Philip Wylie | Willis Perkins short stories | Mystery Novellas | Experiment in Crime | Corpses at Indian Stones | Gladiator
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
American Magazine novellas, uncollected
Three To Be Read
Wylie's work has links to the Scientific School of mystery fiction:
The construction site setting recalls the Golden Age interest in architecture and landscape. The setting uses height and depth, like a number of detective tales of the era.
The puzzle plot has a solution, that bears some formal similarity to the howdunit mystery in "Murder at Galleon Key". SPOILER: Both involve linking an object to a powerful force, that moves it from one point to another. There is also a means of transportation in "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments", that takes the corpse from where it was killed to where it is found.
An airplane-set mystery previously opened Stuart Palmer's The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933).
However, the choice of the murderer is arbitrary and not clued, making the whodunit aspect uncreative.
Its best mystery plot feature is a look at ocean currents, and how they affected the transport of a body. This aspect is deeply puzzling at first, and forms a "howdunit": it seems difficult to figure out how it could have happened. Like many howdunits, it approaches the impossible crime, since it looks impossible for the situation to have taken place. Wylie uses the word "impossible" in the story.
Wylie will look at ocean currents in greater depth in the later "Stab in the Back" (1943). That later story includes a whole ocean seascape, precisely defined, in the Golden Age tradition of creative use of landscape.
A second puzzle in "Murder at Galleon Key" centers on a person's disappearance. This has a fairly ingenious solution. This subplot recalls a bit the disappearance in Stuart Palmer's The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933), although the solution is somewhat different, as well.
Both the shipboard setting and first method of murder in this tale recall Stuart Palmer's The Puzzle of the Silver Persian (1934) of the previous year.
Many familiar Wylie character types appear in this tale:
Both "Death Flies East" and "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" have heroes involved in science and engineering. They show a 1930's faith that dynamic young men will make discoveries in science and get the country moving again, despite the Depression. Wylie also wrote a great deal of science fiction, much of it with Edwin Balmer, and his mystery work shows some continuity with the tradition of American Scientific Detection that Balmer helped to found. Wylie's "In a Hole" also has a construction site location that reflects an interest in engineering.
Wylie's content bears a resemblance to that of Earl Derr Biggers, a mystery writer who was a frequent contributor to The Saturday Evening Post. One might compare "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" to Biggers' Post novella "The Dollar Chasers" (1924). Both deal with a likable young middle class working man of modest means who spends time with a bunch of rich people at an upper class retreat - a yachting party in Biggers, a desert resort hotel in Wylie. In both the young man solves a light hearted mystery, while romancing a young woman, and having some pleasant adventures.
In addition to the hero, who is both an athlete and an engineer, there is a second young male character, Herb Willet. also a recurring Wylie character type: a man who engages in scientific exploration in remote areas. Like the explorer protagonist of Corpses at Indian Stones, Willet is socially an unappealing nerd, not conventionally attractive. Yet he is someone we are encouraged to admire anyway, due to his daring as an explorer, and contribution to human knowledge. Both men are also rich, with ties to upper crust Society. "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments" also has an explorer character - but he is more conventionally attractive socially, and also from a modest middle class background. Despite these differences, the hero of "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments" seems linked to the earlier explorer characters.
SPOILERS: Both "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" and "Murder at Galleon Key" open with similar mysteries: the murder of one character, followed by the disappearance of another.
More importantly, the mystery plot of "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" shares approaches with "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments". Both have subplots, distinct from the murders and disappearances, that involve the landscapes of the stories: the US desert in "The Paradise Canyon Mystery", Africa in "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments". Both subplots are colorful and detailed.
The hero's black hair and black eyes recall the superman hero of Gladiator; the brief mention of his building a dam recalls the engineer heroes of other Wylie. Comments on how women must have invented hunting, and depictions of women hunters skilled with guns, anticipate "It Couldn't Be Murder". The North woods setting in Canada recalls the vacation locales in other Wylie - but it is badly underdeveloped, and plays much less of a role in the plot than the landscapes in Wylie's better tales.
The businessman hero planning to donate his businesses to his employees is an unusual economic touch.
There is a whodunit, but the single clue to the killer's identity is routine. A subplot about an external group of hunters stalking the protagonists has some modest merit. The last two pages have an unusual alibi subplot that depends on nature. This weird subplot is not especially good - but it is different.
The first third of "Puzzle in Snow", setting up the mystery plot, is pretty good, but then the story drags. The puzzle plot shows some mild technical merits, but the story is nowhere as much fun to read as "The Paradise Canyon Mystery".
