Title:
The Mysterious Mickey Finn / Author: Elliot Paul / Publisher: Dover
Publications / Release Date: Out Now / Rating: 3/5
Almost
as soon as the rules of detective fiction were formulated, writers
began exploiting them for their comic potential. Dating from 1939,
The Mysterious Mickey Finn is a spirited parody of S.S. Van Dine's
Philo Vance stories, in which the omniscient Vance solves convoluted
mysteries against a background of high European culture. Huge hits in
their day, they now seem thoroughly deserving of mockery.
Here,
the Vance figure is Homer Evans, an independently wealthy American
who excels at whatever he attempts and is much sought after for his
worldly wisdom, but who prefers to live a quiet life among the
Bohemians of Paris' Montparnasse district. However, never one to
leave a friend in need, he finds himself drawn into various
shenanigans which take a serious turn when a millionaire
philanthropist goes missing.
As the
French police blunder about, clues are misinterpreted,
misunderstandings proliferate and the prison cells fill up with a
motley crew of wrongfully arrested characters, the first half of the
book seems less like a mystery novel than a Howard Hawks screwball
comedy or a forerunner of the Inspector Clouseau films. Elliot Paul
builds the farce expertly, piling complication upon complication.
The
one real problem is Homer Evans himself – Philo Vance parody he may
be, but he's just as unlikely and strangely colourless as the
original. That said, the subsidiary characters come off well –
Miriam, Homer's gun-toting girlfriend, the long-suffering Sergeant
Fremont, and Hjalmar Jansen, a roistering, larger than life painter –
as does the local colour. Having lived in Paris himself in the 1920s,
Elliot Paul knew all about the ways of the Left Bank, and his
descriptions of wild parties at nightspots with names such as
Rendez-vous des Imprevoyants have a ring of first-hand experience
about them.
