Blind Man's Bluff (1943) by Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick was an American mystery novelist and the spiritual father of the most influential of all blind detectives, Captain Duncan Maclain, who lost his eyesight in World War I and forced him to rigorously train his remaining senses to pull double duty – unwittingly becoming a member of the ancient Pythagorean sect whose adherents "considered numbers the supreme concept of existence." The universe is "an orderly composition of geometric figures" to Captain Maclain and geometry governed his movement aided by a sharpened hearing that can make "a map of sound" in his clear, uncluttered mind. This allowed him to become one of the best private investigators in New York City as he sees things other people tend to overlook. 

Captain Duncan Maclain is also somewhat of an anomalous character within the American detective story. A character who connects the traditional detective to the heroes from the pulp magazines and comic books. Captain Maclain's office building is crammed with high-tech gadgets and the building has a subbasement, four floors below street level, which serves as a Batcave. He trains there with his assistant, Spud Savage, whose wife, Rena, acts as his secretary. Captain Maclain also has two German shepherds, Schnuke and Driest, who each played a very different role in his life. Schnuke was trained as a capable, lovable and gentle guide who clung to her master with "a loyalty deeper than death." Driest is a weapon trained to defend and "looked upon the world with a hostile, suspicious canine eye" ready to hurl himself at any adversary at command or suspicious movement. Basically a sentient, medieval spiked mace with fur and a plucky attitude.

So no wonder Captain Maclain served as a model for some other blind characters, such as the blind insurance investigator from the 1970s TV-series Longstreet, Mike Longstreet, but, more importantly, Stan Lee cited Captain Maclain as the model for Matt Murdock – a blind defense attorney better known as Daredevil. Lee stated that he wanted to create "a hero who would start out with a disability" and remembered reading Kendrick's mystery novels about his blind detective years ago, which made him reflect that "if a man without sight could be a successful detective" what "a triumph it would be to make a blind man a comicbook superhero."

I've never understood why Kendrick and Captain Maclain never fully reemerged from the shadows as the character not only has a fascinating backstory and linage, but Kendrick was a consistent writer and plotter. He never used Maclain's blindness as a gimmicked crutch for his plots to lean on, which are either solidly plotted affairs (The Whistling Hangman, 1937) or interesting, pulp-style hybrids (The Odor of Violets, 1940). Kendrick regularly applies his skills to the impossible crime and how-dun-its. The subject of today's review has a strong hint of John Dickson Carr. 

Blind Man's Bluff (1943) is the fourth entry in the Captain Duncan Maclain series and confronts the blind detective with a string of seemingly impossible crimes rooted in the fairly recent past.

Blake Hadfield had served as the President of the Miners Title and Trust Company during the most opulent years of the once successful bank and real estate mortgage company, until the company horribly crashed in 1932, but was personally cleared of any criminal negligence – a charge which the State Insurance Department tried "industriously to prove." But there was still a tragedy waiting in the wings. James Sprague, a ruined depositor, "had taken matters into his own hands and tried to settle accounts with a gun." Sprague shot Hadfield through the head in his office at the M.T. & T building before turning the gun on himself, but the bullet had failed to kill Hadfield. However, it left him completely blind and somewhat isolated. Hadfield lived separate from his wife, Julia, who tried to divorce him, but he fought it successfully in court. Because he knew she one day would want to marry her lawyer and family friend, Philip Courtney. So, for the past few years, Julia scraped and struggled to put their son, Seth, through school and college to show she didn't need her husband. Lieutenant Seth Hadfield, home on a short leave from the army, is engaged to Sprague's daughter, Elise, who worries that her father's attempted murder and suicide will cloud her future with Seth in "an unhappy pall."

So a relatively normal and functioning family by detective story standards, but it's weird that, one day, Hadfield decides to take his son back to the M.T. & T building and summoned several people to join them.

M.T. & T building is a large, gloomy and ponderous structure from the 1890s resembling a prison from that era and, while largely abandoned, is still partially in use by the company's appointed Comptroller, Carl Bentley, who tries to sell the real estate which M.T. & T took over in foreclosed mortgages. Trying to salvage all he can for the investors who lost their money with Elise Sprague acting as his secretary. So the sudden return of Blake Hadfield to his office placed his defunct company back into "unwelcome notoriety" of newspaper headlines as his body was hurled from his office floor to the lobby eight floors below. Just at the moment his wife arrived. Only person with him was his son (boozed out of his mind) and the night watchman has "an unshatterable record of his movement punched every five minutes from the time he started his rounds." So the police find it impossible to present a convincing murder case and the now supposed accident/suicide finds its way to the blind detective, Captain Duncan Maclain.