The solution seems influenced by R. Austin Freeman's A Silent Witness (1914), and shows Wylie's interest in the scientific detective story. Although Wylie shows interest in science in his tales, his work has otherwise little in common with the realist school of Freeman and Crofts; instead his American Magazine novellas are classical detective stories in the intuitionist, Golden Age tradition.
"It Couldn't Be Murder" anticipates Wylie's "Death Whispers" (1944) in its subject matter, although not in its howdunit puzzle. Both deal with an intelligent young man who gets tangentially involved as an outsider/witness/sleuth with a murder in a well-to-do family. Both have an urban background, at or near New York City. The characters in neither tales are scientists, unlike so much of Wylie's fiction. Instead, both heroes are in the "commercial arts": a magazine illustrator in "It Couldn't Be Murder", a newspaper editorial writer in "Death Whispers". Both stories have a likable young woman artist. Both mysteries are medical: probably poisonings, the characters guess early on.
However, "It Couldn't Be Murder" is much more enjoyable than "Death Whispers". "It Couldn't Be Murder" is much more cheerful in tone than "Death Whispers", with its hero only occasionally in the sort of jeopardy that faces the characters in the grim, suspense oriented "Death Whispers". The story's characters are also more interesting, and more unusual as human beings. "It Couldn't Be Murder" also benefits from one of the best developed romance subplots in Wylie's novellas.
The relationship between the hero and the New York homicide detective Riley, is another of Wylie's friendly amateur sleuth / professional policeman pairs, as in "In a Hole" and "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments". Both the amateur hero and Riley bring insight into the crimes.
The garden shows Wylie's ongoing interest in plants and botany.
The commercial artist hero is an illustrator for slick magazines. The slicks were noted for their lavish illustrations, both of stories and in ads. In fact, the main point of the slick paper on which they were printed was to allow such illustrations. There is something reflexive about having an artist for the slicks be the central character for a Wylie mystery - whose main market was the slick magazines.
There is some intriguing political satire early in the tale, dealing with how the rich treat other classes. The Greenwich Village artist hero turns out to have voted for Republican Alf Landon in 1936: something possible in real life, but atypical. Despite this apparent concession to the political conservatism of many slick readers - the slicks were expensive, and read by affluent middle classes rather than the poor - "It Couldn't Be Murder" is definitely anti-rich, pro-middle class. By 1939 and a decade of Depression, much of the American public hated the rich.
Its young doctor hero once again finds himself dealing with a lot of rich suspects, in a vacation area, this time Key West. However, the tone is much more somber than Wylie's other novellas, grim and joyless. Unlike Wylie's 1930's tales, Key West is depicted as sinister and unpleasant.
The solution of the whodunit mystery is arbitrary. There are no clues to the killer's identity: that is, the tale lacks "fair play". A subplot about one of Wylie's "disappearing objects" (the ampoules) is also simple and skeletal. Even the medical mysteries that open the tale, are almost immediately solved by the doctor. He doesn't know who did these crimes - but he knows all the details about how they were committed medically. All of these problems make "Rx: Death" less creative than those Wylie tales fully developed as mysteries.
"Rx: Death" resembles "It Couldn't Be Murder" and "Death Whispers", in pitting a young man amateur detective against murders in a well-to-do family. In all of these tales, it is pretty obvious from the start that the killer is either a family member, a servant or a close family associate, and that the events and motives for the crime are restricted to the family circle. The young man hero, an outsider to the family, gets romantically involved with a young woman in the family.
"Stab in the Back" was reprinted in The Fifth Mystery Book (1944), an anthology of long tales. It originally appeared in the October 1943 American Magazine.
The story has links with other Wylie works. While the island is not a vacation area, it is a retirement community for the well to do, and it has much the same feel as the resort in "The Paradise Canyon Mystery". The South Florida setting is a favorite with Wylie. And there is another of Wylie's young inventors. Like most of Wylie's sleuths, the hero is an amateur detective.
"Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments" is a whodunit murder mystery. But it lacks fair play: there is no way for the reader to figure out the killer, or identify the murder weapon, or solve the other aspects of the mystery. Despite this limitation, the tale's good storytelling, inventive subplots and well used scientific background make this enjoyable reading.
"Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments" has detection performed by a couple. Both help solve the case, although the woman makes a bigger contribution. This is non-sexist. Like "In a Hole", "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments" contrasts these intelligent amateur sleuths with sympathetic, tough policemen. This pattern of relationships and contrasts among the detectives helps give structure to the story.
