The Wooden Overcoat

I've just begun another of the books I bought on David Thompson's recommendation at Houston's Murder by the Book (May its profits increase!): The Wooden Overcoat by Pamela Branch.

I've waffled over whether the book is too cozy for my taste, but an informative short biography of Branch, available on the Rue Morgue Press Web site and as an introduction to the novel, may have resolved the issue in the book's favor. The biography likens Branch's "madcap black humor" to that of such British movies as Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Branch published the novel in 1951; Ealing Studios released Kind Hearts and Coronets in 1949. Throw in another Alec Guinness movie, The Ladykillers, and there's reason to regard The Wooden Overcoat as a literary version of a subgenre I'd known previously only through movies: the macabre cozy. (Be sure to watch the original Ladykillers and not the wretched Tom Hanks remake.)

(Branch's novel offers one big surprise in its opening chapters, at least for me. And wooden overcoat is slang for coffin. At least one source says the expression may be of U.S. origin, while others call it Cockney rhyming slang, without, however, explaining the derivation.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

A rage in Houston

One thing I love about crime bookstores like Houston's Murder by the Book and Belfast's No Alibis or Toronto's Sleuth of Baker Street is the sense of community among workers and readers. Here in Houston, it's de rigeur to belong to at least two crime-fiction book groups, and some people are in more.

Tonight it was the noir group's turn, and they discussed Chester Himes' A Rage in Harlem and The Jook by Gary Phillips, led by the capable Anita Thompson.

Before and after, I bought books by Bill James, Peter Corris, Reed Farrel Coleman and Ken Bruen, and Colin Cotterill. David Thompson is no relation to Anita, but he does help manage Murder by the Book, and he founded Busted Flush Press, and he'll recommend mysteries if you tease it out of him. He suggested The Wooden Overcoat by Pamela Branch, and I bought it.

Oh, and Houston also has good Mexican food.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009