No Fearing or Loathing 

by

Paul Clark

I have three separate hooks for this essay, which, together, show the obsessive ways booklovers think about their books. Here are the hooks: (1) favorite imprints; (2) favorite noir novels; (3) writers from my hometown.

Favorite imprints. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the “Perennial Library Mystery Series” published by Harper & Row included reprints of both classic and obscure British and American suspense and mystery novels spanning the 20th century. At the time, I was managing a bookstore and was at the beginning of my lifelong interest in the mystery/suspense genre, so I eagerly snatched up any new titles that came out in the series.

Over the years, I’ve collected a number of these Perennial Library books, although I have given away a lot more than I possess now. Still, if I am at a used bookstore or garage sale or rummage sale, I’m always on the lookout for these titles. They are one of the few types of books I’ll buy just because of the imprint.

This is probably the highest praise I can give any publisher—“I will buy anything you publish, regardless of content, because I trust your judgment that much.” Only a few imprints have impressed me to that degree in my life.

For the most part, the writers published under this Harper & Row imprint are not household names these days (although they are familiar to fans of the mystery genre). Some of the names of the authors published in this series included Nicholas Blake (pen name of Cecil Day Lewis, former poet laureate of England and Daniel Day-Lewis’ father), Michael Gilbert, John Welcome, Michael Innes, Mary Kelly, Joe Gores, Ross Thomas, and Hillary Waugh. Over the years, I discovered I didn’t care what the nationality of the writer was, or the particular subgenre of mystery was inside the covers—a traditional British drawing room detective novel, a Cold war thriller, a police procedural, a domestic novel of suspense. I’ve rarely found a clunker in the bunch. Which leads me to . . .

Favorite noir novels. Kenneth Fearing was a staff reporter for The New Yorker and other magazines, and published several novels and books of poetry. His reputation, however, is largely based on his 1946 novel, The Big Clock.

George Stroud is the editor of “Crimeways” magazine, one of several published by media giant Earl Janoth. Stroud has a comfortable life—living in the suburbs with wife and child; rubbing elbows with the famous and influential in the city; and doing a respectable job heading one of the more successful magazines in Janoth’s stable.

Stroud also has a wandering eye and one evening it settles on Pauline Delos, beautiful, blonde, and also Earl Janoth’s mistress. This doesn’t stop Stroud from pursuing her and they have a passionate overnight tryst. Stroud drop Delos off at her apartment that evening, and Janoth sees them together, although he can’t see Stroud clearly enough to know who he is. Stroud, on the other hand, clearly sees Janoth on the street.

Janoth meets Delos and they go up to her apartment, where they goad each other into an escalating fight. (Much is made of the fact that both Janoth and Delos like to sleep with both men and women, obviously more shocking in 1946 than today.) Janoth grabs a decanter and hits Delos over the head, killing her.

The twist in the story is that Janoth wants to find out who Delos’ mystery man is without revealing why he wants to know. He chooses Stroud to lead a team of investigators to find the man. So Stroud has to run an investigation that is legitimate enough to appease his boss but not so robust that he fingers himself. Stroud and Janoth and a few other characters narrate the briskly paced story in alternating chapters.

(The book also has the rare distinction of being the basis of two different movies—“The Big Clock” (1948), starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Sullivan, and “No Way Out” (1987) starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young.)

Writers from my hometown. OK, granted, this is the most uninteresting hook. I only discovered this as I was researching Fearing’s life. Fearing was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1902. Two generations after his fellow Oak Parker Ernest Hemingway was editor of the high school newspaper and author of the class prophecy, so was Fearing. He was chosen “wittiest boy” and “class pessimist” by his 1920 graduating class.

Fearing moved east after college, working for a variety of magazines such as The New Yorker and Time (the model for the Earl Janoth’s media empire was Henry Luce’s stable of magazines, including Time, Fortune, and Life). Fearing also was one of the founders of The Partisan Review. Fearing was a prolific writer in the 1930s, producing either a novel or a book of poetry every year. He also was a heavy drinker, however, which affected his literary output. The publication of The Big Clock was the high point of his writing career, both critically and financially, but the combination of alcoholism and bad business decisions (especially acting as his own agent when dealing with a Hollywood studio) left him almost penniless just a few years after its publication. Fearing died in 1961.