The deadly percheron Book

"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.'"

Jacob Blunt seems perfectly sane, but the scarlet hibiscus in his hair begs to differ. He has a perfectly illogical explanation for that. A leprechaun, not the three inch tall Irish variety, but the American 3 foot tall variety, pays him to wear a different flower in his hair every day. Another leprechaun pays him to give away a certain number of quarters every day. The lad believes he is going crazy, which is a reasonable assumption.

Dr. George Matthews is suitably intrigued by the story and breaks numerous personal rules for himself by agreeing to go meet Eustace the Leprechaun. Matthews is amazed to discover he exists. He might be a Leprechaun, or he might be a midget, dwarf, small person, Lilliputian, hafling. Who can say? Of course, any reasonable person will just presume he is a small person running some kind of scam, or he could be a wealthy, certifiably insane munchkin. Regardless, the self proclaimed Leprechaun is not his client, but Jacob Blunt is, even if he has only been one for a matter of hours.

When the Leprechaun instructs Jacob Blunt to deliver a Percheron horse to Francis Raye, an actress, as a gift, Matthews suggests that Blunt get clear of the whole mess, but Blunt is an earnest, young man who insists on fulfilling his obligations.

I really appreciate the way that John Franklin Bardin describes people in this novel. "The redhead was on the long divan in the center of the room, half-lying, half-sitting against a striped pillow. Her hair was long, loose, in lovely disarray. Another girl sat more stiffly beside her--a small, neat, childlike creature with soft-brown curls and an open, innocent look in her blue eyes. The redhead glanced up at us as we came into the room, her eyes intense green blurs in her beautiful, blank face."

While George Matthews is waiting for a train to go home, he feels a sharp blow to his back and wakes up in an insane asylum with everyone referring to him as John Brown. I won't go into details, but let's just say there is irrefutable evidence proving to the institution that he isn't who he says he is.

The nightmare begins.

Now, in my opinion, if you find yourself incarcerated for insanity, the first thing that you should learn is what the institution wants from you. They will give you cues all along. I remember the episode of Penny Dreadful when Vanessa Ives ( Eva Green) is incarcerated, and I'm just sick to my stomach the whole episode, worried that those numbskulls will destroy that pretty mind of hers trying to cure her. I begged her, telepathically, to start giving them what they want so they start to believe she is sane. Matthews doesn't buck the system for long. He has the proper training, after all, and soon he is playing the game. Still, he is a changed man when he comes out. The only job he can get is working in a restaurant on Coney Island. He doesn't feel himself, but also doesn't even look like himself.

"He was not old--about my age now that I studied his face--although he had seemed older at first glance. This was because his short cropped hair was gray streaked with white and his jaw, that showed the remains of strength, trembled spasmodically. But what made him really fascinatingly ugly was the wide, long, angry red scar that traversed his face diagonally from one ear across the nose and down to the root of the jaw at the base of his other cheek. It was an old scar that had knit badly and in healing had pulled and twisted the skin until the face it rode had the texture of coarse parchment and grimace of a clown."

So how did he get this scar? What exactly happened to him between the time he felt that sharp blow and woke up in the mental hospital? "Scars make crimes." Or in my mind, crimes make scars.

Just before beginning this book, I'd finished the book Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi, but Charlie Manson wasn't quite ready to let go of me yet. "But it was the last entry in the notebook that brought memories rushing back to my mind helter-skelter, head over heels." What are the chances! I was first struck by this seemingly very modern word appearing in a book as old as 1946, but then, after some research, I realized the words date back to the Middle English period of the 16th century, skelte hasten.

John Franklin Bardin wrote several books, but there was a productive period starting in 1946 with The Deadly Percheron reaching publication, followed by The Last of Philip Banter and Devil Take the Blue-Tailed Flyk where he had more like a tiger by the tail. He said his influences were Graham Greene, Henry Green, and Henry James, but there are certainly elements of Edgar Allan Poe at work in this book. He never became very popular until a British audience rediscovered him in the 1970s. Now, he is considered by many to be one of the most important American noir writers.

The plot of this novel becomes more and more complex as Matthews researches his recent past, trying to reassemble the missing pieces caused by his amnesia. Bardin overcomplicates the plot, which will stretch the believability of many readers, but his writing style is fresh, muscular, and gritty. I'm certainly looking forward to reading the other two novels from his most intriguing and successful writing period.

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