Customer Reviews

The Screaming Mimi

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

 

 

One of the masterpieces of Hardboiled Mystery, and one of the most neglected and under-rated. John Sweeny finds a hideous statue of a screaming woman in a Chicago boutique and realises it was a psychological trigger for a serial killer. At once funny and terrifying, this book needs to be put along side Hammett and James M Cain and Jim Thompson. This is much MUCH more than a who-done-it; it was a best seller when it came out, and is now out of print. WHAT'S GOING ON??!!!

Blackmask is to be commended for republishing a lot of pulp era fiction which has gone public domain. The downside is that apparently they seek out a copy of the original, scan it and then OCR the images. This causes a lot of typos; in this book, for instance, the word "time" is almost always rendered as "tune", and sometimes you have to figure out that "bun" means "him". Of course these are all real words, so they are not caught by spellcheck..

That aside, this is an engaging little mystery, and perhaps the Chicagoest book I have read. Brown gives you enough clues to figure out more or less what's going on, but the real draw is the engaging character of Sweeny.

One reviewer below called the book homophobic. I think that's an overstatement. A book from 1949 is not going to have a modern view of homosexuality, but the atitude is very "live and let live", and Sweeny does come to respect the shop-keeper a bit.

Is it hard-boiled or an action thriller? Not really. Sweeney is a man of culture as much as deeds, and is only really in danger once, but Brown makes shoe-leather as interesting as shoot-outs.

I really wish the publisher would reprint Fredric Brown's mysteries. This is an excellent example of his work, suspenseful, surprising and funny.

Our guy, Sweeney, is so far over the top the only reason we believe him is because he's our narrator. Sweeney would make Hecht & McArthur's "Front Page" newspapermen look like weenies. Sweeney doesn't just occasionally drink too much; he binges out and spends weeks in the gutter, broke, filthy, and homeless. When Sweeney sobers up (just moderately), he is such a star reporter, his employer's leap to cater to his every whim. Like Wow!

In this 40's era Chicago-noir, Sweeney,while in a nearly comatose binge, witnesses a strange crime site through a plate glass door. A woman (is she dead?) is sprawled on the floor with a fearsome, slavering dog guarding her. No one can get by the dog to see what is wrong. The woman slowly rises, and drops her gown in a spectacular manner. Sweeney decides then and there 1) this is the most beautiful woman in the world and 2) he, Sweeney the Magnificent, will spend a night with her. And anything he wants badly enough, he gets.

Though Sweeney is a little uncertain if what he witnessed was an alcohol-induced hallucination, he finds out quickly it was the real thing. The police think The Ripper, who has terrorized Chicago with three victims, has made an abortive attack on the lady, but her dog saved her. She is an at-risk witness who might be in further danger. Sweeney intends to solve the crimes and get the girl.

Frederic Brown is an edgy writer with a razor sharp sense of humor. When Sweeney theorizes, we don't know if he is putting us on or himself. Mr. Brown is concise and sardonic with a crafty throwaway style. He leaves us always slightly off-balance, and then walks away. Take it, or leave it. Most readers will take it and line up for more.

Living in L.A. many years ago, I was given a bunch of 'crime' books to review for a Film producer. I had never been very interested in mystery/dectective novels (especially Agatha Christie-type stuff), and didn't think I was in a for a treat with the bunch written by some, by then deceased, guy named Frederic Brown. Well, reading 'The Screaming Mimi' and others was an epiphany for me. My scepticism was quickly swept aside, and I was enthralled by the intelligence, movement and tremedously engaging style of Frederic Brown. Once began, there was no way I was going to put any of his books down if I could avoid it. These days I have 'The Screaming Mimi' (thank goodness!) but, sadly gave away 'His Name Was Death' and 'Jabberwocky,' etc. And these days I wait in vain to find those books again. If you have Fredric Brown crime novels, you're lucky :-)

Fredric Brown was blessed with the ability to make the mundane and everyday activities sound like either a great event or, at the least, somewhat otherworldly. The opening chapters of The Screaming Mimi is a good example of this. Each time we are introduced to a person or a situation, it turns out to be different to the first impressions that are created. Not only does it provide entertaining reading but it helps keep you on your toes.

Sweeney, a newspaper reporter, witnesses the strange aftermath of an attempted stabbing murder. The victim is a beautiful woman, a stripper who survives the attack and, while still in shock goes into her performance routine in front of astounded bystanders. As a result of the shock from the attack, she is unable to identify her attacker, but the details make it clear that she was close to being the latest victim of a killer known as The Ripper.

Sweeney makes it his business to discover the identity of The Ripper for two equally important reasons. The first is because it would make a sensational story and as a reporter, he cant resist a good story. The second is that by following up the story he would get to meet the stripper and as a man he cant resist a beautiful dame!

The pace is brisk, the dialogue is amusing and direct as Sweeney conducts his own investigation by following up hunches and suspicions. Its a very entertaining investigation with an ending worth waiting for. If you can possibly get your hands on this, or any of Fredric Browns books for that matter, its worth the effort.

"On top of the radio-phono, on the half that didn't lift up, stood a little ten-inch-high black statuette. It was the figure of a naked girl, her arms thrust out to ward off a ripper, her mouth open in a silent, eternal scream. Her body, which would have been beautiful relaxed, was subtly distorted, rigid with terror. Only a sadist could have liked it. Sweeney wasn't one; he shuddered a little and averted his eyes.

