2 stars

Doc is the editor of the Carmel City Clarion which is a weekly paper. He is also a very big Lewis Carroll fan. Strange things are going on in his little town.

This book kind of rambles along seemingly a little pointless. I didn’t find it that interesting. Perhaps it was my mood when I began to read it, but darn it. Too many books, too little time.

Thanking Netgalley and Endeavour Press for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

Night of the Jabberwock by Frederic Brown was received direct from the publisher.  This is a re-release of a book written in 1950.  I have always heard of the "jabberwocky" but have never read much about the famed creature (was it a poem that made the jabberwocky well known)? This book, though it has the jabberwock in the title is not about the famed creature written about by Lewis Carroll.  Browns tale takes place over one night and is a fast read whodunnit style murder mystery.  The author, of whom this is my first read, wrote many "pulp" fiction type tales back in the day when such writings kept people entertained without having to think to hard about what was being written as we so often get into nowadays.  Good solid and quick read.

4 Stars

Complex, Literate, and Engaging

While Fredric Brown is mostly celebrated as an important, if now largely forgotten, contributor to the golden age of science fiction, he also made his mark in the crime and detection field. This book, which came out in 1950, is widely considered to be one of his finest efforts.

We follow Doc Stoeger through just one eventful night. Doc puts his weekly little local paper to bed every Thursday night, for printing on Friday morning. Early on he wishes that something would happen on a Thursday night that would let him print big, breaking news. Well, a whole lifetime's worth of newsworthy things happen on this particular Thursday night, including murders, robberies, mobsters, scandals, and the like. Of more importance, Doc gets involved in a weird setup that might have supernatural overtones, and he finds himself drifting into a frame for a heinous crime.

The book starts slowly, with all of the relevant characters being set in place, then each narrative thread laid down. As the threads twist and tighten, and as the stakes get higher and the action heats up, Doc keeps drinking and thinking out loud, trying to find the angle that puts everything into place. Often the book feels like Cornell Woolrich, and even more often it feels like a Harry Keeler webwork mystery. In the 20's, Keeler described a webwork plot. To quote Wikipedia paraphrasing Keeler, a webwork is "...a plot that includes many strands or threads (each thread representing a character or significant object), which intersect in complex causal interactions. A webwork novel typically ends with a surprise revelation that clarifies these interactions retrospectively." That's pretty much what you get here.

But, lots of webwork plots are just complex for the sake of being complex, and border on the random or silly. Here, (and this is his genius), Brown keeps everything under tight control, and lets us follow Doc's logical and compelling reasoning. Even better, Doc is a literate man and a lover of all things Lewis Carroll. So, the big setup and much of the action reflects or specifically relates to the events and scenes in "Alice in Wonderland", which is what takes the book way beyond just some webwork plotted effort.

So, bottom line, if you like mysteries, Brown is a writer to know. If you like the idea of "literate hard-boiled", this is a book to try. Heck, if you just think of yourself as a bit old-school in your mystery tastes, or if you like an articulate, engaging and distinctive narrative voice, this could be worth a try. A nice find for me. (Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Night of the Jabberwock by Fredric Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

When I think of Fredric Brown I think of fantastical SF with quirky characters and wild happenings, so I didn't hesitate any when I saw this one up for grabs in Netgalley. Imagine my surprise when I actually acquired a mystery/thriller instead!

Though, to be honest, I didn't quite realize it at first because I was just reading it solely because I like the author and the way it began, with a heavy-drinking newspaperman who's absolutely in love with Lewis Carroll's better fiction and the theory that Caroll (the real man behind the pseudonym, the mathematician) hadn't written his works so much as he had proved and visited those realms in reality and he was just reporting the facts.

Our favorite drunkard begins his quest to find the Jabberwocky. :)

It starts out like a great adventure tale where the hero is super blitzed and yet tries so hard to succeed in this damnably difficult quest, driving around (mind you, this is 1950,) breaking into places, picking up weird Carroll friends, and generally freaking himself out with all the strange coincidences cropping up all over the place.

I admit that it took me a bit to get into the book, but by the midpoint, I was totally hooked and kinda freaked about the social weirdness of THIS MUCH HARD LIQUOR. :)

The second half of the novel keeps him quite as blitzed as the first, but this time he's embroiled in murders and he's apparently the prime perp. Again, I'm amazed he's survived this long even when he was just roaming the countryside looking for an imaginary beasty, and yet it gets better.

Because Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was, after all, a great mathematician, and was able to do some pretty wild stuff with his wild maths, it turns out that his number-one-fan is able to intuitively grasp the weird-ass plot against him and solve the case. (Also while drunk.) :)

What can I say? I'm pretty stoked. This novel snuck up on me and I lost my head snickity-snack. :) Vorpal blade! :)

Review: NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK by Fredric Brown

An excitingly twisted, convoluted, puzzle, a mystery wrapped in an enigma, NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK
is a true reading delight. This is the first of Fredric Brown's writing I'd read, and it's set me on a path to seeking out more. If you love Lewis Carroll, chess, or almost-unsolvable mysteries, get rolling. If you enjoy a feckless protagonist who is almost his own worst enemy, let me introduce you to the endearing Doc Stoeger, small town newspaper owner, alcoholic, and a stalwart friend. Doc just needs that "one big story" to put his weekly newspaper "to bed," but no matter how diligent he is, the stories just keep eluding him, or mutating--until the grizzled journalist finds himself starring in his own real-life story.

Night of the Jabberwock is a brilliant and unusual mystery perfect for lovers of early noir and Lewis Carroll.  Frederic Brown not only gives readers a cunningly plotted murder mystery, he offers some of the most eloquent commentary on books, life and death that I've seen.  Frederic Brown distributes quotes from Lewis Carroll throughout - a definite match for the surreal sequence of events.  Night of the Jabberwock isn't really a fantasy although there are some fantastic elements.  Nor is it a horror story.  It is most definitely a mystery.

Doc Stoeger runs a small town paper.  He likes his chess, his liquor and his Lewis Carroll, not necessarily in that order.  Carmel City rarely has any exciting news.  What Doc doesn't bargain for is a night of gangsters, murder, and strange coincidences.  Ultimately framed for a double murder, believed to be a madman and hunted by police with orders to shoot on sight, Doc must plumb the depths to win a game of chess like no other.

Unlike other nods to Lewis Carroll, Night of the Jabberwock doesn't reengineer his classic tales.  It is wholly unique.  Doc Stoeger is a fascinating character, easy going and good natured but far more clever than Father William to whom he is often compared.  He is a perfect hero for this unusual thriller.

5/5

I received a copy of Night of the Jabberwock from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom