The Five-Day Nightmare by Fredric Brown

IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR WIFE ALIVE AGAIN YOU HAVE FIVE DAYS TO RAISE TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS IN UNMARKED BILLS NOT OVER HUNDREDS.  STAY HOME WEDNESDAY NIGHT ALONE AND YOU WILL RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS ON DELIVERY.  IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE YOUR WIFE WILL BE KILLED....  

Joachim Boaz just reviewed a 1953 SF novel by Fredric Brown, and I just read four 1940s detective stories by Brown featuring bats, clarinets, fake news, and a guy who murders his brother.  I hope the internet is ready for more Fredric Brown content, because today I am opining about Brown's 1962 novel The Five Day Nightmare, AKA The Five-Day Nightmare.  I am reading the novel from a scan found at the internet archive of a three-book omnibus collection printed by Walter J. Black for the Detective Book Club.  My mother is a big reader of Agatha Christie-type mysteries, as was her mother (whom we always called "Nana") before her, and Nana was a member of the Detective Book Club for a period and had quite a few of these triple-book volumes on the bookshelf in her living room.  By reading this novel in this form, I feel like I am paying homage to Nana, whom we saw often and who always spoiled us with candy and cookies and ice cream, and making a gesture towards continuing a sort of family tradition!

Lloyd Johnson, our narrator, is an investment broker and partner with his wife's cousin Joe Sitwell in a small investment firm in Phoenix, Arizona.  Lloyd comes home one day to find his wife, Ellen, is gone and there is an all-caps note in his typewriter--Ellen has been kidnapped and he has to hand over $25,000 in five days or else!  Should he contact the police, Ellen will be killed!  Just two months ago, Lloyd remembers, the wife of a prominent Phoenix businessman and local politician was kidnapped; her husband contacted the cops and she was killed, so Lloyd has every reason to believe this creep ain't bluffing!

For like 95 pages (The Five-Day Nightmare takes up like 112 pages of this omnibus volume) we follow Lloyd as he travels around Arizona raising the money demanded by the murderous kidnapper.  We are privy to his negotiations with a used car dealer, for example, as he sells his Buick for $1,000.  In his quest to secure 25 grand he talks to lots of people--e.g., his partner Joe, a friend in real estate, the husband of an earlier kidnap victim who paid off the kidnapper and got his wife back in one piece--I guess to pile up lots of suspects?  We also get a lot of quotidian details about what Lloyd eats and drinks and what he feeds his cat.  (In my New York days I read the first four or five Mike Hammer novels by Mickey Spillane, and I recall scenes in which Mike cooked himself up some eggs.  I guess that is a traditional element of these hard-boiled noir stories.)

Along with Lloyd we learn all about the methods used by the kidnapper in his first two kidnapping operations as the stock broker talks to those with second-hand knowledge of those crimes.  There are various clues I suppose we readers are expected to weigh when assessing who the kidnapper might be--e. g., the kidnapper seems to know about real estate...hmm, who does Lloyd know who knows about real estate?

Lloyd has the cash in a shoe box when the kidnapper calls and tells him where to leave it, and Lloyd follows his instrutions.  Then comes the astonishing twist.  Ellen was not kidnapped!  The killer who kidnapped those two other women, who we have been hearing about for page after page, does not even appear in the story!  Ellen at no time was at risk of being beaten, tied up, drugged, raped, or murdered.  Ay, caramba!

You see, Ellen left to spend a week with her sister because she and Lloyd had a fight and she thought they needed a week apart.  One of Lloyd's friends (who was strapped for cash) by chance found this out before Lloyd, and stole the note Ellen left her hubby and substituted the ransom note, based on the notes left by the real kidnapper.  In minutes Lloyd figures out which of his friends is the culprit and convinces this joker to give the money back and leave town--Lloyd doesn't even beat him up or sic the police on him or anything.  And he certainly doesn't have a tense and bloody shoot out with anybody, as I thought all the scenes of Lloyd acquiring a revolver and practicing with it at the range and giving us the pro and cons of a revolver vs an automatic were leading up to.

This novel doesn't end in tragedy or in cathartic violence or the triumph of justice or any sort of explosion like that; instead of a bang we get a sputtering deflation.  Ellen and Lloyd even agree their fight was silly and they still love each other! 

Brown is a capable writer, and The Five-Day Nightmare is internally consistent and Brown presents all the clues you would, theoretically, need to predict the truth about Ellen's disappearance, but there is a strong shaggy dog element to the tale and it is hard not to think reading it was sort of a waste of time.

Barely acceptable.