If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

Constiner, Merle

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 3 months ago

Merle Constiner (1901-1979) was an American pulp author who wrote both detective fiction and Westerns. His main detective characters were Wardlow Rock (The Dean) and Ben Matthews. He was born in Ohio and married a woman named Susannah in 1934. He spent some years in Tennessee, where he attended Vanderbilt University, before moving back to Ohio permanently in his thirties. Constiner was a heavy smoker, and suffered a stroke in 1970 which curtailed his writing activity.

Mike Grost on Merle Constiner

Merle C. Constiner's extravagant humor and ingenious plots surprises are greatly appreciated. There is something especially cheery and upbeat about Constiner's work. It makes you feel good.

Peter Ruber has published a biographical article] on Constiner for the on-line journal Pulp Rack, 'The Hunt for Merle Constiner', and a bibliography of his stories.

The Dean

Constiner wrote a series of pulp stories about sleuth Wardlow Rock, known as "The Dean", and Benton "Ben" Matthews, his Watson-like narrator and assistant. These have recently been collected in one volume, The Compleat Adventures of The Dean (2004), edited by Robert Weinberg. The 19 tales appeared in the pulp Dime Detective (1940 - 1945). The stories take place in a comic version of a hard-boiled world, and both heroes are good at shoot-outs and other typical pulp action scenes. But the Dean is also a Sherlock Holmes-like genius detective, with a vast Holmes-like fund of specialized knowledge. Like Holmes, the Dean is a consulting detective, who lives and works in a rooming house presided over by a respectable landlady: here Mrs. Duffy. Just as Holmes is sometimes consulted by a hostile but admiring policeman, Inspector Lestrade, so does the Dean have a rivalry with an honest policeman, Lieutenant Mallory, who reluctantly consults him on the most baffling and bizarre incidents encountered by the police.

The stories also sometimes echo Rex Stout. Ben Matthews is a slum kid, while the Dean is a genius, a bit like how tough guy Archie Goodwin works for super-sleuth Nero Wolfe. The Dean spends a lot of time on non-commercial, intellectual hobbies, in the same way the Wolfe is devoted to orchids and gourmet food. The Dean sometimes sulks and takes it out on Ben, like Nero and Archie, and both teams do a lot of angling to collect big fees from rich clients. However, the well-developed, actual personalities of the Dean and Ben are very different from Nero and Archie; the Dean is not an armchair detective, like Wolfe, but goes everywhere; the Dean is a mature, dynamic acting if eccentric person, and not a big baby like Wolfe who has to be cajoled; and the raffish milieu is far from Stout's upper-middle class New York. The bacon, eggs and flapjack breakfasts frequently described in the stories also seem a world away from Stout's gourmet meals.

The pilot Dean story "Strangler's Kill" (1940) is especially well done. All the pieces of the plot come together superbly well. Today, with a title like that you would expect a horror story, but in the days of the pulps the titles were far more lurid than the actual tales themselves; one suspects that many of them were created by the magazines' editors, not the authors. It is actually a good natured, G-rated detective story. I would love to see a lot more of his work reprinted. In some other of his tales, the clues are eccentric and interesting, but the solutions tend to be a bit on the far fetched and illogical side. So far, all the Constiner tales available do have elaborate puzzle plot narratives, and point out once again how common this was in the best pulp magazine writers.

"They'll Kill Again" (1941) explicitly discusses in its dialogue some of the story construction approaches of the Dean stories. Near the beginning of the tale, Ben points out that there are four separate, seemingly unrelated subplots all going on. The Dean replies that no, all four are facets of the same over-all crime mystery - but he does not explain how. Much of the rest of the story is an attempt to establish connections between the various plots. The Dean's classic remark (section Chapter 4), when he refuses to listen to Banker Vaughn's suggestion, is a delirious reflection of this situation.

The "merger of different subplots" construction of the Dean tales is partly related to, and partly different from, the "pulp style of plotting". In the "pulp style", which was pioneered by Carroll John Daly, there are so many characters in the story, each pursing independent courses of action, that much of the mystery is trying to untangle which of them performed each new mysterious event in the tale. One gets some of that in Constiner's Dean stories. As the different subplots are sewn together, one often learns that mysterious actions are related to a character one would not initially suspect. This recalls the "pulp style". However, in the classic "pulp style" tales of Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner and their followers, all the actions are part of one large complex interacting network. By contrast, Constiner's Dean tales seem constructed more of discrete subplot pieces, all somehow unified together.

