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).

The Spy and the Pirate Queen

The Spy and the Pirate Queen was published in 1967. American former newspaper reporter Hal D. Steward wrote two sexy spy thrillers in 1967, both featuring CIA agent Nails Fenian.

Both were published as paperback originals by a small obscure outfit specialising mostly in sleaze fiction. And The Spy and the Pirate Queen straddles both the spy fiction and sleaze fiction genres.

These two books were I believe Steward’s only forays into the world of spy fiction.

Nailan Fenian, nicknamed Nails, is a philosophy professor, which is a useful enough cover for a spy.

Nails is in Singapore, on the trail of a Chinese lady pirate. Yes, piracy was in fact common in the South China Sea in the 1950s and 60s. Madame Wong is a very successful and ruthless pirate who operates on a large scale. Nails’ job is to terminate her activities which means killing her if necessary.

Within hours of his arrival in Singapore Nails knows that his cover has been blown. Several attempts have been made on his life. An informer has been murdered. More murders will follow. Madame Wong does not take kindly to people who pry into her affairs.

Nails gets involved with a beautiful half-Chinese girl, Lung Mai, who works as a freelance spy. She may be the femme fatale here but that is by no means certain. Nails hopes she’s innocent. She’s amazingly good in bed. He would hate to have to kill a woman with such impressive bedroom skills.

Madame Wong has never been photographed and has kept her true identity a secret. One day she intends to retire, as a respectable citizen. If there is a chance that a person might, deliberately or inadvertently, reveal her true identity her policy is to have that person quietly disposed of. It seems that both Nails and his buddy Underwood at the US Embassy are now in the category of people to be eliminated.

The plot is fairly straightforward, perhaps too straightforward for a spy novel, with the main interest being provided by the possibility that Lung Mai will try to double-cross Nails or double-cross Madame Wong. She might even try to double-cross both of them.

When you read a lot of paperback originals it’s noticeable that most are quite competently written even when they’re trashy. It’s therefore a slight surprise to come across one that is rather poorly structured and that features rather clunky prose. That unfortunately is the case here. Steward also has a bit of a tin ear for dialogue.

There are some fairly graphic sex scenes although they come across as workmanlike rather than passionate.

Nails Fenian is just a little too perfect a hero. A hero needs some flaws, or at least some quirks, to make him interesting. Fenian is just a by-the-numbers action hero.

Madame Wong is at least a reasonably interesting villainess and lady pirates are of course inherently cool, and the piracy in the mid-20th century concept is cool as well. Lung Mai is also a reasonably effective seductive ambiguous dangerous woman.

The Spy and the Pirate Queen is not a great spy thriller. If you’re a fan of sexy spy thrillers it’s maybe worth a look but there are much better books in this genre.

Nicholas Freeling’s Love in Amsterdam

The first of Nicholas Freeling’s Van der Valk mysteries, Love in Amsterdam (AKA Death in Amsterdam), was published in 1962. Van der Valk is a Dutch police detective and these mysteries are set in Amsterdam.

It begins with a man named Martin in police custody. A woman named Elsa has been murdered. Martin knew Elsa very well over a long period of time and had obviously been her lover. He was in the vicinity of the murder scene at the time of the killing.

Inspector Van der Valk does not have enough evidence to charge him and is in fact inclined to believe that Martin was not the killer. He does however intend to keep Martin in custody for questioning. He is sure that Martin is lying about something important and he is convinced that that something is the key to solving the case.

Van der Valk makes it clear from the start that he has no interest in nonsense such as taking casts of footprints or looking for cigar ash or lipstick traces on cigarette butts or fingerprints. Van der Valk’s methods are psychological.

He is convinced that the secret to identifying the murderer is to find out why Elsa was killed. It’s the motive that interests Van der Valk. In fact the motive is the sole focus of his investigation. Van der Valk is also not interested in giving Martin the third degree or intimidating him. He believes that if he can get Martin to talk about Elsa and think clearly about the events of the fatal night and the events that led up to it then eventually Martin will want to tell him the truth. Van der Valk does not believe that he will get anything useful out of Martin unless Martin gives the information voluntarily. Van der Valk is prepared to manipulate Martin but he does so openly - he tells Martin exactly what he is doing.

It’s made clear that Van der Valk is not hoping for a confession. He genuinely does not believe Martin is a murderer. Martin is not a murderer but he is the key to catching a murderer.

Van der Valk is a man with a somewhat earthy sense of humour and he is perhaps a bit of a rough diamond but he’s an affable sort of chap and he and Martin get along quite well. Martin is more of a semi-willing collaborator in the investigation than a suspect. The fact that Martin is now happily married to Sophia may be part of the reason he is holding things back but it’s also likely that there are things Martin does not want to admit to himself.

