Things to Do in Tribeca When You’re Dead

At the end of the Brooke Allen review I pointed out yesterday, she writes: "As a relief from laboring over Pynchon and Mailer, I picked up the latest mysteries by Alexander McCall Smith and John Mortimer . . . and could not suppress the philistine notion that both books were better, on every level, than the biggies I was supposed to be reviewing. Why? Because Smith and Mortimer were working within a clear set of limits; perfection, or close enough to it, could be achieved." There's no genre where you can see perfection reached more regularly than in mystery and crime. Of course, if you're the sort of rube who thinks Special Topics in Calamity Physics counts as a mystery, you probably won't know where to look.

Enter Otto Penzler, who I'm willing to bet has read every mystery ever written, and who holds the square community's (i.e., the Sun's readership's) hand, walks it through the morgue, slides open the drawers, and helps it identify the one it should take home and pay its respects to. Here's his latest recommendation:

"Dead Horse" by Walter Satterthwait (McMillan, 182 pages, $30), is a lousy title for a terrific mystery novel, enhanced by an enticing dust jacket that reproduces an early issue of "Black Mask," the greatest pulp magazine of them all.

The story begins on May 26, 1935, with the death of a famous socialite, Emily Davies Vanderbilt Thayer Whitfield. Although separated, she was still married to Raoul Whitfield, one of the most famous mystery writers in America at the time: a prolific contributor to pulp magazines, author of several crime novels and numerous books and stories about the newly blossoming and exciting world of flying.

The death was instantly ruled a suicide, though Sheriff Tom Delgado thinks it odd that a right-handed woman would choose to shoot herself on her left side, just below the rib cage. Go ahead, try it. It's not impossible, but it sure seems like a lot of unnecessary trouble when the heart or the head requires less of a contortionist act.

What you may not know, but ought to, is that Penzler is also the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, where you can find not only every mystery but every edition of every mystery, including signed first editions and other beautiful rarities. It's got a damn sight more character than the Astor Place Barnes & Noble.

An article in the Times yesterday wondered if interest in the "unknown" was really such a good thing:

A fan recently posed this question online at randi.org: “Is a fascination and increased belief in the supernatural a sign of social decline?”

The answer came as categorically as the words under the Magic 8-Ball: “Yes. Absolutely.”

By itself, “Lost” may not be a harbinger of the decline of Western civilization. But alongside “Heroes,” as well as “Medium,” “Ghost Whisperer” and “Raines,” a new NBC drama that begins in March and stars Jeff Goldblum as a detective who solves murders by appearing to commune with dead victims, the collapse looks pretty darn nigh.

It seems less likely that we're regressing to medieval superstition than that, as accounts for the undying appeal of the mystery novel, we're just fed up with knowing everything there is to know about everybody.