The Real Gone Goose (1959) by George Bagby

Aaron Marc Stein was a prolific American writer of some 100 detective novels, mysteries and the occasional crime-thriller, published over a period of half a century, beginning with Murder at the Piano (1935) and ending with The Garbage Collector (1984) – half of which appeared under two different pseudonyms. I reviewed the sixth novel in his Jeremiah X. Gibbon series, The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends (1953; as by "Hampton Stone"), back in 2020. Hardly a groundbreaking detective novel, but a good, second-stringer from one of those human fiction factories who "once were the backbone of publishing and public libraries." So decided to go over Stein's large bibliography to see if there's anything worth cherry picking.

There are three locked room mysteries, Ring Around a Murder (1936), The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (1949) and Lock and Key (1973), which have been jotted down for future reference. Stein also penned a series featuring two archaeologists, Tim Mulligan and Elsie Mae Hunt, who stumble across murder and mystery in faraway locations or dig sites. I like a good archaeological mystery, but they tend to be damnable rare. So knowing there's an entire series out there sounds like a treat. And then there's the long-running "Schmitty" series.

Inspector Schmidt, New York's Chief of Homicide on Manhattan Island, debuted along with his creator in the previously-mentioned 1935 novel, Murder at the Piano, whose casebook comprises the lion's share of Stein's output – over fifty novels in nearly as many years. The series appeared under the first of Stein's two pennames, "George Bagby," doubling as "the homicide-books man" who "writes up those Inspector Schmidt cases." A common trope among New York-based mystery writers at the time and imagine Stein modeled the series after Anthony Abbot's Thatcher Colt mysteries. However, it does not appear as if Schmitty and Bagby were frozen in the 1930s and '40s with later novels carrying such titles as The Tough Get Going (1977), Mugger's Day (1979) and The Most Wanted (1983). So poked around the early, pre-1950s novels, but, of course, a copy of Ring Around a Murder has yet to come my way. I ended up picking a more accessible title from the middle-period of the series that turned out to be a procedural parody of the conventional "closed circle" whodunit teeming with beatniks who care very little about conventions. 

The Real Gone Goose (1959), alternatively published as A Real Gone Goose, is the twentieth entry in the Inspector Schmidt series, but it's George Bagby who takes center stage.

George Bagby lives in an apartment house in Greenwich Village and has seen many neighbors come and go over the years. And hardly ever got to know any of them. That changes when "this new breed" moved into the apartment building. A group of young beatniks who "seemed to have no sense of privacy" like "locking your door is a crime or something" and never closed or locked their front doors. And when one of them walked into a closed and locked door, they resorted to "the celluloid strip or hairpin routine" to unlock it. It makes you "somebody who thinks property is important" and "there's nothing worse than that." These are the so-called exiles who only use given or assumed names like Sabra, Blair, Sam, Carrie and Dudley, because "surnames suggested parents and they had no need of parents" ("they had already been born"). What they did was one of three things: noise-making, drinking and sponging off Sabra. Bothering other people in the building came as natural to them as breathing.

So kind of the neighbors from hell, if you value privacy, but surprisingly, Bagby finds himself courting their approval. Even was shamed into not double-locking his door ("like a frightened old maid"), because the celluloid strips and hairpins proved no match to the special lock. And being laughed at by Sabra made Bagby feel "stodgy and middle-aged." This situation persisted an entire week, until it came to abrupt end when Sabra was shot and killed in her apartment. Fortunately, Inspector Schmidt is placed in charge of the investigation, but even then Bagby's problems have only just begun.

Admittedly, the story is drained of its loud, colorful and exuberant atmosphere after the third chapter as the investigation begins and becomes more routine, but the ever worsening position Bagby finds himself in added interest to the middle portion – as he's no longer the impartial observer he had always been in these things. There are all those little things that would have looked merely embarrassing or silly, if there hadn't been a murder. 

Such as Bagby removing Sabra from his apartment after their first meeting, which immediately fueled talks "Battling Bagby, the Babe Beater" and rumors he has "been sleeping with the babe." Bagby knew the story of him supposedly beating "dames into submission" would be all over headquarters as "cops are heavy-handed and persistent humorists." So his involvement with the exiles has caused him nothing but trouble and it gets worse when it turns out his missing gun could have been the murder weapon. That makes the episode of the glazier and the gun look a whole lot less innocent than it really was.

I don't know if it was a good decision to let the reader know how innocent these damning scenes really were, but Bagby's precarious position as an innocent man who looks damn suspicious at times helped to enliven an otherwise dull, routine middle portion. Things pick up again towards the end when a second murder is committed behind the double-locked door of Bagby's apartment. Not exactly a locked room mystery, relaying on a duplicate key and celluloid strip, but could have been retooled into a legitimate impossible crime. But the problem instead becomes one of alibis ("alibis all around and I'm left without a suspect"). This final-act has a good use for the normally cliched stopped clock and how Inspector Schmidt used it demonstrate only one of the alibis had been manufactured. I think it would have been an overall improvement had this part occurred earlier in the story with the middle-portion cut down and threaded into the second murder. The remarkable transformation of Blair Nolan would have made a perfectly serviceable Strange Person subplot. However, I don't think anything could have been done to make the murderer less obvious. Not even withholding the finer details regarding the practical side of the motive

So, in the end, The Real Gone Goose came up a little short as a pure, plot-driven and fair play detective story, but tremendously fun as a parody that placed the conventionally-minded, 1930s detective stories among a younger generation contemptuous of conventions. Add the unfortunate situation of the narrator, you can see why Stein was one of those reliable, mid-list writers who were so popular with public libraries and paperback publishers. It should be noted that The Corpse Who Had Too Many Friends and The Real Gone Goose both had all the ingredients to be better detective stories than they ended up being, which probably was due to time constraints and looming deadlines. More time to work out his plots would like have reduced his bibliography, but they would have been better detective novels that would have stood the test of time a lot better. My impression now is that he wrote entertainingly written, serviceable plotted detective fiction that always had a potential glimmer of something greater and never being able to deliver on them. I'm gladly proven wrong and welcome any recommendation.