Category: Golden Age Article

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: The Innocence of Father Brown

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Father Brown, as best I can tell is the second among the Great literary detectives, right after Sherlock Holmes. In some ways, Father Brown was a continuation of what Chesterton wrote in his classic Orthodoxy. 

The intellectuals of Chesterton’s time viewed the orthodox Christian as superstitutious, weak-minded. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy asserted his vision of orthodoxy was something entirely different: It was conscious, sensible, winsome, and wise. 

Two years after writing Orthodoxy, he rapped it in a Cossack, embodied it in the person of Father Brown, a physically unremarkable and humble priest, who uses his wisdom, common sense, and experience as a confessor to solve even the most baffling crimes.

It should be noted that contrary to what many people have said, Chesterton was not a Catholic at the time he wrote the first Father Brown stories from 1910-1914. That conversion wouldn’t happen until the 1920s. However, he already knew the priest who would facilitate his confession and Father John O’Connor was the basis of the character.

To enjoy Chesterton’s books, you have to appreciate a couple of things. First of all, many are unlik e any detective stories we read today.  While there’s plot and action, the main focus is the puzzle, not character development. Outside of Brown, most of the characters remain very flat. Either they’re stereotypical Frenchmen, Calvinists, Rich Men, or Atheists. They’re there to provide their piece of the puzzle and then get on with it.

 There’s also not any sense of danger or mayhem. There’s little violence onstage, although Chesterton can come up with some quite ghastly ways to kill a man. If you like your detective fiction hardboiled, well, I’ll be honest, this isn’t Pat Novak.

This is a battle of wits between you and Father Brown, and most of the time you’re going to lose quite badly. The plot unfolds to reveal the puzzle, Father Brown solves the puzzle and the story ends-often abruptly.

What carries the stories is Chesterton’s voice which I find delightful, even when reading a book one hundred years after the time. Chesterton uses his prose like a painter uses paint, true artistry that’s understandable to a modern reader.

Father Brown is an incredibly fun character, who when he speaks, he says something important. Brown was the first in a long line of unlikely detectives that would include heroes such as Charlie Chan and Inspector Columbo: the last person in the world that the criminal would be worried about finding them out. But somehow, he solves the case with a completely unexpected solution.

There are a total of twelve stories in the collection, each constituting a different mystery. Several were exceptional to me:

The Blue Cross: The first Father Brown story and perhaps his most iconic tale. When Chesterton originally published this short story in 1910, readers must have been shocked to see Father Brown emerge as the hero. As through the whole of the mystery, the focus had been on a police detective. But already, the makings of the great detective were in place. He would often hang back as a background figure until stepping forward to solve the case. When that first story was published in September, 1910, a literary star was born.

The Invisible Man: This was a fitting case, because it not only provided an extraordinarily surprising solution, but also an insight on how Father Brown surprised so many with his observations.

The Three Tools of Death: This is the first Father Brown story I heard an adaptation of, and after reading it, I appreciate it even more. The solution is a gigantic surprise. It’s also a reminder that many of the descriptions, Chesterton gives at the start of the story, he’s giving the readers what the popular view of a character is, not necessarily what the person is really like.  You may leave the story with an entirely different view from popular opinion.

The Sign of the Broken Sword: This had to be my favorite in the collection. To give you an idea of how different these stories are from modern mysteries, the entire case takes place on an entirely different continent from where the mystery occurred, and no witnesses are actually questioned. The story centers around a simple enough riddle. 

Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. But what does he do if there is no forest?

From there, the case proceeds to a startling conclusion, all without leaving a forest,  an Ocean away from the scene of the crime.

On the negative side, I thought the Honour of Israel Gow was slightly absurd. I think Chesterton was trying to make a point about his perception of Calvinist legalism, but it fell a little flat. I also thought the solution in the Wrong Shape was not the right shape of Chesterton’s best Father Brown stories, but it was still passable.

Overall, I found the stories enjoyable and would encourage others to read them. You can read the entire book online or you can buy it on Amazon. (affiilate link.)

Golden Age Article

Pat Novak Doesn’t Swear

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One of the great things about Old Time Radio is the lack of swearing on the shows. Many parents are thankful for this, and a lot of us would rather not hear it for whatever reason. However, I think the lack of swearing actually forced the writers to write better scripts.

When researching Pat Novak, I’ve found that’s he’s been twice published in modern books from Moonstone Books, which imagine him as an old man still kicking about, getting into trouble. As interested as I might be in these books, I’m almost willing to bet that the writers did something to Novak that would ruin the story. While I’ve not read the books (and maybe I could wrong), I’m willing to bet that in the updated version Pat Novak swears.

