John Franklin Bardin

All by John Franklin  Bardin:

The Deadly Percheron  pub 1946

The Last of Philip Banter pub 1947

Devil Take the Blue-Tailed Fly pub 1948

In the 1970s there was a much-prized omnibus version of Bardin’s three key novels, with an introduction by Julian Symons.

This is my copy (and yes the cover picture looks like that, its not a function of my poor camera skills).

It is true to say that in those pre-internet days (when I had not met my fellow-fans online) I would have been arrested by the sight of this book on someone's bookshelf, would have known the owner to share strong common interests with me. Few people would have heard of him or the books or the omnibus.

Symons tells the story of how Bardin was a lost author: he wrote these three books in the 1940s and then just stopped – but in the 1970s was discovered editing a law magazine, and re-emerged. But  not for long: he died in 1981, and the books are forgotten again.

The three books are intense, noir-ish, creepy, and very much fixated on mental illness, psychology and psychiatry. They leave the reader wrung out, with a great sense of unease and a huge admiration for Bardin’s talents. They give an amazing sense of the late 1940s in New York, and of the mixed feeling then for matters of the mind, and criminal psychology.

I re-read the books for the first time in probably 30 years. They are all short sharp shockers (always a recommendation to me). A Percheron is a kind of carthorse – I learned that from this book, and thus was ready when I later found out that it was Oswald Mosley’s bizarre nickname for his famously beautiful wife Diana Mitford.

The horse turns up at death scenes, there is a foolish rich young man, there is money changing hands for ridiculous tasks, and there is a conclusion at a deserted Fun House at Coney Island. 

Do you need to hear more? But the book also features one of the most nightmare-like scenarios I could ever imagine – is this just me or does everyone feel the same? – which is a character being locked up in a mental institution and not able to prove sanity, or his identity, and be released.

These are fierce books.

Philip Banter features an advertising executive in a miserable marriage, who finds each morning in his office a ‘script’ for something in his life that will happen soon. Where is this coming from, and can he change the future – if that is what it is?

 

The Blue-Tail Fly is generally agreed to be the best – it features a young woman being released from a mental facility and trying to rebuild her life and her marriage, and also uncover some items from her past. It is obvious something very worrying is going on…

 

I enjoyed them all, if that is the right word, though they tend to leave you breathless.

After reading the books I looked online to see what there was about him – the answer is not much, but I was lucky enough to find a piece by Jay Rosenberg 

Notes on John Franklin Bardin: The Politics of Fear, Revisited, Revisited — Jay Rosenberg.

He had been rereading the books at the same time as I was, strangely enough, and I found his perceptions very helpful. I very much recommend his piece.

I particularly liked this summary:

“Memory is generally the key to cracking the case in a JFB mystery. Hilariously, sleuthing in JFB is often just characters trying to remember who they are or what they have done (“Who was I before I woke up as a guy working in a Coney Island diner?” (Percheron) “Did I write the confessions that appear on my desk?” (Banter) “Am I the person who killed that guy?” (Blue-Tail Fly)).”

There isn’t much useful clothes description in the books, but definitely an air of out-and-about in New York – the picture of Women Dressed for After Five is from the Vivat Vintage Tumbler.

Abandoned attraction at Coney Island, US National Archives.

Coney Island from Library of Congress.

Office and typewriter from the San Diego Aerospace Museum, a great favourite resource.