It's always funny what upsets a person. I loved Craig Rice's Home Sweet Homicide (1944), a very funny proto-cozy in which a crime writer's three children undertake the solving of the murder next door as a publicity stunt on behalf of their mother while she all unknowing is just trying to bang out the latest manuscript to deadline. With great pleasure, I began Eight Faces at Three (1939), the first of a dozen-ish novels to feature her series character of John J. Malone, a permanently rumpled, equally crocked small-time lawyer with a genius for successfully defending the guilty and an acceptance of human failure so profound that it feels less like cynicism than Zen. It's just too early to be a screwball noir, so I might have to call it a hard-boiled screwball; it takes the icy, nightmarish premise of a murder committed at the moment that all the clocks in the house seemingly stopped at once and pours on so much wisecracking and gin that even as persons of interest appear and disappear like a shell game and family secrets loom Gothically out of the fog, the overall effect is essentially an effervescent, intermittently hungover romp. There's even an intertwined pair of romances, the major one between the two characters who will feature as often in future books as Malone, the rawboned press agent Jake Justus and the tough-talking debutante Helene Brand. And then there's the piece of the story that bit me, which I am still puzzling over a little. It isn't a very big piece of the story, but here we are.
Hyme Mendel, district attorney of Blake County, had always been a little inclined to hate everybody. In fact, he had been born just a bit angry. He was an exceptionally bright young man, and he had been aware of it ever since he brought home his first report card. But in his early life, no one seemed to notice it. The Ingleharts and other residents sent their clothes to be cleaned and pressed at his father's little shop and spoke in a kindly tone to young Hyme when he delivered them. But no one paid any other attention to him.
He was honest as well as bright, and his sense of justice was almost as furious as his sense of injustice. At heart, he was a kindly young man, but the same generous providence that had seen him through law school and made him district attorney of Blake County had dumped Maple Park's first murder in years right on his lap. Moreover, it had landed that murder among the Maple Park residents he hated most.
He felt that he should have enjoyed the situation. Instead, he was annoyed and irritated and a little hurt. He hated these people who had always ignored him.
He hated little Parkins who had seemed to imply that he, Hyme Mendel, should have used the rear entrance.
He hated Holly Inglehart, so cool and poised and perfectly at home in surroundings that bothered him in spite of himself.
And, finally, he hated poor Jasper Fleck with a positive fury because he considered the venerable chief of police of Maple Park a stupid fool who liked nothing better than to kowtow to these people.
Well, he, Hyme Mendel, was going to be different. This Inglehart girl wasn't going to be treated any differently from any other criminal. These people weren't any better than he was. He had as much right to be in the Inglehart library as anybody.
He wished he'd worn his other suit.
It's funny, you see, because Mendel really is out of his league working a murder case among one of the oldest and most high-hat families of Chicago, so self-conscious in the presence of his social betters that his efforts at nonchalant authority end with him dropping his hat and blushing furiously. His insecurity makes him a fish in a barrel for Helene to twist round her finger, playing up to him for time and information while her compatriots scramble sincerely, if sloshily, to get to the increasingly surreal bottom of the mystery and save the prime suspect of well-loved, well-bred Holly Inglehart. Especially because the reader knows from chapter one that she's innocent, Mendel's dogged pursuit of evidence to the contrary doesn't make him look like a crusader sticking to his guns, it makes him look like a clever fool. I understand that he represents the law and when the heroes are all amateur gumshoes, the law is contractually obliged to trip on a banana peel. But when an upper-crust character disparages a self-made one with a line like "You ought to be back at your job delivering coats and pants from the cleaners," my immediate response is fuck 'em up, Hyme Mendel. Alas, when he tries to arrest the now obviously, insultingly obstructive Helene as a material witness, first she slaps him and then Jake socks him cold. That's funny, too—he's been such a pest, he has it coming. The sight of the bruise on his jaw vainly dusted with face powder is the one bright spot for Jake in the tension of the Christie-style denouement. I should stress that the D.A. is not a main character; his scenes in fact comprise a very minor portion of the total plot. But it winds through the book like bitter aloes and I might have twinged at the class condescension regardless of his ethnicity, but when it's applied to the one Jewish character in the story, something more than a twinge results. In fairness to the text, it is never stated that he's Jewish, unless a sardonic allusion to Svengali is intended to suggest it. I don't even recall that he's physically described beyond his harassed and embarrassed, progressively patience-losing air. You find me a goy named Hyme Mendel, I'll wait.
I am not sure why this characterization bothers me so much. I am accustomed to enjoying art by any number of artists who would not have considered me quite human, in whose work I cannot exist except by misunderstanding or caricature—I don't expect to find myself in most art, especially not detective fiction from 1939. One braces for anti-Semitism when reading in the Golden Age. On that front, Hyme Mendel is hardly the worst American literature has to offer. He's not greedy or crooked, he's an antagonist as opposed to a villain, he even finishes the novel in a legal argument with Malone, reminding the reader that he can hold his own on his professional ground when given a fair chance rather than a lot of end-runs and obfuscation. Still. It's something about the dismissal of his intelligence, which for all his kvelling report cards can't match the street smarts of our boozed-up protagonists. It's something about the chip on his shoulder, which the novel tsk-tsks as a conceited foible instead of a valid awareness of class and race. Most of all, I think it's the casual reinforcement of his status as a permanent and deserved outsider, the jumped-up tailor's boy whose inferiority complex gets him so down on a poor little rich girl that he doesn't just miss the real culprit by miles, he gets decked for his pains and serve him right, too. [edit: It occurred to me in the shower that the optics of punching a Jew for comedy in 1939 have only gotten worse.] I'd had no warning of it from my previous experience of Rice. It caught me on the raw. I don't know if I would always have had as sharp a reaction or if the last five years have rather lowered my tolerance, but that's one of those unanswerable questions. I'd never heard of the book before this summer.
