Freakshow - Jacquin Sanders

I like carny books, so I was predisposed to enjoy FREAKSHOW, a novel by Jacquin Sanders that was published in hardback in 1954 by Little, Brown, reprinted in paperback by Popular Library in 1956 under the title STRIP THE HEART, and has just been reprinted again by Black Gat Books with an introduction by Jeff Vorzimmer, the edition that I read.

Bat Fidler is a young drifter who can’t seem to fit in anywhere, but when he goes to work as a wrestler for a carnival, it looks like he may have finally found a place where he can feel like he belongs. He begins an on-again, off-again romance with a slutty young dancer, but the one he’s really drawn to is the Fish Girl, a beautiful young woman born with underdeveloped arms who’s married to the carnival’s owner, a man with a similar condition who’s billed as the Fish Boy. Naturally, drama develops, and as it does, Sanders gives the reader plenty of colorful scenes and inside dope featuring the carnival’s eccentric inhabitants.

It becomes obvious pretty quickly that the performers in the freakshow aren’t the only freaks in this novel. In fact, even though Bat isn’t the most likable protagonist, the reader can’t help but root for him because he’s surrounded by an even more unsympathetic cast of characters. The only one in this book who isn’t a pretty sorry specimen of humanity is the Fish Girl.

There’s a murder and a trial, but FREAKSHOW isn’t really a crime novel or a legal thriller, although it does manage to generate quite a bit of suspense in its later stages. It’s more of a mainstream novel with a noirish tone and reminds me a little of Orrie Hitt’s work, full of characters who get a variety of raw deals but still try desperately to grab on to some sliver of happiness. Sanders makes things so rough on his characters that I wasn’t sure he would be able to pull it all together in any sort of satisfying ending, but that’s what he does. With its small town Texas and midwestern settings, it also reminds me of William Inge and Larry McMurtry.

Overall, FREAKSHOW is compelling reading from beginning to end. It’s deliberately paced, but I read it quickly anyway because of the fine writing and the intriguing characters. As usual, the folks at Black Gat Books deserve our thanks for bringing back an excellent novel that deserves to be read. It's available in paperback and e-book editions. Highly recommended.

Forgotten Books: Madball - Fredric Brown

I have a fondness for novels and stories set in carnivals, circuses, and such traveling shows. Fredric Brown’s novel MADBALL, published originally in 1953 when his career was going along very well, fits quite nicely in this tradition. But as you’d expect, Brown throws a lot of curves into his tale, so you really don’t know what to expect.

Original Dell Edition

In a way, MADBALL is also a caper novel, since the plot revolves around a bank robbery, but unlike most caper novels, the job has already taken place when the book opens. In fact, it occurred weeks earlier, when two guys from a traveling carnival rob a bank in one of the towns on the show’s circuit. They hide the loot somewhere among the various attractions, then promptly get involved in a car wreck that kills one of the thieves and causes the other one to be laid up for six weeks. But as soon as the survivor gets out of the hospital, he heads for the carnival to retrieve the stolen money. Unfortunately for him, he’s murdered almost as soon as he gets there (not a spoiler, this happens very early on), and the rest of the book consists of various parties searching for the loot, as well as the murderer (who is known to the reader almost from the start) trying to cover his tracks.

Gold Medal Reprint Edition

As usual with a Fredric Brown novel, the plot is suitably twisty, but the real appeal is in the fine writing and the compelling characters he creates. Brown was a carny himself at one time, and he knew this world very well, so we get a lot of carnival lore as well a shrewd fortune teller, an insanely jealous knife-thrower and his beautiful wife, assorted women of dubious virtue, a mentally challenged young man and various people who take advantage of him and try to use him for their own benefit, and a murderer who’s maybe not as clever as he thinks he is. Brown generates plenty of suspense as we read on to find out who’s going to get away their crimes and who’s going to wind up with the loot. But of course he has a few twists he waits until the end to spring . . .

Madball is another name for the crystal ball used by the fortune teller, and maybe it actually does predict the future. I can predict that a lot of you would enjoy the novel MADBALL. It’s about to be reprinted by Stark House in its Black Gat line, and I give it a high recommendation.