Some aspects of the setting recall Stuart Palmer's Murder on the Blackboard (1932). Both take place at large, deserted, spooky New York City institutional buildings: a school in Murder on the Blackboard, the museum in "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments". Both buildings are multi-story. Both are full of educational objects and paraphernalia. Both tales also have subplots about the remains of objects burned in furnaces, although the details differ in the stories.
The mystery events begin with the disappearance of a character, a story line that recalls the disappearance in "Murder at Galleon Key". SPOILER: Both come to an ingenious resolution, with an unusual hiding place for the corpse. Several other mystery subplots in "Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments" also involve clever hiding places for objects.
The hero, temporarily blind after an operation, recalls the blind sleuths pioneered earlier by the Scientific School, such as Clinton H. Stagg's detective Thornley Colton.
Unlike much of Wylie's mystery fiction, "Death Whispers" takes place in "ordinary" settings (an apartment house in a mid-size US city) and among ordinary people. There is little about science or technology. All of this makes "Death Whispers" blander and less colorful than Wylie's best work. "Death Whispers" also suffers from the way mystery elements are downgraded in favor of suspense. "Death Whispers" is a whodunit, but there is only one simple and inconclusive clue pointing to the killer. Subplots are skeletal compared to Wylie's better tales. "Death Whispers" is readable, and benefits from Wylie's skill at constructing the story around the blinded man's other senses, such as hearing and smell. But overall it seems like a lesser Wylie tale.
Plot elements of "The Trial of Mark Adams" recur with variations in the opening section of "Experiment in Crime". The young professor recalls the scientist heroes of Wylie's 30's fiction. The professor's adventures among gangsters in the opening recall the adventures of young men among the rich in Wylie's earlier fiction - the two kinds of plot are formally nearly identical. In fact, these gangsters are rich, and seem quite similar in personality to Wylie's earlier millionaires. As in "The Trial of Mark Adams", the young hero discovers a whole new personality for himself, and a new role in life.
Some clues in the story come from botany; in fact, Wylie picks up strongly on the plant life of South Florida throughout the tale. There is also the ingenious mangrove disguise in Chapter 11.
Wylie likes to set his work on high tech transportation systems. The hydroplane in "Experiment in Crime" recalls the airplane in "Death Flies East", the ocean liner in "The Trial of Mark Adams", as well as the many modest little boats and diving equipment in "Stab in the Back". There is also a vacation or travel feel to Wylie's work. In addition to all these means of transportation, we have the desert resort locale of "The Paradise Canyon Mystery". "Experiment in Crime" takes place during the Christmas holidays, and many of its settings are the night clubs and casinos of a tourist's Miami.
"Experiment in Crime" is filled with local color. Many of the scenes are very visual, and one suspects that Wylie hoped it would be made into a movie. Its light hearted tone would have been out of synch with 1940's film noir, when it was written. But it would fit in very well with today's comedy cop shows, location filming, and color cinematography. Adrian Pasdar would make an ideal hero for the story as the professor.
Wylie's novel shows the dark side of the business relationships he extolled in his 1930's American Magazine novellas. In them, businessmen were dynamic figures whose enterprise created American prosperity. Here, they are a bunch of WASP's who have inherited money, and who will do anything to hang on to it. They get involved in a bunch of schemes, some legal, some not, some admirable, some despicable, to try to extend their wealth. It is a far less glamorized picture. It also seems one with far fewer idealized consequences for the United States and its society.
Also looked at from a new point of view is the treatment of the poor young men. In the 30's stories, the best thing that could happen to a young guy was to be taken up by these millionaires and brought into their business. This was treated as a full Cinderella story for the young man, one that opens all his dreams. Here, we get a darker picture. The rich WASP's sponsor a series of young men, setting them up in enterprises or sending them off to college. The relationship that develops is far from ideal, however; after a while frightful tensions erupt between the young businessman and the rich people, tensions that lead to the murderous events of the novel. Even at its best, as in the young police chief whose education they have sponsored, one wonders if young men really want to have this sort of feudal-vassal relationship to a bunch of rich liege lords. After World War II, the GI Bill would make it possible for young men to go to college on their own. This must have been like getting out of prison for America's lower class youth.
SPOILERS: The big secret has some similarities to a subplot in "The Paradise Canyon Mystery". Both involve secret activities of a group of rich people. "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" involves Nature in all its majesty, though, while the secret in Corpses at Indian Stones is more at the level of mere finance. Still, the two works and these subplots have some formal similarity.