Captain Maclain is approached by Harold Lawson, of the State Insurance Department, and a friend of the victim, Miss Sybella Ford, whose company redecorated his apartment after he lost his sight. Neither of them believe his son threw him over the railing and ask Captain Maclain to look at Hadfield's strange death "through a blind man's eye," but the case becomes increasingly complicated when the apparently nonsensical clues and bodies begin to pile up.

A sleazy, ambulance chasing lawyer, named T. Allen Doxenby, attempts to subtly blackmail Courtney into "helping" him handle the Hadfield estate, but he's unceremoniously shown the door and, shortly thereafter, he jumped out of a window – or so it appeared. A man and his wife who live in the apartment opposite of Doxenby heard him scream when they arrived home and stood in front of the door until the janitor opened it, but "there was nobody in the room but an open window." So, if it was murder, the police should "get out a warrant for Superman." There is, however, a curious piece of evidence linking Doxenby to the Hadfield-Sprague shooting years earlier. An initialed, custom-made highball glass that went missing from the office at the night of the shooting and is found in Doxenby's apartment "signed with the fingerprints of two dead men." This is not the last murder or even the first two murders as there might have been a third person who shot both Sprague and Hadfield. This time, Captain Maclain is seriously hampered in his investigation as the war deprived him of Spud Savage, but, even more dangerously, he has fallen in love with Sybella Ford. A briefly appearing Spud (on leave) warns him "the brain of a man in love is never quite crystal-clear," especially to a man who loved by his brain and hadn't experienced love in ages, which might prove lethal when "playing with a killer who has stood the Police Department on its ear."

Captain Maclain not only needs a clear and uncluttered mind to tangle with a very dangerous and clever killer, but also to make sense of wild array of strange, seemingly intelligible clues. Such as a misplaced ball of twine. A bottle of good whiskey thrown down an air shaft. A missing fountain pen and small change. A lowered Venetian blind and a vanished paperweight. A hallucination of someone falling down an elevator shaft. A smashed braille wristwatch and a heavy round watchman's clock that the watchman carried on his rounds. So, yes, there's a definite touch of Carr to the plotting and clueing recalling The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) and Carr's dark obsession with timepieces.

However, Blind Man's Bluff is a Carr-style novel in the way Christopher Bush's The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935) is a Carr-like impossible crime novel. The Case of the Chinese Gong and Blind Man's Bluff both have an impossible crime as the central puzzle full of Carrian ingenuity and worthy of Dr. Gideon Fell, but Bush and Kendrick lacked the master's showmanship and magical touch when it came to the solution. Bush took the humdrum approach of John Rhode and Kendrick showed his pulp credentials by letting Maclain set a trap with himself as bait, which went about as well as you would expect. Not that the more pulp-style ending took anything away from Blind Man's Bluff as a cleverly contrived, mostly fair play and not unoriginal impossible crime novel with the spotty clueing, regarding the question of opportunity, standing as the plots only real weak spot – which is why it's only almost as good as The Whistling Hangman. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed Blind Man's Bluff as a well written and plotted specimen of the American Golden Age detective story helmed by a detective who deserves more recognition by today's mystery readers.

Death Knell (1945) by Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick was a detective novelist and one of the founding members of the Mystery Writers of America, even serving as their first president, but Kendrick's most enduring contribution to the American detective story was his sightless private-eye, Captain Duncan Maclain, who was used by the late Stan Lee as a moden for Daredevil – a blind lawyer and resident superhero of Hell's Kitchen. So you can argue Captain Maclain is the bridge between the (pulp) detective and comic book superheroes.

Captain Duncan Maclain lost his eyesight during the First World War, but "endless hours of rigorous training" sharpened his remaining senses and eventually turned his disability into a strength.

The office of his detective agency is fitted with high-tech recording equipment and has a subbasement, or "Bat Cave," where he practices blind target shooting with his friend and partner, Spud Savage. Over a period of two decades, Captain Maclain had tender fingertips trained in the sense of touch, muscles wracked with disciplined exercise and "keen ears" deafened by "ten thousand shots from an automatic" while he learned "to shoot at sound." And, as an extension of his acquired skills, he has two specially trained German Shepherds, Schnuke and Driest.

In the first novel of the series, The Last Express (1937), Captain Maclain proclaimed he had reversed "the old adage about the land of the blind where the one-eyed man was king," because he had become king in "a land of two-eyed detectives" – none of whom knew how to see as well as he did. However, his blindness is not merely a cheap gimmick. The books are generally very well written and cunningly plotted (e.g. The Whistling Hangman, 1937).

