Charles Williams' The Sailcloth Shroud

The Sailcloth Shroud is a 1959 crime novel by Charles Williams.

Charles Williams (1909-1975) was an American crime writer whose work could be described as hardboiled or noir or suspense fiction, in varying degrees in different books.

The Sailcloth Shroud is a nautical thriller and I am personally very fond of nautical thrillers.

Stuart Rogers (the narrator of the tale) has just arrived back in the U.S. on the Topaz, a ketch he bought cheap in Panama on the assumption that he could sell it at a substantial profit in the States. It was not the happiest of cruises. He had taken on two men, both experienced seamen, as crew. One of them, Baxter, died of a heart attack on the voyage and as a result of unfavourable winds there was no way of getting the body back to an American port in time. Baxter had to be buried at sea.

Then the other crewman, Keefer, turns up dead. Murdered. Brutally beaten to death. There’s some mystery about the money Keefer was carrying. He was supposed to be broke but several thousand dollars were found on the body. For some reason the F.B.I. is interested and curiously enough they’re more interested in Baxter’s fate.

There’s no evidence against Rogers but the Feds think that he knows more than he’s saying. Some other people, very unpleasant people (in fact they’re the guys who killed Keefer), also think Rogers knows something. Which is distressing because Rogers really has told the complete truth and he really doesn’t know anything else.

His problem is that although his story is true, although Baxter really did die of a heart attack, Rogers can’t prove it. Baxter’s body is at the bottom of the Caribbean. Rogers really is telling the truth when he says that there was no alternative to a burial at sea, but he can’t actually prove that either.

Rogers figures that it might be a good idea to do a bit of investigating himself. If he can turn up anything that will clear up the mystery he’ll be able to get the Feds off his back, and, those goons as well.

He knows there are two women involved. Both women were connected in some way with Baxter. And there’s clearly a mystery attached to Baxter.

Stuart Rogers is a regular guy who is not equipped to deal with murderous hoodlums. He briefly considers buying a gun but dismisses the idea. He’s an amateur. These heavies are pros. A gun would just get him into more trouble. Rogers is not a tough guy but he’s not totally soft either. He might not be an experienced brawler but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re scared enough and desperate enough and you’re fighting for your life.

He’s also very much an amateur investigator but he does stumble across a couple of leads.

This is a tale of a pretty ordinary guy suddenly caught up in a nightmare that he doesn’t really understand.

It’s somewhat hardboiled but it's not really noir fiction even if it does have its darker moments. It doesn’t contain the key ingredients that distinguish noir fiction.

It is however a gripping and extremely well-written thriller with plenty of atmosphere and the nautical aspects of the tale add plenty of interest. Top-notch stuff. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this with another Charles Williams thriller, All the Way, in a double-header paperback edition with is pretty much a must-buy.

Paul Tabori's Demons of Sandorra

Demons of Sandorra is a 1970 science fiction novel by Paul Tabori.

Paul Tabori (1908- 1974) was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer who also occasionally used the pseudonym Peter Stafford.

There’s quite a bit of sexual content in Demons of Sandorra but this is definitely not a sci-fi sleaze novel. It’s a dystopian novel with some post-apocalyptic overtones. The setting is one of those utopias that is really a dystopia (of course all utopias inevitably become dystopias) but no-one will admit that their society is dystopian.

The setting is Sandorra, a tiny independent country only it isn’t really independent because there’s a single global government, but nobody admits that. Everybody pretends that independent nations still exist.

This is the story of an attractive young woman named Yolanda Vernon who seems to have a bright future in front of her. She has however started to display disturbing and distressing signs of sanity. Sanity is of course a disorder that usually responds well to therapy. The important thing is to spot the symptoms early and seek treatment immediately.

This is a world that, in the wake of a nuclear war, proceeded to build a perfect new society. The basis of this society would be Synthetism, a psychological theory which rejects reason entirely. Instinct rather than reason should be the guiding principle of both individual and group behaviour. This is also a society that has rejected normality. In this society sanity and normality are regarded as serious mental illnesses.

Marriage and monogamy are also regarded as dangerous deviations. Heterosexuality is tolerated although exclusive heterosexuality is considered dangerously eccentric.

The Synthetists have created a society in which all sexual pleasures can be indulged. Even sexual predation is permitted although you do have to buy a licence. The Synthetist have found ways in which all citizens can open the Gates, the Gates being the pathway to fulfilment. This includes the ultimate Gate.

