Page, Marco -- Fast Company (1938)

Page/Kurnitz wrote or co-wrote 33 screenplays for Hollywood movies between 1938 and 1966.  He wrote or adapted 4 plays for the stage between 1954 and 1963.  More importantly for the purposes of this review, he wrote 4 mystery/detective novels between 1938 and 1955. Fast Company was the first of these.  Of his screen work, Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1945) are the most telling of his style because Page's detecting couple in Fast Company is obviosly based upon Nick and Nora Charles from Hammett's novel The Thin Man (1934).

The plot of Fast Company revolves around some dirty business going on in New York's rare book trade.  A frame-up and an elaborate scheme for stealing, altering and re-selling valuable books are the main plot-drivers in this fast-paced mystery.  Rare book dealer Joel Glass (with help from his wife, Garda) discovers that working for insurance companies recovering valuable stolen books is more remunerative than depression-era bookselling.  The characters make prodigious amounts of wisecracks and drink prodigious amounts of liquor before the story is concluded.  One would not think that so much gunplay, knife-throwing, fist-fighting, kidnapping, head-conking, pistol-whipping, bookstealing and fem-fataling was going on in the 1930's New York rare book milieu.

The best way to describe Page's writing recipe is as follows:  Combine one part Hammett's Nick and Nora with one part screwball comedy with one part thriller-ish action and then add a tiny dash of fair-play clueing.

One plot point that really annoyed me was that, one day after a character is shot in the shoulder, he manages to free himself from being tied up, beats up a crook and jumps out of a second story window.  It's almost as if Page forgot that the character had been shot.

To be fair to Page, the general consensus of COC and Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers is that Fast Company is probably the weakest of his four mystery novels.  Still, it was good enough to win Dodd Mead's Red Badge Prize and it got him to Hollywood where three movies were made based on the lead characters of Fast Company.

A very good review of Fast Company written on 05/09/08 by "prettysinister" on the LibraryThing website indicates that it was one of the earliest American bibliomystery novels.  I don't know if that is true.

Bob Schneider 07/2009

Here is the review for Fast Company mentioned above by Bob Schneider.  His comment about my saying the book is one of the earliest American bibliomysteries neglects to complete the sentence and that is that the story is completely set in the bookselling world.  Most biblomysteries of the Golden Age only include plot elements about a rare book or manuscript and do not deal at all with the business world of rare book selling.

One of the earliest (published in 1938) American bibliomystery novels completely set in the bookselling world.  A bookseller and his wife try to solve the murder of a crooked bookseller who framed a man for the theft of some highly valuable books still missing two years after the crime.  Highly reminiscent of Nick and Nora Charles in their movie incarnations.  A writing style that is completely borrowed from the 1930s screwball movies.  It’s a bit overdone, in my opinion, all empty wisecracks, lots of drinking and partying amid a violent murder and bookselling chicanery that should perhaps be taken a lot more seriously than the characters seem to be doing.  Lots of characters, too!  Kurnitz’s first novel under this pseudonym which led to a successful screenplay writing career – something he obviously wanted.  In fact, he would go on to write two movie sequels with this husband/wife detective team as well as two of the Thin Man movie sequels.  Also noteworthy as the second novel to win the $1000 Red Badge Prize from Dodd Mead in their annual mystery writing contest that lasted for about seven years or so.

J. F. Norris