The Yellow Overcoat (Frank Gruber, 1942)

This was my first Gruber's non-Johnny Fletcher book and I was curious if it would be more serious and not so tongue-in-cheek as the stuff in the Fletcher series (which, for the record, I absolutely love!). I didn't need to wait long for an answer.

Our hero Joe Devlin, an ex-hobo who just inherited a detective correspondence school (the institute!) from his eccentric uncle, is hired by some hillbilly to find his stolen overcoat. Offering him a fee ten times higher than he had paid for the old, stolen one. But since our man isn't a licensed detective, he hires one... who turns out to be an alcoholic... so Joe promptly hires another private eye to keep an eye on the first one. And guess what? This last one will be killed by yet another guy who shadowed all of them!

Welcome to Frank Gruber's wacky world! Cool stuff, a real page-turner. I loved it and couldn't stop smiling while reading it. But then, in the last third, it just falls apart.

After drinking with his new drinking detective buddy and (inevitably) stirring trouble and a fight in the bar, Joe abruptly departs Chicago on some wild goose chase that turns out to not be just an episode but instead takes a good chunk of the book. Unfortunately, it gradually becomes a snooze fest, with new characters needlessly thrown into the plot and some story developments that do little to develop the story. In short, and very bluntly - it turns into a mess. Even worse, most of the spark and playfulness of the first half fades away. It felt like chapter after chapter was used for padding and to reach the word count...

There are a few exceptions, the highlight being the hotel with night and day shift rooms, so our hero must share his room with another guest! Crazy and hilarious shit, I loved that one.

By the time it came to the final part - the mandatory big revelation act - I was pretty battle-fatigued and just wanted it to end. It didn't help much that it took Joe twenty pages to explain the plot and point out the culprit. Since this is a classic mystery, Gruber does his best to overcomplicate everything, and there are probably dozens of possible solutions to whodunnit in this one. So, the one used probably holds water, but it is just not very convincing. To put it mildly.

I'll give you just one example. Our guy didn't go on that goose chase for no reason. He went to that godforsaken place (see the location section of the facts below) with a very specific goal: to make sure there was a certain painting hanging on the wall of some pub, which would corroborate the statement of one of his suspects. You may be asking yourself why the fuck didn't he just pick up the phone, call the pub, and ask the bartender about it? And you would be asking the same question as I did myself...

Had it been trimmed for 50 or so pages, it could have been great. But this way, it's just all right. With due respect to Gruber, it's actually quite forgettable, to be honest...

 3/5

Facts:

Hero:

Joe Devlin is our main guy, but I liked his sidekick, P.I. Harry Bloss, more. The best detective in Chicago!

Dames: 

Martha Drexler, Joe's secretary at "the institute", also mysterious Susan Gard when her face is not bandaged. 

Location:

Chicago... and then off on the night train to Keewatauk. Huh, say that again - to where?

"Keewatauk," said the ticket seller. "That's Pengilly. Leaves in eight minutes. Change at Alborn for Pengilly."

"Keewatauk is a suburb of Pengilly?"

"Su-burb?" Naw; Keewatauk ain't on the railroad. You get off at Pengilly and change to a bus, which runs to Keewatauk. First, you change to another train to Alborn."

"Two changes - to go how far?"

"Eight-ninety miles. Don't know. I've never been there."

Keewatauk cannot be found on Google Maps, but Pengilly is there. And there's no train connection anymore to Chicago! 

Body count:

3

The object of desire:

"I see," said Devlin. "And you want to pay four hundred dollars to get the man who stole your coat?"

"Nah, not the guy. The hell with him! It's the coat I want; that's all."

"You don't want the thief arrested?"

"Nah, what the hell? Maybe he was cold and needed the coat. I'd a bought him one maybe, if he'd asked proper for it. That ain't the idea."

Blackouts:

A missile struck his arm with crushing force, bounced off and collided with his forehead. Fire exploded in Devlin's head and he fell forward on his face, unconscious.

References:

In one scene Devlin humms this tune:

Oh, massa had an obercoat,

He hung it on the wall.

And dat niggah came and stole

And wore it to a ball!

ChatGPT identified it as "Oh, Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground", but this is just another hallucination as the words don't match at all. And it is most definitely not about the slaves "weeping at the grave of their deceased master". But, anyway, cool and funny lyrics.

Title:

See the 'object of desire' section above

Edition:

Popular Library #188

Cover:

Good old "woman-in-peril" theme. Love it. By Rudolph Belarski.

Cool lines:

"How is your uncle?"

"That depends on where he went; he checked out. That's why I'm here. I'm his heir."

"They sure dye these rabbits swell these days."

"Rabbits, you're calling it?" cried the storekeeper. "A genuine mink-dyed fur coat and you're calling it rabbits? Mister, should a mink coming in this store he'd crying, 'mama, papa!'"

"I have here a fine engraving of Abraham Lincoln. It could become yours by showing me the register from the last month and answering a question."

"Add a dollar to it," said the man behind the grill, "and I'll drink a bottle of milk with my mouth full of chewing tobacco and that's a real trick."

"A man after my own heart," said Devlin, pushing the bill under the wicket. ""Let's see the register."

And here's one, probably the least hard-boiled one-liner on this blog. But somehow, I still find it charming:

"Take a nice little walk for yourself, to the east. Walk until your hat floats!"