The end result is a soft totalitarian society in which non-conformism has become compulsory, so non-conformism is now conformism. Sanity is insanity and insanity is sanity. Normality is abnormal and abnormality is normal.

This is a world of therapy, but the therapy is intended to keep people insane.

Privacy has been abolished. It’s considered undemocratic.

Yolanda has a good job at the Lethe Institute. It’s very satisfying being able to help people. Her job is to open the ultimate Gate to those who have passed the appropriate tests and have waited patiently for their turn. The ultimate Gate is of course Death.

This is clearly satire. It’s meant to be amusing and it is. But there’s a serious purpose as well. It does raise all kinds of questions about conformity and authoritarianism and social engineering, and sexual indulgence versus sexual repression. And what it means to be sane or insane, and the conflict between the overwhelming human desires for both freedom and conformity. Also the ticklish problem that there is a need for order but order always leads to repression.

And it develops these ideas in surprisingly complex and nuanced ways. It doesn’t present the various opposing concepts in a simplistic black-and-white manner. Readers are left to make up their own minds. Life is messy and every attempt to reduce the messiness of life just creates new problems. And revolutions don’t always turn out they way you’d hoped, and you can’t predict where they’ll lead.

As the story progresses it becomes crazier, but in interesting ways.

This future society does of course have some unsettling resemblances to the world of today.

Demons of Sandorra is wild stuff but it’s inspired wildness and I was sufficiently impressed to order several more of Tabori’s books. Highly recommended.

The author’s witchcraft potboiler, The Wild White Witch (written as Peter Stafford), has a similar deceptive feel - it seems trashy on the surface but has more substance to it than you’re expecting. I recommend it as well.

Peter O’Donnell’s Pieces of Modesty

Pieces of Modesty, published in 1972, was Peter O’Donnell’s first Modesty Blaise short story collection. By this time he had already written five extremely popular Modesty Blaise novels.

There are six short stories in this collection and they’re rather varied in tone and approach.

The first story, A Better Day To Die, begins on a bus on a remote road somewhere in Latin America. For the whole trip Modesty has been subjected to a lecture by a clergyman on the evils of violence, and on her own wickedness in resorting so often to violence. The reverend gentleman is escorting a party of schoolgirls.

A shot rings out, the bus driver is dead, and Modesty and her fellow passengers are now prisoners of a rag-tag but trigger-happy party of guerrillas, although really they’re not much more than glorified bandits. Modesty would be a lot happier if the clergyman had not seized her little .25 automatic and tossed it into the bushes. The clergyman assures her that it is always wrong to meet violence with violence.

This story is interesting in showing a very ruthless side to both Modesty and Willie Garvin. They don’t enjoy killing (Modesty does end up respecting the clergyman’s courage in sticking to his non-violent principles). But when it’s clear to them that lethal force is justified they become merciless and efficient killing machines.

Modesty also displays some slightly shocking touches of cynicism. Or perhaps not cynicism - perhaps merely an acceptance of brutal realities. An excellent story.

The Giggle-wrecker is outlandish and even whimsical. It starts in a straightforward manner. A Japanese scientist who defected to the Soviets a decade earlier now wants to defect back to the West. He’s now in hiding in East Berlin. Getting him out is quite possible but would involve a major operation which would put the British espionage network in East Germany at risk. Tarrant, the British spymaster for whom Modesty often does jobs, doesn’t want to take that risk.

The alternative to a major operation would be to get a couple of unconventional talented freelancers to do the job. Freelancers like Modesty and Willie. They encounter unexpected and frustrating problems until Willie has a brainwave. His idea is pure madness but it might work. A light but amusing tale.

I Had a Date with Lady Janet is narrated by Willie Garvin. He has a new girlfriend, a charming girl with one leg. Then a nightmare from the past catches up with him - Rodelle, a very unpleasant man he thought he’d killed, isn’t dead after all. Rodelle wants revenge but he intends to strike at Willie through Modesty whom he has kidnapped.

There’s lot of mayhem in a crumbling old baronial house in Scotland. And it really is literally crumbling. A story very much about the unusual but intense Modesty-Willie friendship and quite exciting as well.

