- Paperback: 216 pages
- Publisher: Canongate Classics; New edition edition (19 Sep 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1841950130
- ISBN-13: 978-1841950136
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 30,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Julian Symonds
"Bardin was ahead of his time...there is a visionary lucidity about Bardin's nightmares that makes his surrealist logic both convincing and disturbing."
Product Description
Jacob Blunt has a strange connection with a number of dwarves. Upon entering the psychiatrist's office with a scarlet hibiscus in his curly blond hair he announces that he thinks he is losing his mind. Thus begins this classic crime thriller.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was perhaps the strangest crime novel I've ever read...
In the first chapter, the book features a dwarf, a man with a flower in his hair, and a percheron tied to a lamp-post, and it continues on from there.
In my opinion, this is a great book - the plot is interesting enough to keep you reading, the author makes all the strange events seem real, and he really gets inside the head of the main characters. If you especially like books with a strong psychological aspect, this doesn't disappoint.
Yes, it is a bit different but that makes it seem like a breath of fresh air, something truly original among the run-of-the-mill crime novels today.
In the first chapter, the book features a dwarf, a man with a flower in his hair, and a percheron tied to a lamp-post, and it continues on from there.
In my opinion, this is a great book - the plot is interesting enough to keep you reading, the author makes all the strange events seem real, and he really gets inside the head of the main characters. If you especially like books with a strong psychological aspect, this doesn't disappoint.
Yes, it is a bit different but that makes it seem like a breath of fresh air, something truly original among the run-of-the-mill crime novels today.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read a lot of crime fiction, and this novel was recommended to me by a friend who said that anyone who was interested in crime fiction ought to read this. The opening chapter presents one of the most audaciously weird mysteries I've ever come across - a man walks into a psychiatrist's office wearing a purple flower in his hair, and claims that three 'little men' are paying him to do strange things (flower-wearing, whistling during concerts, and giving away money). The psychiatrist, Dr George Matthews, has to unravel the mystery. At first he assumes his client is bonkers (as one would), but then he meets one of the little men himself...
This is an amazing book, with a constantly-surprising and genuinely original plot, a macabre, tense, nightmarish atmosphere throughout and a satisfyingly unpredictable and gripping conclusion. My one criticism is that because there's so much plot, certain things that should have been given more time to unfold naturally in the book feel as if they've been 'rushed through'. I'd have preferred the author to take his time and for the book to be slightly longer. Still, it is one of the most striking and memorable crime stories I've ever read.
This is an amazing book, with a constantly-surprising and genuinely original plot, a macabre, tense, nightmarish atmosphere throughout and a satisfyingly unpredictable and gripping conclusion. My one criticism is that because there's so much plot, certain things that should have been given more time to unfold naturally in the book feel as if they've been 'rushed through'. I'd have preferred the author to take his time and for the book to be slightly longer. Still, it is one of the most striking and memorable crime stories I've ever read.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
WHO KILLED FRANCES RAYE?
26 Nov 2000
Format:Paperback
Dr George Matthews, a psychiatrist, encounters a patient who claims he is paid by a leprechaun to wear a flower in his hair. Another, he claims, pays him to whistle at Carnegie Hall during performances. A third pays him to give quarters away. Jacob Blunt wants Dr Matthews to confirm that he's mad. Dr Matthews is curious, so he accompanies his patient to a rendezvous with one of the leprechauns. His name is Eustace and he isn't at all pleased to see the doctor.
So begins the Deadly Percheron. After that it gets strange. First published in 1946 this unique murder mystery transcends the boundaries of the genre. It's noir, it's nightmarish, it's compulsive. John Franklin Bardin drags the reader into a world where the nature of identity is constantly questioned. Is our hero who he says he is? Can he be trusted? Is he, in fact, sane? Reality, as seen through his eyes, is a shifting kaleidoscope of memories.
As the murders mount up the fragments of his shattered psyche are slotted together. Slowly reality stabilises. At the end of the novel, but only then, it all makes sense. Who killed Frances Raye? Well, now, let's start at the beginning..."Jacob Blunt was my last patient. He came into my office wearing a scarlet hibiscus in his curly blond hair. He sat down in the easy chair across from my desk, and said, "Doctor, I think I'm losing my mind.""
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
WHO KILLED FRANCES RAYE?
26 Nov 2000
Format:Paperback
Dr George Matthews, a psychiatrist, encounters a patient who claims he is paid by a leprechaun to wear a flower in his hair. Another, he claims, pays him to whistle at Carnegie Hall during performances. A third pays him to give quarters away. Jacob Blunt wants Dr Matthews to confirm that he's mad. Dr Matthews is curious, so he accompanies his patient to a rendezvous with one of the leprechauns. His name is Eustace and he isn't at all pleased to see the doctor.
So begins the Deadly Percheron. After that it gets strange. First published in 1946 this unique murder mystery transcends the boundaries of the genre. It's noir, it's nightmarish, it's compulsive. John Franklin Bardin drags the reader into a world where the nature of identity is constantly questioned. Is our hero who he says he is? Can he be trusted? Is he, in fact, sane? Reality, as seen through his eyes, is a shifting kaleidoscope of memories.
As the murders mount up the fragments of his shattered psyche are slotted together. Slowly reality stabilises. At the end of the novel, but only then, it all makes sense. Who killed Frances Raye? Well, now, let's start at the beginning..."Jacob Blunt was my last patient. He came into my office wearing a scarlet hibiscus in his curly blond hair. He sat down in the easy chair across from my desk, and said, "Doctor, I think I'm losing my mind.""
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A horse of a different color
24 July 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
John Franklin Bardin's 1946 novel shares most of its affinities with the genre of the noir novel (as perfected by writers like Cornel Woolrich or Dorothy B. Hughes), but it's something else besides... it starts out as a kind of humorous fantasy novel, much like something out of Thorne Smith, with a patient telling his psychiatrist three leprechauns pay him every day to complete different silly tasks such as wearing flowers in his hair. Then there's a murder, and then by the fourth chap[ter the novel starts all over again with the same narrator... who is being told he has a different name than he thought previously.
It would be wrong to give more away, but the whole work is certainly one of a kind, and partakes of many different genres and experiments greatly with the idea of an unreliable narrator (indeed, the great theme of the book is how much you can trust someone else's testimony). Its intriguing play with identity seems to anticipate later (and unfortunately better) books such as Patricia Highsmith's THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, and it certainly is a page turner. But it's ultimately not a very good book. There are too many murders, too many revelations that everything you'd been reading was not what you had thought it was; and the central intrigue that ties the whole plot together (and is of course only revealed at the end) is too outlandish. You can see why Millipede Press included it in its superb and beautifully bound re-issues of horror novels, but as fine as its aspirations are, it never really takes off to the level of a Highsmith or a Woolrich at their best.
It would be wrong to give more away, but the whole work is certainly one of a kind, and partakes of many different genres and experiments greatly with the idea of an unreliable narrator (indeed, the great theme of the book is how much you can trust someone else's testimony). Its intriguing play with identity seems to anticipate later (and unfortunately better) books such as Patricia Highsmith's THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, and it certainly is a page turner. But it's ultimately not a very good book. There are too many murders, too many revelations that everything you'd been reading was not what you had thought it was; and the central intrigue that ties the whole plot together (and is of course only revealed at the end) is too outlandish. You can see why Millipede Press included it in its superb and beautifully bound re-issues of horror novels, but as fine as its aspirations are, it never really takes off to the level of a Highsmith or a Woolrich at their best.
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