Book Club: The Second Confession
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milk_and_orchidsApologies I couldn't get this done for Friday--I fell ill and have been completely out of commission. But now I am upright and typing again, so let's get into it--the second Zeck book!
A COMMIE IS A LOUSE
I really like this book, although when I first read it I was a little wary of the levels of demonization of card-carrying-Communists--but then, I have the knowledge in hindsight of the damage the Second Red Scare was just about to do to a lot of people and the culture in general. On the bright side, Wolfe's not a knee-jerk rightwinger in his anti-Communism; he uses the term with precision, but realizes that other people don't:
Given the manner in which Wolfe makes his liberal ideologies plain throughout the series (including the way he asks in this book for the removal of aggressive right-wing blowhard Paul Emerson from the radio, as part of his fee), it seems that Sperling would well be able to call him a commie in the sloppy/Red Scare sense. But Wolfe is not prone to sloppiness or hysteria: he is the one of them who actually knows any members of the party; he knows how to work with Communists in order to do his real job (including the mysterious "Mr. Jones"--is he a mole? If so, why is Archie so afraid for Wolfe? Is he a Communist? If so, why does he give Wolfe so much information?). So it seems at least to me that Wolfe's objections are specific and thought out, which is not the same as Red Scare hysteria.
Archie is a stranger case, since he seems to be yanking Sperling's chain:
Oh, ARCHIE. Heh. What was that even about?
PLOT BASICS
* I will admit that Communism works well as the prime mover in the story and the way to dovetail with Zeck: it's a hugely-charged secret that would certainly draw a professional blackmailer (blackmailing Kane, but also Jimmy Sperling for his contribution to the front for the Henry Wallace campaign, which--at least in this book--is being controlled and manipulated by the Communist Party). And that's what connects Rony (Zeck's worker bee) to Kane, and why Kane kills him. The particulars of the party meetings are also a hugely-charged secret, and publishing those details is how Wolfe frames Kane as a stoolie in the eyes of the party, which motivates them to cut him loose and help prove he's a killer.
* As in "Too Many Women" a couple of books ago, Archie is supposed to go undercover in a group of people...and is unmasked almost at once. Archie, you are not cut out for the cloak-and-dagger! Especially because the unmasking is due to him having SUCH A FAN, with thephoto on her tumblr clipping in her scrapbook. Face it, Arch, you're just irresistible.
SIDE CHARACTERS
* We get some Saul, Fred, and Orrie--and all of them together, in a meeting in which Wolfe asks if they'd be okay if he decided not to punish Rony's murderer (once discovered). I assume he needs to leave this option open since Rony was 1) a blackmailer and 2) Zeck's creature, and the killing might have been (in Wolfe's eyes) justified. Orrie's okay with it: "Here's to crime," he toasts Wolfe. Which in very very long hindsight can give one a bit of a shiver.
* And we get the wonderful Ruth Brady! I don't know if she appears in any future books--I fear not. Which is a damn shame, because she's great, and the way she works with the guys (especially Archie) is terrific. She's a fount of wisecracks, she's a respected specialist in the cosh, she's competent and informative and quick. And, frankly, Archie is able to work with her without the constant OMG LADY DETECTIVE that we get from him re: the later appearances of Dol Bonner and Sally Colt/Corbett. She could just as easily be Fred or Orrie, and that is a refreshing change.
* We get Lon again, and Lon gets a steak again! One of Fritz's, even, and the description always gets me: "The steak was thick and brown with charcoal braid, the grilled slices of sweet potato and sauteed mushrooms were just right..." Now I'm hungry.
* We see Lt. Con Noonan of the State Police again, with some references to the first time they met him in "A Door to Death"--which we haven't actually covered yet, I guess because the collection it appeared in was published slightly afterward. Anyway, he's a brute, and Archie honestly seems to hate him, telling us that Noonan "was fitted out at birth for a career as a guard at a slave-labor camp and somehow got delivered to the wrong country".
