Geoffrey Homes: Dead as a Dummy (Hill of the Terrified Monk)
(1943)
After reading this on vacation, I checked the archives, and
it turns out this was mentioned just before I left. I wasn't
really paying attention at the time, but I picked this up in
the give-away pile in the little library I frequent while at
my summer house. Was my subconscious working, or was it just
fate?
Anyway, the title and garish cover caught my eye. A man in a
white suit, clutching a female dummy (blonde, armless, with
her strapless gown just about falling off) is about to be
shot by a gun in a hand coming out from behind a deluxe
coffin.
Back cover blurb:
"A BODY IN THE LOBBY . . . A DUMMY THAT WOULDN'T STAY PUT . .
.
Ben Logan found he had his hands full--full of murder--when
he tried to open the Empire Theater in Tucson with a thriller
gruesomely titled The Invisible Zombie. And when he took a
night off to get an eyeful of Tucson's other attractions--a
ravishing redhead and a bombshell brunette--he found himself
stuck with . . . A COFFIN FULL OF CORPSE!"
Ben Logan is an "exploitation man" (PR man) for a chain of
movie theatres. He's in Tucson for the reopening of a
theatre--when the manager is killed. So is another guy. And
eventually another. There are three beautiful, intelligent
women in the story as well. Unluckily for Logan, two of them
are interested in other men. But there's always the third
one.
I never figure out plots so I was just reading along enjoying
the way the story was being told, when suddenly it turned
into an international political intrigue, not exactly a spy
story, but almost. It sort of threw me. The usual motives are
love, lust or lucre. Come to think of it, I guess they still
were, but in a different way.
The movie being used to launch the newly reopened theatre,
The Invisible Zombie, comes in for a lot of sarcastic
criticism (remember the author wrote Night of the Living
Dead). I found the narrator's voice very funny, very
sardonic. There are lots of good lines, though I don't like
giving examples, as so much depends on your mood when you're
reading.
Spelling note for those that like them: In general, the word
theatre is spelled with an ER, usual U.S. style., but in the
name of a movie theatre, it is spelled with an RE (Empire
Theatre, Grand Theatre). Exceptions: the back cover and
inside blurbs, where it's ER all the way. I remember in a
Westlake book that takes place near Nashville (Baby, Would I
Lie?, I think it was), the narrator remarks how some of the
theatres spell their names with an RE. Do you think this
depends on the age of the theatre or some sort of snob
appeal?
Another spelling note: As in Chandler, "okeh" is the informal
affirmative.
Karin
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