On finishing Eight Faces at Three, I made a point of checking insofar as it was possible for further appearances of Hyme Mendel in the works of Craig Rice and he does not seem to return, which I suppose I should take as a win for the possibility of reading further in this series, since under normal circumstances a character like Malone would be jam for me. As it is, at the moment I'm thinking I may just stick to Margery Allingham and Dick Francis. tl;dr fuck 'em up, Hyme Mendel. I guess I'll take recommendations for antidotes if anyone has them.
Hyme Mendel, district attorney of Blake County, had always been a little inclined to hate everybody. In fact, he had been born just a bit angry. He was an exceptionally bright young man, and he had been aware of it ever since he brought home his first report card. But in his early life, no one seemed to notice it. The Ingleharts and other residents sent their clothes to be cleaned and pressed at his father's little shop and spoke in a kindly tone to young Hyme when he delivered them. But no one paid any other attention to him.
He was honest as well as bright, and his sense of justice was almost as furious as his sense of injustice. At heart, he was a kindly young man, but the same generous providence that had seen him through law school and made him district attorney of Blake County had dumped Maple Park's first murder in years right on his lap. Moreover, it had landed that murder among the Maple Park residents he hated most.
He felt that he should have enjoyed the situation. Instead, he was annoyed and irritated and a little hurt. He hated these people who had always ignored him.
He hated little Parkins who had seemed to imply that he, Hyme Mendel, should have used the rear entrance.
He hated Holly Inglehart, so cool and poised and perfectly at home in surroundings that bothered him in spite of himself.
And, finally, he hated poor Jasper Fleck with a positive fury because he considered the venerable chief of police of Maple Park a stupid fool who liked nothing better than to kowtow to these people.
Well, he, Hyme Mendel, was going to be different. This Inglehart girl wasn't going to be treated any differently from any other criminal. These people weren't any better than he was. He had as much right to be in the Inglehart library as anybody.
He wished he'd worn his other suit.
It's funny, you see, because Mendel really is out of his league working a murder case among one of the oldest and most high-hat families of Chicago, so self-conscious in the presence of his social betters that his efforts at nonchalant authority end with him dropping his hat and blushing furiously. His insecurity makes him a fish in a barrel for Helene to twist round her finger, playing up to him for time and information while her compatriots scramble sincerely, if sloshily, to get to the increasingly surreal bottom of the mystery and save the prime suspect of well-loved, well-bred Holly Inglehart. Especially because the reader knows from chapter one that she's innocent, Mendel's dogged pursuit of evidence to the contrary doesn't make him look like a crusader sticking to his guns, it makes him look like a clever fool. I understand that he represents the law and when the heroes are all amateur gumshoes, the law is contractually obliged to trip on a banana peel. But when an upper-crust character disparages a self-made one with a line like "You ought to be back at your job delivering coats and pants from the cleaners," my immediate response is fuck 'em up, Hyme Mendel. Alas, when he tries to arrest the now obviously, insultingly obstructive Helene as a material witness, first she slaps him and then Jake socks him cold. That's funny, too—he's been such a pest, he has it coming. The sight of the bruise on his jaw vainly dusted with face powder is the one bright spot for Jake in the tension of the Christie-style denouement. I should stress that the D.A. is not a main character; his scenes in fact comprise a very minor portion of the total plot. But it winds through the book like bitter aloes and I might have twinged at the class condescension regardless of his ethnicity, but when it's applied to the one Jewish character in the story, something more than a twinge results. In fairness to the text, it is never stated that he's Jewish, unless a sardonic allusion to Svengali is intended to suggest it. I don't even recall that he's physically described beyond his harassed and embarrassed, progressively patience-losing air. You find me a goy named Hyme Mendel, I'll wait.
I am not sure why this characterization bothers me so much. I am accustomed to enjoying art by any number of artists who would not have considered me quite human, in whose work I cannot exist except by misunderstanding or caricature—I don't expect to find myself in most art, especially not detective fiction from 1939. One braces for anti-Semitism when reading in the Golden Age. On that front, Hyme Mendel is hardly the worst American literature has to offer. He's not greedy or crooked, he's an antagonist as opposed to a villain, he even finishes the novel in a legal argument with Malone, reminding the reader that he can hold his own on his professional ground when given a fair chance rather than a lot of end-runs and obfuscation. Still. It's something about the dismissal of his intelligence, which for all his kvelling report cards can't match the street smarts of our boozed-up protagonists. It's something about the chip on his shoulder, which the novel tsk-tsks as a conceited foible instead of a valid awareness of class and race. Most of all, I think it's the casual reinforcement of his status as a permanent and deserved outsider, the jumped-up tailor's boy whose inferiority complex gets him so down on a poor little rich girl that he doesn't just miss the real culprit by miles, he gets decked for his pains and serve him right, too. [edit: It occurred to me in the shower that the optics of punching a Jew for comedy in 1939 have only gotten worse.] I'd had no warning of it from my previous experience of Rice. It caught me on the raw. I don't know if I would always have had as sharp a reaction or if the last five years have rather lowered my tolerance, but that's one of those unanswerable questions. I'd never heard of the book before this summer.
On finishing Eight Faces at Three, I made a point of checking insofar as it was possible for further appearances of Hyme Mendel in the works of Craig Rice and he does not seem to return, which I suppose I should take as a win for the possibility of reading further in this series, since under normal circumstances a character like Malone would be jam for me. As it is, at the moment I'm thinking I may just stick to Margery Allingham and Dick Francis. tl;dr fuck 'em up, Hyme Mendel. I guess I'll take recommendations for antidotes if anyone has them.
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