ZECK DRAWS CLOSER
In the interests of backstory: Wolfe tells the Sperlings that he first got an inkling of Zeck "and something of his activities and methods" eleven years ago, although he didn't know his name.
Also: Zeck says he hopes he doesn't have to kill Wolfe, because "It's a more interesting world with you in it." Classic nemesis! Wasn't that later used from Hannibal Lector to Clarice Starling?
They have some bad luck here, Zeck-wise, but then some good luck that might end up staving off the final confrontation for a little while (and certainly gives Wolfe some good bug-out money). The bad luck is that Rony is one of Zeck's belongings--which is a coincidence, but I'm okay with it, given how widespread Wolfe describes Zeck's network as being. At first, Zeck warns them off for investigating Rony--to the point of DESTROYING THE PLANT ROOMS, a dramatic scene (and a favorite!) I'll discuss below. But when Rony is killed, Zeck asks Wolfe to find the killer--and even though Wolfe doesn't do it because Zeck told him to, Zeck still pays up. Archie, still blithely believing he'll be involved in case Wolfe does have to bug out, tucks the money away in an anonymous safe deposit box. Speaking of which...
POOR ARCHIE IN HINDSIGHT
I thought I'd link back to my earlier mention of this book at this point, because it's heartbreaking--but only afterward.
The first two Zeck books, as we've been mentioning, introduce and build on Wolfe's contingency plan In Case Of Terminal Zeck: he's going to flee the Brownstone and go completely undercover to defeat Zeck no matter what it takes, and "[Zeck] will know it is a mortal encounter". In the previous book, he mentioned it only to Archie; in this book, he mentions it to the the entire Sperling family (one of whom he knows has an attachment to a member of Zeck's organization), so the information is spreading wider now like the ripples in a pool.
But every time, and emphatically so in the case of this book, Wolfe emphasizes how Archie will of course be involved and there's no way he could do it without him. In this book, even when things are looking very dark indeed, Wolfe is all "If we ever meet him head on and have to cut off from here and from everyone we know, we'll need supplies." It takes the later events of "In the Best Families" to reveal (and rub in) the fact that this turned out not to be the case. :(
I also mentioned this in the post for "And Be A Villain," because I wonder... is there any clue in "In the Best Families" why he ended up making such a different decision? I can't remember, so I'll be paying more attention to that question when we get to that book. Could his promises to Archie have been flummery all along, with Wolfe secretly deciding to keep Archie safe and out of it, the way he did a few years before when he hired Bascom's men to track down/identify Zeck instead of involving Archie in any way?
WOLFE AND ARCHIE
There are so many great scenes and lines in this book, that I could've filled this entire post with nothing but citations and quotations! They're really getting along well, occasional and productive head-butting included.
* They decide on "Andrew" for Archie's pseudonym... "That would fit the A.G. on the bag Wolfe had given me for my birthday, which I naturally wanted to have along because it was caribou hide and people should see it." Archie, you self-sufficient, furniture-buying, kept man you.
* The ATTACK ON THE PLANT ROOMS. I love this scene--it's the sort of rupture of their sanctum sanctorum that really elevates Zeck (even though it's also hamhandedly hired-gunman-violent, not very clever-Moriarty-style), and honestly shakes Wolfe. The Brownstone is no longer any kind of shield, should Zeck decide to really get serious.
But more, I love the scene for its emotional content. Like the way that Archie narrates a realistic sense of shock (as we've seen him do in other books, when he's in combat-level crisis), having the first line after the cacophony simply be, "Wolfe said something." (We also get a bit of shock when he almost throws up after finding Rony's body, an interesting bit where he doesn't disparage himself or anyone for reacting that way.)
Archie is the man of action, rushing outside and then upstairs, and there's a nice piece of physicality where Wolfe is right behind Archie and would charge forward into the dark room full of shattered glass:
And Wolfe's very quiet reaction when they finally do have a light and he sees the carnage, I feel like it says a lot.
