James Hadley Chase

• Born: December 24, 1906
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: February 6, 1985
• Place of death: Corseaux-sur-Vevey, Switzerland

Type of Plot: Thriller

Principal Series: Dave Fenner, 1939-1940; Vic Malloy, 1949-1950; Brick-Top Corrigan, 1950-1951; Steve Harmas, 1952-1963; Don Micklem, 1954-1955; Frank Terrell, 1964-1970; Mark Girland, 1965-1969; Al Barney, 1968-1972; Helga Rolfe, 1971-1977

Contribution

The canon of James Hadley Chase, comprising more than eighty-five books, has earned for him a reputation as the king of thriller writers in England and on the Continent. In France he is even compared with Fyodor Dostoevski and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. (Such hyperbole, however, must be attributed to the ephemeral popularity of the films based on his novels.) At the other end of the spectrum are those judgments by Julian Symons and George Orwell, who write, respectively, that Chase’s work ranges from “shoddy” to “secondhand James M. Cain” and that it is filled with gratuitous sadism, brutality, and corruption, “a daydream appropriate to a totalitarian age.”

Chase’s own comment that he wrote “for a good read . . . for a wide variety of readers” comes closest to a true analysis of his work. In many ways, his works resemble the James Bond thrillers of Ian Fleming. Yet they are thrillers usually without the plot complexity and climactic endings, the sophistication in the main characters, and the well-chosen detail in description characteristic of Fleming. Chase’s work typically involves violence wreaked on the innocent and weak as well as the guilty and strong, frequent though nongraphic sexual encounters, the hyperbolic machismo of the private investigator, and a tone of danger, excitement, and suspense.

Biography

James Hadley Chase was born René Brabazon Raymond on December 24, 1906, in London, England. After completing his education at King’s School in Rochester, Kent, he left home and began selling encyclopedias door-to-door. Later he worked as a traveler for the book wholesaler Simpkin, Marshall in London. It was at this time that he wrote his highly successful first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939; revised, 1961; also known as The Villain and the Virgin). The book is said to have sold more than 1 million copies in five years. It became one of the best-selling mysteries ever written and was made into a film in 1951. Four of Chase’s other novels were made into films between 1951 and 1959. Chase later served as a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force and became an editor of the Royal Air Force journal. He married Sylvia Ray, with whom he had one son.

Although Chase set most of his novels in the United States, he made very few visits there, and then only to New Orleans and Florida. He preferred to learn about the United States from encyclopedias, slang dictionaries, and maps. Chase was reticent about his life and career, believing that his readers were uninterested in his personal affairs and asked only that he conscientiously write entertaining novels. If his books were selling well, he did not bother with interviews or the critics’ responses. Chase died in Switzerland in 1985.

Analysis

The career of James Hadley Chase began in 1939 with the stunning success of No Orchids for Miss Blandish. This success, along with the timeliness of his style and tone, gave impetus to his continued popularity. Critics have had varied responses to No Orchids for Miss Blandish and his later works. Many judged his first novel unnecessarily violent, with one reader counting forty-eight acts of aggression, from rape to beatings to murder—approximately one every fourth page. Yet this violence clearly appealed to many readers. Later critics regarded Chase’s work as part of the hard-boiled American school initiated by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (and continued by Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald). Others, seeing more depth in his work, suggest that Chase’s novels depict the bleakness of twentieth century America, which must remain unredeemed unless a new social structure is developed. This view, however, is not substantiated by Chase’s own comments on his work.

The violence in Chase’s novels is in fact far from being gratuitous; it is an essential element of the fantasy world of the hard-boiled thriller. This world is no less stylized than the world of the classic British detective story of Agatha Christie. Although the latter portrays an ordered universe cankered by a single act of murder, Chase’s books depict an ordered world held together by raw power, ceaselessly pummeled by the violence of lesser, opportunistic powers. Succeeding in such a society requires that the protagonist be more intellectually, emotionally, and physically powerful than the villains, while in the classic detective story, the hero need only be intellectually and emotionally stronger. This third, physical element, as in the hands of Chase and other members of the hard-boiled school, is another dimension of the same struggle for ascendency between good and evil.