The Subplots

Constiner uses a number of story telling paradigms to create his subplots. These run through several of the Dean tales.

The Dean offers encounters mysterious words or phrases in the course of the investigation. These obscure words turn out to be part of some craft, science or lore. The Dean will eventually consult experts in this field, who explain the surprising meaning of these phrases. This in turn will add another piece to the growing plot mosaic of the story.

The con games of cheap grifters also create mysteries. The subplot will start with the Dean and Ben encountering some small, often bizarre or surreal trace of some con activity. This can be some oddball mechanical device used in its commission. Or the strange behavior of some minor character. Eventually, the Dean or Ben will deduce that this device or behavior is part of some larger con scheme. Constiner usually suggests that these are ancient, long established con games, tricks widely known in the underworld. However, all of these schemes seem little known. At least to me: they always take me by surprise. Formally, these strange bits of business leading to larger con schemes are similar to the use of strange phrases by Constiner. In each, and odd, obscure, and hard to explain story element turns out to be part of some organized body of knowledge, whether a respectable craft, as the odd phrases do, or an underworld con scheme. After the explanation of this mini-mystery, which takes place right in the middle of the tale, instead of waiting for the end, the activity thus revealed becomes in turn part of the overall plot of the story.

There are several types of buildings encountered repeatedly in the Dean tales: 1) Mansions of the rich. These tend to have odd-ball aspects, and to be loaded with pretension. 2) Isolated shacks, often run by bad guys. These shacks tend to turn out to be workshops, in which the bad guys carry on strange crafts and professions. They tend to be full of specialized tools. 3) Run down office buildings. 4) Cheap apartment houses, with strange superintendents or eccentric landladies. This gives Constiner a chance for a double dose of bizarrie: first the Dean encounters the superintendent or landlady, then the actual suspect he has come to interview. 5) Cheap restaurants or bars, often hangouts of the underworld. These have a similar double whammy: first the Dean or Ben meets their eccentric proprietor or bartender, then the suspect who is one of the customers. Ben often enters such bars on his own - Ben is a product of the city's tenderloin, and he is often the sleuth who investigates low-lifes in the tales. 6) Underground architectural structures, such as wells, that are in the back grounds of residential buildings. These are often spooky places, and have a unique architecture and purpose that is discussed in the tale. 7) Outbuildings of mansions of every type: garages with chauffeurs' apartments above, gate-houses, tool shacks, boat houses, stables. 8) Cellars and attics. These can have strange architecture, and be half-finished, compared to the office buildings or mansions that contain them.

The Dean's own landlady, Mrs. Duffy, sometimes entertains the Dean's clients while he is out of the office. She always winds up developing some off trail approach to said hosting. She also solves subplots in the mystery, which the Dean puts to her in abstract form.

Constiner likes strange-themed parties. These seem to be a 1940's specialty. People seemed to like official hospitality in this era, and create all sorts of planned get togethers. Similar parties sometimes turn up in comic books, which often focused on such get togethers for their plots.

There are a lot of off-trail locales in which the bad guys have secretly buried bodies. Strange poisons play a role in the tales, with unusual symptoms. Wills and complex chains of inheritance also are common. All three are the common coin of much mystery fiction. But they also recall the work of R. Austin Freeman, as do the tales' emphasis on skilled craftsmanship and ancient lore. A plot twist early in "The Riddle of the Monster Bat" (1943) recalls ideas in Freeman's "The Naturalist at Law".

The Dean and Ben are always tracking down characters, who have been mentioned, but not yet seen on stage by the detectives or the reader. Sometimes this is a simple matter of looking them up in the phone book; other times it is a huge search that becomes a major element of mystery plotting, with an ingenious surprise when the character's locale is finally revealed. The characters often wind up living in some strange, colorful home, which is described in detail. There are dozens of such locales in the story, all eccentric, all vividly set forth. The characters come from a huge range of backgrounds, from the very rich to the very poor, with every sort of working class background thrown in. Many characters do not have much money, and the tales show how poor everyone was at the end of the Depression. The rich characters have far less "class" than they often do in 1940's non-pulp mysteries, lacking the sophistication and pretension of those of the Van Dine school, the HIBK writers, or British country house whodunits. The rich characters often have mean streaks, and an addiction to night clubs, drink and dissolution. In addition to the respectable characters, rich, working class or poor, there are also an endless parade of con men, mob hit men and crooks. These tend not to be the mysterious murderer behind the puzzle plot. Instead, they add color and complexity to the plotting, as well as the action scenes that were de rigeur in the pulps.

