Jon L. Breen

• Born: November 8, 1943
• Place of Birth: Montgomery, Alabama

TYPES OF PLOT: Comedy caper; master sleuth; amateur sleuth

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Ed Gorgon, 1971-; Jerry Brogan, 1983-1991; Rachel Hennings, 1984-1988; Sherlock Holmes, 1987-; Sebastian Grady, 1994-

Contribution

Jon L. Breen’s contribution to mystery and detective fiction has been twofold. He is first a scholar who has performed invaluable service to those interested in the genre, compiling carefully annotated bibliographies. He is also a recognized reviewer and critic, having written reviews for many periodicals, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Armchair Detective, and The American Standard. Acknowledged as a critic, he received the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1982, 1985, and 1991. He was also the winner of the Agatha Award for Critics in 2000. With his wife, Rita A. Breen, he coedited an anthology of eleven novelettes selected from the American Magazine.

Breen has also contributed to mystery literature by producing many short stories and novels. In these, he has explored parody and pastiche, combined his interest in sports with his love of books, and demonstrated his knowledge of the classic mystery story. His novels have been well-received and favorably reviewed in the United States and Great Britain.

Biography

Jon Linn Breen was born on November 8, 1943, to Frank William Breen and Margaret Wolfe Breen. His parents’ professions may have influenced his choice of profession and his love of scholarship: His father was a librarian, and his mother a teacher. Breen’s college years were spent in California, where he received a bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine College (now University) in 1965. He then attended the University of Southern California, where in 1966, he completed a master’s degree in library science, a profession he would never completely abandon. During these years, he was also a sports broadcaster for a radio station in Los Angeles. An interest in sports was one of Breen’s major avocations and influenced his writing.

After serving in the military from 1967 to 1969, including a year in Vietnam, Breen returned to library work. He served at several educational institutions in California before becoming the head reference librarian at California State College (now University), Dominguez Hills, a position he held until 1975. He became the reference and collections development librarian at Rio Hondo Community College in Whittier, California. In 1970, he married Rita Gunson, a teacher in Yorkshire, England. She has coedited with her husband a volume of novelettes.

When he was twenty-three, Breen’s first short story appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1966. That first effort was followed by more short stories, reviews, reference works, critical biographies, essays, and three respected novels. By his admission, Breen followed the ambitious goal of becoming an “all-rounder,” in the tradition of writers Anthony Boucher, Julian Symons, and H. R. F. Keating. The goal has motivated him to achieve success in diverse areas of research and literature within the mystery and detective genre.

Analysis

During an interview, Jon L. Breen once evaluated the major strengths of his novels as their humor and appealing characters. Breen’s humor owes much to his forays into parody and pastiche. In Hair of the Sleuthhound: Parodies of Mystery Fiction (1982), Breen, in his preface to the volume, tries to distinguish between the two, either because of his careful scholarship, characteristic of his work, or the honesty of his approach to writing, an equally important characteristic, he does not manage to provide a clear distinction; the two forms are intertwined and difficult to separate. Furthermore, the most successful parodies, Breen maintains, are those done in affection and with respect, without hostility. That attitude is obvious in Breen’s work. The authors he parodies have accepted his work as flattering and noted its humor. While Breen’s parody may be the sincerest form of flattery, it can also be an important form of criticism—and perhaps lies its key distinction from pastiche.

Breen’s humor is close to that defined as the ready perceiving of the comic or the ludicrous, effectively expressed. It is marked also by warmth, tolerance, and a sympathetic understanding of the human condition. Gentle as this humor may be, Breen can create hilarious scenes. Listen for the Click (1983) can be regarded as a spoof of the classic amateur-sleuth plot. The final scene is a parody of the typical gathering of suspects during which the culprit is unmasked. A situation that in less practiced hands might be both tiresome and trite, under Breen’s control, leads to a satisfactory resolution of the mystery and a genuinely comic scene.