Along the same lines, critics note that Chase’s heroes are often less than upright and trustworthy. Their motivation to fight on the side of good is often nothing more than financial; they are mercenaries in a power-hungry and materialistic world. For example, Mark Girland would never have become a special agent for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) if he had not needed the money. Yet this seemingly callous attitude underscores the quality of life in a post-Darwinian world, where only the fittest survive and where idealism weighs one down, makes one less effective. It must be remembered that in all detective stories, heroes are heroes not because they are ethical but because they are effective and ultimately successful, whether they operate in the locked room or the world at large. Their methods are suited to the environment to ensure victory. Chase’s detectives are loners, answerable only to themselves. Their ethical codes fit those of their society only if that society happens to agree with them.

Such traits in Chase’s heroes are even more apparent when the books are categorized according to the classic characteristics of the American hard-boiled school. American hard-boiled detective stories are a hybrid of the traditional detective story and the mainstream novel. This hybrid results in less formulaic works. Set in American small towns or in the heated worlds of New York City or Los Angeles instead of London or English villages, these novels also feature more rounded characters. As more and more books in the hard-boiled school were written, however, they developed their own conventions of character: the fighting and lusty loner of a protagonist; his tolerant but admiring superior; the many pretty women who are strongly attracted to him; the fewer beautiful, exotic, mysterious, and dangerous women who are also strongly attracted to him; and the villains, either stupid or brilliant but always viciously brutal. Yet the potential does exist for even more rounded characters.

Although the plots, too, are said to be more plausible than those in the classic detective story, this is not necessarily the case. Extreme numbers of violent acts, a set of four or five murders trailing a detective through an evening’s adventure in a single town, can hardly be considered plausible. Chase’s plots fit such a mold, realistic because they involve commonplace things and events in the real world, unrealistic because they are based in plots of intrigue, with enormous webs of sinister characters woven together in strange twists and knots. Often involving robbery or the illusion of robbery, the overt greed in Chase’s unsavory characters causes multiple murders and cruelty.

In No Orchids for Miss Blandish, a small-time gang steals a diamond necklace; The Things Men Do (1953) involves diamond theft from the postal van service; You’ve Got It Coming (1955, revised 1975), is based on the theft of industrial diamonds worth $3 million; You’re Dead Without Money (1972) shows hero Al Barney working out the events surrounding the theft of a famous stamp collection. Thefts such as these lead to violence that grows in almost geometric progression as the novel develops.

To suggest that Chase’s works are scathing social commentaries calling for a new social structure would be inaccurate. Nowhere in the texts are there hints of statements proposing ideological change of any kind. The world, though violent and unpredictable, is drawn as a literary given, a place that is unchanging, not because humans are incapable of improving it but because it sets the tone for the story.

In the end, then, Chase provided the best analysis of Chase: He gave his reader “a good read,” but he was not simply portraying the amoral world to which George Orwell alludes. Rather, Chase’s heroes entertainingly adapt to whatever environment they enter; their success lies in their recognition that in the mean and dirty world of criminals and evil ideologies, to survive, they themselves must be the meanest and the dirtiest.

You Have Yourself a Deal

One of Chase’s works that exemplifies the conventions he uses is You Have Yourself a Deal (1966), a Mark Girland tale set in Paris and the south of France. Girland is asked by the director of the CIA to assist in the safekeeping and debriefing of a beautiful blond amnesia victim who was once the mistress of a fearsome Chinese nuclear scientist. Girland has recently lost five thousand dollars on “three, miserable horses” and is forced to earn what little he can as a street photographer. Therefore, when two CIA strongmen come to ask his assistance, he happily agrees, but not before sending one of them somersaulting down a long flight of stairs to serious injury and punching the other until he falls to his knees gasping. Girland has found the two of them somewhat overbearing and pushy.