* Wolfe and Archie's trip back up to stay with the Sperlings! Poor Wolfe...his one safe place attacked and disrupted, and here he is on a guest bed with incipient holes in his socks, having to eat jellied consomme. (Man, that meal feels soooo 1950s to me.) I adore the way Archie pulls the blanket off his own bed to cover Wolfe. Daw. In general, their coupled-up napping feels very cozy and domestic; they fit together well, and it's clearly those two against the world.
* Speaking of Wolfe and Archie and the Sperlings...there's a description of what everyone else at the table is wearing, and it's all kind of scruffy-casual, including dingy coat sweaters and loud checks and rayon; Wolfe and Archie "were the only ones with neckties on". I get a sense here of time beginning to move forward without them, as the world outside the Brownstone starts to move more quickly than they do. Throughout WWII and right after, they still felt congruent with the outside world, but just about here I at least start to feel the shift.
* When it's revealed that Wolfe's car was involved, Wolfe and Archie exchange a look and a nod/headshake, and all the required information and confidence has been exchanged. ♥ When Noonan is thirsting to drag Archie to the station and beat the story out of him, Wolfe is Not Amused. ("...if Mr. Goodwin is taken to a barracks, as this puppy suggests, I shall go with him.")
* Archie teases Wolfe with more of his stealth-erudition, tossing out a Confucius quotation as something he heard a guy say once (and then, as always, enjoying Wolfe's double-take. *g*).
* Following up the 'if we have to run we'll need supplies' conversation about the money in the pseudonymous safe-deposit box, Wolfe finishes:
OH, BOYS.
* Archie is so proud of himself for finding the murder weapon! And sooooo cranky when Wolfe seems to downplay it. He punishes Wolfe by not eating dinner with him. SO THERE. *g* Later, during the final rundown of the crime, Wolfe makes a sneaky peace offering, telling the entire group: "By a brilliant stroke of Mr. Goodwin's, [the ambush] was established as a fact. On Thursday he searched the grounds for the instrument used for laying Mr. Rony out, and he found it in the presence of a witness."
* Archie is honestly worried about Wolfe and Mr. Jones, sitting up late into the night until Wolfe has gone safely to bed. "What if I come down some morning and find you?" he asks. Poor guy. (I keep saying Poor Archie here, I know, when there certainly should be a Poor Wolfe or two as well! His cherished orchids, the sudden attack on his bulwark and his haven...)
What do you think? Do you like this one?
Edit!: Here's the schedule for the discussion of Trouble in Triplicate!:
Does anyone want to do the discussion posts for any of these? (If no one volunteers,liviapenn is willing to do "Before I Die".)
A COMMIE IS A LOUSE
I really like this book, although when I first read it I was a little wary of the levels of demonization of card-carrying-Communists--but then, I have the knowledge in hindsight of the damage the Second Red Scare was just about to do to a lot of people and the culture in general. On the bright side, Wolfe's not a knee-jerk rightwinger in his anti-Communism; he uses the term with precision, but realizes that other people don't:
"Whom do you call a Communist? A liberal? A pink intellectual? A member of the party? How far left do you start?"
Sperling smiled. "It depends on where I am and who I'm talking to. There are occasions when it may be expedient to apply the term to anyone left of center. [...]"
Given the manner in which Wolfe makes his liberal ideologies plain throughout the series (including the way he asks in this book for the removal of aggressive right-wing blowhard Paul Emerson from the radio, as part of his fee), it seems that Sperling would well be able to call him a commie in the sloppy/Red Scare sense. But Wolfe is not prone to sloppiness or hysteria: he is the one of them who actually knows any members of the party; he knows how to work with Communists in order to do his real job (including the mysterious "Mr. Jones"--is he a mole? If so, why is Archie so afraid for Wolfe? Is he a Communist? If so, why does he give Wolfe so much information?). So it seems at least to me that Wolfe's objections are specific and thought out, which is not the same as Red Scare hysteria.
Archie is a stranger case, since he seems to be yanking Sperling's chain:
"I like the way your daughter put it. The best I can do is 'a Commie is a louse' or something like that."
