| Title | : | The Fabulous Clipjoint (Ed \u0026 Am Hunter #1) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1596541199 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781596541191 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 132 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1947 |
| Awards | : | Edgar Award Best First Novel (1948) |
Ed Hunter is eighteen, and he isn't happy. He doesn't want to end up like his father, a linotype operator and a drunk, married to a harridan, with a harridan-in-training stepdaughter. Ed wants out, he wants to live, he wants to see the world before it's too late. Then his father doesn't come home one night, and Ed finds out how good he had it. The bulk of the book has Ed teaming up with Uncle Ambrose, a former carny worker, and trying to find out who killed Ed's dad. But the title is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a pulp. Author Brown won the Edgar award in 1947 for this spectacular first-effort.
The Fabulous Clipjoint (Ed \u0026 Am Hunter #1) Reviews
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Noir light
Fredric Brown is best known for his science fiction, particularly short stories. But he wrote stories and books in other genres such as the Edgar Award winning mystery THE FABULOUS CLIP JOINT. Published in book form in 1947, it was first published in Mystery Book Magazine, April, 1946 as Dead Man's Indemnity.
Brown, who had honed his craft by publishing hundreds of short stories in the pulp magazines of the day was known for interesting and sometimes humorous twists. The FABULOUS CLIP JOINT definitely has several twists but light noir not humor. Well, some very light sardonic humor. It was the first of seven novels featuring the nephew/uncle team of Ed and Am Hunter. A type setter and apprentice printer teamed with a carney who, perhaps improbably, make a heck of a team. -
I've heard lots of terrific things about Fredric Brown, and I've read a couple of his short stories in anthologies. The Fabulous Clipjoint is my first novel, and I gave it five stars because I'm a sucker for old-school private eye yarns like this one is. Plus anything with jazz in it gets bonus points. Mr. Brown won the 1948 Edgar for Best First Novel in what went on to become a series, I'm told by other reader (I know the late Ed Hoch told me he was a big Fredric Brown fan).
Ed Hunter, still a teenager, works as a printer apprentice in Chicago and finds his father has been murdered. Before long, Ed hooks up with his Uncle Am, a carney who also happens to have some private investigator professional experience. Together, they set out to expose the killer with a little help given by the cops. Sounds like pretty standard PI fare except we're also treated to young Ed learning about life and coming of age. He encounters bank robbers, gun molls, torpedos, and con artists. All of it is related in his even-tempered, engaging voice. That for me is the strength of the novel.
I wouldn't call The Fabulous Clipjoint hardboiled, more like medium-boiled. Besides the snappy title, the story is first-rate. If I ever find more time to read, I'd move on in the series and find out just what the heck happens to Ed and Uncle Am. -
3.5 stars. A fairly simple plot and storytelling, yet Brown successfully captures some of the boyish exhilarations and determination of a young man on the trail of his father's murderer, forced to grow up practically overnight. This felt a bit more like a golden age mystery from the 20's or 30's rather than the hardboiled noir I was expecting, though Brown does manage to slip in a few unexpectedly lurid scenes, even by today's standards.
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To συγκεκριμένο αστυνομικό 'νουάρ' μυθιστόρημα του Brown διαθέτει ένα διαφορετικό στοιχείο στη πλοκή από πολλά βιβλία της κατηγορίας του: o έφηβος βασικός ήρωάς του, Έντ Χάντερ μαζί με τον θείο του, αδερφό του δολοφονημένου πατέρα του, παίζουν τον ρόλο των ερασιτεχνών ντετέκτιβ, οι οποίοι κάνουν μια επικίνδυνη 'κατάβαση' στα άδυτα του υποκόσμου του 'φανταχτερού' Σικάγο.