So, after having neglected this series for years, I decided to finally return to it and settled on Death Knell (1945).

Death Knell is the fifth entry in the series and represents an unusual personal murder case for Captain Maclain, because the people involved are friends of the woman he loved, Sybella Ford. A group of people who had unfortunately gotten themselves into "a nasty jam."

The backdrop of the story is a luxury suite, on the fourteenth floor of the Arday Apartments on Tenth Street, which is the home of a popular novelist and gun collector, Larmar Jordan. Jordan lives together with his wife, Lucia, a live-in secretary, domestic servants and a cocker spaniel, Winnie. A homely picture of a sophisticated, highbrow New York household, but during a cocktail party, Captain Maclain notices that not everything is as it appears.

Troy Singleton is "mistress number thirteen," or "is it twenty-four," who unexpectedly turns up at the cocktail party, claiming to have received an invitation, but nobody is aware of takes responsibility for this tactless move and she returns to the apartment the following day – which has fatal consequences. Jordan is all alone with Singleton in the apartment when the latter is shot on the balcony as "the carillon across the street began to chime." The murder weapon is "a single-shot, nine-millimeter German gun" from Jordan's extensive firearm collection and happened to be only person who could have pulled the trigger. So the police arrests him on suspicion of murder, because the involvement of an unknown hand appears to be a physical impossibility.

Captain Maclain is asked by Lucia to prove her husband innocent and this requires him to find a murderer who could not possibly have been there. And the only possible answer is "so crazy" he refuses to confide in the police. However, he says it could have had something to do with "the man in a tower" across the street, but the answer is more original than a simple sniper. After all, Singleton was shot at close range. Captain Maclain has to match the murder method to a number of suspects connected to either Jordan or Singleton and these suspects include a literary agent, Sarah Hanley. A newspaper reporter, Bob Morse, who writes profiles for the Globe-Tribune and Brownie Mitchell, a firearms expert, who's cataloging Joran's weapon's collection. Martin Gallagher is Singleton's husband and she never expected him to "ever get back from the war," but turned up right after the shooting.

So with an impossible murder on the balcony of a fourteenth floor apartment and a troupe of suspects makes this one of the more traditionally-styled, less pulpy, detective stories in the series, but one with more emphasis on the characters than the plot – which is relatively easy to solve. Once you know how it was done, you'll know who was behind it. Nonetheless, the story offers a brief, but interesting, glances in the psyche of Captain Maclain.

Captain Maclain protected himself from melancholy, "always dangerous to a blind man," with "an armor of mental steel," but underneath is a more vulnerable human being who mostly lived for the people around him. Like Spud, Sybella and the dogs. Life had hurt him badly. The book gives a particular touching description of the footsteps of his father and mother, which had become familiar and "something to look forward to." But then they had silenced and "life had gone on." Now this can come across as soap opera writing, but Captain Maclain is an interesting enough character to forgive the dramatic touchings.

There are, however, some more cheerful passages in his life: Captain Maclain can find "utter relaxation in music and talking books" or "the ability to read himself to sleep on long cold nights with a volume in Braille tucked under the covers beside him" and "the quilt pulled up to his chin." You can hardly get more cozy than that!

Anyway, the personal touches fit the story and plot, because it really is a very personal case for the blind detective. There are two attempted murders: leaving Sybella hospitalized and Schnuke injured. This person also left another body in his private elevator with a dagger in his belly. So naturally Captain Maclain feels a little hot under the collar and even threatens to flay the murderer alive. And you don't want to get on the bad side of the man who was the inspiration for Daredevil.

So, all in all, Death Knell was not a bad detective novel with perhaps a plot that was too easily solved, but with an interesting look at the lead character and the story has piqued my curiosity in Blind Man's Bluff (1943). Captain Maclain mentioned that he once met a murderer who discovered "a means of pushing people out of windows" when he wasn't there. So I might tackle that one some time in the next few weeks or months. Or, knowing who I am, sometime in the next two or three.

Behind Enemy Lines

"Follow the money. Always follow the money."

- Deep Throat (All the President’s Men, 1976)

We aren't even halfway through the year and the Cold War has already occupied a secure spot on the (short) list for "Best Comeback" in 2014, which reminded me of my continuing negligence of Cold War thriller-and mystery novels.  