Sperling looked at me suspiciously, apparently decided that I merely had IQ trouble, and returned to Wolfe, who was talking.
Oh, ARCHIE. Heh. What was that even about?
PLOT BASICS
* I will admit that Communism works well as the prime mover in the story and the way to dovetail with Zeck: it's a hugely-charged secret that would certainly draw a professional blackmailer (blackmailing Kane, but also Jimmy Sperling for his contribution to the front for the Henry Wallace campaign, which--at least in this book--is being controlled and manipulated by the Communist Party). And that's what connects Rony (Zeck's worker bee) to Kane, and why Kane kills him. The particulars of the party meetings are also a hugely-charged secret, and publishing those details is how Wolfe frames Kane as a stoolie in the eyes of the party, which motivates them to cut him loose and help prove he's a killer.
* As in "Too Many Women" a couple of books ago, Archie is supposed to go undercover in a group of people...and is unmasked almost at once. Archie, you are not cut out for the cloak-and-dagger! Especially because the unmasking is due to him having SUCH A FAN, with the
SIDE CHARACTERS
* We get some Saul, Fred, and Orrie--and all of them together, in a meeting in which Wolfe asks if they'd be okay if he decided not to punish Rony's murderer (once discovered). I assume he needs to leave this option open since Rony was 1) a blackmailer and 2) Zeck's creature, and the killing might have been (in Wolfe's eyes) justified. Orrie's okay with it: "Here's to crime," he toasts Wolfe. Which in very very long hindsight can give one a bit of a shiver.
* And we get the wonderful Ruth Brady! I don't know if she appears in any future books--I fear not. Which is a damn shame, because she's great, and the way she works with the guys (especially Archie) is terrific. She's a fount of wisecracks, she's a respected specialist in the cosh, she's competent and informative and quick. And, frankly, Archie is able to work with her without the constant OMG LADY DETECTIVE that we get from him re: the later appearances of Dol Bonner and Sally Colt/Corbett. She could just as easily be Fred or Orrie, and that is a refreshing change.
* We get Lon again, and Lon gets a steak again! One of Fritz's, even, and the description always gets me: "The steak was thick and brown with charcoal braid, the grilled slices of sweet potato and sauteed mushrooms were just right..." Now I'm hungry.
* We see Lt. Con Noonan of the State Police again, with some references to the first time they met him in "A Door to Death"--which we haven't actually covered yet, I guess because the collection it appeared in was published slightly afterward. Anyway, he's a brute, and Archie honestly seems to hate him, telling us that Noonan "was fitted out at birth for a career as a guard at a slave-labor camp and somehow got delivered to the wrong country".
ZECK DRAWS CLOSER
In the interests of backstory: Wolfe tells the Sperlings that he first got an inkling of Zeck "and something of his activities and methods" eleven years ago, although he didn't know his name.
Also: Zeck says he hopes he doesn't have to kill Wolfe, because "It's a more interesting world with you in it." Classic nemesis! Wasn't that later used from Hannibal Lector to Clarice Starling?
They have some bad luck here, Zeck-wise, but then some good luck that might end up staving off the final confrontation for a little while (and certainly gives Wolfe some good bug-out money). The bad luck is that Rony is one of Zeck's belongings--which is a coincidence, but I'm okay with it, given how widespread Wolfe describes Zeck's network as being. At first, Zeck warns them off for investigating Rony--to the point of DESTROYING THE PLANT ROOMS, a dramatic scene (and a favorite!) I'll discuss below. But when Rony is killed, Zeck asks Wolfe to find the killer--and even though Wolfe doesn't do it because Zeck told him to, Zeck still pays up. Archie, still blithely believing he'll be involved in case Wolfe does have to bug out, tucks the money away in an anonymous safe deposit box. Speaking of which...
POOR ARCHIE IN HINDSIGHT
I thought I'd link back to my earlier mention of this book at this point, because it's heartbreaking--but only afterward.