Ο αναγνώστης παίρνει μέρος σε αυτή την αναζήτηση-οδοιπορικό των 2 'Κυνηγών', όπου η κάθε γωνία της πόλης 'κρύβει' και κάποιο στοιχείο, ωστόσο η διαλεύκανση του μυστηρίου διχάζει αμφισβητώντας την αληθοφάνεια των γεγονότων - ανεξάρτητα από αυτό, πάντως, τιμήθηκε με το λογοτεχνικό βραβείο 'Έντγκαρ' (1948) για το καλύτερο ντεμπούτο συγγραφέα αστυνομικών μυθιστορημάτων.
Βαθμολογία: 3,8/5 ή 7,6/10. -
11/2017
Very, very good. At first this reminded me of the Moon in the Gutter by David Goodis (in that one it is the beloved sister who is dead in the alley, here it's the father), but it became more plotty and interesting (I loved Uncle Ambrose talking about how everything is just atoms spinning around so, you know, reality isn't as real as you think). A satisfying book.
(Just to clarify, this came out in 1947, the Goodis is from five years later). -
An under-read pulp writer from the 1940s, this is a classic noir mystery set in Chicago, the first of a series featuring young Ed Hunter and his uncle Ambrose, a carnie. Ed's father is killed in an alley on the way home from a regular night out bar hopping. The detective seems unmotivated so these two set out to solve the mystery of his death. Brown does a good done, keeping the reader guessing who killed Ed's father and why. Recommended for readers who enjoyed Ed McBain's 87th Street Precinct series.
Sadly, I am not sure where I am going to find the rest of this series... -
By the time Fredric Brown wrote this, his first full novel, he had already been a prolific contributor to the pulp mags of the 1930s & 40s, turning in works across multiple genres from Sci-fi to Noir. The Fabulous Clipjoint duly won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and introduced a popular pair of would be detectives, Ed & Ambrose Hunter, that would feature in a further six novels. Ed is an 18 year old living in Chicago with his father, step mother and teenage step sister. His hum drum existence as a printer working at the same firm as his father by day and dreaming of becoming a jazz musician by night is shattered when his father is found dead, murdered in a dark alley in a seedy part of town. Teaming up with his Uncle, a carnival worker and ex private dick, who he hasn't seen for a decade, Ed vows to track down the killer. Brown has a unique approach to writing noir that surely shouldn't work. He manages to evoke a gritty, shadowy world filled with suspense, while also maintaining a streak of humour that runs throughout. It's both a crime story and a coming of age story as Ed follows what leads they have, while discovering how little he really knew about his own father from the stories Am tells. Brown's playfullness with the narrative comes to the fore in the scenes where Ed does a spot of roleplay, playing a sharp-suited gun killer with an imaginary gun as they try to bluff info out of suspects. And it's smooth. Brown's first person narrative and snappy dialogue just roll through the mind. It's not short of detail either with Ambrose's sometimes off the wall observations fuelled by the author's own wide experience ranging from the nature of handbags to the basic physical structure of the universe, carney lingo, pop culture references, Jazz, movies, books etc. There are clever little touches like Ed ordering "Rye," from the bartender because he'd seen George Raft order it in the 1935 version of The Glass Key but getting Dutch courage not from a stiff drink but rather from the Juke box and the high wail of Benny Goodman's clarinet. After reading several ultra cynical modern day noir novels recently it was refreshing to see that even during the golden age of the genre Noir wasn't always entirely bleak, cold and black.
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My problem is that the first hard boiled mysteries I read were by Raymond Chandler, and now every time I read a noir crime novel from the 40s or 50s I want it to be as good as Chandler, but that’s hoping for too much. Only Hammett comes close.
This book feels hokey and slap dash and boring by comparison to Chandler. It won an Edgar, but it’s hard to see how. The mystery is meh, the characters are meh, the writing is meh. It’s the mehbulous clipjoint. -
The Fabulous Clipjoint is the Catcher In The Rye of mystery novels - or at least, it is for me.
While I read it, I'm living the life of Ed Hunter, a bright but bitter 18-year-old living in the Chicago slums of the 1940s. And the funny thing is that just like Catcher In The Rye, it doesn't feel a bit dated; Ed loves jazz and wants to play the trombone, but that feels exactly the same as a kid wanting to play the electric guitar would today. Ed's thoughts, as Brown writes them, feel just as fresh and "now" as anything written last week - and are a lot more engaging and real-feeling than 99% of the fiction being written these days.
