"Block Party" by Sam Merwin, Jr.
Way back in 2017 I read Merwin's science fiction novel The House of Many Worlds and judged it harshly. When I read his story "Final Haven" five years later I was a little more kind, but still not happy. Well, today we give Merwin another shot.
Almost immediately upon starting "Block Party" I was regretting my decision to give Merwin another chance, as the first few paragraphs are full of sentences meant to be evocative and literary but which are in fact embarrassingly stupid.
Where gaudy booths and loud music and spicy, hot Italian foods had lent gaiety, only litter and squalid emptiness remained, mercifully softened by the East River darkness.
Is the river causing the darkness? What does "soften emptiness" really mean? Horrible.
Carl, a Nordic rarity in that overwhelmingly Mediterranean district, was fair and short, with a pear-shaped Teutonic build. His outward stolidity concealed intricate inner meshworks of fears and rashnesses.
I never heard the stereotype that Germans are shaped like pears before, and "meshworks" and "rashnesses" are pretty bad--they are not euphonious, and what the hell do they mean in this context? Metaphors are supposed to make things more clear, not less, and this metaphor adds confusion instead of enhancing clarity. Does Merwin think "meshworks" refers to the gears in a machine; is he suggesting Carl's actions are driven by fear and rashness? (Does he think gears move themselves? Shouldn't he say that fear and rashness are the motor or the fuel, not the gears?)
After those glaring eyesores, either the text got better as it focused on plot and gave up trying to sound poetic or I became immune to such offenses. The plot of "Block Party" is actually not bad. Carl and his friend Tony are small time crooks who have been hired to pull a robbery. A rich guy is in trouble with his sixth wife, and knows she has blackmail material in a safe at the hotel where they are living. Rich guy hires a medium-sized crook, Dixon, who in turn hires Carl and Tony to stick up the hotel night manager and get the envelope from the hotel safe. Carl and Tony get the envelope, but Carl accidentally kills the night manager. After Dixon receives the envelope from them, he tries to kill the two men--legally, Dixon is just as responsible for the murder of the night manager as are Carl and Tony, so he considers permitting them, dangerous witnesses who might lead the police to him and even testify against him, to remain in circulation to be too dangerous. But Carl turns the tables on Dixon and kills him.
Tony and Carl begin the long trip to Mexico. Tony worries that the rich guy will hire thugs to find and kill him and Carl in hopes of retrieving the blackmail material, which he has retained. Two men travelling together, a tall dark Italian and a short fair German, will be easy to spot, so Tony decides to kill his friend. As the story ends, Tony wonders what life will be like alone.
"The Fog" by Gil Brewer
This, the story illustrated on the cover, is a brief little trifle, but well written. A guy drives into a new suburban development next to a big field--his old pal has moved here with his new wife, whom the protagonist has yet to meet. His friend isn't home, but the wife is, and she is very, very, flirty. She also hints that her husband is a nervous wreck, isn't paying her any attention. Our guy eventually leaves, goes to his hotel. After midnight the woman calls him, begs him to come help her--his friend, her husband, is in trouble! It's a foggy night. He gets over there and she asks him to help her look for hubby in that field; she seduces him and after they bang out in the wet field she admits she murdered her husband today, right before she called the protagonist.
Acceptable.
"Shot" by Gil Brewer
This story appears under the pen name Roy Carroll. Here we have another treacherous, murderous, woman, though we only know a woman is to blame at the end. A guy is walking on the city street, headed to a rendezvous with his wife. Suddenly he is shot! The gun had a silencer on it, and the bleeding injury is hidden by the man's jacket, so other people on the street don't really know what is going on, wonder if the victim is drunk or having a stroke as he staggers around. A man arrives and takes charge of the victim, leading him away--oh no, he's not trying to help, this is the shooter, come to finish the protagonist off with a knife in an alley! Our guy tries to fight, but it is hopeless--he expires. The end of the story makes clear that his wife hired or is sleeping with the shooter--perfidious female!
This one is pretty good, suspenseful (I didn't know how it would turn out, who would live and who would die, and I didn't predict the wife was in on it) and more economical than "The Fog," the flirting scenes of which are perhaps too long, too repetitive.
"Terror in the Night" by Robert Bloch
"Terror in the Night" is a mediocre filler piece.
Our narrator, named Bob, answers the door one night to find a woman in a bedraggled nightgown--it is Marjorie, a friend of his and his wife Barbara's! She has escaped from the asylum! Marjorie tells a wild story, of how her husband had her put in the asylum under false pretenses so he could spend more time with his mistress (Marjorie refused to go along with a divorce), of how the asylum staff are totally corrupt and evil--murdering the patients for money and raping the female patients--of how she escaped tonight by allowing one of the staff to use her body. Marjorie fights her way out of their house when she senses Bob and Barbara don't take her story seriously and fears they are going to try to detain her and call the asylum to have her picked up. The final lines of the story indicate that Marjorie's story of conspiracy, murder and rape is true, and Bob, though probably not his wife, is somehow complicit in the atrocities taking place at the asylum--he is at least aware of them.
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These stories are forgettable little entertainments, like potato chips or something. I have to admit, and I have said this before, that crime/detective stories often feel a little hollow compared to the science fiction and fantasy stories I generally read. Even very entertainment-oriented SF, like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan stories or Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, seem to be making some argument about how you should live your life or how society should be organized, and of course major science fiction writers who have stacks of awards like Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon and Frederik Pohl suffuse their work with their criticisms of our society and suggestions on how to improve it.
But maybe I am being unfair; maybe today's stories have something to tell us about life and society? Perhaps it is interesting that all four paint a bleak portrait of marriage--spouses are unfaithful, will demand a divorce, will try to blackmail you, will try to kill you. Also, in each story evil triumphs--people betray their friends or spouses, innocent people get killed and/or killers escape punishment. A grim vision, offering as the only solution solitude and celibacy!
It's back to critically acclaimed science fiction writers next time around; until then, keep an eye on your spouse!
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