Of course, defenders of realism would say, Of course, Pat Novak swears. He swears like a tough waterfront boat operator, because he’s a tough guy waterfront boat operator.  

Realism has a point, but if you’re wanting realism, the private detective genre is where to come. Most private eyes live a far more boring live than Novak and other detectives. What makes Pat Novak fun is the dialogue and what makes the dialogue fun is that Pat Novak doesn’t swear.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Novak’s a goody good. He’s got a big time bad attitude and is a smart mouth. In a modern detective show, much of the dialogue used to insult Hellman would be cast aside for the ever-convenient curse words.

But without the ever-reliable “four letter dictionary” available in the 1940s, Novak has to be creative in taking on Inspector Hellman:

Pat Novak: I’m walking out of your jail, Hellmann. You got a broken down .38 that won’t fit anything but your thumbs. You can’t hold me on that.
Inspector Hellman: I found you over the body. I can hold you on suspicion of murder.
Pat Novak: But it will hurt tomorrow morning, Hellmann. The paper’s will be down here for a follow-up, and you’ll have to tell them what it looks like out in left field.
Inspector Hellman: I’ll handle them.
Pat Novak: You can’t afford to have them start laughing at you. People will get the idea it’s your face.
Inspector Hellman: You can save carfare if you stay right here, because I’ll have you back by noon tomorrow.
Pat Novak: You’re not that good, Hellmann. You couldn’t hold a moth with a searchlight. 

Pat Novak is the Poet Laurete of putdowns. The master of the stinging smart aleck remark. The show’s got a rythym, a certain poetry to it. No, it’s not realistic, but it’s better than realistic.  

A swearing Pat Novak wouldn’t have to be near as creative, near as smart, or near as good as the trash talking waterfront rat who couldn’t talk trashy. A swearing Pat Novak isn’t Pat Novak at all.

Book Review, Golden Age Article

Review: Nightwatch

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What would happen if the immortal detectives, Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown met with a brutal murder to solve?

This is the fascinating question posed by Rev. Stephen Kendrick’s 2001 Book, Night Watch. The plot of the story is that Sherlock’s Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, the British’s government’s most indispensible man as Sherlock Holmes described him, calls his younger brother in to investigate a murder. The rector of an Anglican Church is found dead in his church, with his body mutilated. The prime suspects: leaders of the world’s major religions who’d gathered in Britain for some inter-religious dialog. Father Brown is serving as an interpreter for a visiting  Italian Cardinal.

The murder and its solution are fantastic. However, the story is dragged down because of some errors in Kendrick’s writing mechanics and also because Kendrick’s story was frequently derailed from the story to Kendrick’s religious agenda. In part, the book was written to back up Kendrick’s assertions in Holy Clues: The Gospel According to Sherlock Holmes which seems to suggest that in Holmes later days in became someone who could best be described as “spiritual and not religious.” Unfortunately, the author seemed to work too hard on this angle, which distracted from the main point that readers who weren’t enthusiasts of Universalism picked up the for: a murder mystery.

Kendrick’s treatment of Holmes, Watson, and Brown was good, but in places uneven. I found some of the conversations between Holmes and Watson not entirely believable and out of place in a mystery novel. Kendrick’s Holmes was a cut below Doyle’s in solving the case, and Kendrick tried a cheap out by simply saying that Doctor Watson’s accounts had been exaggerated or unrealistic. To be fair, Kendrick is hardly the first author of a Holmes pastich to use that out. What Arthur Conan Doyle created in Holmes was a bit of a mental Superman, and like Superman it’s very hard to come up with a worthy opponent for him. So, it’s far easier to move the character closer to reality.

His portrayal of Brown, while not having the flair of G.K. Chesterton, and leaving the character a little flat was still essentially the same orthodox Catholic priest that readers have come to know and love. Given that Kendrick, as a Unitarian Universalist,  comes from a completely different theological perspective than Chesterton, he deserves to be commended for not trying to tamper with the character, as some interpretations have tried to change Brown into their vision of what a Christian should be rather than the character Chesterton created.

Of course, in a two-detective story, one detective usually draws the short straw, and Brown clearly has the back seat to Holmes. However, in Chesterton’s books, Brown off hung around in the background until coming forward to the solution to the crime.  

Kendrick’s deserves credit for the audacity of it all. He’s the first author I know of to try and bring these giants of detecting onto the same stage. And he produces an interesting, albeit not completely satisfying tome.  Here’s hoping that others will follow Kendrick, and this isn’t the last Holmes-Father Brown crossover we see.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Golden Age Article

The Guide to OTR Distribution Models

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There are a number of ways to get an Old Time Radio fix. Each has advantages and disadvantages to it.  There’s some debate back and forth between various sites. I think each can meet the needs of a specific base of fans.

