Customer Reviews

Rocket to the Morgue

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Rocket to the Morgue" isn't the greatest mystery novel ever written; it isn't even the best locked room mystery ever written. The ending is telegraphed from the fictional excerpts before the first chapter; there are far too many characters and more than one detective to keep track of comfortably. But "Rocket to the Morgue" is a joy to read for a completely different reason: the author, Tony Boucher, was a close friend of many of the golden age of science fiction's writers living in Los Angeles before the war. Boucher took his friends, mixed them up a bit, and turned them into characters in the novel. The fun comes in playing detective yourself, and trying to figure out who is who. Jack Williamson identified most of them in his autobiography, and the rest are fairly easy to figure out if you know your writers. Don't read the rest of this review if you want to figure them out on your own! Austin and Bernice Carter are based on two pairs of husbands and wives: Robert and Leslyn Heinlein, and Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. After they are first introduced, the Kuttner and Moore fade away, and the rest of the Carters are pure Heinlein: reading Austin Carter's arguments is like being a fly on the wall of Robert Heinlein's writing room! Joe Henderson is a mix of Jack Williamson and Edmund Hamilton; Matt and Concha Duncan are Cleve and Vida Cartmill. Chantrelle is a lunatic of a rocket scientist who also believed in hermeticism by the name of Jack Parsons (after the war, a certain science fiction writer turned religious founder stole Parsons' wife and swindled him out of $10,000). Don Stuart is editor John Campbell; the murder victim is based on an obnoxious fan by the name of "Tubby" Yerkes. All in all, anybody interested in the character and lives of the early golden age of science fiction in Los Angeles needs to read this roman-a-clef.

Anthony Boucher's is one of the more prominent names in mystery writing; indeed, an annual convention of great stature, Bouchercon, is named after him. "Rocket to the Morgue" is one of Boucher's locked-room mysteries and is the sequel to "Nine Times Nine," another locked-room mystery. "Rocket to the Morgue" combines the crime-solving talents of Suster Ursula, who solved the first locked-room crime, and Lieutenant Marshall of the L.A.P.D., who was also in on the first crime.

Hilary Foulkes is the son of one of the greats of science fiction, and he calls the police to report apparent attempts on his life. Marshall arrives just in time to be present for the arrival of a bomb. Though the police defuse the bomb, soon Foulkes is found stabbed the back in a room that seems to have been securely locked. Only two doors exist, and one of them is chained from the inside. The other door leads to another room, where several observers are prepared to swear that nobody went into or came out of the room in which Foulkes was found. Motives are hardly a problem--unless too many motives is a problem. Foulkes has been exceedingly penurious in allowing use of his father's works, even denying one of the nuns permission to translate a book into Braille.

As much as "Rocket to the Morgue" (which Boucher originally published under the name H.H. Holmes) belongs to the locked-room subgenre of mysteries (and therefore to the classic tradition in which John Dickson Carr and Clayton Rawson wrote), it is also very much concerned with the nascent science-fiction genre, then contained to the pulps and fanzines. In 1940s' Los Angeles, the future of science seemed almost limitless, and Boucher's cast of suspects delights in exploring the frontiers of the new world. Still, the centerpiece of the book is the mystery of the locked room, and the book succeeds or fails on the strength of the puzzle and its solution. The puzzle is competently constructed, and the clues are all there, to be certain. Still, there is something a bit unsatisfying about the end result when one compares it to the works of the other masters of the locked-room.

This has always been one of my favorite mystery novels.

Set in Los Angeles in the months just before World War II, most of the characters except a cop and a nun are composites of science fiction writers who lived in L.A. and attended the "Manana Literary Society," (where they boasted about the wonderful books they'd start writing 'manana.') The writer characters are all based on science-fiction writers of the time.

Robert Edward James identifies most of them in his review, but I'll mention that another is based on L. Ron Hubbard (e-mail me for more information, if you want me to tell you who it is). And "Hillary Foulkes," the obnoxious son of a famous author, is also the son of a famous author who invented a famous character (again, I'll tell you who in an e-mail, but you SHOULD be able to figure that one out).

And I thought the mystery was well done, aside from painting a nice picture of the U.S. on the eve of war. Recommended.

Before there was Bimbos of the Death Sun, there was Rocket to the Morgue.

Someone is trying to kill the heir of a famous science fiction adventure writer. But who?

Is it the thinly disguised Robert A Heinlein-alike, Austin Carter? (Fun games to play while reading Carter scenes: How many times does he refer to Heinlein or one of RAH's psuedonyms?)
Is it Bernice Carter, the wife of said thinly disguised RAH-alike? (Who is NOT Virginia. The book was written in 1942, which is five years before RAH divorced his second wife and married Ginny.)
One of an assortment of other SF writers?
A fan?
His brother-in-law?
His wife?
What about his cousin?

This is a fun little book, rather a lot like Bimbos except that it was written in the early 1940s. The mystery is cleverly done, though I will admit that I suspected the conclusion pretty early on.

Apparently there is a previous book with the same police detective & nun combo solving the case, but it isn't necessary to read it. The prose gets a little purple from time to time, but what do you want? It's a pulp mystery about pulp science fiction writers. If the prose didn't turn purple periodically I'd be disappointed.

Oh, and the Captain Comet breaks are fun too...

This is a murder mystery in which the suspects are famous science fiction writers, and the characters are based on real authors like Robert A. Heinlein, et al. The author, Anthony Boucher, was one of their circle. So to the average reader it's just another good whodunnit, but to diehard sci-fi fans it's an unusual treat, must-have for a serious sf collector.