The White Moll

Of the Frank Packard books I have, The White Moll is unique in that the lead character and focus is that of a woman. Otherwise, it follows a similar formula of the other novels. It has about the most convoluted of all set-ups and backdrops of any of them though, which is saying something.

Miss Rhoda Gray was raised by her father, a mining engineer, down in South America. He gets ill and comes to New York to see a specialist. He's wealthy enough for the trip and treatment, but it doesn't leave alot left over for niceties and they settle in the poorest and crime-ridden section of town. Through an act of charity towards a crook she earns her nickname the "White Moll". "White" as being slang for being honest, trustworthy, and above board. "Moll" as that for a young woman (this is the first I've heard it used as being generic for a young woman and not one specifically a girl-friend to a crook or crook herself). When her father dies, she is left with just enough of a stipend to live on, but not to move or better her situation. She uses her money then to engage in acts of charity amongst crookdom. By these acts of kindness and known not to be be a stool pigeon or preacher, she earns the goodwill and protection of both crooks and cops.

Her life significantly changes when she comes across the old beggar woman Gypsy Nan close to death. Gypsy Nan refuses to be taken to a cop or hospital, at least not until taken first to her room at the flop house. In the candle-lit room, she reveals to Rhoda a small hiding place with clothes and loot, it turns out that Gypsy Nan is in reality a much younger woman! Shorn of her disguise as an old woman that would've exposed her at the hospital, they leave the flop house so that no link between her and Nan can be made. Then Rhoda is able to summon a cop and ambulance to take her to the hospital.

However, for Gypsy Nan it's too late and knowing she is dying, she manages to get a promise from Rhoda. She knows of an impending crime but she won't squeal on her mates. Instead she implores from Rhoda that she commit the robbery beforehand and then return the loot afterwards. Thus, forestalling the crime but not getting anyone arrested. Rhoda agrees and Gypsy Nan passes from this world.

Rhoda commits the act of robbery but is seen and pursued by the police. Only through the seeming innocent intervention of a good looking young man is she able to make her escape. With only a little lead, she finds herself near Nan's apartment. She enters and quickly dashes her clothes and loot in the hideaway and disguises herself as Gypsy Nan! Thus, Miss Rhoda Gray aka the White Moll becomes wanted by the police!

The next day, still in the Gypsy Nan disguise, she is visited by the good looking young man. He identifies himself as The Adventurer, a gentleman thief and he's looking for the White Moll in order to team up with her. However, their conversation is cut short as with his phenomenally good hearing he hears other feet on the stairs, Gypsy Nan gets a second visitor. The second is Parson Dangler, crook and gang-leader. More than that, he knows that Nan is a false identity as he's the husband to the dead woman that wore it earlier! However, through low lighting and subterfuge, Rhoda is able to keep secret that she's not the original woman. Through him, she learns that the gang's carefully laid plans had been forestalled often of late. Until last night, they had no clue as to whom, but now Dangler is sure it's the White Moll that's been the source of all their troubles! Thus, the White Moll is also wanted by the crooks!

That is the set-up. Rhoda Gray aka the White Moll is wanted by police and the crooks for a bunch of crimes she didn't commit and the one she technically did. She maintains the Gypsy Nan identity as both a safe haven and to gain information on future crimes that she then stymies in her compromised identity of the White Moll, all the while trying to find evidence that will clear her name. She also fights the growing attraction she feels for that self-professed crook The Adventurer whose path she continually crosses and matches wits against. And, with the deceased woman who was Gypsy Nan being secretly married to the crook who heads the gang that Gypsy Nan runs with, it's not that safe an identity.

The book is only disappointing in that despite the colorful name, the White Moll moniker is simply a nickname based on slang. It's not a separate identity, she doesn't wear all white and a mask. Also, despite her tomboy upbringings in the wilds of South America, Rhoda is not capable of being able to out-run, out-fight, or out-shoot a reasonably fit man. She only has her daring and wits. She's a colorful and sympathetic heroine, but she doesn't take those extra steps to make her fully a mystery-woman. With a female protagonist, Packard saddles her with more conflicts with her emotions, fears and doubts than he does his male heroes. However, it ultimately works in her favor. She suffers from much of the same emotions that most of us, man or woman, would feel in such situations, as unmanly as it would seem to acknowledge that in heroic fiction. Yet, it doesn't paralyze Rhoda to inaction. She feels those feelings, acknowledges them, then gets up and does what needs doing.

