The Saint in the Clouds

"My first rockets went up like iron balloons. Somehow, most people were slow to perceive a genius had been launched, except me."

- Leslie Charteris 

The Hindenburg Murders (2000) is the second in a string of six standalone novels, known collectively as the "Disaster Series," in which Max Allan Collins slyly blended historical facts with pure fiction by positioning past masters of the written word in the role of detective on the eve of a tragic event – only the reader is aware of the impending doom. 

It's an unusual approach to a series of historical mysteries about disasters, but I derived great pleasure from the gradual thickening of suspense as history slowly takes over the reigns of a story. You know what's going to happen, and yet, you can't find yourself on the next page soon enough!

Over the past several years, I reviewed The Titanic Murders (1999), The Pearl Harbor Murders (2001) and The Lusitania Murders (2002). During my pre-blogging days, I read the dark, grimly The London Blitz Murders (2004) and the splendid The War of the Worlds Murder (2005) – which remains my personal favorite and the crown jewel of this series. So that makes The Hindenburg Murders the last one of the lot. Luckily, Collins is a prolific author and has an extensive bibliography of crime-fiction to explore, but first I have to get this review out of the way.

The protagonist of The Hindenburg Murders is Leslie Charteris, creator of "The Saint," a Robin Hood-type of character who first appeared in Enter the Tiger (1928) and was played by Roger Moore in a 1960s TV-series – before he would lend his face to James Bond. However, my exposure to Charteris has been limited to one or two short stories and the Val Kilmer movie from the mid-1990s, which probably does not count for much.

So I'll refrain from making any uninformed, potentially cringe inducing comments about The Saint to spare the enamel on the teeth of genuine fans of the series, because there still seem to be plenty of them around.

Lets move on to the book itself. Or, rather, the after word, entitled "A Tip of the Halo," in which Collins lists of all the sources he consulted and gives an answer to the question if Charteris was actually a passenger on the Hindenburg – which is answered with "a resounding, absolute yes," well, "sort of." Charteris was one of the "well-publicized passengers aboard the airship's maiden voyage," but the account of his presence on its final journey is wholly made-up by Collins. The reason for bringing this up is a 38 second video-clip I found of Charteris reporting on that voyage, which I recommend watching before reading the book. It's like a short teaser for the book. 

Japanese edition of The Hindenburg Murders

The Hindenburg Murders begins on May 3, 1937, as the Titanic-sized zeppelin is being prepared in Frankfurt, Germany for its trans-Atlantic crossing to the United States. As to be expected, they were real Nazis about airport security in those days: bulky X-ray machines probed the content of baggage, suitcase lining was regularly knifed loose, gifts rudely unwrapped, shaving kits disassembled and even children's toys confiscated. All of this added to annoyance of the dapper-clad gentleman with the monocle, named Leslie Charteris, who begins here to bounce witticisms off the humorless Nazis and later on in conversations with his fellow passengers – which gave me the impression of him having been a real-life counterpart of Archie Goodwin.

Nevertheless, the pesky, but efficient, gründlichkeit of German customs seems not to have been entirely without reason, because the presence of Nazi officials aboard seems to confirm there’s a genuine fear of saboteurs and bombs. After all, the Hindenburg is filled with hydrogen, one of "the most flammable, hottest-burning gas in the world," and even a small spark could light the entire ship up like a Christmas tree. Something is going on becomes very clear when Charteris' roommate, an SS-informer named Eric Knoecher, vanishes in the night, but evidence left behind suggest he was flung out of a port window – plunging 2,100 feet into the freezing waters below. The question is whether this has anything to do with a possible plot by saboteurs or that he posed a danger to one of the passengers, because there were Jews and Jewish sympathizers among them.