That's probably why the novel won Fredric Brown the Edger for the best first mystery novel of the year*.
You'll like Ed, I think. You'll like his uncle Ambrose, "Am" for short, too. Am has been a lot of things, including a "carny", which is slang for a carnival worker. Brown spent some time as a carny himself, and knew the business well. Although only a little of the novel takes place at a carnival (the main action takes place in the seedier parts of 1940s Chicago) Brown's details ring true. If you're interested, Brown set a number of short mystery stories in carnivals too.
When Ed and Am Hunter team up to find out who murdered Ed's father, it doesn't feel anything like the traditional mystery novel. There are noir elements of course, but there's an immediacy and realism to the book that - well, I keep trying to explain what makes the book different, and I keep coming back to the same comparison. Just as some readers almost feel as if Holden Caulfield was a friend, someone they knew, so you may well feel about Ed Hunter - and through him, Fredric Brown. Or at least, I do.
It's really an exceptional and unique book, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Ed and Am Hunter are one of mystery's outstanding teams, and Brown wrote six more novels about them. The Fabulous Clipjoint remains the best in the series, but the rest are also outstanding novels. Not all are currently being published, unfortunately. Small mystery publishing houses keep bringing Brown's mysteries back into print, and then inevitably go out of business. In any case, all of Brown's mystery novels are beautifully written and well worth the effort of finding them. Although he never achieved the general recognition that he deserved, Fredric Brown is highly respected by authors and those who've read his work.
Brown also wrote many short noir detective stories for the pulps - but unlike many such stories, his have heart and a gentleness, a sort of intellectual and thoughtful quality, that make them special. They, too, have been collected and published by several small companies.
Lastly, I have to note that Brown was also highly regarded for his science fiction stories and novels, of which there are many. If you like his work in either genre, you'll almost certainly like his work in the other genre - even if you don't normally like that sort of book.
If you like Brown, Anthony Boucher's writing style is in many ways similar. It may not be a coincidence that Boucher, too, worked both in mystery and SF.
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* - Unlike other genres, mystery writers only give awards to first novels. -
Part hard-boiled mystery novel, part coming-of-age story, this under-appreciated novel is a great example of Fredric Brown's seemingly endless imagination.
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The Fabulous Clipjoint is not the type of book I'm ordinarily drawn to. Indeed, if it were not for that the fact that I have a subscription to Otto Penzler's American Mystery Classics series, and read the books on a monthly basis for the Mysterious Bookshop book club, I probably would never have been interested enough in the synopsis of this story to read the book, let alone buy it. But here we are nonetheless. And quite to my own surprise, I really liked it. Within these pages we are introduced to Ed and Am Hunter, nephew and uncle amateur detectives, attempting to solve the murder of Ed's father/Am's brother in 1940s Chicago. There are minor subplots involving a carnival (Am is a carney) and bank robbing hoods, but the meat of the story is Ed finding himself and growing into a young man in the midst of his father's murder and their subsequent quest to uncover the killer. Ed's voice reminded me slightly of Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye (a book I utterly despise) in a young, unsure kid sounding exactly like one, but it worked for me where Holden's did not. You find yourself liking Ed and feeling as if he's real (a feat not always achieved in mystery fiction, which can sometimes focus more on the mystery than the characters). As someone who generally does not solve the whodunnit, the killer in Clipjoint felt a but obvious, although their motives did not. All in all, a really solid mystery, and an author I would love to revisit again.
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A nice noirish detective novel--not as good as some other things I've read by him, but OK. Best when Ed acts like a real confused eighteen year-old and not when he turns into Mr. Smooth With the Dames. Am is a great character, and there's some wonderfully-detailed glances at seedy Chicago. The mystery is not much, but it's full of odd, interesting bits (Ed and Am sit around the bar and talk about women's handbags???).