My purpose is not to reccomend any specific products, hosts, or services, only to give the interested fan a look at the benefits and drawbacks of each way of accessing Old Time Radio.

It should also be said that just because there are disadvantages to a method doesn’t mean the medium is bad, just giving pros and cons.

(more…)

Golden Age Article

Carter Brown: It’s Australian for Vintage Radio

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I recently came on a quite interesting discovery in my continuing journey to find the best old-time radio detectives: Australian Detective Series Carter Brown.

Carter Brown isn’t the name of a detective, rather its a pseudonym for an author, or actually several authors of detective fiction in Australia. The primary user of that pseudonym was Alan Geoffrey Yates. In the 1950s, according to the University of Queensland News, imported American cultural items were banned from Australia allowing them to produce many American-style dramas.

The Carter Brown Mystery serials were the Old Time Radio Detective equivalent of the Spaghetti Westerns. The two serials I listened to were set in the United States, featuring Australian actors playing Americans. Overall, in the two serials I’ve listened to so far the actors and writers were quite proficient giving few clues that this wasn’t really released from a big American city.  The main thing that stood out was when one of actors referred to getting “Petro,” a term an American wouldn’t use. However, that’s somewhat nitpicky. I could imagine what an Englishman would say about some of our efforts to recreate Great Britain.

The theme music to the show is incredibly catchy with a great celtic beat. The dialogue is crisp and up to date. I had to do a couple searches to make sure this wasn’t one of those mis-labeled “old time radio shows” that was really performed in the 1980s. But it was written in the ’50s, which made it quite impressive. Unlike, most American detective shows that were half hour dramas, Carter Brown mysteries were four part serials, allowing for more complex plots to develop.

Regarding the suitability of the shows, I’ve never read the Carter Brown books, but the radio shows fall safely into PG-territory as most vintage radio detectives do.

While Carter Brown mysteries doesn’t easily lend itself to be included as one of our “Detective” shows given that they changed detectives every serial, it was still a worthwhile discovery.

Golden Age Article

How Would You Like Your Detectives Boiled?

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The phrase, “Hard Boiled Detective” is well-known to include private eyes like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. These tough hombres don’t shy away from a fight, have a downbeat outlook on life, and operate in a gritty, seamy side of  the world. They’re known for the fast fists, and fast mouths.  Johnny Dollar (coming this Friday)  is from the hard boiled school, and so is Pat Novak (coming this Tuesday).  One might say Novak is overboiled, but I digress.

I’ve found out though that there are so-called soft boiled detectives, who are viewed as being more intellectual in solving their cases, not needing to get tough because of their keen reasoning skills. Sherlock Holmes (Thursday) fits into the latter category.

But what about Dan Holiday in Box 13 (coming Monday), or Let George Do It (coming Wednesday.) How do they figure? It depends on who you ask.

OTRCat swears Dan Holiday is a hardboiled detective, but that doesn’t seem to fit Holiday’s overall character. He can be sarcastic, but also goes multiple episodes without using his fists and doesn’t pack heat.

No one’s even willing to place a marker on where George Valentine falls on the spectrum as he usually uses his mind, but isn’t afraid of using his fists.

Detectives we’ll meet in future series have created even greater confusion.  OTRCat claims that both Barrie Craig and Richard Diamond are hard boiled all the way.

However, in a poll of Thrilling Detective readers, Richard Diamond finished as the second in a poll for most soft-boiled detective because he sang. Of course, those who have met with Diamonds fists sing a quite different tune.

Barrie Craig actually made fun of hard boiled detective novels. He is openly philisophical and even at times philanthropic, and generally the type of guy you’d like to have over for dinner.  Of course, if you cross him, he can take you down with style.

And the soft boiled category has its problems, too. A broad category that puts geniuses like Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe in the same class as the somewhat clever Mr. and Mrs. North and that lovable single father detective The Big Guy.

Of course, most people will admit that some detectives won’t fit easily into either category, but will still try to jam detectives into a category that may not fit. My thought is that there are many unboiled detectives on radio.

I think of Holiday, Valentine, and Craig as the type of person you might hire as the family detective (if people hired detectives like they do doctors and lawyers): Decent, honest, hard-working,  and generally peaceful folks who could live next door, but who can be counted on in a pinch and when force is called for, will act decisively. While I enjoy the outrageous hardboiled nature of Pat Novak and the mental methods of Holmes and Wolfe, the most real detectives to me are these unboiled detective because they have many counterparts in the real world. Look on your local police force and you’ll find more people like Dan Holiday and Barrie Craig than you will people like Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade.