Rufus King - Murder By Latitude, 1930

I imagine that many have realized that Rufus King is one of those writers that I like very much. And not just because he could write very well (he was a born writer), but also because he is one of those authors, who were acclaimed in his time, and then just as quickly forgotten. But if by other authors, it may also include, in his case, it becomes a puzzle: why Rufus King was forgotten?

Rufus King probably I think (and I wrote in my essay published two years ago on the Blog Mondadori) in the first fifteen years of its production, was a highly original author, or at least enough to be copied as a model, but then paid other authors in the meantime risen to the headlines, library duty, changing the tenor of his stories and his characters conforming to the characteristics of others.

But since I'm basically a romantic, I love to remember those who have been forgotten, in my opinion not a good reason: so I am pleased to recall Rufus King.

Murder by Latitude, is remembered as one of his six novels most characteristic and emblematic: some will have identified some characteristics typical of gay work. Of Rufus King, nothing is known because he was so reserved that in comparison, Derek Smith, "was well known." And his photos are few.

The features gay, are scattered: I'm not going to list them: if they will be in or not I'm not interested. The fact is that the characteristics of gender (masculine friendships, but not both) are mentioned in the novel several times for various male characters, although the most recognizable is that between Gans and Swithers (but also hinted that there is between a character and a sailor of engine room).

Beyond this the novel has a characteristic typical in Rufus King: the wise use of power, that insinuates itself at first, then becomes palpable and finally spasmodic, with surprising end and never predictable. Even here, the suspense is the host.

Gans, the radio (the radio operator of the time we would have said) is found murdered on board the steamer "Florida": why should someone kill a radio operator? To prevent it from passing a dispatch of utmost importance to Lieutenant Valcour, the Metropolitan Police of New York, on board too, along with other passengers. Embarked, because even if you do not have the physical characteristics, he and other police authorities know that among the passengers is the murderer of Larry Lane, a rich man, killed in the toilet of a nightclub in New York and robbed . The killer was also seriously injured friend of Lane, but he has survived and he has helped to make the identikit and emphasize the physical data of his assailant. Now the killer is on board the Florida, because he wants to get to Cassie Poole, rich lady of high society, previously married to their first marriage Lane. Cassie after having divorced (and others) from Lane, was married to Ted, a man much her junior, met at the beach. The killer wants to kill her? He will really kill her? But why?

You will find that Cassie at the time of her first husband, had adopted a child for a short time, Toody, who then had, at the age of nine years, repudiated, along with his aunt, while paying an annual check.

There's a testament that Cassie should not have done, in favor of her new husband, who forces the killer to make a widow, to make void the last testament, and instead re-reverse the previous. For Valcour it is one of the most difficult investigations of his career: to discover the murderer, among false rumors, strange disappearances of objects (a silver thimble, a long needle and embroidery scissors snap, pitch), among reluctances,  among smugglers of jewelry and phoney characters identified, while the ship is abandoned to itself, in the sea.

The ending is really surprising: in some ways, is very similar to the final catharsis of The Twin Siamese Mystery by Ellery Queen, another vandinian writer as Rufus King. Some critics argue (I think that may be right) that the name Queen could be the answer to Rufus King. 

In the novel of the Queen, Ellery and his father are in a villa ( where it wears a dark tragedy), which is located on top of mountain ledge ,while below the flames devour the woods and there almost to attack the house; here the characters are on a ship which is at sea, which is isolated in the sea (because the radio operator died), and whose rudder was damaged and whose instruments (compass) has been deliberately altered, so that it goes drifting: here is the final cathartic is the crash on the rocks (which allows the ship to run aground), but then we will be questioned  until (Valcour, Sohme the captain and the player .. ) about why the sky should show the route, is not that usual: the stars are not what the captain had seen many times before; in Ellery Queen novel there was the rain that saved the house from the fire, that throughout the novel had been the background increasingly present of the drama of the villa. In both cases, the characters of the plays are saved, but in both cases, the killers commit suicide.