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I really enjoy Fredric Brown. I don't think he's a very good writer, tbh, but he has a great imagination and all kinds of energy and a singular voice-- he's never pretending-- which is always emotionally invested. I just read his books and smile. Good stuff.
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“The Fabulous Clipjoint” by Fredric Brown is a classic noir mystery that introduces the unlikely detective duo of Ed and Am Hunter, a nephew and uncle who team up to solve the murder of Ed’s father. The audiobook, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, brings to life the gritty atmosphere of post-war Chicago, where the Hunters encounter a colorful cast of characters, from carnival freaks to gangsters, as they follow the clues that lead them to the truth.
The audiobook is a faithful adaptation of the original novel, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1948. Fredric Brown was a master of pulp fiction, who wrote hundreds of short stories and novels in various genres, including science fiction, horror, and humor. His style is witty, fast-paced, and full of twists and surprises. He also had a knack for creating memorable characters, such as Am Hunter, a former carny worker who knows all the tricks of the trade and has a penchant for quoting Lewis Carroll.
The narrator, Stefan Rudnicki, is an award-winning audiobook producer and director, who has worked with many authors and genres. His voice is deep, rich, and expressive, and he captures the tone and mood of the story perfectly. He also does a great job of differentiating the voices of the various characters, giving them distinct personalities and accents. He conveys the emotions and motivations of the protagonists, as well as the humor and suspense of the plot.
The audiobook is a treat for fans of noir fiction, as well as for newcomers who want to discover a classic of the genre. It is also a great introduction to the work of Fredric Brown, one of the most versatile and inventive writers of his time. The audiobook will keep you hooked from start to finish. If you enjoy “The Fabulous Clipjoint,” you will be happy to know that there are six more novels featuring Ed and Am Hunter, which are also available as audiobooks. -
Otra relectura feliz y una que me devolvió al mundo de uno de mis autores favoritos de toda la vida: el Sr. Fredric Brown. Brown destacó ampliamente cómo autor de cuentos y novelas de género, especialmente ciencia ficción y policial negro. Dentro de lo segundo, La Trama Fabulosa es su primera novela -de hecho, es su primera novela sin importar género- y el inicio de una saga que reaparecerá en estas reseñas en los próximos días: la saga de Ed y Am Hunter. Nos encontramos en la ciudad de Chicago y el joven (18 años) Ed Hunter se desayuna un día con que su padre ha sido asesinado la noche pasada, al salir de copas. Todo indica un crimen casual, pero el tío de Ed y hermano del muerto, Am, regresa a su vida para opinar distinto. Sea cómo sea, ademas, Am -feriante, aventurero, ex detective privado- cree que es su deber -el de los Hunter- encontrar al asesino y pueden dedicarle a la tarea un tiempo y concentración que la policía no. Y así comienza entonces, tanto esta novela puntual cómo la saga, una que le servirá a Brown para reflexionar sobre la vida adulta desde los ojos de un joven cómo fuera alguna vez, pero también con el tamiz de un hombre maduro en la mirada de su tío, tal cual lo era al momento de escribir la novela. Y si bien es una novela con indecisiones de estilo propias de cualquier primera novela -digamos que se parece mucho a cualquier novela hard boiled de su propia época- es lo “extra” lo que la vuelve muy recomendable: el descubrimiento que Ed va haciendo sobre su padre asesinado y quién era en realidad, el inicio de la vida adulta -relacionarse con mujeres, el alcohol-, la posibilidad de una vida para sí cómo nunca se había imaginado, etc. Y además de todo la prosa de Brown es siempre adictiva. Una maravilla de escritor, un placer leerlo siempre.
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Ολντ σκουλ αστυνομικό νουάρ, απ' αυτά που συνήθως με αρέσουν. Αυτό δεν μου πολυάρεσε -και ανησύχησα κάπως. Αλλάζουνε τα γούστα μου και μπερδεύω τα μπούτια μου, μάλλον.
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3.5*
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Πολυ κακη μεταφραση σε ενα καλο hard boiled
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I had always thought of Frederic Brown as a science fiction writer, for that was how he was presented to me when I first discovered him in the Sixties. I was surprised later when I encountered others who had always thought of him as a mystery writer with a sideline in science fiction, which had gotten out of hand. It was not until the early Eighties that I came across re-issues of his collected short mystery fiction. Some of those stories from the Thirties and Forties seemed as dated as much fiction from that period, with outmoded social concepts, citations of forgotten radio shows or films, and references to people once household names but totally unknown now. But even the out-of-date stories scintillated with crisp dialogue, compelling narrative, and engrossing puzzles. In those stories, I discovered Frederic Brown a second time, this time a far edgier writer, one who walked on the noir side of the street, created grifters and gun molls, and employed a vocabulary steeped in violence and slang.
In a way, it’s harder these days to track down out-of-print books by a writer like Brown because of the decline of brick-and-mortar bookstores. On the other hand, the rise of small, specialized e-book publishers has brought many forgotten crime classics out of oblivion. Such is the case with “The Fabulous Clipjoint,” a book for which I searched a long time, without success, but finally found in a Kindle format. It’s importance is that it was the first appearance of the nephew/uncle detective team of Ed and Ambrose (Am) Hunter, a key volume in providing a context for all the books that came after.
Ed Hunter tells the story of “The Fabulous Clipjoint,” how his father, Wally, was murdered in a dark Chicago alley, an event devastating to Ed for many reasons, but which to his step-mother and step-sister was merely the end of a meal ticket. Shattered as only an eighteen year old can be, Ed travels to a far town to inform his father’s brother, Ambrose, whom he has not seen for a decade, mostly because he is disliked by his step-mother, disliked not just because he works at a traveling carnival but because he sees through her. To Ed’s surprise, Uncle Am leaves the carnival, accompanies him back to Chicago, and tells Ed they are going to solve Wally’s murder. And when Am tells him, “We are Hunters,” he understands the intended double meaning.
The goal of the characters, to find out who killed Wally, happens very late in the book and passes quickly, with startling abruptness. But the goal of the characters is not the purpose of the book, for Ed’s story is more about coming of age and finding out what he wants to do with his life, than it is about who killed his dad. In this, he is guided not only by an uncle well acquainted with the highs and lows of the world, but by friends and family whose masks are ripped away by death, by gangsters and gun molls looking for vengeance and riches, and by the ordinary riff-raff of society whose only goal is to survive from one moment to the next, at a profit, whether by helping people or betraying them.
Reading “The Fabulous Clipjoint,” you wonder why Frederic Brown ever bothered with science fiction. As with most things, it was probably an economic situation, for his crime writing is superb and extremely easy to read. True, some of the trappings of society have changed since the book was written, but if you’ve seen even one old gangster or detective film you know the clothes and the venue well enough. The slang may slow you down, but as with most languages context is usually sufficient for understanding, and, besides, carny slang is almost an academic study these days. All of the drawbacks of the book, however, are unimportant compared to the engaging narrative voice of young Ed Hunter and the masterful storytelling skill of Frederic Brown. -
review of
Fredric Brown's The Fabulous Clipjoint
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 25, 2018
Blame it on Fredric Brown. He's sucking me into the underworld of plot-driven writing. I was engrossed in this. I loved it. I hardly took any reviewer notes on it at all for the usual reason that I don't want to spoil the plot & I don't have much to say about it that isn't plot-based. The father/husband/stepfather gets murdered & the family members have their various reactions wch seem real enuf. The son, Ed, realizes that he didn't really even know him & feels bad about it. This is emphasized when Ed meets the murdered father's brother after a hiatus of a decade & hears stories about the 2 of them that're surprising:
""Let's stick to Pop," I suggested. "He was in Spain."
