El protagonista, Doc Stoeger, es un editor de un periódico semanario local de una pequeña ciudad, harto de no no haber publicado una sola exclusiva en veintitrés años. La visita de un extraño personaje, que como Stoeger también es un declarado amante de la literatura de Lewis Carroll, lo atrapa de un cadena de sucesos extraños, casi surrealistas, que pondrán en peligro su propia vida.

review of
Fredric Brown's Night of the Jabberwock
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 10, 2018


There's a Facebook group called "Phlegm's corner" & the founder of the group, John Arnold, likes to post a diversity of images that appeal to him. At one point, it was bk covers. One of the bk covers was for Frederic Brown's The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches. I liked this title so much that I looked him up online & read that he had a good sense of humor. I decided to try to find things by him to read. This was the 1st. I loved it & I've loved the 2 I've read since this as much if not more. A new favorite author has been found!

The basic idea is that a small-town newspaper editor who's also a Lewis Carroll enthusiast gets embroiled in various murders & other crimes. He also drinks alot. ALOT. Alotof alcohol, i.e..

"He said, "Glad you got here early, Doc. It's damn dull this evening."

""It's dull every evening in Carmel City," I told him. "And most of the time I like it. But Lord, if only something would happen just once on a Thursday evening, I'd love it. Just once in my long career. I'd like to have one hot story to break to a panting public."

""Hell, Doc, nobody looks for hot news in a country weekly."

""I know," I said. "That's why I'd like to fool them just once. I've been running the Clarion twenty-three years. One hot story. Is that much to ask?"" - p 6

Of course, he's about to get his wish at a level he's veeerrrrrrryyyyyyy unprepared for. This bk was 1st published in 1951, 2 yrs before I was born. It's interesting to see a calculating procedure used that's the same one I was taught. Is anyone taught this way anymore or is it all about using common electronic devices?

"I figured it myself. "Fifty times twenty-three is—one thousand one hundred fifty; twice twenty-three more makes eleven ninety-six. Pete, eleven hundred and ninety six times have I put that paper to bed on a Thursday night and never once as there a really big hot news story in it."" - p 9

& the main character is 'getting old'. One of my mottos is Live Fast, Die Old but that doesn't mean prolonging one's life simply for the sake of it. In other words, I'd accept death if I didn't have so many better things to do than die. Still, 'getting old' is mainly fun if you've got a good memory, wch I do, but how long will that last? Otherwise, 'getting old' is NO FUN b/c, in my case, all the women in their middle 30s that I want to fuck my brains out w/ are having none of it. Since when do people in their mid 30s have good sense? It's disgusting. So, yeah, for me, reading about a character who's 'getting old' is a hoot.

"I looked at myself in the mirror back of Smiley's bar and wondered how old Al Grainger thought I was. "Hope I can do the same thing when I'm your age," indeed. Sounded as though he thought I was eighty, at least. I'll be fifty-three my next birthday.

"But I had to admit that I looked that old, and that my hair was turning white. I watched myself in the mirror and that whiteness scared me just a little. No, I wasn't old yet, but I was getting that way. And, much as I crab about it, I like living. I don't want to get old and I don't want to die. Especially as I can't look forward, as a good many of my fellow townsmen do, to an eternity of harp playing and picking bird-lice out of my wings. Nor, for that matter, an eternity of shoveling coal, although that would probably be the more likely of the two in my case." - p 15

Don't worry about picking the lice, people in Hell are allowed temporary green cards to do that & if they so much as complain about what a bum deal they're getting they get sent straight back.

Doc has already been drinking at the bar but then he goes home & is joined by an unexpected guest so they drink some more.

"He inclined his head with solemnity equal to my own, then tilted it back and downed his drink. I was a little late in downing mine because of my surprise at, and admiration for, his manner of drinking. I'd never seen anything quite like it. The glass had stopped, quite suddenly,a good three inches from his mouth. And the whiskey had kept on going and not a drop of it had been lost. I've seen people toss down a shot before, but never with such casual precision and from so great a distance." - p 23

Doc & the stanger-w/-the-impressive-drinking-style discuss Lewis Carroll:

"["]There ought to be a law against the printing of volumes of The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. He should be remembered for the great things he wrote, and the bad ones interred with his bones. Although I'll admit that even the bad things have occasional touches of brilliance. There are moments in Sylvie and Bruno that are almost worth reading through the thousands of dull words to reach.["]" - p 24

Touché! Actually, I have a Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (Vintage Books Edition, May 1976; originally published by The Modern Library, 1936), 1294pp, that might even be the edition Doc's objecting to here. It has Sylvie and Bruno in it, I read it, I don't remember it, I vaguely remember finding it sub-par. Like most or all 'complete' works, it isn't really, it doesn't have Symbolic Logic in it, e.g.. Still, I'm glad it exists, I'd have to raid Carroll's grave to recover teh rejected works if Doc's suggestion had been followed. I even have an edition of Alice in Wonderland in Latin: Alicia in Terra Mirabili. When I die, if the wrong people get to my aRCHIVE that'll be one of the things to go straight to the trash 'cause it's in a furrin language.

"I said, "Now, wait a minute. If I understand you correctly your thesis is that Lewis Carroll—leaving aside the question of what or who he really was—worked out through mathematics abd expressed in fantasy the fact that—what?"

