"Arthur finished shaving and then, although it was early in
the morning for a drink, he poured a Scotch." From Edwin
Lanham's SLUG IT SLAY (Harcourt, Brace & Company 1946)
and reprinted by Bantam as HEADLINED FOR MURDER.
This is a throw-away line in Lanham's novel but as the
preacher might say, I'm taking it as the text for my sermon
because it illustrates a bigger truth. The hard-drinking hero
of hard-boiled novels is a cliche but the hard-drinking
reporter is a stereotype that is underlined through popular
culture far beyond our little niche.
And, guess what, while exaggerated, there is some truth to
the cliche which Edwin Lanham a veteran of various newspapers
including the New York Herald Tribune well knew. And I know
it as well. One of the reasons I enjoyed this novel is that I
am a former reporter and have myself written mysteries with a
reporter hero.
Reporters did drink quite a bit. I put this in the past tense
because, as with the rest of society, they do not, in my
experience, drink nearly as much as a group as they did in
years past. Let me tell you a story about an old reporter I
knew.
When I was a reporter in Atlanta there was an old-timer who
was a legend because of his coverage of the Winecoff Hotel
fire in Atlanta during the 1940s. More people died in that
fire than in any hotel fire in U.S. history. Dozens of people
leaped to escape the flames and died in the fall. There was a
convention of young people from around the state, high school
students, many of whom died. This guy walked in off the
street to a wire service and screamed "Give me a typewriter"
and sat down and began writing and didn't get up or stop
writing for 24 hours. He had been a newspaper reporter and
witnessed the tragedy and searched out the nearest newsroom
to spill his guts. At some point during that 24 hours the
wire service hired him.
It was a wonderful story. But years pass and that reporter is
pretty deep in the bottle. Now he favors the overnight shift
where there is little contact with people, except through the
phone, and the only requirement is accuracy and quickness. If
you have those two things you can hold a job at a wire
service. He liked the overnight shift because he could drink
on the job without criticism. He would slip into the rest
room and pull out a pint bottle he carried in his coat
pocket, nestled under his arm, and take a slug. Nobody cared.
He was accurate and he was quick. But we had reached an age
when drinking on the job was frowned on. Hence the midnight
shift.
So one day our hero is on his way to the bathroom for his
periodic drink which required he pass near the elevators. It
was after midnight. The elevator doors open and there is the
bureau chief and, worse yet, a visiting executive from New
York. There is no escape! He will be introduced and his
liquored breath will be all too evident.
In his moment of panic, glancing around, he spots a penny on
the floor. To avoid facing the arriving executives, the
reporter says "A Penny!" and bends down to pick it up. His
intention is to use this diversion to avoid directly facing
the visitors. At least he would be able to duck below their
noses because of the penny.
Unfortunately the pint slips out of his coat pocket, falls to
the floor and shatters wetly into a thousand pieces. The
reporter pauses just a moment, bending over, and lifts the
penny up. He stands, looking intently at the penny and says:
"Penny wise...Pint foolish."
Following this, he continues on his way to the bathroom. His
recovery was so admired (these were after all writers who
were judging him) that he retained his job.
So I can understand how Edwin Lanham has a newsroom in New
York of a morning newspaper where the reporters and editors
with regularity, and no condemnation, leave during their
evening work period for a drink or two.
I was also charmed by the mechanics of Lanham's newsroom. We
are talking
"hot" type here and I am in the last generation of reporters
who grew up in the hot type era. Friends, the words and
sentences had to be set in lead on a linotype machine. The
"slug" in the title of the story refers to the word the
reporter would put into the left hand corner of the story
that would identify it.
Stories were written in "takes," especially on
deadline. So "Slay" would go down to composing as "Slay, Take
One" and "Slay, Take Two" and etc.
Lanham much later wrote a book entitled THE PASTE-POT MAN,
which I have ordered but have not seen. But I know what a
"Paste-Pot Man" was. The paste-pot was essential to a
reporter and editor. Forget computers! You are typewriting on
copy paper. If you rewrite a paragraph, you don't want to
retype the whole story! You tear out the new paragraph and
glue it with the past-pot in place of the paragraph you are
replacing.
All of those things of my past...past-pots, pica poles, and
the pictures that had to be converted to engravings are all
gone.
But to the story. Arthur Leslie is the relatively new city
editor of the New York Courier when the publisher Forrest C.
Willshire is murdered in his penthouse apartment above the
newspaper. The publisher had written his own obituary and had
it on file. When this was published in 1946, I am certain
that it was a surprise to readers that obits were written in
advance. Now it is more widely known. The obit for Bob Hope
in the New York Times was written by a writer who had died a
few years ago. Back in 1946 this would have been a surprise.
The obit contains essential clues for what is initially
thought a suicide is a murder and the suicide note is truly a
fragment of the obit. The motive for the murder goes back
decades to when the publisher was a young man of modest means
in Oklahoma.
This is an inside job and the key is who had the motive. My
biggest complaint on this novel is something that was common
in novels of that time. Instead of a simple, straightforward
story, it becomes complicated as the writer tries to
introduce every character in the story to the death scene to
make them a suspect. Even though the thrust of the story was
contra-Christie style writing, there was a reluctance to
abandon the convention of making everyone and his brother a
potential suspect.
If you look at Hubin you will see that this novel is listed
as part of a series. But the series is not featuring the
reporter Leslie. The series is Lieutenant Madigan of
homicide, who in this story is very much a secondary
character. I don't know how he is treated in other novels but
based on my enjoyment of this one I plan to find out.
Richard Moore
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