Marian Babson

• Born: December 15, 1929
• Place of Birth: Salem, Massachusetts

TYPES OF PLOT: Cozy; amateur sleuth; psychological; thriller

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Douglas Perkins and Gerry Tate, 1971-1990; Trixie and Evangeline, 1986-2012

Contribution

In her crime novels, Marian Babson displays a debt to Agatha Christie and other writers from the Golden Age of Mysteries period. However, the world envisioned by Babson is irrational, far from the orderly, hierarchical world of the English tea cozies. Her characters, children among them, tend to be lonely, alienated individuals striving for order in a chaotic world. Animals, particularly cats, contribute to the dynamics of Babson’s mysteries, often revealing submerged personality traits of their owners. Skilled in character analysis, Babson delves into the minds of outwardly ordinary people, questioning the meaning of normality. She is more interested in exploring the psychological effects of suspicion on characters than in focusing on murder itself or subsequent justice. Seldom do detectives—professional or amateur—unravel the mystery. Instead, the culprits continue their lives of violence, ultimately bringing about discovery through their actions. Babson experiments with a variety of narrative techniques and professional settings. Her first-person narrators, who hold few illusions about life, usually appear more concerned with the terror of the suspected threat than the crime itself.

Although reviewers in the United States and Babson’s adopted England have generally paid little attention to her work, she has managed to carve out a niche. Her quirky characters, experiments in narrative style, and humorous, if sometimes implausible, plots have earned Babson a dedicated following on both sides of the Atlantic, and her ten years as head of the Crime Writers’ Association (1976-1986) also endeared her to her colleagues. In 2004, Malice Domestic gave Babson its Agatha Award for lifetime achievement for her mystery and detective fiction contributions.

Biography

Born in New England on December 15, 1929, Marian Babson moved to London in 1960 and continues to make her home there, with periodic visits to the United States. Details of her private life remain scant. She worked briefly on the campaign of a Boston politician, where she learned the basics of public relations. Her experiences contributed to creating her first series hero, Douglas Perkins, a publicist-turned-detective. Later, she worked as a secretary on temporary stints for various employers, including a pop singer, a psychiatrist, a safe maker, and a solicitor. In 1976, she became secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association, a post she held until 1986.

Babson has said that her writing mysteries evolved from her fondness for reading them. Between 1971 and 1987, she wrote more than twenty mysteries. In one interview, she named straight suspense and crime mixed with comedy as her two favorite genres, yet she does not limit her work to them, saying, “I don’t think writers ought to be too predictable.” Her versatility is evidenced by her work for various magazines, including Woman’s Realm and Woman’s Own. Babson died in 2017.

Analysis

In Marian Babson’s work, murder usually does not initiate the mystery. Instead, the characters, including the children, attempt to regain some order as they suffer from unexpected and unprovoked disruptions to their lives. In A Trail of Ashes (1984, also known as Whiskers and Smoke), Rosemary empathizes with the young as they learn that “life was not the way it was presented on the television screen. When people were cruelly wounded, they did not leap up with a merry laugh after the commercial—they lay there and bled.” Characters in Babson’s mysteries do bleed, if only metaphorically, and they continue to struggle with loneliness.

A Trail of Ashes

Babson frequently provides pets as companions for her disaffected characters. Errol, a Maine coon cat featured in A Trail of Ashes, offers little consolation for the Blakes when they first arrive. He typifies an aggressive, undisciplined society that prides itself on independence. Rosemary explains, “The brute was twice the size of our lovely Esmond; a burly, thick-necked, square-headed animal, given an unexpectedly rakish look by the fact that the tip of one ear had evidently been chewed off in some private dispute of long ago.” Ultimately, assertive Errol and the Blakes establish a rapport, a tribute to newfound friendships.

Portrayal of Children

Babson’s sensitive portrayal of children in crime novels was displayed early in her career. Typically, these children struggle with unsettling disruption in their lives: parental abuse, neglect, or death. In Unfair Exchange (1974), nine-year-old Fanny displays an obnoxious attitude that proves to be a reaction to the neglect by her vivacious yet thoughtless mother, Caroline. Babson captures the dichotomy of Fanny’s character by showing the child seeking comfort by clutching a huge stuffed giraffe she has named for a sports car, Alfa-Romeo. Twinkle, the child star in Murder, Murder, Little Star (1977), appears as arrogant and rude as Fanny. Twinkle’s ineffectual mother accompanies her on the set but offers no real support. Narrator Frances Armitage, hired as Twinkle’s chaperone, recognizes the loneliness of the child and her career concerns. Thought to be ten but really a teenager, Twinkle fears the loss of good parts. Once her life is no longer in jeopardy, Twinkle seems destined for a role suggested by Frances: Lady Jane Grey, the child bride and queen.

