Happiness Is A Book: Friday’s Forgotten Book: Lay On, Mac Duff by Charlotte Armstrong

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Patricia Abbott: Short Story Wednesday: NIGHT CALL AND OTHER STORIES OF SUSPENSE, Charlotte Armstrong

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Patricia Abbott: FFB - Nightcall and Other Stories, Charlotte Armstrong

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Jerry's House of Everything: FORGOTTEN BOOK: A LITTLE LESS THAN KIND

Jerry's House of Everything: FORGOTTEN BOOK: A LITTLE LESS THAN KIND:   A Little Less Than Kind  by Charlotte Armstrong  (1963) Hob Cummingham was a large and powerful man:  well-liked, determined, successful, ...

Patti Abbott: FFB: NIGHT CALL AND OTHER STORIES OF SUSPENSE

 Patti Abbott: FFB: NIGHT CALL AND OTHER STORIES OF SUSPENSE

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong: Reviewed by Jeanne Amanda “Mandy” Garth is a charming young woman with artistic talent, something she apparently didn’t inherit from eit...

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FFB Review: "The Dream Walker" by Charlotte Armstrong --- Guest Reviewer Patrick Ohl

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott here. For this final Friday of the month of May, Patrick Ohl of the comprehensive blog “At The Scene Of The Crime” is back. Today he reviews The Dream Walker by Charlotte Armstrong. Lots more books over at Patti’s blog so make sure you check out the list after reading Patrick’s review.

The Dream Walker is about a young woman named Olivia Hudson, a teacher at a fashionable girls’ school, aged 34. She is narrating her story into a tape recorder as a break from looking at a Portugal-shaped crack in her ceiling. And the tale she tells is a fantastic one: it is the story of a plot to bring down a well-regarded man. But how do you do that? According to Armstrong, you need a crazy plan, one so insane that even when it is exposed it is hard to believe that someone would go to all that trouble to fool people. Such a plot apparently took place.

The target of this plot was John Paul Marcus, a highly respected man whose advice led to Raymond Pankerman’s illegal activities being discovered. Now, Pankerman desires revenge, and right on cue he met Kent Shaw, who devised a brilliant and completely mad plan to bring about Marcus’ downfall. Four people were in on the plot, and Ollie tells us all about it. For although the truth is now known, the damage to Marcus’ reputation has been done, and this is Ollie’s attempt to undo it. But it’s hard work: “Respect is a kind of Humpty Dumpty. All the King’s horses can’t put it all the way up, again.”

The story of The Dream Walker is a fascinating one. Charlotte Armstrong shows some plotting brilliance. From the very first chapter, you know who is in on the plot. The plot involves an apparently-supernatural element, as a young woman claims to walk around in places thousands of miles away in her dreams, and it really happens. Very few variations on this impossible trick are possible, and Armstrong wisely decides to give you the full story from the get-go. The fascination with The Dream Walker lies in how the plan is slowly executed: the noose around Marcus’ neck slowly tightens, and I spent the first part of the novel practically cheering on the conspiracy, eagerly waiting to see how they would solve their difficulties. But after a certain point in the novel, my allegiance was switched over to the other side, as I eagerly read on to see how the plot could be defeated.

In The Virtue of Suspense, a biography of Charlotte Armstrong by Rick Cypert, it is observed that the novel was one of Armstrong’s responses to Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunt. Armstrong observes that nothing is proved against Marcus—indeed, it never could be proved because Marcus is innocent of any wrongdoing. But all it takes is the seed of doubt for a man’s reputation to be blown apart. A life’s work is destroyed in a matter of minutes, and the public relishes the destruction of an idol, but doesn’t care much for its restoration. At one point, Ollie tells the reader:

Please, if I am making this clear at all, please do read the fine print and the follow-up and all the hard, dry parts in the news. Don’t let your mind jump on to the next sensational headline. Oh, it’s more fun to float along, enjoying the high spots. The new murder. The latest scandal. Today’s clash. But afterwards, people have to live. And if all you remember is a vague impression of some nasty mess, and the thing that remains is only your notion that this person once fell away from the clear and unquestioned way—and to know what truly did happen is a task too dry, too hard—ah, please. It isn’t fair.

