look at Hugh’s character and his dilemma from a different angle.
Viewed in one way, Hughes’ authorial reticence is a detective writer’s stunt, similar to Christie’s celebrated omission in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but it is really much richer than that. It is an opportunity for the reader to reevaluate his assumptions and prejudices, and to see the facts in the case of Hugh Densmore—indeed American society itself—from an entirely new perspective.
Dorothy B. Hughes is well known, at least among mystery buffs, as the author of the novel In a Lonely Place, which was adapted into a memorable—but very different—movie. But this book is just as good—perhaps better—and should be remembered as well....more
If you prefer noir with a nouvelle vague air—less detached than Godard, less sentimental than Truffaut...something by Chabrol perhaps—then the crime n If you prefer noir with a nouvelle vague air—less detached than Godard, less sentimental than Truffaut...something by Chabrol perhaps—then the crime novels of Jean-Patrick Manchette may be just what you’ve been looking for.
This novel, in which Julie, an au pair just released from a mental hospital, and Peter her charge, the spoiled six-year-old nephew of a billionaire, are pursued by contract killer Thompson and his crew throughout the French countryside, is a fine example of what the author can do. Manchette, who honed his skills writing teleplays for French TV, has a great gift for spare dialogue which suggests more than it tells, and for economical descriptions which are easily visualized. This book could be a fast read, if you want it to be, but there is plenty here to savor and reflect upon too, if you are a contemplative sort of reader.
Manchette was a left-winger, radicalized by the war in Algeria, who holds up to criticism—but never in a preachy way—the materialistic values of a society poisoned by money. He does this through his sharp cynical dialogue (learned from Dashiell Hammett) and his talent for describing rooms and the objects in them (learned from the Nouveau Roman novelists like Robbe-Grillet).
But if you’re just in the market for a good crime novel, don’t let the political and literary influences worry you. I believe they make his books richer and deeper, but they never interfere with the clarity of his vision, the drive of his narrative, nor the diamond-hard edge of his prose....more
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