The inhabitants of Babson’s world are invariably victims of loneliness and emotional deprivation. Though her stories are not unleavened by wit, the worlds she creates leave her readers with the sense that events are random after all and that little is worthy of trust.

Perkins and Tate Series

Cover-Up Story (1971), Babson’s first crime novel, relays the exploits of the series character Douglas Perkins of the public relations firm Perkins and Tate. Perkins is embroiled in a mystery while representing an American country music troupe led by the tyrannical Black Bart. When one of the performers is injured under suspicious circumstances, Perkins and his partner Gerry Tate must find the murderer while trying to maintain peace among the rest of the troupe’s unusual members. In Murder on Show (1972; also known as Murder at the Cat Show), death calls on Perkins again—this time at a cat show he and his partner Tate have been hired to publicize. When a gold cat statue goes missing and the show organizer turns up dead, Perkins must unravel the mystery while maintaining his studied ambivalence toward an endearing kitten clamoring for his attention. In Tourists Are for Trapping (1989), Perkins and Tate investigate the death of an elderly member of an American tourist group, and In the Teeth of Adversity (1990), they help a dentist to the stars deal with the bad press surrounding the death of a top model in his office.

Although the Perkins series novels have been praised for their plotting and characterization, some critics describe them as apprentice novels, in which Babson was able to hone her narrative and comedic style in addition to developing several of her recurrent themes and plot devices such as the centrality of feline characters, quirky plot scenarios, and the way her protagonists stumble unintentionally on mysterious and deadly events.

The Lord Mayor of Death

The Lord Mayor of Death (1977) involves Kitty, a five-year-old who is easier to like than Babson’s other child characters, Fanny and Twinkle, but no less lonely. Irishman Michael Carney lures Kitty into accompanying him to ceremonial festivities. The red lunch box he gives her contains a bomb with which he plans to kill the lord mayor of London and nearby celebrants.

A victim of child abuse, Michael loathes children, a fact that emerges as his thoughts are presented. Nevertheless, he must cater to Kitty’s whims to accomplish his plan. Increasingly aware of children’s unpredictability, Carney has to appease the fretful Kitty. Fearfully, he remembers, “When kids had tantrums, they threw things.” Kitty unknowingly thwarts Carney's plans by presenting the lunch box to Clover the Clown to boost his spirits. The tension in the novel arises from the juxtaposition of innocent children with a murderous villain.

The Twelve Deaths of Christmas

The Twelve Deaths of Christmas (1979), set in a London rooming house, demonstrates Babson’s narrative skill in presenting multiple murders. An omniscient narrator alternates with the crazed, unknown murderer in giving accounts of the seemingly random murders and the subsequent fear they instill. Adroit placing of red herrings enables the murderer’s identity to remain a secret until the end. The reader, however, traces a tortuous descent through layers of madness as the murderer wrestles with a sense of alienation, painful headaches, and incomprehension of events.

The murderer, finally diagnosed as suffering from a brain tumor, uses free association in selecting unconventional instruments of death. For example, when walking in Queen Mary’s Rose Garden on the sixth day of Christmas, the murderer notices a metal pull ring torn from a can and recalls a metal loop with a blade, a device used in a post office for opening packages. This thought is followed by feelings of irritation toward a youthful mugger lying in a drunken stupor while his blaring transistor radio shatters the peace of the garden. “I remember something else, too,” the murderer muses. “Blood makes a excellent fertilizer for roses.” Increasingly, he becomes paranoid but remains superficially normal, smiling and waving to neighbors but thinking, “I hate them all.” Vivid description reinforces the disquieting atmosphere in the rooming house. The table set for the Christmas feast holds, among other things, “skeletal stalks of celery” and a carving knife “nearly as long and sharp as a sword.”

Dangerous to Know

Babson’s Dangerous to Know (1980) is notable for some of her most effective imagery. Certainly, Tom Paige, the newsman narrator, could be expected to manipulate words skillfully. Working the graveyard shift, Tom expresses his disillusionment with the modern world when wire services worldwide shut down for the night. He describes teleprinters, “They’re the mechanical Recording Angels of the twentieth century. Everything spread out before your eyes and everything given the same value.”

