Farewell to San Sebastiano

 I learned recently that James Powell died last year. He was one of those friends I knew for years through the grace of the Internet, but  never met.  He was also one of the most brilliant writers of comic short mysteries. 

I once wrote that the average (hah!) Powell story "contains a fully realized plot stuffed with wild free associations wrapped around a bizarre central idea that, if it had occurred to most writers, would cause them to swear off late-night enchiladas."

For example, he wrote three stories about Inspector Bozo, a cop in Clowntown. In one of these tales we meet a mute ventriloquist ("he threw his voice and it never came back") who partners with a mind-reading dummy (who knows what jokes he wants to tell). The victim died of "a heart attack with severe side splits" from laughing too much. And so on. 

 His first story, which you can read here, "The Friends of Hector Jouvet," is set in a tiny Riviera country centered on a casino.  You are thinking of Monaco, but Powell writes about San Sebastiano.

Inventing San Sebastiano freed me from the tyranny of facts. If you go into a large public library you will see a pale crowd of men and women researching books or articles they plan to publish or preparing for courses they intend to teach. And these are all noble things. But there are other researchers there, an even paler crew who accumulate knowledge so they can write letters to the editors of mystery magazines peppered with words like ‘egregious’ and ‘invincibly ignorant.’ ‘Dear Editor,’ they write, ‘in your issue of November last, I was astonished to find a character in a James Powell story releasing the safety catch of an 1864 sleeve Derringer, model 302, a.k.a. “the Elbow Smasher.” I think not. That particular model Derringer did not come with a safety catch until January of 1865.'”

A Pocketful of Noses is a collection of short stories set in San Sebastiano, focusing on four generations of detectives, all named Ambrose Ganelon.  (In order they are: a deductive detective, a scientific dick, a hardboiled P.I., and a down-on-his-luck detective because his ancestors chased all the criminals away.)

Let's explore the residents of this principality a little, shall we?

    * One store in San Sebastiano can be recognized by “the blank sign and the bare window, the place of business of the maker of the finest invisible ink ever concocted.”

    * In the Armenian quarter you will find “rug merchants like the notorious Leon Barbarian who sat in front of his shop until all hours, begging each passer-by to come in and rob him blind because his wife needed a brain operation. This remark never failed to infuriate Mrs. Barbarian who would burst out of the shop, wild-eyed and incoherent with rage. Barbarian would give a sad little shrug, his point made.”
 

* During a brief military dictatorship the principality’s citizens were encouraged to revolt by a mime who “leaped up onto a vendor’s barrow and mimed a message, urging everyone to march against the stiff wind of tyranny, shatter the shrinking glass box of oppression, and pull together on the rope of common purpose."

Powell was a native of Canada, by the way, which he describes as “a land doomed many times over because it had been built on a vast snowman graveyard.” One of his most popular characters is Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock, who may not be the brightest member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but is certainly among the most imaginative. He blunders into conspiracies involving defective beaver hats, migrating Bigfeet (Bigfoots?), and the “blue bread of happiness.” Like his author, the character is one of a kind.

Those stories feature  a Mountie named “Gimpy” Flanagan who had “sworn never to pull his revolver without drawing blood, an oath that cost him several toes.”  Powell also informs us that Scandanavians tend to underestimate Canadians, seeing them as “a frivolous southern people much like the Italians…”  And the Canadians have sworn to defend the U.S. from an overland attack by Russia, because they know “that if Mexico ever tried to invade Canada by land, the United States would do the same.” 

My absolute favorite Powell concoction was “The Plot Against Santa Claus,” one of his many yuletide tales.  It is told from the view point of the North Pole’s chief security elf. 

Another of his many holiday tales, “The Tamerlane Crutch,” has one of my favorite opening paragraphs of all time:

Marley was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. And when a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.

The first time one of my stories appeared on the cover of Alfred iItchcock's Mystery Magazine they were kind enough to commission an illustration for it (as opposed to buying existing art).  Jim immediately noticed a discrepancy between the text and the picture and wrote to me to say:  "You're hero is so tough he eats his scrambled eggs sunny-side up." Which doesn't make much sense but sure made me laugh. That was often the case with his tales, as well.

A few more Powell-isms and I will let you go:

“To really succeed neatness-wise you need a messy best friend.”

"Time isn't a clockwork thing." 

The great circuses of Europe were destroyed by World War I which "drafted bareback riders into the cavalry, sent their dapple grays to drag artillery pieces through the mud, and marched the clowns off into the various general staffs.

"In the end all our stories must be too short."  

Amen to that.