3/8/13

"Who is in charge of the clattering train..."


"...Death is in charge of the clattering train!"
- Edwin J. Milliken (Death and his Brother Sleep
C. Daly King opened one of his lauded mystery novels, Obelists Fly High (1935), with the epilogue of the story and thought it would be a nice touch to begin this post on Todd Downing's Vultures in the Sky (1935) in a similar vein: it's as if we have entered a period of redemption!

As the post-title and opening quote suggests, Vultures in the Sky takes place aboard a passenger train bound for Mexico City, but sundry shadows are cast over the journey and not all of them are from the zopilotes (vultures) dotting the desert sky. Rumor filled compartments of an impending railway strike and saboteurs of the Cristeros (a religious splinter faction) become the prowling ground of a murderer who snuffed out a passenger before he even boarded the train! There's even talk that there may be people aboard who are connected to an infamous kidnapping case, which is not entirely coincidental, as Curt mentioned in his review that Downing had "read Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) the year he began writing Vultures and he immediately praised the Crime Queen's novel unreservedly" – giving perhaps the first of many nods to one of the most famous whodunits ever written.

Downing's regular detective, Hugh Rennert of the United States Treasury Department, Custom Services, tries to take charge when he suspects foul play after one of the passengers, an American of Mexican extraction named Torner, dies while they passed through a darkened railway tunnel and Rennert does not entertain the theory that it was the bad air in the tunnel that got to him. He receives official clearance to take charge of the case, until they reach their destination and the proper authorities can take it from his hands, but this murderer is not deterred by red tape and continues to plough through the list of passengers.

I wonder if Vultures inspired the opening sequence of Stuart Palmer's The Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (1937), in which Inspector Oscar Piper is on a train heading for Mexico City when a customs inspector takes a sniff from a bottle of cheap perfume and falls to the floor in a dead faint.

The plot rattles along at a nice, but brisk, pace and Hugh Rennert functioned as both a knowledgeable guide, who speaks his languages and appreciates the culture and history of the land, and as a proper detective – trying to make sense of hatboxes and the movement of suspects. In many ways, this was the kind of detective story that I was hoping to find when I picked up Downing's The Cat Screams (1934), actually two years ago this week, and I think my poorly written, two-year-old review still conveys my lack of enthusiasm for the book. I actually referred to Clyde B. Clason in that review and I think Vultures compares best to his work except that we move from the remnants of an erstwhile civilization, piled up in a private museum or library, to a railway track carving through the deserts of Mexico – where everything is very much alive as opposed to dusty museum pieces in the possession of a soon to be murdered private collector (c.f. about half of Clason's output).

Downing redeemed himself with Vultures, after my initial disappointment over Cat, and second chances appears as of late to be a trend on this blog. Zelda Popkin's Dead Man's Gift (1942) was a marked improvement over her slapdash performance in Murder in the Mist (1940) and Kay Cleaver Strahan's Death Traps (1930) made the award-wining Footprints (1929) look even worse in retrospect: it's as if we have entered a period of redemption! 

Lets hope this trend continues and I will definitely check back on Downing. All of his books have been reprinted by Coachwhip and have an introduction by Curt Evans (a.k.a. The Passing Tramp).

This also reminds me how horrible behind I am on my reading and working off my wish list.

7 comments:

  1. I hope you like the others as you move along, Vultures is one of my favorites. Murder on Tour, the first one, will be shortly, with a new introduction. You remind me I need to do a piece on Clason, have been meaning too for like years now, lol!

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    1. I will probably order another one of Downing’s books later this month. Looking forward to reading more of him now.

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  2. Oh for the love of Harry Stephen Keeler! Take a wild guess at what book review I was just about to start writing! Go on, I dare you! The Kracked King of Keerland has struck again!

    I shared your enthusiasm for this book, but I hadn't read THE CAT SCREAMS before so I didn't enter with a preconception of any sort. I really loved the atmosphere, and the scene where the car is left behind is positively brilliant!

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    1. I’m not in the least bit surprised at Keeler showing his translucent mug around here, not long after his last encounter with you. I told you you needed heavier artillery to vanquish Keeler (don’t cross the beams though).

      Is it perhaps and idea, now that you have read Vultures in the Sky, to tackle The Cat Screams and see what you make of it.

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    2. I have already read another Downing book, THE LAST TRUMPET, but was hoping to start with a review of VULTURES. I wrote a review of VULTURES but am pretty unhappy with it. It basically sounds to me like a regurgitation of everything you've said in this post.

      So it looks like I'll have to rewrite that review and reschedule my upcoming reviews somewhat...

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  3. Rowrbazzle, as Pogo used to say. I just finished reading this one - and enjoying it tremendously. I program the podcast several weeks out, and my review is scheduled to run several weeks from now, which will put me behind the rest of you. Sigh. Maybe THAT'S why my readership numbers don't get better...

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    1. I know what you mean, Less, I’m nearly always beaten to the punch when it comes to reviewing new releases (I’m looking at you Patrick), but I think, in your case, it has more to do with the schedule than with discussing books that others might have already taken a crack at. Perhaps one review every Monday is not enough...

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