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A review by paul_cornelius
You're Lonely When You're Dead by James Hadley Chase
5.0
With You're Lonely When You're Dead, James Hadley Chase returns to an American based crime thriller, an action filled detective story, with Vic Malloy as its private investigator bent on finding vengeance and justice. The book is also a bit of a shock, especially if you read through Chase's books in the order they are written. Which is one of the things I like to do with authors I find interesting after having sampled several titles. In the case of Chase, he had spent a great deal of the postwar years of the 1940s writing London centered thrillers that crossed a variety of genres, political, black comedy, tragicomedy, psychological expose, and, when he put his setting in Mexico, even outright comedy. He experimented, and it showed in his style. The novels placed in England contain elegant, sophisticated, layered passages, elevated prose, and complex dialog and syntax. It is the complete opposite to the hard-boiled fiction You're Lonely When You're Dead represents. It proves, moreover, that Chase could be a serious writer, when he wanted. Not that the hard-boiled entries are not serious, but they do eventually become a recurring franchise that no doubt gave JHC a good and steady income. This novel is a prototype for the books that will follow.
It became a prototype because it not only contrasts thematically and formally with the more literary minded works of the 1940s but because it moves the plane of the novel to an entirely different level. By that, I mean the novels with the English settings depicted a grim realistic world, that reflected their psychology. People walked around with a feeling of grit and grime about them. Something seemed always unwashed, whether the person depicted was a shallow tart or a member of the fading upper class. These books are filled with detail and an authenticity of place. You're Lonely When You're Dead is different. Instead of a dark realism, which always seems damp in England, these American-based works seem to express themselves in a bright glow. They are so bright, they seem like something mythical. Cabins and sand and surf become something the reader allows his mind to fill in, instead of being given elaborate embellishments. For example, the verandahs and porches seem never to have screens or screen doors. And if they do, the rusting springs on the doors never squeals or pops back into place. I pick that out as but one example, because it is the exact sort of entrance description for an English pub or flat that Chase would never lapse into mere concept.
Concept drives these American thrillers. The police are "the police," not Inspector This or That. The owners of restaurants and hotels and acting agencies are ethnic types, not people with a familiar background. And, finally, these American stories depict a class of people who act out their lives in lush vegetation and glaring sunlight, symbolizing, perhaps, the very ease of mobility from the working class to more restricted social places. That is how one time O.S.S. agent Vic Malloy, for example, acts in this story. Finally, the American stories, where individually owned cars replace reliance on taxis, emphasize the inherent freedom to move that Chase captures in his vision of America. So different from the ever drab, dark, and claustrophobic London of the British novels.
It became a prototype because it not only contrasts thematically and formally with the more literary minded works of the 1940s but because it moves the plane of the novel to an entirely different level. By that, I mean the novels with the English settings depicted a grim realistic world, that reflected their psychology. People walked around with a feeling of grit and grime about them. Something seemed always unwashed, whether the person depicted was a shallow tart or a member of the fading upper class. These books are filled with detail and an authenticity of place. You're Lonely When You're Dead is different. Instead of a dark realism, which always seems damp in England, these American-based works seem to express themselves in a bright glow. They are so bright, they seem like something mythical. Cabins and sand and surf become something the reader allows his mind to fill in, instead of being given elaborate embellishments. For example, the verandahs and porches seem never to have screens or screen doors. And if they do, the rusting springs on the doors never squeals or pops back into place. I pick that out as but one example, because it is the exact sort of entrance description for an English pub or flat that Chase would never lapse into mere concept.
Concept drives these American thrillers. The police are "the police," not Inspector This or That. The owners of restaurants and hotels and acting agencies are ethnic types, not people with a familiar background. And, finally, these American stories depict a class of people who act out their lives in lush vegetation and glaring sunlight, symbolizing, perhaps, the very ease of mobility from the working class to more restricted social places. That is how one time O.S.S. agent Vic Malloy, for example, acts in this story. Finally, the American stories, where individually owned cars replace reliance on taxis, emphasize the inherent freedom to move that Chase captures in his vision of America. So different from the ever drab, dark, and claustrophobic London of the British novels.