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Wylie, Philip

Page history last edited by J F Norris 13 years, 3 months ago Saved with comment

Philip WyliePhilip Gordon Wylie (1902-1971) was an American author and screenwriter. Born in Massachusetts, he attended Princeton and worked at various jobs including editor of the New Yorker. He served on the Dade County (Fla.) Defense Council, was a director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and at one time was a special advisor to the chairman of the Joint Committee for Atomic Energy. Most of his major writings contain critical, though often philosophical, views on man and society as a result of his studies and interest in psychology, biology, ethnology, and physics. He married Sally Ondeck in 1928; they were divorced in 1937, after which he married Frederica Ballard. He wrote mystery and science-fiction potboilers and used several pseudonyms, and introduced the word "Momism" in his attack on US culture, A Generation of Vipers. Wylie wrote over 100 popular "Crunch and Des" stories for the Saturday Evening Post, about the adventures of Captain Crunch Adams, master of the charter boat Poseidon; there was even a brief television series.

 

Mike Grost on Philip Wylie

 

Wylie's "Perkins Finds $3,400,000" (1931) is a charming humorous tale about amateur detective Willis Perkins and his attempt to solve a bank robbery. It is similar to a good deal of other mystery fiction in slick magazines of its era: it features an ordinary middle class guy who gets involved with crimefighting; and it has a playful sense of genre bending, the sense that a mainstream storyteller is exploring the detective story form to see what sort of storytelling opportunities it contains.

The American Magazine novellas

 

Several of Wylie's American Magazine novellas have been reprinted, including "Death Flies East" (1934) (in the Breens' American Murders), and "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" (1936) (in the August 1966 EQMM). Both have heroes involved in science and engineering. They show a 1930's faith that dynamic young men will make discoveries in science and get the country moving again, despite the Depression. Wylie also wrote a great deal of science fiction, much of it with Edwin Balmer, and his mystery work shows some continuity with the tradition of American Scientific Detection that Balmer helped to found. "Perkins" also has a construction site location that reflects an interest in engineering. "East" is full of coincidences and is labored in its plotting. "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" is a good piece of storytelling, however. While it does not have a solution of Agatha Christie level brilliance, the way the characters dance in and out of the Golden Age style whodunit plot is most satisfying. The story has a musical quality, with each event unfolding at precisely the right moment in the tale.

 

Wylie's content bears a resemblance to that of Earl Derr Biggers, a mystery writer who was a frequent contributor to The Saturday Evening Post. One might compare "The Paradise Canyon Mystery" to Biggers' Post novella "The Dollar Chasers" (1924). Both deal with a likable young middle class working man of modest means who spends time with a bunch of rich people at an upper class retreat - a yachting party in Biggers, a desert resort hotel in Wylie. In both the young man solves a light hearted mystery, while romancing a young woman, and having some pleasant adventures.

 

Ellery Queen also reprinted others of Wylie's tales. "Murderers Welcome" (1936) is an uninspired novella about a 1930's millionaire trying to smoke out his attempted killer. "Puzzle in Snow" (1937), another American Magazine novella, was in the February 1964 EQMM. It too has a sympathetic businessman hero, and both stories depict businessmen as the wellsprings of American prosperity. The first third of "Puzzle", setting up the mystery plot, is pretty good, but then the story drags. The solution seems influenced by R. Austin Freeman's A Silent Witness (1914), and shows Wylie's interest in the scientific detective story. The puzzle plot shows some mild technical merits, but the story is nowhere as much fun to read as "The Paradise Canyon Mystery". Although Wylie shows interest in science in his tales, his work has otherwise little in common with the realist school of Freeman and Crofts; instead his American Magazine novellas are classical detective stories in the intuitionist, Golden Age tradition.

 

"Murder at Galleon Key" (1935) is Wylie's second American Magazine novella, and the first set in South Florida, this time at a fishing camp in the Florida keys. Like the first, "Death Flies East" (1934), it is not as good as Wylie's later stories. Its best feature is a look at ocean currents, and how they affected the transport of a body. Wylie will look at ocean currents in greater depth in the later "Stab in the Back" (1943). That later story includes a whole ocean seascape, precisely defined, in the Golden Age tradition of creative use of landscape.

