Great News for DeAndrea Fans!

One of my all-time favourite authors is William DeAndrea. That’s hardly a secret – the man combined a perfect amount of tricky plotting with characterization and style, and consistently turned out high-quality stuff until his all-too premature death in 1996. I’ve enjoyed reading his stuff so much that I’ve even created a page dedicated to his work, to keep track of all my reviews. Imagine my delight, then, when I found out that The Mysterious Press was planning to reissue DeAndrea’s stuff as e-books! This release will introduce DeAndrea to a wide audience of readers. Among the releases are all three of his Niccolo Benedetti novels – including the Edgar-winning The Hog Murders – and the short-lived Lobo Blacke/Quinn Booker series – which read like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin in the Wild West. But there’s another series character who will be making his way to the e-reader screen for the first time, and that is Matt Cobb.

Cobb was introduced to readers in DeAndrea’s Edgar-winning debut novel, Killed in the Ratings. (He won a grand total of three Edgar Awards—the third for his excellent non-fiction work Encyclopedia Mysteriosa). Cobb works at a media conglomerate known as The Network – a telecommunications giant like ABC or CNN back in the days when television was king and didn’t have to worry about the Internet. He is Vice-President of Special Projects, a job that basically entails his making sure that The Network stays out of trouble. But in some cases where trouble already has occurred, it’s up to Cobb to initiate Damage Control mode.

Murder on Air

It might seem like an odd choice to review a novel by William L. DeAndrea in this series of hardboiled reviews. But in this case, I think the choice is defensible: Killed in the Ratings (DeAndrea’s first novel) is far more hardboiled than later entries in the Matt Cobb series. The book deservedly won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and DeAndrea would follow it up impressively, winning another Edgar the following year for The Hog Murders. (Here’s an interesting bit of trivia—looking at the dust jacket of Killed in the Ratings, it seems that DeAndrea originally planned to call his second book The Serial Murders.)

Live from New York: Murder!

The last time I read a book by William DeAndrea, I walked away disappointed. Cronus was highly unlike the other DeAndreas I’ve read— it was a paranoia-fuelled and painfully average Cold War thriller. It was wonderful, then, to return to Matt Cobb, DeAndrea’s main series character. Killed in the Act was the second Matt Cobb mystery, right after the Edgar -winning Killed in the Ratings. Cobb is a fusion between the classic GAD investigator and the hardboiled, private eye: he speaks in the hardboiled voice, but he’s not a private detective by trade, and in fact, he seems to suffer from a severe case of J. B. Fletcher Syndrome.

Matt Cobb is Vice-President of Special Projects at The Network, a major television broadcaster like NBC or CBS. His job is basically to handle tricky situations and make sure The Network comes out of it with a squeaky-clean reputation. The way he speaks reminds me uncannily of Archie Goodwin—like Archie, he speaks with the voice of the private eye without the negative qualities. Yes, he can make sarcastic comments in his head, but he doesn’t make it a governing staple of his life to be rude to everyone he meets, and this quality makes him a likeable character, the kind of guy you want to win in the end.

The Big Chill

William L. DeAndrea has quickly become the most reviewed author so far on this (still rather young) blog, but can you really blame me? DeAndrea knew how to tell a good story without uselessly padding it out. He was clearly influenced by Rex Stout, and in this book, Killed on the Rocks, I noticed more than ever the way the detective, Matt Cobb, spoke in that unmistakable voice used by Stout’s Archie Goodwin.

Killed on the Rocks is a highly entertaining read, where DeAndrea seems to have combined the style of Rex Stout with a plot that John Dickson Carr at his most ingenious could’ve come up with. This combination is the stuff of dreams, something mystery fans like me thought they could only wish upon a star about. But as it turns out, it is possible to reach out and read it! No, this isn’t a hallucination, a lie, or a dream! Egad!

Death and the Figure-Skating Footman

My great love is for mysteries of the Golden Age, and the authors who emulated the style. The richness and imagination found in stories written at the time is just incredible. Reading a Golden Age mystery is almost like agreeing to an author-reader duel with whoever the author was. The author throws every trick in the book at you: red herrings, fake alibis, multiple murders... Meanwhile, the reader tries his (or her) best to keep their balance, thrusting back with their own deductions, trying to figure out just what the old devil’s up to this time. It’s plenty of fun to read along and try to beat the detective to the solution. I can’t help but get a picture in my mind of a pleasant evening of deduction by the fireplace: Dr. Fell smoking a pipe in a red leather armchair, Sir Henry Merrivale battling it out with a pair of knitting needles as Miss Marple attempts to help out… It’s a very warm, pleasant image.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the road, this kind of mystery became unpopular. Instead, we are stuck with 600 page books, 450 of which are character angst, 100 of which is devoted to social commentary, and the rest is the plot. We’re stuck with characters moaning about how unhappy they are, the details of their various love affairs, and attempts at faux artistry all over the place. The picture I get of the modern mystery stage is a dark, grim one, where imagination and creativity are almost viewed as crimes in themself.

That is why I would prefer reading a Golden Age mystery almost any day of the week –  and why finding a good, (more) modern mystery author is something of a miracle. Enter William L. DeAndrea.