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A review by wintermute47
Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers
2.0
This book was adapted into a successful Broadway play, which was in turn adapted to film on seven different occasions in the 20th century. After seeing two of the film adaptations on TCM recently, both of which were mediocre in very different ways, I decided to go the source, which found all news ways to underwelm.
Despite the structural similarities (a group of people gather at an isolated location, intrigue unfolds, people are killed) this book is not a thriller or a mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie--it's melodrama. We spend an inordinate amount of time with the protagonist professing his deep and abiding love for a woman he met hours prior and about whom he knows nothing. She, in turn, alternately adores him or despises him depending on whether or not he's doing what she asks him to do. The meaning behind all of it doesn't unfold until the final chapters, so the only thing at stake for most of the book with whether the woman likes him or not.
A final note: the two film adaptations I watched (Hamilton and Killy 1935 and Landers 1947) both incorporate the element that the author character has made a bet to write a story in one night at Baldpate Inn, in contrast to the novel where the author plans to spend several weeks writing a new book sans any wager. The 1935 film concludes by revealing that all the sensational events of the film were the story the author wrote as a way of illustrating how absurd his pulp novel theatrics would be in real life. This makes a point (the plot twists are all very silly) but it also means that none of what we've watched has mattered at all. The source novel features the author vowing to use his time alone to write a serious book, not like the thrillers he's written to date, but in his final line he makes a joke about how the thrills he's just experienced ARE the novel we've just read, which makes it seem like the entire 1935 adaptation is based on a literal reading of the source novel's closing line. Amusing, but still not worth the time I've invested in the Baldpate universe to date.
Despite the structural similarities (a group of people gather at an isolated location, intrigue unfolds, people are killed) this book is not a thriller or a mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie--it's melodrama. We spend an inordinate amount of time with the protagonist professing his deep and abiding love for a woman he met hours prior and about whom he knows nothing. She, in turn, alternately adores him or despises him depending on whether or not he's doing what she asks him to do. The meaning behind all of it doesn't unfold until the final chapters, so the only thing at stake for most of the book with whether the woman likes him or not.
A final note: the two film adaptations I watched (Hamilton and Killy 1935 and Landers 1947) both incorporate the element that the author character has made a bet to write a story in one night at Baldpate Inn, in contrast to the novel where the author plans to spend several weeks writing a new book sans any wager. The 1935 film concludes by revealing that all the sensational events of the film were the story the author wrote as a way of illustrating how absurd his pulp novel theatrics would be in real life. This makes a point (the plot twists are all very silly) but it also means that none of what we've watched has mattered at all. The source novel features the author vowing to use his time alone to write a serious book, not like the thrillers he's written to date, but in his final line he makes a joke about how the thrills he's just experienced ARE the novel we've just read, which makes it seem like the entire 1935 adaptation is based on a literal reading of the source novel's closing line. Amusing, but still not worth the time I've invested in the Baldpate universe to date.