The first two Zeck books, as we've been mentioning, introduce and build on Wolfe's contingency plan In Case Of Terminal Zeck: he's going to flee the Brownstone and go completely undercover to defeat Zeck no matter what it takes, and "[Zeck] will know it is a mortal encounter". In the previous book, he mentioned it only to Archie; in this book, he mentions it to the the entire Sperling family (one of whom he knows has an attachment to a member of Zeck's organization), so the information is spreading wider now like the ripples in a pool.
But every time, and emphatically so in the case of this book, Wolfe emphasizes how Archie will of course be involved and there's no way he could do it without him. In this book, even when things are looking very dark indeed, Wolfe is all "If we ever meet him head on and have to cut off from here and from everyone we know, we'll need supplies." It takes the later events of "In the Best Families" to reveal (and rub in) the fact that this turned out not to be the case. :(
I also mentioned this in the post for "And Be A Villain," because I wonder... is there any clue in "In the Best Families" why he ended up making such a different decision? I can't remember, so I'll be paying more attention to that question when we get to that book. Could his promises to Archie have been flummery all along, with Wolfe secretly deciding to keep Archie safe and out of it, the way he did a few years before when he hired Bascom's men to track down/identify Zeck instead of involving Archie in any way?
WOLFE AND ARCHIE
There are so many great scenes and lines in this book, that I could've filled this entire post with nothing but citations and quotations! They're really getting along well, occasional and productive head-butting included.
* They decide on "Andrew" for Archie's pseudonym... "That would fit the A.G. on the bag Wolfe had given me for my birthday, which I naturally wanted to have along because it was caribou hide and people should see it." Archie, you self-sufficient, furniture-buying, kept man you.
* The ATTACK ON THE PLANT ROOMS. I love this scene--it's the sort of rupture of their sanctum sanctorum that really elevates Zeck (even though it's also hamhandedly hired-gunman-violent, not very clever-Moriarty-style), and honestly shakes Wolfe. The Brownstone is no longer any kind of shield, should Zeck decide to really get serious.
But more, I love the scene for its emotional content. Like the way that Archie narrates a realistic sense of shock (as we've seen him do in other books, when he's in combat-level crisis), having the first line after the cacophony simply be, "Wolfe said something." (We also get a bit of shock when he almost throws up after finding Rony's body, an interesting bit where he doesn't disparage himself or anyone for reacting that way.)
Archie is the man of action, rushing outside and then upstairs, and there's a nice piece of physicality where Wolfe is right behind Archie and would charge forward into the dark room full of shattered glass:
"Let me get by," Wolfe growled like a dog ready to spring.
"No." I pushed back against him. "You'll scalp yourself or cut your throat. Wait here till I get a light."
And Wolfe's very quiet reaction when they finally do have a light and he sees the carnage, I feel like it says a lot.
* Wolfe and Archie's trip back up to stay with the Sperlings! Poor Wolfe...his one safe place attacked and disrupted, and here he is on a guest bed with incipient holes in his socks, having to eat jellied consomme. (Man, that meal feels soooo 1950s to me.) I adore the way Archie pulls the blanket off his own bed to cover Wolfe. Daw. In general, their coupled-up napping feels very cozy and domestic; they fit together well, and it's clearly those two against the world.
* Speaking of Wolfe and Archie and the Sperlings...there's a description of what everyone else at the table is wearing, and it's all kind of scruffy-casual, including dingy coat sweaters and loud checks and rayon; Wolfe and Archie "were the only ones with neckties on". I get a sense here of time beginning to move forward without them, as the world outside the Brownstone starts to move more quickly than they do. Throughout WWII and right after, they still felt congruent with the outside world, but just about here I at least start to feel the shift.
* When it's revealed that Wolfe's car was involved, Wolfe and Archie exchange a look and a nod/headshake, and all the required information and confidence has been exchanged. ♥ When Noonan is thirsting to drag Archie to the station and beat the story out of him, Wolfe is Not Amused. ("...if Mr. Goodwin is taken to a barracks, as this puppy suggests, I shall go with him.")
