Baynard H. Kendrick

• Born: April 8, 1894
• Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Died: March 22, 1977
• Place of death: Ocala, Florida

Types of Plot: Private investigator; police procedural

Principal Series: Miles Standish Rice, 1936-1938; Captain Duncan Maclain, 1937-1962

Contribution

The first six of the thirteen Duncan Maclain novels have been described as “outstanding,” ranking with the best detective fiction done in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s by an American. Out of his personal experience working with blinded veterans, Baynard H. Kendrick created the character of Captain Duncan Maclain. Kendrick wanted to prove that the disadvantages associated with lack of sight could be overcome, and that the blind need not be treated as dependent children. Consequently, he deliberately placed his blind investigator in the most harrowing of situations. Maclain is not, however, superhuman in the mold of Ernest Bramah’s Max Carrados. Kendrick could invent puzzles and twisting plots as well as the best of his contemporaries, but his unique contribution is his portrait of a believable disabled person in a dangerous occupation. Kendrick was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, served as its first president, and received the organization’s Grand Masters Award in 1967.

Biography

Baynard Hardwick Kendrick was born on April 8, 1894, the son of John Ryland Kendrick and Juliana Lawton Kendrick. Graduated from the Episcopal Academy in 1912, he later became the first American to join the Canadian army, enlisting in the infantry only one hour after the declaration of war. He was on active duty in France and Salonika and was decorated by the British and Canadian governments. His association with World War I convalescent homes led to a lifelong interest in the training of the blind. On May 2, 1919, he married Edythe Stevens; they had three children, Baynard, Edith, and Julia. After Edythe’s death, he married Jean Morris in 1971. During the years between the end of the war and the publication of his first novel, Blood on Lake Louisa (1934), Kendrick traveled widely, lived in almost every corner of the United States, and tried almost every job imaginable, including those of lawyer, certified public accountant, hotel manager, publisher, and secretary to a door company.

Kendrick considered Florida his home and was a member of the editorial board of the Florida Historical Quarterly and director of the Florida Historical Society; he wrote the column “Florida’s Fabulous Past” for the Tampa Sunday Tribune (1961-1964). His best-selling novel The Flames of Time (1948) deals with the state’s turbulent past.

Kendrick was the organizer of the Blinded Veteran’s Association and served as chairman of the board of directors and as its only sighted consultant. In honor of his work in the training and rehabilitation of blinded veterans, Kendrick received a plaque from General Omar Bradley. The film Bright Victory (1951), an adaptation of his novel Lights Out (1945), which concerns the trauma of the blinded soldier, earned for him the Screen Writers Guild’s Robert Meltzer Award and the Spearhead Medal of the Third Armored Division. It is no surprise that all of his works have been transcribed into Braille.

In addition to Lights Out, Kendrick has had other works adapted for film, and the 1971 television series Longstreet was based partly on the character of Duncan Maclain. Suffering from ill health during the last ten years of his life, Kendrick wrote his last mystery, Flight from a Firing Wall, in 1966. He received the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award in 1967. He remained an active fund-raiser for the Blinded Veterans’ Association until his death in 1977.

Analysis

In The Last Express (1937), Baynard H. Kendrick introduced the figure of Captain Duncan Maclain, the tall, handsome war hero turned private investigator who is blessed with the gift of analytic reasoning and a flair for the dramatic. This description is typical of many detectives of the 1930’s. The plots of the early Maclain books, in their love of the bizarre and the complex, are also representative of the era. What separates the Maclain novels from the rest is a marked shift in emphasis.

In many classic novels of detection, the sleuth, even though he may be endowed with a variety of affectations and idiosyncrasies, is a subordinate figure. The star attraction is generally the plot, on whose intricacy and brilliance the success of the novel depends. Therefore, even if the reader cannot tolerate the detective, the ingenuity of the problem and its resolution can still be admired. In a Duncan Maclain novel, however, the opposite is true. The work stands or falls on the credibility of the characterization of Maclain himself, for he is blind. Consequently, the things that a physically able detective takes for granted become magnified in importance and, in some cases, must be explained in great detail. For example, a sighted detective may explain why he shot at a fleeing criminal and missed. Maclain must explain why he did not—he shoots at first sound.

It is essential to point out that Kendrick’s choice of a blind detective is not a gimmick. Supposedly based on a friend of Kendrick who was blinded in World War I, Maclain is not blind simply to be different. Passionate in his support for the disabled and an authority on the training and rehabilitation of the blind, Kendrick deliberately created a detective who could stand as a symbol not only for the sightless but also for those who could not accept the blind as valuable members of society. Kendrick admitted that he wanted his novels to be used as propaganda in the fight for the understanding and the mainstreaming of the handicapped. Therein lies the artistic problem inherent in the portrayal of Duncan Maclain. It is very difficult to be a propagandistic symbol and, at the same time, an interesting and credible human being. Yet Maclain must be interesting and credible because of his complete domination of the novels in which he appears. The plot is secondary to the man and the detective. How does one portray the vulnerability and humanity of the man when one also wants to emphasize his invulnerability to the accidents of fate?