""Yeah. Well, he came back. We finally got in touch with one another through a friend in St. Paul we both happened to write to. I was with a detective agency then—Wheeler's, out in L.A.—and Wally was in vaudeville. He used to be pretty good at juggling—oh, not a top act, even as jugglers go, but he was good with the Indian clubs. Good enough for a spot with a fair troupe. He ever juggle any lately?"" - p 77
"I was tired, but I had trouble getting to sleep. I kept thinking about what I'd learned about Pop.
"When he was my age, I thought, he'd owned and run a newspaper. He'd had a duel and shot a man. He'd had an affair with a married woman. He'd traveled across most of Mexico afoot and spoke Spanish like a native. He'd crossed the Atlantic and lived in Spain. He'd dealt blackjack in a border town." - p 81
This bk was copyrighted in 1947. I was born in 1953. I often find myself attracted to cultural products from the 1950s. I love Morton Feldman's "Intersection" piano pieces, e.g.. The Fabulous Clipjoint doesn't quite fit the era but it's close enuf. Ed calls his father "Pop". My mom called her stepfather "Pop" &, as a family tradition, I called mine "Pop". Is that common anymore?
""You mean you're going to—to—"
""Hell, yes. That's why I had to fix things with Hoagy and Maury—he bought the carney this season but kept Hobart's name on it—so I could stay away as long as I had to. Hell, yes, kid. You don't think we're going to let some son of a bitch get away with killing your dad, do you?"" - p 18
Uncle Am & Ed are going to investigate. The cover of the bk identifies this as "AN ED AND AM MYSTERY NOVEL" wch makes me wonder if there are others. I look online & learn that there are 7. This is the 1st one. I'm hooked, I want to read them all. (Then again, I really do have better things to do.) It helps that there's lingo I'm not familiar w/:
"Bassett's eyes unveiled a little, just a little. He asked, "You think you might want to run one?"
""I think maybe," my uncle said.
"They seemed to understand each other. They knew what they were talking about. I didn't.
"Like when Hoagy, the big man, had been talking to my uncle about the blow being sloughed. Only that was carney talk; at least I knew why I didn't understand it. This was different; they were talking words I knew, but it still didn't make sense." - pp 29-30
A subplot of sorts is that Ed's 15 yr old stepsister is horny & keeps trying to seduce him:
"She said, "Some day I'm going on the stage, Eddie. What do you? How'm I doin'?"
""You dance swell," I told her.
""Bet I could strip-tease. Like Gypsy Rose. Watch." She reached behind her, as she danced, for the fastenings of her dress.
"I said, "Don't be a dope, Gardie. I'm your brother, remember?"
""You're not my brother. Anyway, what's that got to do with how I dance? How—"
"She was having trouble with the catch. She danced near me. I reached out and grabbed her hand. I said, "Goddam it, Gartie, cut that out."
"She laughed and leaned back against me. The pull on her wrist had brought her into my lap.
"She said, "Kiss me, Eddie." Her lips were bright red, her body hot against mine. And then her lips were pressing against mine, without my doing anything about it." - p 63
Uncle Am is experienced & wily, Ed is young but has an imagination for taking risks that pay off. Here, after not being sure what he do, he spontaneously approaches a gangster's girlfriend in a direct way:
"I asked, "Does the name Hunter mean anything to you?"
""Hunter? It doesn't."
"I asked, "How about the name Reynolds?"
""Who is this?"
""I'd like to explain," I said. "May I come upstairs? Or would you meet me down in the bar for a drink?"" - p 139
The direct approach pays off in a way that Uncle Am's previous con attempt hadn't.
Brown also wrote science fiction & I like the way his respect for the genre keeps popping up in his crime fiction:
"The top floor was a very swanky ocktail bar. The windows were open and it was cool there. Up as high as that, the breeze was a cool breeze and not something out of a blast furnace.
"We took a table by a window on the south side, looking out toward the Loop. It was beautiful in the bright sunshine. The tall, narrow buildings were like fingers reaching toward the sky. It was like something out of a science-fitcion story. You couldn't quite believe it, even looking at it." - p 178
I really enjoyed reading this. I seem to like his crime fiction more than his SF even tho I generally like SF more than crime fiction. I've hardly told you anything about the bk to spoil it for you. READ IT! It's a quickie. Brown isn't afraid to depict 'beautiful' women as manipulative. I'm reminded of Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister b/c of that. I appreciate stories in wch women are shown equally as victimizers rather than only as victims — the latter seems unrealistic to me but there's plenty of it around these days.
