Saturday, November 28, 2015

The Vultures Gather: The Grindle Nightmare (1935), by Q. Patrick

"When the buzzards roost in Grindle Oak, Death comes to the valley."--The Grindle Nightmare.

The Grindle Nightmare (1935) was the first Q. Patrick crime novel co-authored by Richard Wilson "Rickie" Webb after he met Hugh Callingham Wheeler, his living partner in Massachusetts for more than a dozen years and by far the most important of the four mystery writing collaborators he worked with over the years. Grindle had been preceded by Cottage Sinister (1931) and Murder at the Women's City Club (1932), co-authored with Martha Mott Kelley; Murder at Cambridge (1933), authored by Webb alone; and S. S. Murder (1933), co-authored with Mary Louise White, who is also credited as the co-author of Grindle.  I can't help wondering whether Hugh Wheeler may have had some influence on Grindle, however.

The next year Webb published another Q. Patrick mystery, Death Goes to School, which evidently was authored by himself alone, but Death for Dear Clara (1937) and all the Q. Patricks that followed were written collaboratively by Webb and Wheeler.

The Grindle Nightmare was, it seems, one of the more successful Q. Patrick crime novels, which were later eclipsed by Webb and Wheeler's Patrick Quentin mysteries. Reprinted by Popular Library in 1949, it appeared a final time in paperback in the Sixties in a Ballantine edition; but since then it has been out-of-print for over a half century, like all the other books in the Q. Patrick line, sadly.


At the time it was originally published in 1935, Grindle was noted for its horrific criminal subject matter, which includes animal mutilation and child murder.  The novel is set in New England in the Grindle Valley, twenty miles from the city of Rhodes, home of Rhodes University Hospital.  There are a half-dozen or so main households in Grindle (see map), populated by a group of mostly unlikable middle and upper class professional types beset by myriad physical and emotional dysfunctions, some quite bluntly presented for their day.  It all struck me rather like something out of a Patricia Highsmith novel, say Deep Water (1957).

When The Grindle Nightmare was published
mystery was made about the identity of the
author, "an important eastern executive."
When the depraved crimes commence, the reader doesn't really have much of anyone to root for, which certainly casts a wide net of suspicion.  Even the narrator, Dr. Douglas Swanson, and his housemate, Dr. Antonio Costi, "one of the youngest and smartest professors of pathology in America," in whom readers may discern the Watson and Holmes figures of the story, seem rather clinical and even callous about the mayhem.

Today such a story would be told strictly for horror and shock value, at two or even three times the length (Grindle is a short novel of only about 60, 000 words), but in 1935, the events, while no end gruesome, are intellectualized as part of a problem to be solved.

The solution is very interesting, especially for its time, but of course I can't say more about that without spoiling.  Surely someday this novel will be reprinted, so I don't want to do that.  However, I do have more to say about Grindle in a forthcoming essay included in a collection to be published next year, so stay tuned!

9 comments:

  1. I'm actually kind of afraid to read this one, should I ever get my hands on it. The subject matter and its handling has been described by several people as deeply disturbing.

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    1. I think the problem in the story is rather intellectualized, which mutes the disturbing elements. We are distanced from emotional horror, even as physical horror is being described, if that makes sense. It's a very interesting book, a step up in artistic maturation for the author.

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  2. Oh, if, only some publisher would bring back all of the the Q Patricks and the Patrick Quentins. I read most of the latter back in the day, and loved them: they were like the Harlan Cobens of the 2000s but, mercifully, only about half the length. I can't really understand why they've been allowed to fall into obscurity.

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    1. I have made one error, Murder at Cambridge has been brought back into print. But, otherwise, nada. I would say now that Rufus King has brought back into print, PQ/QP is the biggest publishing oversight in classic American crime fiction.

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  3. I think The Grindle Nightmare is a minor masterpiece of subversive crime fiction. So way ahead of its time. If you read this one and then immediately follow it with Murder by Prescription with all its near mad scientist experiments and the animal vivisection you might come think that Wilson was a closet sadist. But I think he just wanted to shake up genre fiction by venturing into taboo worlds other writers dare not set foot in. Once he and Hugh Wheeler settled down to become a writing duo the grisly violence to animals and children disappeared from their books and the descriptions of muscular, virile, and handsome young men took over. :^)

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    1. Yes, definitely subversive. The ethics of animal testing comes up in Grindle too, with those two young male housemates, doctors Conti and Swanson, being attacked for the practice. Webb, being head of research in a major pharmaceutical company, definitely would have been familiar with the subject.

      The sadism question is interesting. It certainly comes up here and Puzzle for Fools has one of the most sadistic murders in crime fiction, on par with some of the modern graphic serial killer novels.

      Grindle has a bit about muscular, virile, handsome men too. Although heterosexual, Swanson manages to find some time to tell us about his housemate Conti's rippling physique and how at their house he has a tendency to undress right in front of him, goodness!

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  4. I only have an ancient Italian peperback edition of this - I keep hoping to get an untranslated version at an acceptable price as I am such a fan of their books.

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  5. I hope you will also treat the Jonathan Stagge period. I remember fondly each mystery solved by an innocent remark of the doctors daughter.

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