A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck is mostly a story of Willie and Modesty trying to find a way to help their friends John Collier and Dinah without appearing to help them (there’s nothing worse than being put in the position of seeming to be asking for help). There have been a series of spectacular robberies, which may turn out to be the perfect opportunity.

It also offers a reminder that Willie and Modesty are not cops or government agents. Their attitude towards the law is decidedly flexible. A fairly enjoyable story.

In Salamander Four Modesty gets mixed up in industrial espionage after a wounded man shows up on the doorstep of the remote Finnish cabin she is sharing with a renowned sculptor named Hemmer. He’s doing a sculpture of her. She’s giving him lots of encouragement in the bedroom and out of it.

The wounded man, Waldo, is an old rival from her criminal past. A rival but a friendly rival. Waldo’s troubles are none of her business but she doesn’t take kindly to attempt to kill people she knows socially. A pretty decent story.

The Soo Girl Charity is a story in which Modesty’s bottom plays as crucial role. It goes without saying that Modesty has a very nice bottom. She has no great objections to having it admired. Even a gentle friendly pinch is something she can take her in her stride. But this was different. What business Charles Leybourn did to Modesty’s bottom was neither gentle nor friendly.

Modesty and Willie decide that Leybourn needs to be taught a lesson in manners. Their plan involves stealing. They haven’t stolen anything for such a long time so this sounds like fun.

It turns out that there is more than bottom-pinching going on.

This is the best story in the collection. There are several twists, including a very nice one at the end.

Pieces of Modesty is an interestingly varied collection and is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first five novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death, The Impossible Virgin, And I, Lucifer.

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Magician

The villain of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel The Magician was inspired by Aleister Crowley although the story itself is pure fiction.

Maugham had met Crowley and while he disapproved of him and considered him to be a charlatan he was strangely fascinated by the notorious occultist. And while many of the extraordinary tales Crowley told about himself were untrue Maugham had to admit that they were not all untrue. Crowley was a remarkable man. It was obvious to Maugham that he was a perfect subject for a novel.

Maugham’s novel begins with a brilliant young surgeon who is engaged to be married to the beautiful Margaret, who had been his ward. In Paris they encounter the notorious occultist and magician Oliver Haddo. Haddo is wildly eccentric and slightly sinister but he is charismatic and fascinating.

Haddo seems to be intent on seducing Margaret. Is he simply making use of standard techniques of hypnotism (aided by his charismatic personality) or does he possess actual occult powers?

And is he intent on mere seduction? There is a possibility that he has something much stranger and much more shocking in mind.

Maugham did not believe that Crowley possessed any real magical powers but had to admit that he certainly had the ability to convince people that he did. Oliver Haddo might well have obtained such powers.

The story of Maugham’s novel of course has no connection whatsoever to any events in the life of Aleister Crowley. Crowley simply served as a jumping-off point. And of course in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were many occult practitioners so Haddo is perhaps more representative of a breed than of an individual.

Either way Oliver Haddo is a wonderful and memorable larger-than-life character. He entirely dominates the story.

This was a period of intense interest in the occult so in commercial terms the idea was a winner. It was very much in tune with the cultural obsessions of the day. The reading public had an inexhaustible appetite for thrillers with an occult flavouring.

The novel is an unashamed potboiler (and I have no problems with that). It can be regarded as an occult thriller, a melodrama, a romance and even as gothic horror. It’s not what you expect from Maugham, excepting that being a Maugham novel it’s extremely well-written. He has some fine suspense, some genuine chills and thrills and a perverse love story. And the love story is quite powerful.

This is a very early example of the occult thriller genre which would reach its full flowering in the works of Dennis Wheatley.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Magician. Highly recommended.

Rex Ingram’s The Magician (1926) is a superb movie adaptation of the novel.

Crowley was himself a talented writer. His Simon Iff Stories are splendid occult detective stories, Crowley’s most famous novel, Moonchild, does touch on some of the occult practices described in Maugham’s novel. So it is possible to get both sides of the story.

Carter Brown's The Bump and Grind Murders

The Bump and Grind Murders is a 1964 Carter Brown crime thriller.

The phenomenally popular and prolific English-born Australian pulp writer Carter Brown created a dozen or so series characters, one of the lesser-known being female private eye Mavis Seidlitz who featured in a dozen books between 1955 and 1974.