It is not clear who might be the murderer or murderess (is the magnitude of the writer), until a few lines from the end, because Rufus King, hides and conceals clues to his liking, generating tension, modifying it and literally grow through various interventions :for example when he pointed to one of the characters as Dumarque, unusually for his height, wears  high heels. Rufus King heinsinuates doubts. The chapters are intentionally very short so as to break the speech several times, are deliberately  presented false suspects, but why?  The murderer is a great actor, has a strong will, generated hatred resentment and greed. And then the ending will be tragic.

It presents the objects stolen, some of which we see that fall within one of the assassins, but others do not: what is it for? They are used to generate tension.

Before the murderer is a man, then you know that woman, then that could be a woman disguised as a man, then another.  Slender male hands, hands and torsos hairy manly, heterosexual and gay friends, men face feminine, masculine women from hard expressions, men who use high heels, like women: you could say that this novel is a classic of ambiguity.

In some ways, the isolated ship at sea, on which two murders are perpetrated (the second one with the needle, dials a novel  by Ellery Queen with Drury Lane: in that novel the needle is dipped in curare whereas here it is forcibly inserted into the neck and broken in), prefigures a kind of enlarged locked room, and the elements that sweep the sea, though accelerating voltage, also serve to isolate the action on board the ship, and to prevent the murderer along with others, of course, could save themselves.

And the presence of different latitudes, each call to a different chapter, means that the ship while moving, may be localized on the sea only by means of the calculation of the latitude and not through other means, for which it is properly isolated in the middle of the sea. And from there you can not escape. The use of various latitudes, also serves to focus the reader's attention even more on the events aboard the ship.

For the rest ... a masterpiece.

Pietro De Palma

Rufus King : Holiday Homicide, 1940

Rufus King (1893-1966) was a novelist very active since the late '20s to late '50s early '60s, and very famous and  all in all retired life: in life, nothing much was known about him, besides the fact that he lived in rural upstate New York, who was single, and had every year “problems caused by snow”, so much so that he bought a house in Miami ( the rest just he set there some of Miami his stories).
 Another thing we know it’s that he had studied at Yale. It is curious that in those years at Yale were studying both “King of Mystery”: Rufus and Charles Daly, and that they both graduated in 1916. It’s possible that they did not know? Both King, both followers of Van Dine (but Reginald De Puyster of Rufus King made ​​his debut in 1926 as Philo Vance, the two are very similar. Normally it is said that Rufus King has copied Van Dine, but .. is it really so?). Rufus King in 1916 he enlisted for the Great War and when after war he turned home, he worked for some time as a radio operator on ships
Today is very little known and his novels are rarely published, but the time was well known: it was a fine exponent of that school of American writers (as JDCarr, Mignon Eberhart) who refused to give up the English Mystery, rather in favor of the Hard-Boiled, born in American environment. Mike Grost believed to have heavily influenced the first novel of two cousins ​​Dannay & Lee, who became known for signing a brand internationally recognized and appreciated: Ellery Queen: “Rufus King’s first Lt. Valcour novel, Murder by the Clock,had a simple plot idea involving men’s hats…It is possible that EQ used King’s work as a jumping off point and subsequent works. One wonders if the name “Rufus King” affected EQ’s choice of the pseudonym Ellery Queen”.

 In other words, according to him, Ellery QUEEN would be influenced by the success achieved by Rufus KING’s Murder by the Clock. The report QUEEN-KING could mean more than that a subsidiary, the recognition of the fact that King, by the time they released debut of the Queen, was more important to them or two cousins considered him so. 