 

"The Trial of Mark Adams" (1935), Wylie's third American novella, was reprinted by EQ as "Not Easy To Kill". Both the shipboard setting and first method of murder in this tale recall Stuart Palmer's The Puzzle of the Silver Persian (1934) of the previous year. Many familiar Wylie characters appear in this tale. This story contains another young scientist hero, this time a doctor who wants to do research. To earn money, he works as a cruise ship doctor among a group of rich people. Another important character is a business tycoon, a dynamic man essential to America's prosperity. As in the later "Murderers Welcome" (1936), someone is trying to kill him. The tale is a combined thriller with mild whodunit features. It is exceptionally readable, with many absorbing events.

 

"Rx: Death" (1941) is a medical mystery novella. It shows Wylie's ties to the Scientific School. Its young doctor hero once again finds himself dealing with a lot of rich suspects, in a vacation area, this time Key West. However, the tone is much more somber than Wylie's other novellas, grim and joyless. Medicine is heavily employed in the crimes, but plays little role in the detection. While the solution shows little ingenuity, once again the complex storytelling makes interesting reading. Unlike Wylie's 1930's tales, both the rich and Key West are depicted as sinister and unpleasant.

 

"Stab in the Back" (1943) returns to Florida, this time a suburban housing area on a man-made island off Miami. It shows the Golden Age fascination with architecture. This time we see a whole island, together with its homes and the surrounding sea area. Wylie even roots the story in the construction of the island years ago, with the developer being a character. The first two thirds of this tale is delightful, with a vivid description of a mystery based in and closely linked to the architecture of the island. The last sections of the story are not as good, with a completely arbitrary, un-clued choice of murderer. Still, most lovers of Golden Age mystery fiction will enjoy this piece, especially those who like Golden Age buildings and landscapes. "Stab in the Back" was reprinted in The Fifth Mystery Book (1944), an anthology of long tales. The story has links with other Wylie works. While the island is not a vacation area, it is a retirement community for the well to do, and it has much the same feel as the resort in "The Paradise Canyon Mystery". The South Florida setting is a favorite with Wylie. And there is another of Wylie's young inventors here. The precise technical treatment of the building construction and ocean aspects give the tale something of the flavor of a science based detective story. Like most of Wylie's sleuths, the hero here is an amateur detective.

 

Experiment in Crime

 

"Experiment in Crime" (1948) is a long post war novella. It is a pure thriller, and has no mystery or puzzle plot elements per se. It is set in a more underworld milieu than Wylie's American Magazine novellas, with both gangsters and crime rings. This is in accord with the more hard-boiled world that was fashionable in crime fiction after World War II. It falls naturally in two sections. Chapters 1 - 8 form a light hearted, delightful tongue in cheek narrative of how a young professor became involved with the underworld. The rest of the book narrates a more serious adventure of the professor. It is pleasant enough, but not as good as the opening chapters. Plot elements of "The Trial of Mark Adams" recur with variations in the opening section. The young professor recalls the scientist heroes of Wylie's 30's fiction, and some clues in the story come from botany; in fact, Wylie picks up strongly on the plant life of South Florida throughout the tale. There is also the ingenious mangrove disguise in Chapter 11. The professor's adventures among gangsters in the opening recall the adventures of young men among the rich in Wylie's earlier fiction - the two kinds of plot are formally nearly identical. In fact, these gangsters are rich, and seem quite similar in personality to Wylie's earlier millionaires. As in "Mark Adams", the young hero discovers a whole new personality for himself, and a new role in life.

 

Wylie likes to set his work on high tech transportation systems. There is the airplane in "Death Flies East" and the hydroplane in "Experiment in Crime", as well as the liner in "Mark Adams", as well as the many modest little boats and diving equipment in "Stab in the Back". There is also a vacation or travel feel to Wylie's work. In addition to all these means of transportation, we have the desert resort locale of "Paradise Canyon". "Experiment in Crime" takes place during the Christmas holidays, and many of its settings are the night clubs and casinos of a tourist's Miami. This last story is filled with local color. Many of the scenes are very visual, and one suspects that Wylie hoped it would be made into a movie. Its light hearted tone would have been out of synch with 1940's film noir, when it was written. But it would fit in very well with today's comedy cop shows, location filming, and color cinematography. Adrian Pasdar would make an ideal hero for the story as the professor.