Slowly the complicated and sordid truth about the relationship between Martin and Elsa is brought to life. They had a passionate, obsessive but unhealthy relationship. Elsa was promiscuous and she was manipulative and selfish. Elsa used men. Sex plays a major role in the story since it played a major role in Elsa’s life but for Elsa sex was always a weapon. There’s some kinkiness in this tale but it rings true given what we find out about the people involved.

It has to be said that if you’re hoping for anything resembling a traditional fair-play puzzle-plot mystery you’ll be very disappointed (and the plot most definitely does not play fair). The mystery plot is pretty feeble. But clearly Freeling had no intention of writing a mystery of that type. He doesn’t care about the plot at all. This is a psychological crime novel.

Generally speaking I dislike psychological crime novel. Too many of them try to put the reader inside the mind of a serial killer or a psycho killer of some kind and I have no desire to be put inside the mind of such a person. But Love in Amsterdam is different. Firstly, while there’s a killer there is no serial killer or psycho killer. Secondly and more importantly (and more interestingly) in this book Freeling is trying to put us inside the head of the victim rather than the killer. And since the victim is dead he can’t do that directly. The only way the reader (and Van der Valk) can get inside Elsa’s mind is indirectly, through Martin. This is a genuinely intriguing approach.

Of course we also get to know Martin very well. He’s quite fascinating. He’s not quite a loser but he’s made a lot of mistakes and he has taken an awfully long time to grow up. He has indulged in very self-destructive behaviour. But he’s not a total loser. He’s trying his best.

Elsa isn’t quite a monster, but she’s close. She’s the kind of woman who might not set out to destroy men’s lives but she will do so anyway. She is bad news, but fascinating in the way that Bad Girls always are fascinating.

If there’s a slight weakness here it’s the motive which I felt needed to be fleshed out just a little.

Overall a psychological crime novel with a genuinely interesting approach. Recommended.

Peter Rabe's Journey Into Terror

Journey Into Terror is a 1957 crime novel by Peter Rabe.

It opens with a killing. A senseless killing. Two criminal outfits shooting it out in Truesdell Square and a girl named Ann just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up with a bullet hole in her forehead.

Ann was John Bunting’s girl. They were to be married the following day. Now that his girl is dead Bunting is just an empty shell. He gets drunk. He gets drunk again. He keeps getting drunk. Then he hears another drunk, a guy known as Mooch, talking about all the people who have done him wrong over the years and how one day he will have his revenge.

And suddenly Bunting knows what he has to do. He has to kill the guy who killed Ann.

He doesn’t know where to start. All he has a name. Saltenberg. Saltenberg may have some connection with the events in Truesdell Square. Bunting has also heard that a whore named Joyce might know something. Joyce doesn’t know anything her sister Linda does. Linda isn’t a whore. She’s a widow. Since her husband died she’s been dead inside. Just the way Bunting has been dead inside.

Linda has some vague connection with Saltenberg. Saltenberg is a businessman but he’s not exactly an honest businessman.

The answer may lie in Florida, in a town named Manitoba. Bunting heads for Florida. Maybe Bunting is finally doing something positive, but maybe he’s being manoeuvred into it. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Linda tags along with him. She doesn’t care about Bunting or Florida and she doesn’t care about herself but Joyce has kicked her out and she has to go somewhere.

Bunting and Linda don’t get along. There is no whirlwind romance. There’s nothing between them. They don’t exactly hate each other. They don’t care enough to hate each other. But maybe in their own broken ways they have made some some kind of connection. At least Bunting is now vaguely aware of the existence of another human being even if he doesn’t like her. And for Linda it’s much the same.

Bunting finds out that Ann’s killer had to be one of four men. The four men are Tarpin and his associates. They’re decidedly shady businessmen. In fact they’re small-time gangsters. Bunting has found a way to infiltrate Tarpin’s gang. It’s not clear how he intends to find out which one of them was the killer. He just assumes that he’ll find a way. His objective is clear but he hasn’t given much thought to the methods necessary to achieve it. He’s an obsessive but not a very clear-headed one.

So this is a murder mystery as well as a revenge story. Neither Bunting nor the reader has any idea of the identity of the killer.

The real focus is on the two central characters, Bunting and Linda. They’re both severely broken people and they have a lot in common. They’re both dead inside. The question is whether there is any hope for them, whether they can find a way to put themselves back together. Maybe they’ll just destroy themselves, or destroy each other. Maybe they can give each other a reason not to destroy themselves.

They’re not exactly sympathetic characters. They have entirely shut down their emotions and they have also shut down their entire personalities. They’re zombies.

The four men who might have killed Ann have a bit more depth than you might expect. They’re not very nice men but they have their own vulnerabilities and fears.

This is a psychological crime novel with perhaps a slight noir feel, if you’re prepared to define noir very loosely.

Like the other Peter Rabe books I’ve read this is an odd but strangely fascinating tale. Highly recommended.

By the same author I have also reviewed Stop This Man! and The Box and they’re both odd books as well.