Charteris is asked to carry out a discreet investigation by lying through his teeth: he tells everyone that his roommate has come down with a severe case of the cold and will be staying in their cabin. Only the murderer would be aware of this lie, but this potential interesting way of making a killer, subtly, betray himself turns out to be nothing more than a wild goose chase and the guilty party revealed by bungling part of the job than by ratiocination on Charteris parts – which makes this series entry slightly disappointing in the detection department.

The Hindenburg Murders is mostly rewarding for its use of the historical content and its depiction of life about a gigantic airship: from the sumptuous dinners and the lavish passenger accommodation to the hermetically sealed smoking room and water rationing in the shower cabins. It makes you wonder why, as far as I'm aware, there aren't any Golden Age-era mysteries that employed one of these floating ships as a backdrop for a classic whodunit. I should also mention the ending of the book, which gives a harrowing depiction of the aftermath of the disaster and that made for great, if gruesome, ending during which a final surprise was sprang on the reader. That's something I can always appreciate.

So, while The Hindenburg Murders was not the best or my favorite entry in this series, I still found it to be an excellently written, well-researched piece of historical/speculative (crime) fiction. Of course, it has something to offer to the fans of Charteris and The Saint, because Collins is a fan and noted, in the previously mentioned after word, how there are numerous references that can "be found by the keen-eyed Charteris fan" – as well as the tongue-in-cheek chapter titles that were apparently firmly planted in the Charteris tradition of his "Immortal Works."

On a final note, I might not have been wildly enthusiastic about The Hindenburg Murders, but loved the series as a whole and have a particular fondness for The Titanic Murders and The War of the World Murder. I really hope this series, one day, will awaken from its slumber, because there are still a number of possible books that can be added to this series: R. Austin Freeman served in the First World War as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corpse (The Great War Murders) and surely Edogawa Rampo's war effort for Japan can, for the sake of a good story, be tied to murder connected to Hiroshima or Nagasaki not long before the U.S. drops by.

Well, here's hoping!

Seven Days to Disaster

"Espionage, my son, is far from being a joke in these days. It's wide and it’s deep and it sinks under your feet—like that water out there. It runs much deeper than it ever did twenty-five years ago."

- Sir Henry Merrivale (Carter Dickson's Nine-and Death Makes Ten a.k.a. Murder in the Submarine Zone, 1940)

The Lusitania Murders (2002) is the fourth entry in Max Allan Collins' remarkable, but sadly discontinued, "Disaster Series" that "combined the factual with the fanciful" by hurling celebrated writers of popular fiction in disastrous, world-altering events and have them solve a range of problems – just before tragedy strikes!

Jacques Futrelle was the spiritual father of one of the immortal detectives of the printed page, "The Thinking Machine," who perished on the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912, but The Titanic Murders (1999) gave him a proper sendoff. The Pearl Harbor Murders (2001) gave Edgar Rice Burroughs of Tarzan fame a murder to investigate on the island of Hawaii mere days before the devastating attack that pulled the United States into World War II. The London Blitz Murders (2004) pits Agatha Christie against a depraved serial-killer, known as the "The Blackout Ripper," when the city was being pounded by the Luftwaffe, but The War of the Worlds Murder (2005) remains my personal favorite – in which Walter B. Gibson comes to the rescue of Orson Welles during the infamous Panic Broadcast.

Willard Huntington Wright was a "trailblazing art critic" and an important avant-garde figure in pre-World War I New York City. Wright was a "caustic critic of popular fiction," but would gain everlasting fame in that realm of the literary world as the man who brought the British-style, puzzle-oriented mystery novel to the Americas and created one of the most irritating, know-it-all snobs in the genre – the wisenheimer known as Philo Vance.

However, that chapter of his career began in the mid-1920s with the publication of The Benson Murder Case (1926), but The Lusitania Murder is set during the first week of May, 1915, when the titular ship left New York for Liverpool, England on what would be her final voyage. During those days, Wright was still somewhat of an acid-tongued critic and a professional journalist.