It ‘s good to say, however, that Rufus King achieved considerable success over time for reasons other than for being a follower, a little unusual of Van Dine. Rufus King in fact, having for the time worked as a radio operator of ships, brought that maritime environment in many of his novels: Murder by Latitude (1930), The Lesser-Antiller Case (1934), Murder on The Yacht (1931), are all novels that are built so. And it’s to mention the fact that some time before he began his career as a novelist, Rufus King had written the original story of The Silent Command , a film from 1923 directed by J.Gordon Edwards and starring Bela Lugosi: the final scene took place on a ship during a storm
The reason, however, is also psychological-descriptive: Rufus King was very keen to describe the characters and moods, and to concentrate the action in a closed space (the ship so to speak are the extensions of a Locked Room), and this gave him the opportunity to emphasize the drama and anguish of changing situations and characters, before the stillness of the sea, with a very effective contrast effect.
Also in Holiday Homicide, the story takes place on the sea.

The novel is required for entry of a new protagonist, Cotton Moon, a wealthy investigator who spends all his money in search of rare nuts, and his assistant-secretary Bert Stanley and is followed by an expert chef, Walter: it is clear that in this case, Rufus King has created a character referring to Nero Wolfe, his secretary-assistant Archie Goodwin, and the Swiss chef Fritz Brenner. It follows that this is one of those novels in which Rufus King began to denounce the influence of other mystery writers: in essence begins to lose its originality. However, the King's writing is great.
In this case, Rufus King plays down the action humor found: Cotton Moon comes here did begin, in an almost comical manner: a nut of Sapucaia, set by a man a board of  Aliseo, a luxury yacht anchored near the yacht of Cotton Moon, hits him on his forehead: Bruce Jettwick, wants to get his attention, because there was a murder on board and he is afraid of being accused. To be killed is the uncle of Bruce, the wealthy building contractor Myron Jettwick. On board the yacht, there is also

 the mother of Bruce, Helen Jettwick former wife of Myron (Bruce is the son of Helen's first marriage); Myron's sister, Emma; McRoss Jepson, secretary of Myron, a business woman, Harriet Schuyler together with his daughter Elisabeth. So it's a strange and varied wildlife of characters, all ambiguous and reticent .. interested.
From the cabin where he was found dead Myron, disappeared a metal box with compromising documents. Where ever may have been "placed", if it is not?
Here, then, that to Cotton Moon is the idea of ​​using a diver. Note carefully: a diver. This Rufus King, in spite of the influence of affected mystery writers "more square" as Stout, may have been a good model for other novelists: for example, Jonathan Latimer.

And the point of union with Latimer may be just a diver. At this point should be introduced which would be affected by Latimer: the novel in question is Headed for a Hearse, 1935.
Fie, there must be an error: why King had influenced by a Latimer’s novel in 1935, when his was in 1940? The fact is Rufus King had published The Lesser Antilles-Case, one year before the novel Latimer, in 1934. In all three novels, the previous and the next King to Latimer that arises between the two, in time, we find ... a diver. In fact, is this singular figure that is in charge of finding incriminating evidence under the sea. However next to the diver, we find other elements that allow us to say that King could have influenced Latimer: for example, the opening scene of the novel by Latimer (the man who is waiting in the cell death his last hours) is very similar to a story by Rufus King (The Weapon That Did not Exist ,1926), in which an Ireland girl awaits his fate in prison in New York.
Returning to Holiday Homicide, H.H. (Also Headed for a Hearse by Latimer is .. HH: curious!), we see essentially just nuts of Sapucaia are used to build the evidence of the guilt of Bruce. Followed by two more deaths, the last of which will it’s that of secretary of Myron, Jepson McRoss, appropriately out of the way through a razor sharp, because It thought that he had committed suicide for remorse of killing. The real murderer, will be the least suspected, only this time, and this is the real weak point of the novel:  the guilty will not be identified on the basis of precise indications, but according to the intuition of the protagonist without the reader will have no had, during the course of the story, the slightest consciousness of it.
Beyond this .. it is a great novel, with a decent plot, English humor, and, despite being essentially a pastiche of Rex Stout’s novels , is very well written, with great descriptions, and an engaging storyline.

Pietro De Palma

P.S.

In these days, in Italy, it's now available again the extraordinary Rufus King's novel, Muder by Latitude.