The Dean and Ben live in a run down rooming house on the edge of the slums; they share three rooms, which double as their office, and never seem to have any money or consumer goods, and do not own a car. They seem like a portrait of the desperate financial state of middle America in the late Depression, themselves. While they always make a big bucks fee at the end of the story, their financial lot never improves in the next tale. One suspects that the big-money finish is designed to give the working class readers of the pulps a fantasy thrill. The Dean could be a portrait of an intellectually trained man with no job opportunities in the Depression, reduced to struggling to get by on his wits, and the tales make clear that Ben was at the end of his rope before he was "rescued" by the Dean and made his assistant.

Non-series Stories

"Last Page of the Hangman's Diary" (1945) is the only tale about a sleuth named Kincaid, and Constiner's only piece for Ten Detective Aces. The story appeared as the Dean tales were coming to an end, and the tale strongly resembles the Dean outings. We have a mansion with some interesting and unusual architectural features that play a role in the plot: both a Golden Age specialty, and a recurrent feature of the Dean stories. There is also the rural cabin deep in an isolated recreational area, a number of eccentric suspects who range from rich to poor, clues in the form of arcane words and phrases, a complex back history for the characters involving wills and inheritance, an inside look at a racket (here stealing and fencing rare books), and a pure puzzle plot approach topped off with very occasional action scenes, including a final shoot-out: all features known (and loved) in the Dean series. "Last Page of the Hangman's Diary" is not as long as the Dean stories (most of which are fifty page novellas), and Kincaid is a solitary sleuth without a Watson or as many hobbies as the Dean (although his fondness for photos of caves perhaps ties in with all the underground structures in Constiner). His personality comes across: bemused, ironic, sensitive to the slightest nuance, not easily deceived. He has a restaurant-based office, like Norbert Davis' Max Latin, and a little bit of Davis' humor clings to the detective's characterization.

"Last Page of the Hangman's Diary" shows an interesting construction, joining together its subplot mysteries. Once a subplot mystery's solution is explained, it in turn leads to a second mystery. These second mysteries, as a group, all revolve around one central mystery - their explanations all form pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, involving one central riddle. This "two level deep" construction shows considerable formal beauty, and requires plotting skill. To give a concrete example, what and who are causing the hangman noises, and why? Once we learn the answer to this, the answer serves as clue in a new central puzzle. And what is the truth about the enigmatic "Dog's-Tooth Bond" the old man wanted investigated? When the truth about this is revealed, it too serves as a clue in another mystery: the same mystery for which the hangman noises solution became a clue. Not only is this two levels deep structure ingenious in itself. It serves to unify all the apparently completely unrelated subplots into a central mystery. Some other mystery subplots in the story (but not all of them) also take part in this grand design.

The name of the detective Kincaid, recalls Hake Talbot's sleuth Rogen Kincaid, who appeared in Hangman's Handyman (1942), a novel with a similar title to Constiner's story. Despite this, I cannot see much similarity between the two authors.

"Black of the Moon" (1946) is the only appearance of detective Lew Crockett. One wonders if this started out life as a Luther McGavock tale, and if Constiner changed the lead to sell it to a different pulp, Mammoth Detective. The names of the two sleuths are similar, and both travel to small Southern towns. Lew Crockett runs some small con games himself, but they are always to advance his detective work, never to make money. The overall detective plot does not cohere, with logical flaws in the plot. But some of the subplots are nice, and the story is pleasant reading. I especially liked the strange woman Crockett meets, and the subplot about the tool shed. The title refers to an odd back woods superstition, part of Constiner's ongoing interest in old lore - all of which he always debunks.

Constiner and T. S. Stribling

Merle Constiner's pulp mystery tales seem oddly similar in many ways to those of T.S. Stribling, although it is hard to see how they could have been too familiar with each other's work. (Neither one's detective work appeared much in book form, being largely confined to magazines.) Constiner's detective Dean Wardlow Rock resembles Dr. Poggioli, in being an erudite, eccentric scholar hired to work among the police and criminals. Both are bright, both can be flaky, and both are figures of humor, both admired and mocked by their authors. Ben Matthews, the Dean's Watson and narrator, is a down to Earth kind of guy, and sometimes seems very similar in tone to the narrator of Poggioli's later, post 1945 stories. As we said before, Constiner's first story about the Dean, "Strangler's Kill", is one of his best.

