Kersh, Gerald - Prelude to a Certain Midnight (1947)
Those of you who know this author from the recent Karmesin collection from Crippen & Landru, and enjoyed him, should try this one (my edition is Dover 1983, and it probably isn't that hard to find). It is not a detective story, but rather a sort of crime novel that has no real resolution. It is SUPERBLY written, with character descriptions that will split your sides, and also some very evocative prose, as in renditions of some people's nightmares, and also the depressed and fog - bound London of the time. It takes place in the East End of London in the late 1930s (in retrospect), and involves an eccentric pub that was the hang - out for some of the neighborhood, Jewish haberdashers, hack writers, sluts, obsessives of various sorts, and feminist reformers, all of whom are presented both wittily and respectfully.
I will just give a couple of examples, and if you like that sort of thing, as I do, you will love this book (on the other hand, I can understand that to some tastes this is too contrived and superficial).
The body of the lobster resembled Mothmar's nose, and the extended claws his eyebrows. Mothmar Acord had a baked, glazed, pitted face - a dish - shaped face, discoloured by oriental suns and high fevers, and distorted by unholy passions. The oval dish might have been Mothmar's head on a pillow - only the mouth was not there. His mouth was difficult to describe and impossible to forget. The upper lip was a Cupid's bow: the lower was sucked away so that it radiated wrinkles like the ribs of a fan. Under heavy brows like frayed packing string, his murderous little blue eyes stared you out of countenance and then withdrew into spider webs of wrinkles while the mouth smiled downwards. He had lived most of his life in the tropics; drank soberly for hours, and then suddenly got drunk and pinched you viciously, always smiling. Mothmar had the air of a man gone rotten without ripening, in too much sunshine - the kind of sunshine from which a man tries to hide, and so goes yellow and decays.
She was a big blonde, with little pale eyes set too close to a nose shaped like a potato. Her face appeared flat and powdery as a flounder dusted with flour before it is thrown into the frying pan; and her mouth protruded like the scalloped edge of a pie.
But Shocket the Bloodsucker (a boxing promotor) talked for the two of them. When Shocket opened his mouth, which he did continuously, you were reminded of a piece of steak in which a butcher has made a preliminary cut. Out of this red, glutinous gash came a monotonous, husky voice with the penetrative quality of a cow - bell in a mist.
The story is about a child rapist/killer, and is quite harrowing in a quiet way, but its fine presentation puts Harris (Hannibal Lecter) to shame. This is the way that sort of thing OUGHT to be done. I really think this author deserves more attention, so thanks to Doug for publishing the Karmesin stories. At least that's a start.
Wyatt James
Yes, but is it detection? Like The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor, which appeared at about the same time, Prelude to a Certain Midnight is a self-indulgent piece of wordplay that has little to do with telling a story or solving a crime. Its main goal appears to be sketching characters; filling in detail about Soho-dwellers of the Thirties and their hangers-on. These are drawn convincingly enough. Their silly names tell us, though, that this is all really a game - a Noel Coward drama in prose form, full of brittle conversation and very little real emotion.
Kersh seems to have preferred the short story form. I think he should have stuck to it.
Jon.
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