The Gathering Place

Breen is also capable of handling subtler humor adroitly. His touch is equally deft in scenes with less action and more dialogue. Neither labored nor forced, his lines are witty, suited to his characters, and well-paced. When Rachel Hennings, the protagonist of The Gathering Place (1984), inherits her uncle’s secondhand bookstore in Los Angeles, she interrupts her college career in Arizona to manage the shop, a literary landmark. In the past, a favorite haunt of literary figures and their friends, it has a charming ambiance and appeals to her tastes and interests. While at college, she has been pursued by an amorous, if tense, young faculty member. Resigned to her leaving Arizona, the young professor calls his brother in Los Angeles, the book editor for a local newspaper, asking that he assist Rachel in settling. Rachel and the editor are attracted to each other, but he considers her his brother’s girl. Their conversation in which Rachel tries to express her feelings is characterized by Breen’s control of scene and dialogue. The tone is light; there is no weighty introspection or serious self-analysis. Only the less sympathetic characters take themselves very seriously in this author's work.

Rachel is an independent young woman determined to succeed in her bookshop. Confronted by many representatives of the world of best sellers and the friendly ghosts she senses in her uncle’s shop, she proves equal to the challenges presented to her. As in the case of other Breen characters, she is attractive and has a winning personality.

Triple Crown and Listen for the Click

As Breen suggests, his character is one of his strengths. They are varied and attractive. Jerry Brogan, the protagonist of Triple Crown (1985) and Listen for the Click, is an overweight racetrack announcer. He is bright and decent, a former public relations man who has found satisfaction and pleasure in his small and narrow announcer’s booth. However, his weight calls for imaginative methods of entering that cramped space. Devoted to his aunt and dedicated to doing a good job calling the races but somewhat uncertain about his relationship with his girlfriend, Brogan is eminently likable. He is not cast in the traditional hero mold nor an antihero, but rather a figure with whom it is very easy to identify.

Brogan’s aunt, Olivia Barchester, a charming eccentric given to the avid reading of mystery and detective fiction and owning a certain talent for investigation and deduction, is not only a friendly parody of famous sleuths who have gone before her but also a carefully drawn and attractive figure in her own right.

The ability to depict memorable characters and the penchant for humor in his novels may be exemplified best by Breen’s minor characters, Stan Digby and Gaston Miles, in Listen for the Click. Respectively, a would-be mystery writer and a seedy con artist combine their talents to take the artless Olivia Barchester for her fortune. The two contribute much to the novel's success. Following Triple Crown and Listen for the Click, Loose Lips (1990) and Hot Air (1991) complete Breen's Jerry Brogan Mystery series.

Kill the Umpire

One of Breen’s best-known characters, Ed Gorgon, allows the author to set his classical-style mysteries in the unlikely world of major league baseball. Gorgon is an umpire. In 2003, Breen collected sixteen Gorgon stories in Kill the Umpire. Always the critic, Breen accompanied his stories with commentary dealing with the development and growing sophistication of his storytelling and Gorgon’s aging over thirty years of making calls between murders.

Eye of God

In 2006, Eye of God was released to mixed reviews. Breen foresaw controversy but was intrigued by the idea of homicidal criminality at the heart of American televangelism. One of the main characters' religious conversion at the outset of the novel and the uncritical exploration of the inner sanctum of the Religious Right made many readers uncomfortable. Some fans, however, found the novel interesting and original.

Other Works

Breen's essays and criticisms of mystery novels, authors, and short stories are compiled in A Shot Rang Out (2008). His novel Probable Claus (2009) follows a young lawyer as she receives death threats after working on a murder trial and eventually finds love. In The Threat of Nostalgia and Other Stories (2013), Breen introduces fifteen short stories about radio and sports. His other collections include The Drowning Icecube and Other Stories (1999) and Hair of the Sleuthhound (1982).

