WHODUNIT: JACK BATTEN
HAMMETT UNWRITTEN By Owen Fitzstephen Seventh Street Books, 176 pages, $13.95
Nobody named Owen Fitzstephen wrote this playful novel about the disintegration of Dashiell Hammett’s career. The real author is Gordon McAlpine. Owen Fitzstephen is a character in Hammett’s novel, The Dain
Curse. But the kidding with identity is typical of the sly twists that drive Ham
mett Unwritten’s crazy-quilt plot. Hammett is the book’s central character, and with the unfolding of the story he soon discovers the later fates of the characters in his third novel, The Mal
tese Falcon. Brigid O’Shaughnessy? A jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity. Spade’s sweet secretary Effie Perrine, alas, fell on hard times. The story’s chief grifter, Kasper Gutman, didn’t die after all. Neither did Miles Archer, Sam’s P.I. partner; he happened to have been in bed with pleurisy at the time O’Shaughnessy was supposed to have murdered him. Only the number two grifter, Joel Cairo, met hard justice, serving life in prison.
Hammett’s encounters with this bunch yield more than enough funny business to keep the story boiling merrily along. Most of the action turns on the value of the black bird, which really is priceless. But what is even more tantalizing is the book’s take on Hammett’s personal demons, especially his monumental case of writer’s block.
From the time he finished his fifth novel, The Thin Man, in 1934 until his death in 1961, Hammett remained helpless when confronted by his typewriter. What was the problem? Ham
mett Unwritten offers familiar answers from Hammett and Lillian Hellman. But then — ah ha! — it comes up with something entirely new.
SIX YEARS By Harlan Coben Dutton, 400 pages, $29.50
Coben is an American crime writer with a million gimmicks. Here’s his new book’s angle: when a man named Jake learns that the guy who married the woman Jake has always madly loved dies, Jake checks out the dead guy’s widow, but she’s not Natalie, not the woman he’s crazy for. What happened to Natalie? Jake suffers much before he discovers the answer. We readers suffer too — Coben is long on violence and short on nuance — but we hang in till the end because the gimmick has hooked us.
THE DEVEREAUX LEGACY By Carolyn Hart Seventh Street Books, 157 pages, $13.95
Hart, the prolific and celebrated American crime novelist, hit a career sag in the 1980s. To write her way out of it, she mixed genres, fashioning a novel that combined conventional mystery (solid stuff ) with elements of Harlequin romance (surprisingly persuasive) and a ghost story (dead in the water). From this mélange emerged The Devereaux
Legacy, a success in 1986 and equally welcome in a recent republication. The book’s heroine, a plucky young thing, shows up at a lavish South Carolina plantation, searching for her ancestral roots. What she finds instead are relatives intent on running her off before she wises up to desperate family secrets.
THE SCOTTISH BANKER OF SURABAYA By Ian Hamilton Spiderline, 437 pages, $19.95
In the fifth book featuring ace forensic accountant Ava Lee, the ghastliest piece of violence takes place off stage. This discreet narrative choice, in contrast to the book’s predecessors in the series with their out-front carnage, shines the focus on Ava’s deductive talents. She’s on the trail of Ponzi schemers who have taken Toronto Vietnamese for $30 million. The hunt whisks Ava to the usual exotic Southeast Asian hot spots, but the sleuthing depends more on brains than physical stuff, thereby making for a more convincing plot.
Jack Batten’s new crime novel, Take Five, appears on April 20.