Customer Reviews

No Orchids for Miss Blandish

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

James Hadley Chase is the master of crime fiction, not to be confused with mystery, suspense or simple thrillers. He goes deep into his characters makeup and motivation for crime. No Orchids for Miss Blandish is one of his classics about a crime family kidnapping a rich girl for a ransom. However the relationships that develop between the girl and her captives, and the conflict between the family members go beyond a simple crime. Despite reading it several times, and watching the movie, it has not lost its fascination for me, like many of Chase's books. It is a pity that his books are out of print. I read about 50, and there are more I want to buy if I can find them.

I feel compelled to comment on the last reviewer who admits to not having read the novel, but instead launches into analysis of an essay written by George Orwell entitled "Raffles and Miss Blandish." The reviewer's problem is with the use of two quotes from the Orwell essay, drawn together to better promote the book's merits in the bookseller's synopsis. For clarification, here is an expansion of the quotes taken from Orwell's essay:

The first quote:

"In a book like No Orchids one is not, as in the old-style crime story, simply escaping from dull reality into an imaginary world of action. One's escape is essentially into cruelty and sexual perversion. No Orchids is aimed at the power-instinct, which Raffles or the Sherlock Holmes stories are not."

And the second quote:

"Several other points need noticing before one can grasp the full implications of this book. To begin with, its central story bears a very marked resemblance to William Faulkner's novel, Sanctuary. Secondly, it is not, as one might expect, the product of an illiterate hack, but a brilliant piece of writing, with hardly a wasted word or a jarring note anywhere. Thirdly, the whole book, récit as well as dialogue, is written in the American language; the author, an Englishman who has (I believe) never been in the United States, seems to have made a complete mental transference to the American underworld. Fourthly, the book sold, according to its publishers, no less than half a million copies."

Maybe it's just me, but I sense a fair amount of admiration in those words. Just for fun, let's pull another quote from the essay. Orwell's ends "Raffles and Miss Blandish" with these words:

"In Mr. Chase's books there are no gentlemen and no taboos. Emancipation is complete. Freud and Machiavelli have reached the outer suburbs. Comparing the schoolboy atmosphere of the one book (Raffles) with the cruelty and corruption of the other (No Orchids,) one is driven to feel that snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behavior whose value from a social point of view has been underrated."

Freud and Machiavelli have reached the outer suburbs. I love that allusion, and if I had not yet read NO ORICHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH, I would certainly seek it out after reading that dark declaration.

This 1961 book tells a story about gangs in the Kansas City area circa 1934. Two members of a small gang stop at a rural gas station / lunchroom. A reporter stops by, and chats with a gang member. This reporter is covering the "Blandish shindig", where Miss Blandish will be wearing a very valuable diamond necklace. Then she and her boyfriend will visit a roadhouse. Bailey, and his boss Riley, plan a highway robbery to steal this hard-to-fence diamond necklace.

They stop the car to steal the necklace. Miss Blandish's boyfriend tries to defend her, and is shot and killed. The gang decides to kidnap the heiress, and drive away. But when they stop for gas, the members of another gang, bigger and more dangerous, see them and later figure out they kidnapped the heiress. The Grisson gang will follow the Riley gang and hijack the heiress. The Riley gang will not be able to complain. [Would a gang that just murdered a man give up so easily?] Now the Grisson demands a million dollars in used bills, and gets it. But they renege, and keep Miss Blandish for her utility.

This story, interesting in itself, has little redeeming value. While fictional, it echoes the crimes of the 1930s: the kidnaps in the Midwest (and elsewhere), the gang wars, the society of that day. There is little mention of politic, or the corruption of local government. The idea of wearing an expensive necklace to a roadhouse seems unbelievable, except as a hook for this story. But it serves as a warning against foolish actions, and the destructive use of drugs. A small company is put out of business by a larger company, and then falls before a more powerful organization. [The word "blandish" means "pleasing, alluring, enticing".]

This was a fun book. Not sophisticated, just fun. Shoot first, ask questions later. Heavy on the sexual innuendo but nothing explicit.
The bad guys are bad and the good guys are good. Predictable ending but, who cares? Very film noir but in a book. I'm going to try another one of his.

I am a big fan but this is just not his best efforts...not even among top 10 I feel.

Great Author, love his books, I have been reading them from when I was a child, have them as hard cover and paper back, now I would love to have them on my Kindle.
Most of his books will keep you in suspense literally from the beginning to the end. Not complicated to read and loads of suspense. That is if you like crime books like I do.

After reading Orwell's essay "Raffles and Miss Blandish," I purchased and read this vintage curiosity and was surprised that Orwell would call it "brilliant" (he did, and not in a tone of sarcasm) or, for that matter, bother to write anything at all about this tawdry, relentlessly depressing, albeit mildly interesting novel of crime and amorality. Orwell apparently found it a useful contrast to "Raffles" and the good old days of gentlemen scoundrels. He further points out that the author had plagiarized the plot from Faulkner's "Sanctuary," and found Chase's version to be a "cesspool" and "pure fascism." This is hardly a recommendation, "brilliant" notwithstanding. None of the characters, including Miss Blandish herself, are in any way sympathetic, which is not to say that any decent person (that's you and I) is not appalled by the treatment these characters impose on each other. But hey, they're just cardboard, anyway. As an historical landmark, it seems to have taken the Chandler/Hammett/Cain tradition a leap forward as far as graphic description and "realism" are concerned, leading perhaps to Mickey Spillane and Ed McBain. All of these gentlemen, in my own humble opinion, are superior craftsmen by far. Chase even publicly apologized to Raymond Chandler for lifting entire paragraphs from his work and incorporating them into his own needy efforts. Unless you're doing research on the evolution of crime fiction, "Miss Blandish" is a waste of your time, believe me. You'll find George Orwell's essays, however, more than worth your while. Now these are indeed an example of brilliant writing.

I might have bought this book but didn't due to the first review i read completely giving away the ending of the book. Spoil sports. Come on Amazon. surely you should be checking any reviews posted to look for that kind of thing.

Originally written in 1939 (and later revised by the author), this gritty crime novel has got a lot of fine elements in a nicely plotted armed robbery turned murder turned kidnapping. Unfortunately, for me there wasn't enough detail in the motivation of characters to make it at all believable (not that I think believability is always necessary); I'm left with the impression that characterization in this book is rendered by a paragraph which says "Criminal A behaves like this because...." Don't get me wrong, even though I just can't help thinking that every character in this novel is utterly s-t-u-p-i-d, it reads really good and is a great time passer that may serve to inform the reader about what Europeans thought about Americans (Chase (one of his pseudonyms) was an Englishman who learned about America from books). What's most interesting to me is how nobody seems to understand the unfortunate Miss Blandish. No review I have ever read gets her right (certainly none of the others on this page, so don't worry 'bout them givin' nothin' away). Is she the victim of a "fate worse than death"? -- whatever that means today -- or is she the victim of something else? Perhaps the spareness of detail here is what makes this novel work. George Orwell thought it was nothing short of "brilliant." What will you think?

He wrote a long essay about it, and condemned it for being an "unmoral" (as opposed to "immoral") book. If he used the adjective "brilliant," it was probably in a negative way. Believe me, he was no fan of the author or of this particular book!