Stories of the "Red Scare" took the place of the "Yellow Peril" yarns in the second half of the previous century, but left them mainly untouched because they seem to work better on a "You-Had-To-Be-There" level. Well, in the light of current events and news coverage, I read a stand-alone novel by Baynard Kendrick, Hot Red Money (1959), penned at the tail end of the Golden Age and best described as a clutter of cloak and dagger stuff.

The main protagonist of Hot Red Money is Maurice Morel, Staff Writer for the Globe-Star Syndicate, whose journalistic activities has uncovered several Communist plots and spies over the years, earning himself a place on "Khrushchev's list of Free World annoyances that should be removed" – in spite of being their most valued double-agent in the United States. Moral has an appointment with an informer, a Lebanese sailor named Beshara Shebab, at a place named Beirut Café and Shebab can provide information on large sums of unREDistered (pun!) money in anonymous, numbered bank accounts in Lebanon. Typically, Shebab is knifed and (of course!) Morel is knocked unconscious, shortly after their meeting, in the alley behind the café.

Unfortunately, this is the point in the plot where Hot Red Money begins to loose some of its lucidity and there were moments when I felt like I was reading a series of events instead of a linear, forward-driven narrative – even introducing and fleshing out characters who quickly disappear again. Such as Special Agent Leonard Ducro, who's packed off to a sanitarium called Amity Rest Home to pump a patient on information. The confidential source for this tip was Morel and the dying words of Shebab, but, of course, the patient ends up being murdered in very pulpy-circumstances. I was hoping the story would partially follow the route of Patrick Quentin's A Puzzle for Fools (1936) and Jonathan Latimer's Murder in the Madhouse (1935) was referenced, but the rest home bits, in combination with the flow of the story, recalled the clinic-scenes from Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely (1940) – only less exciting than Philip Marlowe's ordeal.  

The often unnecessary switches between characters, who can disappear in the background as soon as they've appeared, is further marred by the overrepresentation of perfectly covered spies in Morel's professional-and social circle – which makes for a muddled web of relationships and lots of padding. There were some interesting and historical bits and pieces, with some contrasting opinions here and there, but if you're really interested in the history of the Cold War than there are far better sources. And the meager payoff and predictable twist at the end was as helpful to Hot Red Money as Mussolini's military alliance was to Hitler's quest to conquer Europe.

I'm well aware that I'm padding out this review with utter drivel, because there isn't much left to say and I have barely written a full page. I'll add this though: Baynard Kendrick was capable of writing better detectives (e.g. The Whistling Hangman, 1937), thrillers (e.g. The Last Express, 1937) and spy/mystery stories (e.g. The Odor of Violets, 1940). Unfortunately, Hot Red Money is heading for the Worst-of List of this year.

Well, I guess Cold War thrillers are not for me and I'll most likely pick up something more traditional for my next read.  

Open Season

Bugs Bunny: "Just between the two of us, what season is it, really?"

Daffy Duck: "Ha, ha, ha! Don't be so naive, buster. Why, everybody knows it's really duck hunting season."

Back in December, I picked up a copy of Baynard Kendrick's The Whistling Hangman (1937), which spurred an altogether too short, but nonetheless riveting, reading binge – during which I covered several tomes from the Captain Duncan Maclain and Miles Standish Rice series. A review of The Last Express (1937) even made it to this blog. 

Though every bit as readable, Blood on Lake Louisa (1934) is an early effort that sets itself apart from the crime riddled chronicles of Maclain and Rice. In the first place, it's a standalone novel situated in a small town, Orange Crest, and has a distinct regional flavor – and the case is reported to the reader from a first-person point of view. The always clued-up Mike Grost also noted on his website that the plot was structured on the basic principles of an Had-I-But-Known story, which is strange for a masculine book set against the background of outdoors sportsmen and moon shiners with an almost entirely male cast – making this book somewhat of a curiosity. 

The person narrating the story is a small town physician, simply known to his family and friends as Doc Ryan, who reflects back at "the events that threw the whole of our little community into an uproar," which was set in motion when one evening he took a boat out to the lake to fish under the pale and sorrowful visage of the moon and take pot shots at the snoozing ducks between the reeds – but when he wants to retrieve a wounded bird he finds the corpse of a friend tingeing the dark blue waters with a splash of crimson red.

On the surface, the untimely demise of David Mitchell, a local banker, has all the earmarks of an unfortunate hunting accident, but a primarily investigation shows that the ammunition in the medico's rifle was of a different brand than the discharge that ended up killing Mitchell – making this a clear case of murder as he was already dead when the doctor emptied a cartridge at the feathered shooting targets.