Brown was supposedly popular in his day but in this reader's experience he seems close to forgotten now. That's a shame. Besides, he was born in Baltimore, my home town. -
I needed a break from philosophical C. S. Lewis reading so I grabbed something from my go-to escapist genre: mystery/crime from the 1920’s-50’s.
There was nothing fancy about this book; no snappy dialogue like Hammett or Chandler and no steadily building dread like Goodis or Woolrich. However, it had a decent plot with some good twists and turns. The story follows 18-year-old Ed Hunter as he and his Uncle Ambrose (a carnie) try to track down his father’s killer in Chicago. The tale features the usual noir fiction assortment of drunks, gangsters, crooked cops, and a femme fatale or two. I guessed whodunnit pretty early on, but there were enough red herrings and obscure motives that I didn’t get bored with it. There is also the added interest of this being something of a “coming of age tale” for Ed. I was a little disappointed that the carnie angle didn’t play into the story as much as I’d hoped, but I guess you can only fit so much into 168 pages. Overall: exactly the kind of escapist read I was hoping for. -
I recently read the classic mystery, winner of the Edgar award for best first novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown. The writing is superb. The characterization is strong. The dialog is good. The plotting is beautiful. (Brown was an experienced short story writer when he wrote his first novel. It's not the work of a beginner.) Readers who like language will learn both old carny jargon and mid-twentieth-century slang.
The plot is full of twists. Readers will guess some of them. I'm reasonably sure they won't guess all of them.
The Fabulous Clipjoint is among the top ten percent of novels I have read. (I believe the book has one small flaw, but I can't go into it, for it is a spoiler.) I especially recommend it for fans of Raymond Chandler. -
It is no wonder this book won the Edgar for best first mystery novel. When Ed Hunter is 18 his father is murdered so he goes to his Uncle Am, a carny, for help. As Am tells Ed, "We're Hunters," playing on the double entendre with full meaning, and they set off to track down the killer.
This is a rich story about coming of age, looking below the surface for people you thought you knew well, and learning to walk those mean streets while maintaining integrity. In short it is about where a hard boiled detective gets his formational training.
There were seven Ed and Am mysteries and I look forward to tracking the remaining six down for future enjoyment. -
Very enjoyable! They don't write them that way any more.
Despite the fact that there were some real "bad guys" in the book, what I think I liked best was the warmth and naturalness of the characters, characteristics that are all too rare in today's thrillers.
It was also fun to step back into 1950! -
A diverting 1947 noir lite novel set in Chicago. The action all takes place near where I work (what is now Streeterville and River North), and it's fun to picture the settings--neighborhood bars, cheap apartment buildings, streetcars, train stations, and hotels--in the now-upscale blocks where I ramble. The city was a lot smaller back then...
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I don't get all the fuss about this book. It was enjoyable, but never rose above 5 on scale of 1-10. Maybe its status is due to it being the first of the Ed and Am books, but it fell short of being exciting, and I'm not keen on any more of these.
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I recently heard that American International Pictures—the company that used to make the Poe-inspired films often starring Vincent Price back in the 1960s—aimed their films at nineteen year old males. The belief was that guys wouldn't go to "chick flicks" and older teens wouldn't go to films intended for younger viewers, so nineteen year old males became the target demographic.
There must be similar thinking going on with Frederic Brown and the pulp novels of his era. Not only is the book filled with mystery, intrigue, and the common man delving into the criminal underworld on his own (things that could appeal to anyone), it also flirts with moments of nascent machismo and scandalous sexuality, almost certainly aimed at young males. The young protagonist must simultaneously learn to get tough while also staving off the uncomfortable sexual advances of his young step-sister.