Collins exercised his artistic license to place Wright aboard the Lusitania, under the guise of a reporter seeking interviews with some of the famous guests, which is an operation done under the familiar pseudonym of "S.S. van Dine." However, there's an ulterior motive for his presence aboard.

The Lusitania was a luxury liner that could be easily converted into a battleship and there are persistent rumors that, in its capacity as a passenger liner, the ship is used to transport "ammunition, weapons and perhaps even high explosives" into a war zone – effectively blurring the lines "between commerce and combat." It makes "Big Lucy" a potential target for U-boats and saboteurs. So, as "S.S. van Dine," Wright has to gauge the veracity of those rumors for an article, but he also has a slight personal interest in the matter as a public germanophile with a pro-German stance.

In reality, Wright was blacklisted from journalism for his German sympathies, which happened after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917. There were also accusations of Wright being a spy for Germany. The picture Collins painted of him had a bit more nuance, which stated that although his "tastes run to Wagner, Goethe and Schopenhauer" it shouldn't be assumed he wears "a photo of the Kaiser in a locket" near his heart – which nudged him slightly into the neutral corner.

Anyhow, there's not just a possible secret, unlisted cargo of war supplies that requires Wright's attention, but there's also a small group of German stowaways found after departing from New York. Are they spies, saboteurs or merely part of a ring of thieves targeting the valuables of the first-class passengers? Whatever the answer is, someone wants to them out of the way and soon they're being targeted by a brutal, devious murderer.

Luckily, Wright receives help from the ship's detective, Philomina Vance, who's a Pinkerton operative with the deductive-skill of storybook detective and plays the Sabina Carpenter to Wright's John Quincannon. It's up to them to figure out whether the murders are connected to the possible war-connection the ship has with the Allied war effort or to the mysterious telegrams that some of the more prominent passengers received before departure. Or simply a fallout among thieves.

Collins used some of the actual passengers for this part of the plot, because they included a who's-who of the rich and famous from the early 1900s. They include multi-millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt. Philosopher and writer Elbert Hubbard. A well-known American theatrical producer with German-Jewish roots named Charles Frohman. The Belgian fund-raiser Marie DePage. Which are just a few of the notable names.

This makes The Lusitania Murders a well-written and researched novel, which pleasantly blurred the lines between fact and fiction without becoming too implausible. It must be, however, noted that this entry paid more attention to the characters and the ambient setting that other books in the series, which may have something to do with the time-period in which the story was written – as it was written in the aftermath of the terrorist-attacks on September 11, 2001. Collins mentioned in his after word that "for a number of days" he "did not feel like playing the role of entertaining," which was particular troubling to "a writer in the process of creating a confection based around another tragedy of war."

So this probably gave characters, setting and the looming disaster a bit of a precedent over an Agatha Christie-style drawing room mystery. More than is usual in this series. However, that doesn't mean the story is bare of clues or a decent plot, which it has, and I feel confident in stating that both readers of detective-and historical fiction will find enough between the pages of The Lusitania Murders to loose the track of time for a couple of hours.

Finally, I want to point out that the foreword imagines Van Dine would titled this book The Lusitania Murder Case, which is an appealing title, but he preferred a six-letter word preceding the murder case-bit. I know he wrote The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1938), but that was an exception (and a bit of a sell-out). I think something along the lines of The Cunard Murder Case or The Kaiser Murder Case would've been closer to a Van Dine approved title for this book.

I guess this is as good to end yet another long, rambling and shabbily written review and urge you to read this series for yourself. I'd recommend The War of the Worlds Murder in particular, which is simply wonderful. And has Orson Welles as one of the main characters! 

Day of Infamy

"Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God."

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt (December 8, 1941) 

There was a period when variation was a part of my reading habit and nuzzled at other genres, such as the "Lost World" yarns from The Complete Land That Time Forgot (Edgar Rice Burroughs; collected in 2007), before I shackled myself to the mystery genre with this blog. I really should pick up a non-mystery novel again and Max Allan Collins' The Pearl Harbor Murders (2001) helped me remind there's actually more to read as well as providing a terrific example as to why I'm hooked on detective fiction.