Blood on Lake Louisa is very competent in keeping your eyes and mind from straying off the printed pages, from throwing a pocket watch hidden in a coffee pot at you to a confrontation with a dying man who utters a cryptic warning message, while moon shining and counterfeiting hover inconspicuously in the background – but the most engrossing parts were the lines that reflected the time and era. The first copies rolled off the press in 1934, but it was probably written at the tail end of the Prohibition Era. It's drenched with bootlegging references and several characters have bottles of hard liquor stored away, including the doctor and the sheriff, and shows how that particular decade in history taught Americans how to be unlawful – especially on a domestic level.

Less endearing was the stereotypical portrayal of minorities. I'm the farthest removed from a political correct, censor happy prick but even I cringed at some of the scenes in this book. Laughing at comedians who make edgy jokes is something completely different as being confronted with the uncouth, racial attitude of the 1930s and the reason why we'll never see another Baynard Kendrick print run until he drops into the public domain – which is a shame, really, in spite of this embarrassing character flaw.

All in all, this is a fairly well written and adequately plotted detective story, which keeps the reader occupied by littering the place with mystifying clues and stuffing shadowy nooks with mortal dangers, and while the solution doesn't come off as the mind-blowing surprise it was intended to be – it was still a nice first try and I appreciate it. However, I recommend you start off with The Whistling Hangman before examining Baynard Kendrick's other detective stories.

Once again, I have to end on an unrelated note. But today I received a package stuffed with impossible crime novels. So you know what to expect in the upcoming weeks here.

"Experience is the cane of the blind"

"I've reversed the old adage about the land of the blind where the one-eyed man was king. I've become king in a land of two-eyed detectives, none of whom know how to see as well as I do."  

- Captain Duncan Maclain, The Last Express. 

Baynard Kendrick's second detective novel, The Last Express (1937), is the first entry in what was once a very popular series chronicling the extraordinary adventures of Captain Duncan Maclain, a private investigator who lost his eyesight during the First World War, but through rigorous training he sharpened his remaining senses – turning a defect into virtue and conquering his darkened world by successfully applying his newly garnered skills for detective work. This makes him a rather unusual combination of the traditional detective and a pulp hero.

He can astonish skeptics of his abilities with dazzling, almost Holmesian, deduction, as he does with his client in the opening chapter of this book, but he also has an office studded with high-tech recording equipment and has a subbasement, four floors below street level, where he practice blind target shooting with his business partner and friend, Spud Savage. It's therefore not difficult to see (no pun intended) why Stan Lee saw (no pun intended here, either) in him the potential for a superhero and used him as a model for Matt Murdock – a blind defense attorney who strikes fear into the hearts of the criminal elements of Hell's Kitchen as his masked alter ego, DareDevil.

The Last Express opens with the arrival of Evelyn Zarinka, a young and not un-attractive woman, at Maclain's office. Her brother, who's a District Attorney, is crossing swords with a big time gangster and she fears he's deeper involved than is healthy for him, but before the sightless detective can even as much as lift a finger to help her dispel the dangers facing them, her brother meets an untimely demise when an unknown assailant throws a hand grenade into his car – and the only clues the police and Maclain have to go one are the victims cryptic dying words and mangled cage containing a couple of dead mice.  

The investigation that follows provides a knotty problem for Maclain's sensitive fingers to unsnarl, but is also fraught with many dangers as the book continuously skips from moments of rational detective work to thrilling scenes of suspense. There is, for example, a second murder, committed in front of witnesses at a nightclub, which takes some considerable thinking on Maclain's part to figure out and a remorseless hit man puts Maclain and Spud in a tough and perilous situation. But my favorite parts of the story deal with a treasure-hunt-like search and exploration of the labyrinthine tunnels, underneath the streets of New York, to locate a disused and sealed tunnel that holds, according to urban city legends, an old wood-burning locomotive and the end station of their dangerous journey for the truth. 

It's a good and fast-paced read, with some frantic and harrowing moments, that throws a couple of fairly interesting puzzles into the mix. However, it's this hodgepodge of styles that inevitable dulls the detection part of the novel and leaves the reader a bit dissatisfied with the overall experience. The method employed at the nightclub, to temporarily obscure the murder, and the reason for the D.A. to carry around a bunch of mice were adequately and satisfyingly explained, but the interpretation of the dying message and the identity of the guilty party felt like a letdown.

I can recommend this one to readers already familiar with Baynard Kendrick and Duncan Maclain, but if you're new to them a better starting point would probably be The Whistling Hangman – a novel of detection without the trappings of the thriller and suspense story.