There's a thrilling car chase near the climax of the book, the only such scene in any of these books. Again, it takes a little reminding, that a car going 35-45 mph was really booking in those days (1919) and almost all cars were convertibles!

Thinking of Bradbury

Ray Bradbury passed away this week. I talked a little bit about him on my other blog but I find myself continually thinking of him through this week.

It's funny. I can remember the gateway to many of my favorite authors, but I don't remember Bradbury. With Tolkien it was The Hobbit cartoon. With Heinlein it was the comic serialization of one of his novels in Boys Life magazine that lead me to seeking out the novel it was based on. Clifford Simak it was because I was interested in monsters and one of his novels was The Werewolf Principle. Not what I was expecting, but I was hooked. With the Doc Savage novels someone gave me as a gift the hardback edition of The Sargasso Ogre, I guess because I liked superheroes. My first Shadow was a beat up paperback I found at an antique store.

Bradbury, like Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, is a mystery though. I don't know where I first stumbled upon his stories or which one that made me a fan for life. I think my Dad's parents had a hardback edition of The Illustrated Man so maybe that was it. Or, it could have been an anthology of short-stories that would feature one of a dozen that seemed ubiquitous, that you never knew where it would pop up like "The Veldt", "The October Game", or "The Million Year Picnic".

Regardless, I sought out his books from used book stores, bought his new books when they came out. Didn't matter if they were his martian tales, his dark fantasy or terror stories, his stories about Ireland or even if it was non-fiction. Reading Bradbury and the way he put words together made you want to sit down and write too. It was like seeing into creation and wanting to be a part of it.

I remember an episode of the television series "Fame" where the students were going to put on a production of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but because it was deemed racist, it got pulled and banned. So, the assignment changed to Fahrenheit 451. I don't know if Bradbury's book ever was banned itself, but it's become almost the symbol of "Banned Book Month". Interestingly, Twain's classic was on banned lists twice for polar opposite reasons. The first time was because the fact that a white boy would actually be friends with and help an escaped slave and makes the conscientious decision that if helping his friend, an escaped slave, would send him to Hell, well, then he guessed he was going to Hell. But, he'd stand by his friend. Nowadays, it's because of the audacity of Twain to present a slave as someone who would be uneducated, superstitious, and talk in bad English. But, I digress. A television show about performing arts high school students seems like an odd place to find a reference to Bradbury, but there it is. Just as there's a shopping mall that was inspired by an essay. Or an earpiece that played music in Fahrenheit 451 would inspire a man to invent the Walkman, the precursor to today's mobile music devices.

The ending to Orson Scott Card's short story "The Eumenides of the Fourth Floor Lavatory" is extremely reminiscent of Bradbury's "The October Game" where what happens immediately next is up to the imagination. It's hard to imagine Stephen King's works without Bradbury paving the way, showing magic, horror, fantasy, and heroism lurking in picturesque small town America and what really drives the story, what's really important are the relationships of the people. Bradbury was better at writing endings though.

One of my favorite Bradbury short-stories takes place in the larger universe of his Martian stories, though it takes place on Earth. It's a future with imminently practical people with no imagination. Earth is overcrowded so a corporation has taken to buying up graveyards, exhuming the graves and cremating all the remains. However, this is something up with which one dead body will not put, so he gets up and wages a war of sabotage and destruction in revenge. He thinks it's  perfect, because in this world of no imagination, who would even consider that a dead person would be walking around. Yet, it's that very fact that gets him found out as insanity has been cured, and no one living would commit these crimes or even have a reason to. Ergo, it must be a dead man as reasons two workers. After all, as the great detective once said, "Once you eliminate the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable..."

It's been a while since I've read any of his short-stories. While I'm at the old house this weekend, I think I'll pull down one of those old paperback anthologies from the bookshelf.