The aforementioned protagonist is Ed Hunter, an eighteen year old on the verge of manhood. After his father gets killed in a Chicago alley after a long night of drinking, he teams up with his uncle Ambrose, a smooth-talking carney, and the two investigate, running into all kinds of shady characters along the way. Brown scores points with me right away because he finds a way to make the protagonists' investigations passably believable. They end up working alongside the cops, and, while at times they are effective at getting information out of people, they are clearly still far from perfect.
While the novel's characterizations overall are weak (but whose reading this book for realistic emotional reactions anyway?), there are moments when the conversations between Ed and his uncle are touching, discussing things like how little Ed knew about his father and how often people get unfairly labeled. The ending is well done, too. The identity of the killer seemed so obvious when it was revealed, but I sure didn't see it coming (and that's exactly why people are reading this). -
WOW. I LOVED this book.
It has much of the usual tough guy detective or noir story feel but it is a different kind of mystery. In some ways it is a slow burn even though things do happen and you want to find out what it coming. BUT the resolution at the end is a bit of an “anti-resolution”, at least in a mystery story sense. It is hard to explain, just read the book and get to the end.
The kicker is toward the end where finally there is a reference to what the title is all about. After all their adventures, our young protagonist and his wise but tough uncle have a drink from high above Chicago and Brown lays out the whole point if it all. And it goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting.
We took a table by a window on the south side, looking out toward the Loop. It was beautiful in the bright sunshine. The tall, narrow buildings were like fingers reaching toward the sky. It was like something out of a science-fiction story. You couldn’t quite believe it, even looking at it. “Ain’t it something, kid?”
“Beautiful as hell,” I said. “But it’s a clipjoint.” He grinned. The little laughing wrinkles were back in corners of his eyes. He said, “It’s a fabulous clipjoint, kid. The craziest things can happen in it, and not all of them are bad.”| Page 128
So basically, everything going on around us is a con, or a bait and switch, where we are lured into life by false advertising. I might be overreaching here but we are lured to buy, eat, do, so many things and most of them are really not good for us. The majority of stuff in a coffee shop you should not get (pastries, sugar packed coffee, and more). And just look down a cereal aisle in a grocery store, millions spent to lure us to buy sugar coated crap.
Well, you get the idea. But to make a big ol’ comments about the absurdity of modern life at the end of a mystery novel. THAT is something special.
I must confess I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much when I was younger. I guess I am an older more cynical reader now and ripe for Fredric Brown mysteries.
Now some quotes:
She came back looking like a million bucks in crisp new currency. | Page 111
I said, “You talk like a poet, not a carney.” He chuckled. “I read a book once,” he said. “Look, kid, don’t try to label things. Words fool you. You call a guy a printer or a lush or a pansy or a truck driver and you think you’ve pasted a label on him. People are complicated; you can’t label ’em with a word.” | Page 49 -
This was a fantastic surprise! Ed wakes up to news that his father is dead in an alley in Chicago, and he hooks up with his carney Uncle Am to track down who done it. One of the things I loved is that it's really well-plotted and paced, but also just how much I loved the voice of Ed. I was not expecting a mystery like this to also be somehow a great coming of age story, especially with the surprisingly relevant character study of Ed's father. I'd recommend this to almost anyone who loves mysteries.
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Frederik Brown ist im deutschsprachigen Raum manchem noch als Autor sehr pointierter SF-Kurzgeschichten bekannt. Aber er war auch sein sehr guter Krimi-Autor. "Hunters erste Jagd" ist sein erster Roman und kam so gut an, dass er eine Reihe von Krimis mit Ed Hunter, in diesem Roman erst 19 Jahre alt, geschrieben hat. Die gehören inzwischen zu den Klassikern.
Ich habe diesen Krimi, der knackig kurz ist, sehr gerne gelesen. Er hat alles, was einen guten Detektiv-Roman, der in der Großstadt spielt, ausmacht.
Diese Ausgabe enthält auch ein biographisches Nachwort vom Lektor Martin Compart.