Such is the tone of the novel. The blond woman, Erica, is sought by the Russians, who want her information, and by the Chinese, who want her dead. Girland discovers, however, that she is involved in the theft of a priceless black pearl from China, a common twist in a Chase plot. Also typical is the resolution, which lies in the discovery of look-alike sisters, the more virtuous of whom is killed. Other innocent characters are murdered also: Erica’s young and devoted nurse is shot, and the longtime secretary to the CIA chief is thrown to the ground from her upper-story apartment.

The world in which Girland operates is hostile, and it justifies his own violent excesses and other less than noble behavior. As an American in Paris, he is motivated entirely by his own financial gain and the fun of the mission, not at all by ethics or patriotic duty. This is especially true when he learns that Erica will not be a national security bonanza but could be a financial windfall to him, worth some half million dollars if the pearl is recovered and sold. At a lavish romantic dinner paid for by the CIA, Girland offers to leave his mission, go with her, find the pearl, and sell it. “I’m not only an opportunist,” he tells her, “I am also an optimist.” This is, however, the mind-set he must have to succeed in this world—a world of evil Asians, “with the unmistakeable smell of dirt,” and Russian spies, one of whom is “fat and suety-faced” and has never been known “to do anyone a favor.”

Clearly Chase fits neatly into the hard-boiled American school of detective fiction, even allowing for his English roots. His books are, indeed, escapist and formulaic, but they are successfully so. Chase’s work is of consistent quality and time and again offers the reader the thrills and suspense that are the hallmarks of this mid-twentieth century genre.

Principal Series Characters:

• Dave Fenner , a former reporter who has become a private detective, is a loner, known for surviving innumerable violent, suspenseful situations. He is the main character in Chase’s most popular novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1939).
• Brick-Top Corrigan is an unscrupulous private detective who leaves his clients without solving any cases, taking half of his fee with him. He worked as a commando before becoming a private eye.
• Steve Harmas , a chief investigator who solves cleverly plotted insurance frauds. His beautiful wife, Helen, assists in solving these crimes in the art deco world of California in the 1930’s.
• Don Micklem , a millionaire, lives the life of a playboy and becomes involved in international intrigue.
• Frank Terrell , a private investigator who works in Paradise City, Florida. He operates in a world of false identity, theft, and murder.
• Mark Girland , a former agent for the Central Intelligence Agency who lives a carefree and fast life in Paris, where he enjoys pleasures of the moment, particularly those involving beautiful women. Seeking always to earn money with as little effort as possible, Girland has his adventures when he is hired by the CIA on special assignments in Paris.
• Al Barney , a dissipated former skin diver, serves as the narrator of two novels set in Paradise City, Florida.

Bibliography

Calcutt, Andrew, and Richard Shepard. Cult Fiction: A Readers’ Guide. Lincolnwood, Ill.: Contemporary Books, 1999. Chase’s works and his fans are compared with those of other writers who have acquired a cult following.

Horsley, Lee. The Noir Thriller. New York: Palgrave, 2001. This scholarly study of the thriller covers four of Chase’s novels, including No Orchids for Miss Blandish and The Wary Transgressor. Bibliography and index.

Orwell, George. “Raffles and Miss Blandish.” In The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. London: Secker and Warburg, 1968. Orwell, one of England’s most famous authors and essayists, compares Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish with the Raffles stories of E. W. Hornung.

Smith, Susan Harris. “No Orchids for George Orwell.” The Armchair Detective 9 (February, 1976): 114-115. A response to Orwell’s essay, defending Chase’s work from Orwell’s critique.

West, W. J. The Quest for Graham Greene. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Explores the relationship between Chase and Greene and the influence of the one’s works on the other.