The events from The Pearl Harbor Murders begin on December 5, 1941, when there are less than forty-eight hours between the unprecedented attack on the Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the Second World War, but Edgar Rice Burroughs does not believe Oahu is a target for an invasion – and neither does General Short. Besides, there's a trouble brewing on the island. Burroughs is requested to keep an eye on his German neighbor, Otto and Elfrieda Kuhn, alleged Nazis with family ties to Heinrich Himmler.

Meanwhile, "Hully" Burroughs (son of) is requested by a sensational band singer, Pearl Harada, for her father to fix an appointment with Col. Fielder. Pearl and Bill Fielder (son of) have plans, but her mixed blood and war looming at the horizon makes marriage a problematic issue in 1941. She simply wants to plead her case to the colonel.

"Disaster Series" distinguishes itself from other (mystery) novels featuring historical figures, because they were, mostly, present at the time of the titular catastrophes and hard facts are seamlessly integrated with the fictional aspects of the story. Collins' endnotes referring back to the texts consulted are reflected in the story, not just by finding a satisfying balance between fact and fiction, but in conjuring up images of Hawaii on the brink of war that felt alive – from the white beaches of Waikiki to the markets of China Town. Of course, there were more direct references to the racial tensions and hierarchy (e.g. issei and nisei), but I think Earl Derr Biggers (Charlie Chan Carries On, 1930) and Juanita Sheridan (The Waikiki Widow, 1953) would recognize Collins' Hawaii as theirs.

I'm not overly familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs' work, having only read The Land That Time Forgot trilogy and name, maybe, two of his characters, but enjoyed how Collins sketched in Burroughs personal life from the man's own point of view and loved the anecdote about the controversy surrounding a World War I Tarzan novel. Tarzan in the trenches of the Great War? My interest is piqued! I was also interested in the relationship between father and son, which, in a detective story, immediately begs for a comparison with Ellery and Inspector Richard Queen, but there relationship was never explored in-depth and was more of an excuse to get Ellery on the crime-scene without pesky questions being asked. I was more reminded of Herbert Resnicow's Ed and Warren Baer, making the first of two appearances in The Dead Room (1987), who, despite tragedy close at home, have a good relationship and are drawn into a murder investigation out of necessity instead of finding it stimulating mental exercise.

Still, Burroughs doesn’t do too bad on his outing as an amateur snoop of fiction, awaking from a bizarre nightmare, which he jotted down for future reference, capturing Pearl’s murderer, Harry Kamana, red-handed on the moonlit beach – after glimpsing him standing over the body from the bedroom window. Kamana claims to be innocent and the Burroughs launce an investigation of their own, but are they looking for one of her scorned admirers or one of the spies looming ominous in the background like the approaching attack. The solution is well put together and a play on the least-likely-suspect gambit, even though Collins would probably have been accused breaking a cardinal rule of detective fiction if The Pearl Harbor Murders had been published in the 1940s. But then again, those rules were written in Britain and Collins is American. So go figure (I kid, I kid!). This plot is set against the backdrop of an impending war, but only the reader is aware of what’s about to hit them and, coupled with the history of Pearl Harbor, adds an usual tension to the story.

The War of the Worlds (2005) has been my favorite up to this point, in which a murderer turned the table on Orson Welles during the infamous Panic Broadcast and was just fun to read, but now has to share that place with The Pearl Harbor Murders. I really hope this series returns one day. Luckily, I still got two more to go.

Note for the curious: I previously reviewed The Titanic Murders (1999).

Jacques Futrelle's Last Case

"Nothing is impossible. The mind is master of all things."

- The Thinking Machine ("The Problem of Cell 13") 

Max Allan Collins vanished from my reading list as fast as he had appeared on there, but nothing to the detriment of Collins as a mystery writer. I was just too occupied with the classics to give much attention to newer writers and it took some serendipity to finally put another volume from his defunct Disaster series in my hands.