Plot and Style

In a discussion of his work, Breen has said that the plot is the most difficult part of the undertaking. Breen is on record as an admirer of some of the most complex plots of mystery and detective fiction, and it is not surprising that craftsmanship in this area is of major importance to him. His storylines are strong, and his powers of construction are formidable. Reviewers are not critical of his plots, except The Gathering Place, in which, according to one critic, Breen pushes the reader’s credulity too far. Rachel becomes involved in a psychic experience in her shop when she becomes a “medium” for long-dead writers who use her to expose a ghostwriting scandal. She also discovers that she can sign authentic signatures of these same kinds of spirits in an automatic writing session when the pen moves unbidden by her hand, creating a cache of signed editions coveted by collectors. Even an act of final retribution implies that these ghosts are determined to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. It is not surprising that some critics insist that Breen has strained the fabric of his story or that the premise on which the tale hangs is too bizarre to be acceptable. A critic for The New York Times, however, believes that the author never intended his readers to take the premise seriously. As in his other novels, the entertainment that Breen affords is important.

Breen’s attention to detail, which enhances the authenticity of his scenes and adds to the completeness of his descriptions, is also noteworthy, especially in a genre where attention to detail is an important factor. His timing and placement of clues and his avoidance of the loose ends that can distract and frustrate the reader account for much of the popularity of his novels. The foregoing comments should not, however, suggest that realism in the literary sense is the first goal of the author. His is not the tough or hard-boiled approach to crime and mystery fiction. There is no gratuitous violence or lurid description of corpses, though murders are committed and acts of violence do occur. Sex is neither exploited nor ignored. It plays a part in the lives of Breen’s characters and in his plots but never dominates the action. Nor is Breen’s treatment of women exploitative. Women are presented quite naturally as equally intelligent and capable as their male counterparts. On the other hand, the author does not pander to the female audience by exaggeration. Balance is another of the author’s unheralded achievements.

Breen’s style, described as “breezy” by multiple critics, is extremely readable. No doubt the author, an able craftsman, would be dismayed that a novel could be devoured so quickly, given the time it must take to achieve the plot flow and words. His prose is economical and clear. His dialogue, especially in the more humorous scenes, is well-conceived. The pages are not burdened with complex sentences or banalities.

Scholarship

Breen’s lengthy love affair with mystery and detective fiction—he began reading and collecting at the age of twelve—seems to give him a unique place among authors of this genre. Few can claim his knowledge of the movement's history or exhibit such an intimate understanding of the contributions of individual authors of the past. As a result, he is as important for his scholarly work as he is for his fiction. For example, Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction (1985), a critical bibliography of courtroom fiction, while not claiming to be comprehensive, is a very complete and detailed guide. A set of guidelines influencing the choice of entries is clearly stated. Each book included has a lengthy courtroom scene or focuses on a trial. Entries are restricted to American or British courts or cases in parts of the world that use English in their legal systems. All entries carry annotations outlining the plot and action and a critique of the accuracy of legal knowledge.

Breen’s thorough knowledge of the mystery genre, as critic and scholar, parodist, and practitioner, makes him a unique figure among mystery writers, particularly interesting to the mystery buff for his mastery of the difficult parody form and his similarity to other masters of the genre. Above all, Breen’s novels are sheer fun, promising to delight readers with their well-crafted plots, judiciously drawn characters, a wealth of realistic detail, and fine timing.

Principal Series Characters:

• Ed Gorgon is a baseball umpire with a flair for solving major league puzzlers.
• Jerry Brogan is a hefty racetrack announcer who uses imaginative methods to squeeze into his announcer’s booth and unravel criminal schemes.
• Rachel Hennings is the owner of a haunted bookstore in California who moves among the dead, the undead, and the not-dead-at-all.
• Sherlock Holmes is the iconic supersleuth created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
• Sebastian Grady is a Hollywood detective whose sidekick is a cat.

Bibliography

Bottum, Joseph. “Kill the Umpire: The Calls of Ed Gorgon.” Review of Kill the Umpire, by Jon L. Breen. The Weekly Standard, vol. 9, no. 30, 12-19, Apr. 2004, p. 47.

Breen, Jon L. Interview in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. June 1979, pp. 57-58.

Breen, Jon L. Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction. 2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, 1999.

Breen, Jon L. What About Murder? A Guide to Books About Mystery and Detective Fiction. 2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, 1993.

Gulddal, Jesper, et al. The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction. Cambridge UP, 2022.

Watt, Peter Ridgway, and Joseph Green. The Alternative Sherlock Holmes: Pastiches, Parodies, and Copies. Ashgate, 2003.