Gun in Cheek Read Online Free PDF Page B

destroyed—the result of gulping down a large dose of irradiated phosphorus. "A most unusual manner of committing suicide," Anthony observes.)
    As everyone prepares to leave Mystery Lodge, the remaining members of the Mystery Writers Guild heap praise on Dr. Anthony for his AD abilities in general and his motion-picture theory of crime detection and prevention in particular. One of them, Martenson, also notes that "Zarzour looked like a murderer—he acted like one—and he kept talking about committing the perfect crime. Now according to every precept of mystery fiction, he definitely should not have been the actual killer!"
    Anthony smiles at this. And just before he and Penny drive off into the sunset (the storm has ended and the sun has come out), he leans out of the car window and says, "Don't forget, Martenson, that you are supposed to fool your readers. Maybe it pays to be original once in a while."
    Maybe it does. And Murder of a Mystery Writer most definitely is an original. Not as original as the motion-picture theory of crime detection and prevention, perhaps, but pretty original just the same.
    In the past two decades, the foremost addition to the AD ranks has been that of the real person no longer alive—and, in particular, the real mystery writer no longer alive—who is placed within a fictional framework in order to solve a fictional crime. Joe Gores's Hammett (1976) was the first of these, with its time frame of 1929 and its San Francisco setting; another of note, despite some rather nasty speculation and innuendo, is Kathleen Tynan's Agatha , in which Agatha Christie becomes involved in murder and intrigue during her now-famous disappearance in 1926. This sort of fictionalizing is acceptable so long as the author treats his real-life character with intelligence and insight, makes a serious effort to portray accurately the life and times of the individual, and concocts a plot worthy of that person's abilities. In the case of an item called Chandler (1977), by someone named William Denbow, none of the foregoing applies.
    Chandler is a rather obvious attempt to capitalize on the modest success of the Gores novel—one of those quickie paperback exploitations that hack writers disgorge in a few days, utilizing no more research than a bottle of A Scotch.   It purports to tell the story of how Raymond Chandler, during a visit to New York, saves Dashiell Hammett, who is also on a visit to New York, from some vengeful "wop" gangsters. To anyone who knows anything at all about either Chandler or Hammett, however, the characters in this novel are instantly recognizable as imposters.
    The number and magnitude of the gaffes that permeate Chandler are staggering. The novel appears to take place in 1936, owing to the statement that "a few years had passed since Repeal," and owing to the fact that one of the characters, who was born in 1896, is forty years old; yet Hammett is said to have just published Red Harvest in book form (it first appeared thus in 1929) and to still be turning out pulp stories for Black Mask (his last appearance in that magazine was in November 1931 with a story called "Death and Company"). "Hammett" repeatedly refers to San Francisco as Frisco, something no longstanding resident of that city, as the real Hammett was, would ever think of doing. He is depicted as an alcoholic so cynically and hopelessly besotted that he can barely write or otherwise function without first taking a drink; we are also informed that Joseph T. "Cap" Shaw, the pioneering editor of Black Mask , has been either rejecting outright Hammett's most recent submissions or returning them for extensive revisions. Hammett's days as a Pinkerton operative are described as if he himself had been a tough pulp hero—kicking down doors, shooting and arresting gangsters, watching out that "you didn't catch a bullet from some hophead with three guns on his emaciated person." The claim is also made that Hammett was