I found this the most powerful message of the book, possibly due to the fact that I myself have had a personal experience along these lines—though of course nothing as fantastical as Armstrong’s tale. She conveys it so well that I don’t know where to start describing her brilliance. Maybe I shouldn’t even try—this is something you just have to experience for yourself.

The plot moves smoothly along and is a terrific novel of suspense, quite possibly the finest I’ve read all year long. In particular the final act is brilliant, as everything falls apart. Mistakes occur left and right, throwing off the conspirators’ plans, and after several misunderstandings the climax of the novel is an extremely suspenseful and chilling confrontation.

The Dream Walker was enthusiastically received by critics like James Sandoe (The New York Herald Tribune) and Anthony Boucher (The New York Times). Sandoe is quoted as having called it “a most uncommon thriller, quite the best Mrs. Armstrong has given us since the shattering ‘Mischief.’” I’m genuinely embarrassed that I hadn’t gotten around to Charlotte Armstrong sooner in my reading career. I had Armstrong vaguely pegged as a writer in the Had-I-But-Known school of Mary Roberts Rinehart. But I ask you, can you seriously blame me for this mistake when one of Armstrong’s books is entitled The Chocolate Cobweb?

Charlotte Armstrong has proven once again that she could write. In my previous read, The Case of the Weird Sisters, Armstrong came up with a unique impossible crime and infused it with an eerie, surreal atmosphere that fuelled my interest right up until the end. The Dream Walker contains another impossible crime, but one to which you know the solution from the start. It is a terrific novel of suspense and an excellent novel overall. It’s an excellent rebuttal to McCarthyism and a fascinating look at how mere doubt can poison a man’s reputation beyond repair. The Dream Walker is a wonderful novel that has unequivocally placed Charlotte Armstrong among my favourite female writers, right up there with the likes of Margaret Millar and Agatha Christie. If you’ve never encountered Armstrong before, this makes for one hell of an introduction.

Patrick Ohl ©2014

http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/

Picks By Pat: Writers Born Today - Charlotte Armstrong

 Nice pickup of a review by Patrick Ohl for FFB....
Picks By Pat: Writers Born Today - Charlotte Armstrong: It's the birthday of Charlotte Armstrong, born May 2nd 1905 in Vulcan, Michigan. She went to college in Wisconsin but earned her degree ...

FFB Review: "Mischief" by Charlotte Armstrong

Please welcome back Patrick Ohl for this installment of Friday's Forgotten Books......

Anyone who reads my blog regularly has, by now, noticed two things about me. First off, I’m positively insane. Second, whenever I get introduced to a new author and am very impressed with the book in question, I tend to go on a reading binge. I did this earlier in 2012 with Donald E. Westlake, devouring Dortmunder and Parker novels as though they were potato chips until I realized that I would soon run out of my supplies if I kept at it. But I just can’t learn my lesson, and I’m at serious risk of doing it again with the work of Charlotte Armstrong. The symptoms are all there, and I just got finished reading Armstrong’s novel Mischief.