A second similarity is the nature of the characters both authors' detectives encounter. These characters are very eccentric, and many of them are engaged in mysterious enterprises, activities that are distinctly off beat and off center. In both authors, the exact nature of these enterprises is often initially not made clear. Figuring out exactly what the characters are up to is one of the principal tasks of the detective, in fact. The detective is aided in this search by clues these enterprises leave behind, clues that are often distinctly bizarre, to the point of surrealism.

A third similarity of the two authors is their focus on the humorous eccentricities of Southern Life. The Dean stories take place in an unnamed town, but one which is hot and muggy, and which has commercial ties with New Orleans in some of the tales. It could well be a fairly Southern city, perhaps in Kentucky or Tennessee. Constiner's other series detective, Luther McGavock, often visited small Southern towns, the same as Poggioli. McGavock appeared in Black Mask, just as the Dean stories ran in Dime Detective.

The Late Constiner Mystery-Westerns

Constiner did not write only for the pulps. Early in his career his short story "Big Singing" (Household Magazine, January 1932) was nominated for an O. Henry Award. After the pulps died in the early 1950's, Constiner published some stories in slick magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post, then began publishing paperback Western novels under his own name. Correspondents tell me that some of the books published by "Tom West" were also by Constiner, although I have been unable to verify this from independent sources. The Constiner Westerns include: Last Stand at Anvil Pass (1957), The Fourth Gunman (1958) published as a "double" with Slick on the Draw (1958) by Tom West, The Cactus Kid (1959) by Tom West, Short-Trigger Man (1964), Guns at Q Cross (1965) published as a "double" with The Toughest Gun in the Territory (1965) by Tom West, The Action at Redstone Creek (1965), Wolf on Horseback (1965) published as a "double" with Bushwack Brand (1965) by Tom West, Outrage at Bearskin Forks (1966), Rain of Fire (1966) published as a "double" with Bitter Brand (1966) by Tom West, Top Gun from the Dakotas (1966) published as a "double" with Rattesnake Range (1966) by Tom West, Two Pistols South of Deadwood (1967), The Four from Gila Bend (1968), Killers' Corral (1968), The Man Who Shot "The Kid" (1969), Death Waits at Dakins Station (1970), Steel-Jacket (1972). He also wrote novels, mainly about the American Revolutionary War, for young people, including Meet Me at the Merry Fifer (1966), The Rebel Courier and the Redcoats (1968) and Sumatra Alley (1971). Many of these books are quite short, from 100 to 130 pages, and are perhaps more long novellas than novels, strictly speaking. They are refreshingly unpadded by modern day standards. Some of these novels are fascinating combinations of the Mystery and Western fiction. However, not all of Constiner's Westerns are deeply mystery oriented. The Cactus Kid (1959) by "Tom West" has a murder mystery, but it is a minor element in a unmemorable Western dealing with violent confrontations (although the encounter with the nesters at the start of Chapter 8 is good).This book, like the other "Tom West" tales, may or may not be by Constiner. Death Waits at Dakins Station (1970) is much better written, but it has little mystery, strictly speaking.

Constiner's Short-Trigger Man (1964) is a Western novel, but it has many elements in common with mystery fiction. The tale opens with the hero innocently mixed up in a murder case; he spends most of the story trying to track down the killers and discover the sinister facts behind the killing. Much of the first half or more (Chapters 1 - 8) strongly resembles a detective novel, with the hero interviewing suspects and tracking down information; the second half has more pure elements of Western adventure. The hero, a retired gunslinger or "short-trigger man", can be seen as the Western equivalent of a modern day private eye, although the analogy is far from exact. Both spend much time investigating crimes among scenes of danger. His initial involvement in the crime stems from a failed mission that blows up in his face, just like the way many private eyes become enmeshed in their cases. The story differs from most mystery fiction in that the villains are identified early on, and the story has no whodunit aspects.

Unlike modern writers who mix mystery and Western fiction, such as Bill Pronzini and Edward D. Hoch, Constiner does not emphasize the fact that he is combining genres. He follows many conventions of detective fiction, but never explicitly calls attention to this. One suspects that his publishers or his readers or both simply wanted a Western, and Constiner was incorporating mystery elements as part of his own writing approach.

Constiner is good at vivid details of daily life. He has elaborate descriptions of food in the old West, and buildings, as well a nature and the clothes people wear. This gives the tale a vivid, "you are there" quality. The tale is much less surreal than some of Constiner's 1940's pulp stories. It shows good storytelling. Constiner often emphasizes mysteries of character. We first meet someone, and both his hero and the reader wonder what they are really like. Gradually, we find out in the novel.

