Northern Book Review

Elementary, My Dear Groucho

Ron Goulart
1999

Following quickly on the gumshoes of Groucho Marx, Private Eye, this third installment in the mystery series starring Groucho Marx and scriptwriter Frank Denby ups the ante by killing off a German director on the set of a Sherlock Holmes movie. The star of the film, one Miles Ravenshaw, calls a press conference and challenges Groucho to a duel of wits and discovery, saying “I fully suspect, old man, that once that baggy pants mountebank learns that Miles Ravenshaw is on the case, he won’t even dare to compete.” After that, not investigating the case is out of the question, not to mention checking with his tailor.

We visit a Mexican café owned by a Swede, (and the food is just the way it you would predict), hob nob with studio heads, PR flacks, starlets and Nazis. To say nothing of the dog. Groucho is peddling a script for a movie called “Cinderella on Wheels,” Frank’s wife Jane plays an important part, there are more interesting characters than ever, and the complex plot is the most satisfying yet.

Groucho Marx, Private Eye

Ron Goulart
1999

Things are beginning to gel quite nicely in this second Groucho mystery set in 1930s Hollywood. The writing is snappy, Groucho is in fine form and as for the plot, there’s no hitch in its gitalong.

In the first book, Groucho Marx, Master Detective, Frank Denby meets the love of his life, Jane. It happens so quickly that one wonders if Jane isn’t one of the bad guys, in true film noir tradition. Luckily, she’s not and she and Frank pursue their relationship throughout this second adventure.

We get a nice look at some movie sets, hear Groucho sing Gilbert and Sullivan, and watch him deal with a persnickety child actress named Polly, who he describes as possessing “all the best qualities of Typhoid Mary, Ma Barker, and Louis B. Mayer.” The new sponsor of Groucho’s radio show is Mullens Pudding, which comes in “five flavorful flavors,” chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch, strawberry and, according to Groucho, herring.

Between tracking down the killer of the “poor man’s Ronald Coleman,” Brian Montaine, and finding out who is framing Polly’s mother, Groucho deals with tourists and autograph seekers, obliging them with a signature, sometimes even his own.

All my reservations regarding the literary resurrection of Groucho have vanished like a puff of Groucho’s cigar smoke. Carry on, Ron, the world needs Groucho now just as much as it did then.

Island Magic

Elizabeth Goudge
Paperback, 1975

Island Magic is split between detailed and enjoyable characterizations and florid, flowery, overblown prose that eventually creates the desire put down the book and go read a computer manual as an antidote.

Some examples:

A boat approachs The Island:
“Now they were slipping along beside the Island. It lay on the sea like a sleeping animal, the rocks at ists northern end stretched out like claws.”

A room where two characters often talk:
“They sat down together on the ‘jonquiere.’ The oil lamp, burning low on the the table, was reflected in the copper warming-pans and the dark oak of the table. All the willow pattern plates held a friendly gleam of light, and the old clock ticked companionably. The room was used to these two sitting there on the ‘jonquiere’ and talking, sometimes late into the night. It welcomed them and endeavoured to be helpful, the clock remarking monotonously that the nibbling seconds make an end of all things, even life, and the reflected lights replying warmly that there are certain things, seemingly unsubstantial, that cannot die, since their reflector is eternal.”

I enjoyed the characters in this book, most of whom were fully explored. However long discourses on their interior dialogue (not the interior dialogue itself, which would have been much more to the point) and emotional strains caused me to skip quite a few boring passages.

“The Isand” has no name, but has been French and is now English. The folk who live there are fishermen and farmers except for the few professionals required of any town: a doctor, judge, policeman. The doctor is a cruel and domineering man, whose two sons disappoint his aims for them. One marries his love and becomes a farmer, rather than a professional, and the other disappears to the sea, never to be seen again. Or is he?

The plot is a simple Prodigal Son theme and fairly predictable. The farmer son, Andre, has married his sweetheart and fathered five children. It’s the children who bring life and interest to the book. How they solve their problems, how they agonize and triumph, is what makes the book worthwhile.

I made it through Island Magic. I even enjoyed much of it. When I picked up A City of Bells by the same author and began to read, I realized I did not have the stamina to wade through so much cloying verbiage.