Brown could be described as a Hardboiled Lite writer with a slightly tongue-in-cheek approach. On the basis of The Bump and Grind Murders I’d say that the Mavis Seidlitz novels were among his most lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek. And also among the sleaziest.

While all fictional lady PIs owe a debt to Honey West I’d have to say that Mavis Seidlitz bears very very little resemblance to Honey West. Honey is tough, resourceful, brave and competent and she’s a smart cookie. Mavis isn’t very tough, she’s accident-prone, she’s ditzy and she’s staggeringly incompetent. The Honey West novels combine solid PI action with touches of humour and a huge dash of sexiness. The Bump and Grind Murders has a reasonably solid plot but it’s played mostly for laughs.

Mavis makes every mistake a PI could make and invents some brand new mistakes that nobody else had ever thought of.

The only thing Mavis and Honey West have in common is an extraordinary tendency to end up without any clothes on.

Mavis is a partner in a detective agency with Johnny Rio. The agency is hired by a nerdy guy named Hatchik to protect his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Irma, is a stripper at the Club Berlin. Hatchik has tried to persuade Irma to give up her stripping job but Irma takes her art very seriously. The Club Berlin’s gimmick is that everything is German-themed and the strippers use German-sounding stage names. Irma is Irma Der Bosen, which apparently means Irma the Bosom. Once Mavis gets a look at Irma’s superstructure she decides that the name is extraordinarily appropriate.

Mavis will of course go undercover at the club, as a stripper. Her act involves having her clothes fall off accidentally. She has a partner, a guy called Casey, who helps to ensure that her clothes fall off.

There is tension between the girls at the club. The manager is slightly sinister and there’s a really sinister guy with a scar hanging around. Then of course there’s a murder, but Irma is not the victim.

The plot gets a bit crazy and that’s partly due to Mavis’s amazing ability to misunderstand everything that is going on. She discovers that the club is being used as a front by a spy ring and that there’s an undercover CIA agent working there.

The strip club setting works well, adding some seedy glamour.

Brown perhaps makes Mavis (who is the first-person narrator) just a bit too ditzy but this does the advantage that we’re dealing with a kind of unreliable narrator -if it’s possible to misunderstand something and leap to the wrong conclusions Mavis will do just that. That makes the plot a bit more fun. And Mavis can be amusing at times.

Towards the end Brown throws in a bunch of plot twists and the fact that the narrator doesn’t have a clue what’s going on around her does increase the surprise factor a little.

Classical strip-tease was of course all about the tease and the sleaze factor in this book is a bit like that - it isn’t anywhere near as sleazy as we expect to to be, even when Mavis gets naked.

Carter Brown had zero literary pretensions. His books were pure entertainment, a bit trashy, but always fun. The Bump and Grind Murders is recommended.

J. Hunter Holly’s The Running Man

J. Hunter Holly’s The Running Man is a 1963 science fiction novel published as a paperback original by Monarch Books. It falls at least loosely into the category of science fiction paranoia fiction.

College professor Jeff Munro becomes involved, quite by accident, with a group known as Heralds for Peace (HFP). They’re a mysterious group regarded with suspicion by many. They appear to be a cult but whether they’re a religious or a political cult is uncertain. Jeff Munro violently disapproves of them.

Munro encounters an angry mob about to kill a woman. She is a member of HFP and the mob is convinced that HFP is some kind of sinister threat to society.

Then he encounters a strange very frightened man (Munro thinks of him as the Running Man) who is convinced that the HFP are out to kill him. And It appears that they really are out to kill him.

Munro is puzzled. He has seen evidence of irrational hatred directed at HFP but also evidence that they might indeed be a sinister organisation. He is intrigued enough to start poking about the cult’s vast headquarters compound hidden away deep in the woods. He sees a couple of things that lead him to wonder if this really is an ordinary cult or whether there might be strange and powerful forces at work, forces that might be unnatural or other-worldly in origin. He expects cult members to be fanatics, but these cultists are disturbingly zombie-like.

Infiltrating the HFP seems like a good idea at the time but Munro may have landed himself in the middle of something more dangerous than he can handle.

And also more perplexing. There may be bad guys behind the cult, or possibly several different groups involved behind the scenes. All of them may be planning to double-cross each other. There may be multiple levels of double-crosses. The nature of the bad guys is a mystery - there does seem to be something unnatural going on.