Kendrick’s solution was to surround Maclain with an array of secondary characters, both friends and servants, who function as his own personal support group. Unfortunately, too often they are just that: merely members of a group with little or no individuality. At times they are stereotypes, such as Cappo, Maclain’s manservant-chauffeur. As chorus characters, they exist simply to provide transportation for the captain or to comment on his brilliance. Even his wife is a vague, shadowy figure. The only memorable auxiliary figures are his Seeing Eye dogs, Driest and Schnucke, who generally seem more human than the humans themselves. Schnucke acts as the detective’s guide, and Driest, an attack dog, is his bodyguard. The two are lovingly described in the novels, and when they are wounded trying to protect their master, the reader feels more sympathy for them than for any of the human victims, including perhaps Maclain.

This stance seems to be a deliberate decision on the author’s part—he wants no sympathy for his blind detective. He wants Maclain to be judged according to his skill and intelligence as a detective. In the understandable desire to prove that Maclain can compete and even excel in his dangerous career, however, Kendrick sacrifices the human credibility for the professional and surrounds Maclain with an aura of rigid perfection. Kendrick was aware of this difficulty and frequently has his characters comment on their reactions to the captain’s personality or lack of it. The typical response is one of awe:

She returned to her apartment feeling a little awed. There was a quality of frightening perfection about Duncan Maclain. She knew he was engaged, but sometimes Bonnie wondered. Was Maclain’s fiancée in love with the handsome, virile man, or fascinated by the cold perfection of the disembodied human machine?

The second reaction to Maclain is usually one of disbelief on discovering that he is actually blind. Here again, given the didactic motives underlying the creation of Maclain, Kendrick was faced with an almost unsolvable dilemma. On one hand, he was adamant in his belief that the blind are not different from others and should not be set apart or perceived as special in any way. In fact, Maclain does not even agree that he is blind in the accepted sense of the word:

“I’m not blind, though,” said Duncan Maclain. “I merely lost the use of my eyes in the last World War. There are many definitions of the word blind in the dictionary, Miss Vreeland. There are even more of the verb to see. Only one definition of each applies to impression through the eyes.”

On the other hand, proud of the accomplishments of the blind and eager to prove their worth, Kendrick wants to demonstrate what they can achieve. Therefore, the reader has the paradoxical portrait of a blind man who is never happier than when people forget that he is blind, but who also delights in displaying what he, without sight, can do. Maclain loves to show off; his favorite parlor tricks are doing jigsaw puzzles and his famous Sherlock Holmes routine. The following sequence, with variations, is repeated at the beginning of all Maclain novels and short stories.

He sank down farther in his chair and clasped his long, sensitive fingers together. “You’re five foot six, Miss Vreeland—a couple of inches taller than your cousin. You weigh—I trust I won’t offend you—about fifteen pounds more. One hundred and thirty to her hundred and fifteen. You are older than she is—.” “Wait,” said Katherine, “You must have made inquiries about us. Why, Captain Maclain?”

“My only inquiries were made through my senses.” The captain sat erect, holding her with a sightless stare from his perfect eyes. “Your height is unmistakable from the length of your stride. I’ve walked with both you and Bonnie across this hall. Weight can be judged unerringly by the feel of anyone’s arm. Every fair has weight guessers who make a living from this knowledge. The voice betrays one’s age, and many other things—sorrow, pleasure, and pain.”

Make Mine Maclain

The impression gathered about Maclain is always one of superiority, that is not atypical. Great detectives are great detectives because they are superior, and most of them love to demonstrate the scope of their intellects. What is different is that Maclain and his creator continuously feel compelled to vaunt the detective’s talents. Clearly, to a great extent, this showboating is a result of the blind person’s position in society. Kendrick’s novels are treatises on the treatment afforded the blind. One of the successes of his work is his artful and sardonic capturing of the various nuances of society’s ignorance and prejudices. This skill is especially manifest in the novels that describe the closed society of the upper class—for example, Make Mine Maclain (1947). The Beautiful People simply do not know how to treat someone who is less than physically perfect, and although they can pretend that the less fortunate and the disabled do not exist, they cannot overlook Duncan Maclain. Criminals are at an even greater disadvantage when they are confronted by the captain. Scornful of the sighted representatives of law and order, they find the idea of a blind investigator laughable—until they fail and he succeeds. Good examples of Kendrick’s richest irony can be found in his analysis of the three-layered prejudice of upper-class criminals who, being Nazis, view Maclain as a type of freak. They, like much of society, take it for granted that because Maclain is physically disabled, he must also be mentally deficient, a fact that the detective exploits to the fullest. In many of these cases, his success is a direct result of his blindness. His adversaries continually underestimate their foe.