 

Corpses at Indian Stones

 

Corpses at Indian Stones (1943) takes Wylie into Mary Roberts Rinehart territory. While the young scientist heroes of other Wylie works tend to be relatively poor outsiders who are working among the rich, here the archaeologist hero is the nephew of a wealthy society spinster. Like Rinehart's spinster in The Circular Staircase (1908), the story opens with closing down her winter home, and moving into a country house for the summer. As in Rinehart's The Wall (1938) and The Yellow Room (1945), here the story takes place at an exclusive summer colony, where all the families know one another, and where the families have been interacting for years, having a tangled personal history. Like the heroine of Rinehart's The Great Mistake (1940), the aunt has a secret that she is scared to share with the rest of the world, either her nephew or the police, and she is caught up with sinister doings with the other older characters in the story. As in Rinehart's The Album (1933), the older characters condescend to the younger ones in their 20's, and do not share information with them. And the secret, when it is revealed halfway through the novel, seems directly related to one in The Album. Wylie's sociological explanation of that secret in Chapter 9 is actually pretty detailed and interesting, and helped me understand some of the social background of The Album, which Rinehart treats more matter of factly.

 

Corpses at Indian Stones is not that satisfying a read. Too much of the book is soap opera, dealing with the lives of the unappealing characters. The hero is never especially believable. Although he is a Great Explorer who has done archaeology all over the jungles of the world, he is also a mousy, shy man who dresses like a wimp and has no confidence. We are supposed to welcome his blossoming out during the story, but with all of his advantages of wealth and social position, it is hard to identify with him or care that much about his social problems finding acceptance with High Society. Admittedly, many people are far better at their job than in impressing other people at a party, and this book could be construed to be about them. The story does pick up during the crime investigations: Chapter 4 looks at the first murder, Chapter 9 at the big secret, Chapter 10 at the second murder, which has mildly locked room features, and Chapter 15 at its explanation.

 

Wylie's novel shows the dark side of the business relationships he extolled in his 1930's American Magazine novellas. In them, businessmen were dynamic figures whose enterprise created American prosperity. Here, they are a bunch of WASP's who have inherited money, and who will do anything to hang on to it. They get involved in a bunch of schemes, some legal, some not, some admirable, some despicable, to try to extend their wealth. It is a far less glamorized picture. It also seems one with far fewer idealized consequences for the United States and its society. Also looked at from a new point of view is the treatment of the poor young men. In the 30's stories, the best thing that could happen to a young guy was to be taken up by these millionaires and brought into their business. This was treated as a full Cinderella story for the young man, one that opens all his dreams. Here, we get a darker picture. The rich WASP's sponsor a series of young men, setting them up in enterprises or sending them off to college. The relationship that develops is far from ideal, however; after a while frightful tensions erupt between the young businessman and the rich people, tensions that lead to the murderous events of the novel. Even at its best, as in the young police chief whose education they have sponsored, one wonders if young men really want to have this sort of feudal vassal relationship to a bunch of rich liege lords. After World War II, the GI Bill would make it possible for young men to go to college on their own. This must have been like getting out of prison for America's lower class youth.


No mention is made of Wylie's very funny satirical novel The Smiling Corpse that features real life mystery writers attempting to solve a murder.  The book's subtitle is "Wherein G.K. Chesterton, S.S. Van Dine, Sax Rohmer & Dashiell Hammett Are Surprised to Find Themselves at a Murder as Are the Anonymous Authors." It was originally published as "by Anonymous" but has since been proven to be the collaborative work of Wylie and another writer named Bernard A Bergman.  I have added the book to the bibliography.

 

J F NORRIS

 

Bibliography

 

Novels

 

Babes and Sucklings (1930)

Gladiator (1930)

The Murderer Invisible (1931)

The Savage Gentleman (1932)

When Worlds Collide (1933) (With Edwin Balmer)

After Worlds Collide (1934) (With Edwin Balmer)

Finnley Wren (1934)

The Golden Hoard (1934) (With Edwin Balmer)

The Smiling Corpse (1935) (with Bernard Bergman, originally published as "by Anonymous")

Danger Mansion (1937)

The Big Ones Get Away (1941)

Salt Water Daffy (1941)

Corpses at Indian Stones (1943)

Night Unto Night (1944)

Blunder: a Story of the End of the World (1946)

Footprint of Cinderella (1946)

The Smuggled Atom Bomb (1948)

Opus 21 (1949)

As They Reveled (1951)

The Disappearance (1951) (With Edwin Balmer)

Denizens of the Deep (1953)

Tomorrow (1954)

The Answer (1955)

Treasure Cruise and Other Crunch and Des Stories (1956)

Innocent Ambassadors (1957)

Triumph (1963)

Too Much of Everything (1964)

Autumn Romance (1965)

Experiment in Crime (1965)

They Both Were Naked (1965)

The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise (1969)

Los Angeles AD 2017 (1971)

Sons and Daughters of Mom (1971)

The End of the Dream (1972)

Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments (anthology) (2010)

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