The "Disaster Series" tells to the untold stories of some of the previous centuries most celebrated (crime) writers, who took it upon themselves to collar a murderer during world shaping events. Agatha Christie tangled with a serial killer in The London Blitz Murders (2004), but I spoiled that one for myself by looking up some of the characters while reading the book. A mistake I avoided with the next book, The War of the Worlds Murder (2005), in which Walter Gibson, creator of pulp hero the Shadow, has to save Orson Welles from a murder charge that is looming above his head like the Martian invaders from his play – and I remember that the story was very much in spirit of that famous Panic Broadcast.

Last week, I acquired The Titanic Murders (1999) that imagines an answer to the question if Jacques Futrelle's crime-solving talents were engaged aboard the R.M.S. Titanic.

Futrelle was an American journalist turned fiction writer and remember today for fathering one of the immortal detectives of fiction, Professor S.F.X. van Dusen a.k.a. "The Thinking Machine." There's a tragic beauty that Futrelle and Van Dusen had their final adventures together, because Futrelle had on him a batch of unpublished Thinking Machine stories. They went down together, after Futrelle made sure his wife May was safe in one of the lifeboats.

Before I had arrived at the "Notes for the Curious"-like section at the end of the book, I had settled for the authors word that painstaking research had gone in weaving fact with fiction, which must be challenging when building a drawing room-style plot around hard facts. I think it was a job well done.

The Titanic Murders opens, unusually in a historical mystery, in the present with the author of this book and an anonymous phone-call from a man claiming to have been part of a salvage crew that discovered two bodies in the cold storage of the wreck of the Titanic. This leads the author and his wife to daughter of Jacques and May Futrelle, who has heard a rather fantastic story from mother that now appears to be grounded in truth. Rewind back to April 10, 1912 and the Futrelles are set to sail home on the maiden voyage of men's latest nautical masterpiece, R.M.S. Titanic, unsinkable and furnished with all the comforts of the land – even steerage is uncommonly luxurious compared to other ocean liners. Second Class is basically First Class with less glamour, but the Futrelles find that their Second Class ticket has been bumped up to a First Class. The White Star Line wants First Class filled with high profile names and they would like Futrelle to pen a detective novel set aboard the Titanic. It proves a perfect opportunity for Jacques and May to finally collaborate on a novel.

John Crafton's business proposals are less than welcome and Futrelle has to dangle him over a railing to make clear that he's not interested in putting a dime in a blackmailers pocket, but he can't stop Crafton from bothering other passenger into becoming clients of him. Of course, someone puts a stop to Crafton and a maid, upon entering his locked cabin in the morning, finds his naked body. I have to say that The Titanic Murders is one of the most minimalistic locked room mysteries I have ever read. You're never sure if it's a locked room situation until the ending, when a rather simplistic answer is supplied. To quote Futrelle, "So much for the locked-door mystery."

Futrelle convinces the ship director and captain that Crafton was smothered to death with a pillow, instead of having died of a heart attack, and begins a discreet investigation among the important guests that have been approached by Crafton – trying to pry loose the blackmail stories. The plot is perhaps not as grand as a mystery addict, spoiled by Agatha Christie's travel mysteries, expect from a whodunit set aboard the Titanic, but I will confess to a spot of hypocrisy and admit that I was more enamored with the characters and setting than with the plot. So there you go. Collins' depiction of Jacques and May Futrelle also reminded me of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller's Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon, if they end up being married by the early 1900s.

All in all, an excellent read that toys with an interesting premise and kept me page bound well into the authors note. It also serves me as a reminder to add yet another name to my wish list. I've already been informed that Collins wrote a mystery novel set a convention (several of those have been discussed on here last months), and I have to say, The Lusitania Murders (2002) looks like a fun read. I love rival detectives matching wits!

To be continued...