The fine cover painting (perhaps by Jack Gaughan - the inside illustration is signed with his "JG" logo) of the original paperback publication of Short-Trigger Man shows two cowboys riding the same horse; the cover blurb states: "Share my horse, share my fate!" The only trouble with this is that no such scene occurs anywhere in the novel. This is a classic mix-up.

I suspect that Short-Trigger Man has many autobiographical elements. Not in a literal sense, but it conveying the feel of the author's life: what Andrew Sarris calls a "stream of emotional autobiography". Constiner's hero Watts Denning has many skills, some of which he uses professionally, some personally. He is a former gunman, now a professional barman. He is also an expert horseman, rider, cattleman, bookkeeper, student of human nature, and sleuth. All of these skills are poetic expressions of Constiner's own artistic gifts. Constiner had spent his life writing: it was a life devoted to art. Constiner's fiction had appeared in cheap outlets devoted to entertainment - pulp magazines and paperback original Westerns. This is similar to Watts' work as a barman in cheap but agreeable dives. Watts has no permanent home - he wanders from bar to bar to get work. Similarly, Constiner had found no permanent platform in publishing. Neither man minded this - both just accepted this as part of the nature of things, and enjoyed the variety of experiences, instead. The profession of barman is similar to Constiner's own: both serve up pleasant concoctions to the public. By the way, Short-Trigger Man does not emphasize alcohol; Watts often serves up a wide variety of non-alcoholic drinks to his Western patrons, as well as himself. He is as much a restaurateur, serving up beverages to accompany food, as what we today think of a barman. Watts' skills as a sleuth represent Constiner's ability to construct mystery plots; Watts' gunman abilities stand for Constiner's ability to write about violence, always a necessity in the world of pulp.

The working class environment of Short-Trigger Man also reflects Constiner's own life. My correspondents tell me that Constiner was a kindly man who spent his last years writing in a room in the back of the small house in Monroe, Ohio where his wife ran a nursery school. The room was decorated with the covers of Constiner's Western paperbacks. This is somewhat similar to the existence of Watts Denning, and most of his friends. Watts will wind up with a cot in a back room of whatever bar he is working, and enough food to eat. The other good characters in Short-Trigger Man lead similar lives. One holes up in the back of a burned out building. The sheriff and his wife have rooms above the courthouse; a friend owns and lives in a cheap bar on the wrong side of the rail road tracks, which he never crosses: he is uncomfortable on the fancy side of town. All of this is presented as typical existence in a small frontier town in the old West. But it also reflects the life of Constiner. Constiner should be compared to Mondrian, the great abstract painter who also devoted his life to his art. Mondrian never had more than a one room dwelling which served him as both a studio and as a bedroom. This is part of the price for what these men did. All in all, Short-Trigger Man is a poetic testament, telling us about Constiner's life and art.

The Four from Gila Bend (1968) does have a puzzle plot. Its construction is the reverse of Short-Trigger Man. The first half of this book emphasizes Western adventure, the second half concentrates more on the mystery puzzle plot. The puzzle plot has pleasant appeal, although it is not clear that it is "fair play": that Constiner gives the reader all the clues needed to deduce the solution. Its location is the opposite of Short-Trigger Man. That book took place in the far North of the United States, near the Canadian border in Montana, while The Four from Gila Bend takes place in Arizona, in the far South near the Mexican border. Both novels are in arid, barren, near desert locations, as is The Cactus Kid (1959). Constiner has a flair for describing such locations. They often have a poetic quality. They seem to give consolation to Constiner's heroes, and mirror their emotional states. Constiner discovers plenty of variety in these desert locales: they are rich and complex environments. The slow journeys his heroes take through these landscapes are often high points of the novels.

The Four from Gila Bend shows signs of its era, in its discussion of subjects that might have been taboo in an earlier time. One of the women in the book is in a common-law marriage, and the subject gets an airing that seems to reflect the hippie generation of the period. The book has quite a few sympathetic woman characters, most of whom are strong willed and gutsy, as well as being extremely down to earth and unrefined. This perhaps echoes the women's lib movement of the time. There is an anti-authoritarian attitude running through many of the characters and the book, with one of the sheriffs in the tale the subject of much satire. This too reflects the hippie era, and its skepticism about the fuzz. The hero of the book is a sheriff, so the book is hardly anti-police. Women in the book tend to own property, and run land, while men tend to be in charge of businesses or professions. Villains in Constiner Westerns tend to be rich men with large business empires. They tend to be up to complex criminal schemes that result in murder. His good guys tend to be fast-drawing Western heroes. Often times, a female relative of the first victim plays a major role in the plot.