Munro needs to find somebody he can trust but he might be better off not trusting anybody.

In 1963 brainwashing was becoming a cultural obsession. Not just brainwashing of prisoners-of-war but more subtle forms of brainwashing employed by the advertising industry and governments - there were plenty of different kinds of brainwashing about which to be paranoid and this novel certainly taps into that cultural obsession.

Munro is an interesting hero. He’s a college professor so he’s not exactly open-minded. He led a campaign to deprive the HFP of the right to speak on campus. He has a bit of an authoritarian steak although at the time the author may have seen that as a good thing. It certainly makes Munro a valuable potential recruit for the HFP - this is a man who has a yearning for power.

There’s plenty of paranoia here. Poor Munro seems to be hopelessly out of his depth. He starts to understand some of what is going on, but not all of it, and that could lead him into making mistakes. And he’s just an ordinary college professor, not a secret agent.

There is some genuine science fiction content although it takes a while to emerge. The science fiction elements are moderately interesting.

It’s a fairly entertaining tale if you enjoy science fiction paranoia and you don’t set your expectations too high. Worth a look.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with William P. McGivern’s The Mad Robot in a two-novel paperback edition.

Joseph Kessel’s novel Belle de Jour

Joseph Kessel’s novel Belle de Jour was published in 1928 and was immediately controversial. It would be decades before anyone dared to publish an English translation.

Both Kessel and his novel are now entirely forgotten outside of France. Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film adaptation is however still regarded as one of the masterpieces of cinema.

The basic premise of both novel and movie is the same. Séverine is a happily married young woman who has never learnt to be totally comfortable about sex. She decides to take a part-time job, in a brothel. It’s a kind of therapy. She can however only work the afternoon shift, so she becomes known as Belle de Jour.

It’s obvious that Séverine has major sexual issues and that she takes no pleasure at all in love-making with her husband Pierre (an eminent young surgeon). Her first experience with a customer at the brothel is degrading and humiliating. That excites Séverine a great deal. She discovers that if she feels sufficiently degraded she can enjoy sex a good deal.

Then along comes Marcel. He’s one of her customers. He’s a hoodlum. His body is covered in scars from numerous fights. He’s dangerous with a suggestion of violence. This is the best sex Séverine has had so far!

Her husband is kind and gentle and sensitive and never pressures her into having sex. He’s so passive and understanding and sensitive that she can hardly bear to have him touch her. Marcel just takes her brutally when he wants her. That works for her.

Séverine is determined to keep her two lives separate. That might be possible as long as she and Marcel do not get emotionally involved. Perhaps they are already emotionally involved. Séverine isn’t sure she can tell the difference between lust and love and she isn’t at all sure which of those two things she wants.

The sadomasochistic elements that are prominent in the movie are more diffuse and more indirect in the novel. It’s clear that Séverine enjoys to some extent playing the submissive role but it’s the more generalised sense of shame and degradation that gets her blood pumping.

While the basic plotline sounds very similar to the 1967 movie there are in fact huge differences. Buñuel’s movie operates on at least two different levels of reality. It is clear that much of the action of the movie consists of Séverine’s sexual fantasies. It is impossible to be certain where reality and and her fantasies take over. Dream and reality seem to be bleeding into each other. It’s possible (but by no means certain) that almost everything in the movie only happens in Séverine’s fantasies. Buñuel has no intention of making things easy for us. He wants us to be uncertain.

This is not the case with the novel. The novel is a straightforward linear narrative with no ambiguity. Everything that appears to happen in the novel does happen.

It is always important to bear in mind that a novel and a movie adaptation of that novel do not necessarily have the same meaning. And the intentions behind the novel and the movie may be very very different. Buñuel did not feel the least bit constrained to make a movie that meant the same things that the novel meant. And there is no reason at all why he should have felt so constrained.

So if you’re thinking that the novel may make the movie’s meaning more clear then you’re hoping to be disappointed. It’s not going to be any help at all in that department.

Although Buñuel’s movie is the greater artistic achievement his movie and Kessel’s novel are both exceptionally interesting and both are very much worth seeking out. Kessel’s Belle de Jour is highly recommended.

My copy of the book is the Overlook Duckworth paperback edition of Geoffrey Wagner’s 1962 English translation.

I’ve also reviewed Buñuel’s movie, Belle de Jour (1967).