But it woke him up, seeing the (black statuette). It woke him up to a nightmare." - THE SCREAMING MIMI p. 64

This short mystery is a perfect example of noir writing at its best. Published in 1949, it is dated, but gives the reader an excellent slice of Post-WW2 big city life over 60 years ago. The author, Fredric Brown, was a prolific writer of that bygone era with an amazingly off-beat view of America at that time. Brown also had a great sense of humor. His likeable hero, newspaper reporter for the Chicago "Blade" John Sweeney, is, I think, more of an anti-hero with a heavy duty drinking problem, who wakes up on a park bench one day after a long bender and talks to God. Sweeney looks at life through the jaundiced eye of a professional newspaperman. He isn't surprised by much; except when he first sees Yolanda, the beautiful, blonde, stripper victim of a brutal attack by....well, you'll have to read the book to find out who done what to whom.

I highly recommend this novel. 5 BIG STARS

It's been 25 years now since I saw the 1958 Anita Ekberg movie "Screaming Mimi" at NYC's Thalia Theatre (paired with the 1956 Jayne Mansfield film "The Burglar," for one remarkable double feature...ah, that WAS a theatre!), and all I can remember of it is the famous scene at the beginning, in which Anita is attacked, while taking an outdoor shower, by a knife-wielding maniac. (Yes, this scene beat "Psycho" to the shower punch by two years!) I'd love to refresh my memory of this film, but surprisingly, despite the presence of cult actress Ekberg, it has never been released for home viewing--not on VHS, laser disc or DVD--and is rarely revived or shown. Fortunately, we still have the film's source book, Fredric Brown's 1949 thriller "The Screaming Mimi," and a recent perusal of that short novel has once again reminded me of what a terrific author Brown could be. (He was, famously, Mickey Spillane's favorite writer.) I'd previously only encountered Brown's work in the sci-fi field, but his output in the crime arena was apparently just as prodigious and well done. "Mimi" is a compactly written affair, as would be expected of the man who's famous for his sci-fi "short shorts," filled with wonderfully hard-boiled dialogue, intricate plotting and interesting, believable characters. Though not as highly regarded as Brown's first crime novel, "The Fabulous Clipjoint," it remains a marvelous entertainment.

In the book, we meet William Sweeney, an occasional alcoholic and a reporter on the "Chicago Blade." When we first encounter Sweeney, he is deep in the midst of one of his binges, living like a homeless person and soused to the gills. After witnessing the aftermath of the attempted murder of a beautiful stripper, however--the first nonfatal attack by the so-called Ripper, after three previous homicides--he rouses himself from the gutter and goes back to work, vowing to catch the Ripper and, ultimately, spend a night with the wounded victim, Yolanda Lang. To the reader's surprise, this mess of a lush turns out to be one very clever, witty and cultured fellow, although not especially tough; indeed, he gets the stuffing beaten out of him three times during the course of his pursuit! Investigating the three women who had been sliced to death by the Ripper over the course of the previous two months, Sweeney encounters quite an assortment of Chicago's denizens, from strippers to small-time hoods, from tough-talking cops to a wacky artist, from an enigmatic talent manager to a gay art dealer. Eventually, Sweeney realizes that a small black statuette of a terrified woman, the so-called Screaming Mimi, might hold the key to the killer's identity. But will he live long enough to make use of that knowledge?

As to the identity of the murderous Ripper, my advice would be to not even guess. This novel is extremely well plotted, as I mentioned earlier, and its final revelations DO come as a nice surprise. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the author's great use of humor in his book. The dialogue here sparkles, and Sweeney seems to never be at a loss for some snappy rejoinder. "The only thing I hate about you is your guts," he tells one of his adversaries. When told that the Ripper's third victim had been a private secretary, he remarks, "How private? Kind that has to watch her periods as well as her commas?" Then again, the book can get awfully bleak, as when Sweeney reflects, "Death is an incurable disease that men and women are born with; it gets them sooner or later. A murderer never really kills; he but anticipates." I might also add that a good street map of downtown Chicago (a town I've never been to) proved very helpful to me while reading this book; Brown was apparently right at home in Chicago, and it shows. The author, for all his meticulous plotting and sharp writing, DOES make a few gaffs during the course of his novel. In one section, Sweeney walks into a bar (even when not on a binge, this character drinks more than you would believe; an interesting drinking game would be to take a sip of booze for every full drink that Sweeney consumes!) and puts a $5 bill on the counter; a few pages later, Brown tells us that he had put a $10 bill down there. Also, one of Sweeney's fellow reporters, Horlick, is said to be starting his vacation on a Monday, but 100+ pages later, he IS at work on that day. Quibbles aside, though, "The Screaming Mimi" is some mighty impressive work. Capped by a wonderfully ironic final page, it is an object lesson in being careful for what one wishes....

I enjoyed reading this novel, all right-- parts are so bad they deserved to be enshrined in one of Pronzini's Gun In Cheek books. To say that the psychology in this novel is sound is akin to saying that an abandoned shack in the woods would pass building code inspection. And I'm not even factoring in Brown's homophobia (which, even as a straight guy, I found annoying) or the fact that a chronic alcoholic-- I'm sorry, _heavy drinker_-- could function as well as this reporter does. The ending, in which the reporter keeps the killer at bay (for several hours!) is deliciously bad in the best tradition of wretched pulp fiction. I recently read a few W. R. Burnett novels (Little Ceasar and Asphalt Jungle) which were written a decade or two before this but hold up a lot better. Brown has written some good stuff, but this novel doesn't deserve its "classic" status.