""That there is another plane of existence besides the one we are now living in. That we can have—and sometimes do have—access to it."" - p 34

This is crime fiction but Brown wrote SF too & he lets the 2 genres seep together a bit. I like that. Since I've read this bk, I've read 2 more of his mysteries & I just bought 4 of his SF bks. Stay tuned. In the meantime, Doc is getting more than his fair share of the newsworthy night that he wished for.

"I think it must have been the reaction from the cowardice I'd shown and felt only a minute before. I must have been a bit punch drunk from Jabberwocks and Vorpal Blades and homicidal maniacs with lyncanthropy and bank bandits and a bank burglar—or maybe I thought I'd suddenly been promoted to the Roman candle department." - p 42

& that's only page 42. Doc keeps postponing calling the cops even tho he runs against one dangerous criminal situation after another. In 'real life' this isn't very likely but it's one of those things like when the teenagers separate into small search parties in the horror movie. You just know things are going to get worse.

"I decided that I'd better wait until I was somewhere else, before I called to report either Bat Masters' passing through or about the escaped maniac at my own house. It wouldn't be sfae to risk making the call from here, and a few more minutes wouldn't matter a lot." - p 44

Doc's been drinking alcohol continuously for more than 4 hrs. I was beginning to suspect some "Poultrygeist" action here where only the most drunk person survives.

"It was almost half past-twelve when we finished. There was just time for a stirrup cup, and we had one. With food in my stomach, it tasted much better and went down much more smoothly than the last one had. It tasted so good, in fact, that I decided to take the bottle—we'd started the second one by then—along with us. We might, after all, run into a blizzard." - p 77

"In a glass coffee mug, stir together whiskey, hazelnut liqueur, and Irish cream; top with coffee. Garnish cocktail with whipped cream and serve immediately." - https://www.marthastewart.com/333908/the-blizzard-cocktail

"I got out of the car and—I don't know why; or do I?—I took the bottle with me. It was so dark outside that I couldn't see the bottle in front of my eyes as I tilted it upward." - p 78

"I had three quick ones while Smiley read the headlines.

"The room began to waver a little and I realized I'd better get to bed quickly. I said, "Good night, Smiley. 'Sbeen wonnerful knowing you. I gotta—..."" - p 140

Just reading about all the drinking going on is practically enuf to make me sick. Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of this story is that Doc doesn't just vomit out his stomach lining & die as a result after he's survived more adventures in one night than are likely for even the most hardened detective.

"He lifted the bottle and said, "To Lewis Carroll."

"Since that was the toast, I said, "Wait!" and got the cork quickly out of the bottle of whiskey I was still carrying, and raised it, too. There wasn't any reason why I couldn't or shouldn't get in on that toast as long as my lips, as a neophyte's, didn't defile whatever sacred elixir the "DRINK ME" bottle held.

"He clinked the little bottle lightly against the big one I held, and tossed it off—I could see from the corner of my eye as I tilted my bottle—in that strange conjuring trick again, the bottle stopping inches away from his lips and the drink keeping on going without the loss of a drop." - p 83

Alas, the outcome was different than in the Carroll story. He shd've lost all the drops this time. Maybe the little bottle was full of bees knees. I've always wondered about those.

"This wasn't the car in which Yehudi Smith had driven me here. The gear shift knob was hard rubber with a ridge around it, not the smooth onyx ball I'd noticed on the gear shift lever of his car. It was like the one on my car, which was back home in the garage with two flat tires that I hadn't gotten around to fixing." - p 86

That's what he thinks. What do you think? ( )

Nicely done.. .. keeps you guessing till the end.. . ( )

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

When I think of Fredric Brown I think of fantastical SF with quirky characters and wild happenings, so I didn't hesitate any when I saw this one up for grabs in Netgalley. Imagine my surprise when I actually acquired a mystery/thriller instead!

Though, to be honest, I didn't quite realize it at first because I was just reading it solely because I like the author and the way it began, with a heavy-drinking newspaperman who's absolutely in love with Lewis Carroll's better fiction and the theory that Caroll (the real man behind the pseudonym, the mathematician) hadn't written his works so much as he had proved and visited those realms in reality and he was just reporting the facts.

Our favorite drunkard begins his quest to find the Jabberwocky. :)

It starts out like a great adventure tale where the hero is super blitzed and yet tries so hard to succeed in this damnably difficult quest, driving around (mind you, this is 1950,) breaking into places, picking up weird Carroll friends, and generally freaking himself out with all the strange coincidences cropping up all over the place.

I admit that it took me a bit to get into the book, but by the midpoint, I was totally hooked and kinda freaked about the social weirdness of THIS MUCH HARD LIQUOR. :)

The second half of the novel keeps him quite as blitzed as the first, but this time he's embroiled in murders and he's apparently the prime perp. Again, I'm amazed he's survived this long even when he was just roaming the countryside looking for an imaginary beasty, and yet it gets better.

Because Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was, after all, a great mathematician, and was able to do some pretty wild stuff with his wild maths, it turns out that his number-one-fan is able to intuitively grasp the weird-ass plot against him and solve the case. (Also while drunk.) :)

What can I say? I'm pretty stoked. This novel snuck up on me and I lost my head snickity-snack. :) Vorpal blade! :)

( )

Funny, clever, original - almost as good as his science fiction. I just got so tired of all the drinking though. If I read another Brown mystery I'm going to count how much they drink. ( )