It is also certainly true that the success of Duncan Maclain, literary character, is a result of his blindness. Although Kendrick won critical acclaim for his earlier Miles Standish Rice novels (for example, The Iron Spiders, 1936, in which a serial killer leaves behind black spiders as his calling card), they evoked little popular response. With the introduction of the blind captain, however, Kendrick’s stock as a mystery writer soared. (It did not hurt that most of the Maclain novels, especially those written during the war years, were serialized in many of the most popular magazines of the time.) Readers were fascinated by the tall, enigmatic Maclain and the necessary paraphernalia of his life—his dogs, his Braille watch, his Dictaphones and recording devices. They loved seeing him triumph in situations that would have made a sighted superathlete cringe. Such public approval, in addition to the enthusiastic support of organizations for the blind and the disabled, led to a change in direction for Kendrick.

The Odor of Violets

In his earlier work, the puzzle and its solution had always dominated. Buoyed by the public response to the exploits of his blind investigator, however, Kendrick gradually turned away from the classic novel of deduction to the world of espionage and the thriller. In these later works, Maclain is confronted by ever more dangerous situations; this harried leaping from one escapade to another robs the blind man of some of his credibility, the quality that is of most value to him as a literary figure. Maclain had been at his best in novels such as The Odor of Violets (1941), perhaps the major work of this series. The Odor of Violets, even though it deals with spies and saboteurs, is still essentially a novel of deduction set in the closed world of a private house.

Out of Control and Flight from a Firing Wall

The critics, impressed by the skilled maneuvering of the intricate plotting, compared Maclain favorably to Bramah’s Max Carrados, the first blind detective in fiction. Increasingly, however, as Kendrick puts Maclain through his paces, the novels begin to emphasize violence and frantic pursuit. Out of Control (1945), the last important Maclain novel, is one long chase scene. There is no mystery as the detective trails a psychopathic murderess through the wilds of the mountains of Tennessee. After 1945, the quality of Kendrick’s work suffers a marked decline. Kendrick did make a minor comeback with his last work, Flight from a Firing Wall, a novel of suspense centered on the author’s firsthand knowledge of intrigue and espionage in the Cuban refugee enclaves of Southern Florida.

Kendrick considered his support of the blind to be his profession. His creation of Duncan Maclain was only one aspect of that lifelong advocacy. When speaking of the Maclain novels, Kendrick never mentioned the artistic nature of his work but instead always stressed the technical detail required for the depiction of a blind hero. He was most proud of the fact that “the accuracy with which I attempted to portray the character . . . caused me to be called in for consultation on the training of the blinded veterans by the U.S. Army in World War II.”

Although he was a writer of popular fiction, Kendrick espoused a classical theory of literature: He believed that art should teach while it entertained. One adjective that could be used to describe his fiction, however, is very modern: Kendrick’s work was nothing if not committed.

Principal Series Characters:

• Miles Standish Rice , a tall, lanky deputy sheriff from Florida, is chiefly remembered for his famous self-introduction: “I’m Miles Standish Rice—the Hungry!” His cases reveal the author’s interest in the landscape and varied traditions of his adopted state.
• Duncan Maclain , a private investigator, is blind. Adaptation to his visual disability has heightened the awareness of his other senses to an extraordinary degree, but it is his sensitivity to others and their emotional handicaps that is memorable.

Bibliography

Haining, Peter. The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000. Many of Kendrick’s novels appeared during the pulp era, and this analysis of his fellow mystery writers’ magazine work provides context for his fiction.

Kendrick, Baynard. “It’s a Mystery to Me.” Writer 60 (September, 1947): 324-326. Kendrick discusses his own writing, as well as his tastes in the mysteries of other novelists.

Knight, Stephen Thomas. Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Looks at the basic detective novel and how it has diversified over the years. Provides insights into diversification by changing the character of the detective, such as Kendrick’s making the detective visually disabled.

Langman, Larry, and Daniel Finn. Guide to American Crime Films of the Forties and Fifties. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1995. Several films were developed from Kendrick’s work, including Eyes in the Night (1942) from The Odor of Violets; The Hidden Eye (1945), based on his characters; and Bright Victory (1951) from Lights Out. This work examines similar films and mentions Kendrick.

Norden, Martin F. “Dimension of Blindness in Eyes in the Night.” Film Criticism 18/19, no. 3/1 (Spring, 1994): 46-59. An analysis of the film made from The Odor of Violets.

The Saturday Review of Literature. Review of The Last Express, by Baynard H. Kendrick. 16 (June 5, 1937): 16. Favorable review of this novel that introduces blind detective Captain Duncan Maclain.