* Archie teases Wolfe with more of his stealth-erudition, tossing out a Confucius quotation as something he heard a guy say once (and then, as always, enjoying Wolfe's double-take. *g*).
* Following up the 'if we have to run we'll need supplies' conversation about the money in the pseudonymous safe-deposit box, Wolfe finishes:
"I hope I never touch it. I hope it's still there when I die, and if so it's yours."
"Thank you very much. I'll be around eighty then and I'll need it."
OH, BOYS.
* Archie is so proud of himself for finding the murder weapon! And sooooo cranky when Wolfe seems to downplay it. He punishes Wolfe by not eating dinner with him. SO THERE. *g* Later, during the final rundown of the crime, Wolfe makes a sneaky peace offering, telling the entire group: "By a brilliant stroke of Mr. Goodwin's, [the ambush] was established as a fact. On Thursday he searched the grounds for the instrument used for laying Mr. Rony out, and he found it in the presence of a witness."
* Archie is honestly worried about Wolfe and Mr. Jones, sitting up late into the night until Wolfe has gone safely to bed. "What if I come down some morning and find you?" he asks. Poor guy. (I keep saying Poor Archie here, I know, when there certainly should be a Poor Wolfe or two as well! His cherished orchids, the sudden attack on his bulwark and his haven...)
What do you think? Do you like this one?
Edit!: Here's the schedule for the discussion of Trouble in Triplicate!:
- 02/22/13 - trouble in triplicate - before i die
- 03/01/13 - trouble in triplicate - help wanted male
- 03/08/13 - trouble in triplicate - instead of evidence
Does anyone want to do the discussion posts for any of these? (If no one volunteers,
liviapenn is willing to do "Before I Die".)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-11 05:53 pm (UTC)Good point! And why would he, since Archie seems somehow incapable of going undercover for more than five minutes. :D (Well, to be fair, it's not like Archie generally unmasks himself. But he's a guy who determines his choice of pseudonym based on wanting to show off his beautiful, monogrammed caribou bag on a weekend trip, so...he might not be cut out for true anonymous-undercover stuff. And readers of the final Zeck book know how far Wolfe went to become truly anonymous and undercover!)
I think we had a little discussion on here before about whether Archie really is as transparent as Wolfe thinks, and someone argued convincingly that Wolfe knows Archie so incredibly well--down to the minutiae and the unspoken electricity--and thus can read him so thoroughly, that he forgets not everyone has that ability/knowledge. I could see that being part of it, but I also honestly don't know how good Archie is at long-term absolute deception, of the sort that an anti-Zeck operation requires. At the very least, as a narrative voice he certainly is given to slips of unreliability, letting things slip out to us around the edges all the time, and possibly to other non-Wolfe characters as well (though I haven't been close-reading for that dynamic lately, so I can't say for certain).
I particularly like the slow weave in of Zeck through these two
Me too! It does something the Holmes corpus didn't with its Moriarty, which is to actually sneak him into the storyline well before the big crisis/conflict/disappearance. As it is, with Holmes you have to take his word in the one story that Moriarty really is as big as he says, and has such widespread webs, and is his nemesis and whatnot, even though we've never seen Holmes mention him before. (You see adaptations of Holmes tackle this issue as well, as when the Granada versions slip Moriarty in as the behind-the-scenes prime mover in cases like the Red-Headed League; or when the BBC Sherlock versions have Moriarty be someone hiding in plain sight before the crisis.)
Anyway, in Holmes, the Moriarty setup and payoff are all delivered basically at once. Whereas the Zeck books have the chance to step back and go at it more gradually, building the menace and the suspense, a more gradual setup first and then the climactic payoff. When Wolfe finally does take steps, their extraordinarily drastic nature (especially for Wolfe, for whom even leaving the Brownstone has previously been a matter of highest moment) has been matched and balanced by all that time Zeck has spent coiling into the stories.
I hope you get completely well soon!
Thanks! I am much better, up and about.