In Mischief, Mr. and Mrs. Peter O. Jones are on their way to an important social function, where Mr. Jones is due to deliver a speech. They have to leave their daughter Bunny behind, and they planned to leave her at the hotel with Mr. Jones’ sister. But at the last moment, she cancels on them, and they’re forced to scramble around to find a replacement. Fortunately, an elevator operator named Eddie Munro hears of their plight and volunteers the services of his niece, Nell Munro. The Joneses are only too happy to accept Eddie’s offer, but something feels odd the instant Nell steps into room 807…

When they leave, Nell quickly puts Bunny to bed and soon, the mischief begins. It’s relatively harmless at first, as Nell tosses some papers around and does a mad dance of sorts. But then she begins to make malicious phone calls to random people in the phone book. But that’s only the beginning. Things go very wrong indeed when a stranger is lured into the hotel. One thing is certain: the Joneses should never have allowed Nell to babysit Bunny…

Mischief was originally published in 1950, but happily, it’s been brought back into digital print by The Mysterious Press, along with several of Armstrong’s novels. I can’t begin telling you how glad I am about this. Charlotte Armstrong was a supremely talented writer, capable of conjuring suspense out of thin air, creating memorable characters and perilous situations. I was aware that I was reading a work of fiction, but I felt a deep emotional investment in the entire story, and was on the edge of my seat throughout the book. It’s a short read, and that’s in its favour: the story unravels quickly and neatly.

But at the same time, Armstrong creates some truly memorable characters. I particularly liked the character of Jed Towers. He’s about to fly out of town to take up a new, important job, and so was spending potentially his last evening with Lyn Lesley. The date had an air of decisiveness around it: this would either make or break their relationship. Unfortunately, things get off to a bad start: when they are accosted by a beggar in the street, Jed walks away and drags Lyn along with him. This upsets Lyn, and they argue about just how much you can really trust other people. Jed argues that the beggar was probably quite comfortably off and didn’t need the money, while Lyn says that even if that were the case, she’d at least have felt better had Jed given the man some money. With a huff, the two separate, and Jed goes back to his hotel room… where, from his window, he looks into Room 807 and spies Nell Munro. He decides that, what the hell, he might as well flirt with her, and so he inadvertently gets sucked into a deadly game played between the insane Nell and the rest of the world.

It’s through Jed that Charlotte Armstrong weaves not only an intricate plot, but also fascinating themes through which she explores the human condition. Jed begins the evening as the cynical man-of-the-world, scoffing at Lyn’s naiveté, but he himself is lured into a trap. He soon realizes that Nell is insane and must figure out a way of escaping her clutches without exposing little Bunny to the dangers of being left alone with this madwoman. But nothing quite works out, and everything slowly leads to a tense climax, where miscommunications, misunderstandings, and delays all add up to create a memorable conclusion to the novel. As much as I’d like to say more (both on the plot and the thematic levels), that would necessitate spoiling the ending… so instead, I recommend reading the book for yourself.

When Mischief was originally published, Anthony Boucher’s review for The New York Times stated that “Miss Armstrong is amazingly adroit at fusing action with character development, and at utilizing the most theatrical devices not only to thrill but to say something about Man and his world.” I can think of no better way to describe Charlotte Armstrong’s talent as a writer. Mischief is an extraordinary achievement, a short but sweet book full of tension. It’s one of those books that you must read for yourself to fully appreciate it. I, for one, highly recommend it, and can only scratch my head in amazement that Charlotte Armstrong could have fallen into obscurity.

Note: This book was made into a film, Don’t Bother to Knock, starring none other than Marilyn Monroe as Nell! I have not seen the movie but am interested in the idea. Monroe never entered my mind as a possible actress to portray Nell, but the idea of her playing an insane babysitter is too delightful for words. I might review the film on my blog in the future.

For more on how you can get Mischief as an e-book, visit this link from The Mysterious Press.

Patrick Ohl ©2012

At 19 years of age, Patrick Ohl has already read the complete works of Agatha Christie and has almost done the same with John Dickson Carr. His taste in mysteries is very comprehensive, including the intellectual challenges of John Rhode, the psychological suspense of Margaret Millar, and the violent world of master thief Parker. He currently plans to write his autobiography, tentatively entitled I can’t stand postmodernism, and to sell millions of copies worldwide, gain international fame and influence, and use this to get some attention for criminally neglected authors such as this one. His reviews can be found on his blog, At the Scene of the Crime.