First, my hat is off to our list owner who after first
restating the rules has now led by example in his fine
write-up of John D's PALE GRAY FOR GUILT. I have good
memories of this book. Although I read the pb, this was the
first hardcover of a Travis McGee that I remember seeing.
Some company
(Lippincott??) began publishing hardcover reprints of the pb
originals and that may have been what this was. Anyway,
thanks chief, and I will follow suit.
THE DEATH OF HUMPTY DUMPTY by David Alexander was first
published in 1957, I presume by Random House who was
Alexander's US publisher at the time. I read the 1959
Boardman reprint, one of many I have purchased over the years
from Jeff Meyerson who regularly goes to England to find book
treasures. The Boardmans are a special treat as they
regularly gave hardback honors to American PBOs.
Anyway, back to the book at hand. This is one of the best of
Alexander's Bart Hardin 8-novel series. Hardin was the
managing editor of the Broadway Times, a theatrical and
sporting journal who lived on 42nd Street just above the
Bromberg's Flea Circus and Fun Arcade. Alexander spent ten
years as the managing editor of the New York Morning
Telegraph, so what he writes comes from a deep
background.
Humpty Dumpty Hughes is the comic relief at a New York strip
club. A holdover from burlesque, it used to be routine to
have comics between the strippers or to act as MCs for the
acts. Yea verily, I am old enough to have witnessed this
personally. (Your correspondent pauses here to ruminate on
the fact that he remembers those tired comics of decades ago
even though the young ladies of that time are generally lost
in a collage of tits and hips. Sigh...)
Alexander opens his story with Hardin at home in bed on New
Years Eve. He refuses to go out and drink on the amateur
night of the first of the year. He is watching television
even though he can hear the crowd out his window. But a
friend calls. Zita Janos is a young dancer who he befriended
and got her a job at a grind joint called the Fig Leaf. She
calls at a few minutes to midnight asking him to come share
New Year's with her and he reluctantly dresses and goes the
few blocks to her house. There, looking out the window, he
witnesses an egg-shaped man dressed in a clown suit perched
in a window of a hotel and then falling to his death. Humpty
Dumpty Hughes, the comic who worked at the Fig Leaf.
Alas, it must be noted that Alexander is prone to these
coincidences. One either accepts them or not. I do and I am
quick to protest them.
But when he calls the police there is no body. It seems
Humpty Dumpty landed on a ledge five or six floors below but
the body was removed before the police arrived. He was
however very dead as his body was later delivered to Hardin's
door by a horse-drawn cab. (While it may seem obvious that he
would have died, I remember that my wife's Uncle Carl went
out the 11th floor window of the Admiral Farragut Hotel in
Knoxville, Tennessee and lived to star in a Ripley's Believe
It Or Not cartoon. So I note his death precisely.
Uncle Carl was probably drunker than Humpty Dumpty
Hughes and that may have saved him)
The story we enter is a shadowy world of mobsters who control
strip clubs as well as race track touts. It pits Hardin
directly against a syndicate boss who always speaks of
himself in the third person. Just when he seems to be too
soft, Hardin shows toughness. He is a hard hero for me to
predict. He always keeps me guessing. Meanwhile we are
treated to a view of the world that drips realism.
Even after Alexander left his position with the New York
Telegraph ( a publication on which his fictional Broadway
Times is based, the author followed the racing world as a
regular contributor to Blood Horse and other thoroughbred
racing publications. His stories and first hand accounts were
key pieces used to put together the superb book on
Seabiscuit. He was a personal friend of the jockey and
continued to chronicle the jockey's life long after he faded
into obscurity. By the way, I can't wait to see the
Seabiscuit movie.
Is this a great novel? No. I find some of his technique
off-putting, such as the italicized chapter openings. I did
enjoy the hell out of it and I sped through the reading
enjoying every moment and am anxious to begin more by
Alexander.
Pronzini, a fan of Alexander, noted that he was even better
at short lengths than as a novelist. So I now have stacked up
four or five of his short stories and novelettes on which I
will report later.
Richard Moore
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