Later, he decries the superficiality of newspapers and their reading audience: “Life in a newspaper office is full of loose ends.” He despairs the possibility of writing for an educated reading public eager to resolve substantive issues. His already jaundiced attitude toward humankind becomes even more cynical when he learns that his trusted coworkers share the guilt for recent crimes, including murder. The mystery's conclusion offers little consolation to the reader, who anticipates the reestablishment of order.

The Cruise of a Deathtime

With The Cruise of a Deathtime (1983), Babson returns to multiple murders and an Agatha Christie-like resolution. This work won the first Poisoned Chalice Award, which recognizes works for the many bizarre murders they incorporate. The murders and the suspects are confined to the Empress Josephine, a cruise ship headed for Nhumbala, ten days’ trip from Miami. Among the victims are five film viewers “skewered to their seats—rights through the back of their chairs!” An extortion note threatens additional murders each day of the cruise. The resolution of the mystery is reminiscent of Christie’s Ten Little Niggers (1939; also known as And Then There Were None).

As Babson isolates her characters on the cruise ship, she explores people’s insensitivity to one another. The novel begins with an introduction to Mortie Ordway and Hallie Ordway, television quiz show contestants who “had triumphed, winning not only the Loot of a Lifetime but climaxing it by winning the Cruise of a Lifetime, as well.” Their making fools of themselves on the show had entertained innumerable viewers, who never considered the emotional cost to the Ordways, called “Oddways” by the offensive quizmaster. Their villainy is shown to be, in part, a response to their having become objects of derision. Before shooting her pearl-handled revolver, passenger Mrs. Anson-Pryce recognizes the complicity of society in criminal activities: “Truly, we manufacture our own monsters.”

Weekend for Murder

Weekend for Murder (1985; also known as Murder on a Mystery Tour) also evokes memories of Golden Age predecessors, set in secluded Chortlesby Manor. Woven throughout the novel are allusions to famous authors and their works; for example, the manor’s cat is named Roger Ackroyd, and two of the characters are Sir Cedric Strangeways and Lieutenant Algernon Moriarty. The culprit, a disaffected literary critic, draws on pre-1940 mysteries as he plots his crime. A playful tone pervades the book.

The Cat Who Wasn’t a Dog

In The Cat Who Wasn’t a Dog (2003; also known as Not Quite a Geisha), the sixth installment in the Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair series, Babson’s grand dames of the stage find themselves embroiled in a new mystery when fellow actress Dame Cecile Savoy and another actress friend discover Savoy’s beloved Pekinese dead. Mystery soon engulfs the aging actresses when they become implicated in the death of a taxidermist with whom Savoy has consulted for preserving her precious Pekinese and the disappearance of a housekeeper.

As in most of her works, Babson’s plot involves a savvy and exotic cat—this time, a Japanese bobtail named Cho Cho San, who knows more than she is telling about the murders. Babson makes no secret of the murderer’s identity, but the sniping between the four actresses and their desperate efforts to disentangle themselves from suspicion of murder provides ample entertainment.

Babson's final work, No Cooperation from the Cat: A Mystery (2012), is a humorous mystery novel similar to Only the Cat. It is the final novel in the Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair series.

Only the Cat

Only the Cat (2005; also known as Only the Cat Knows) breaks little new ground, but Babson delivers another quirky mystery requiring subtle feline skills. Everett Oversall, a wealthy and reclusive tycoon, employs a stable of beautiful women at his remote castle. When one of them, Vanessa, goes into a coma after a fall, her twin brother Vance decides to unravel the mystery.

Experienced as a female impersonator, Vance goes undercover as his sister to unravel the mystery behind her accident. In typical fashion, Vanessa’s cat, Gloriana, is the only trustworthy figure involved in the mystery, ultimately proving invaluable to his investigation. Babson’s characters lack the depth of previous books, but she depicts Vance’s increasingly desperate attempts to maintain his female persona to excellent comedic effect.

Principal Series Characters:

• Douglas Perkins and Gerry Tate are partners of the London public relations firm Perkins and Tate. They get involved in solving murders through their publicity work. Not a cat lover, Perkins ends up doing publicity for a cat show and becomes a cat owner himself.
• Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair are former stars of the silver screen who find their acting talents are no longer in demand. They stumble into murders that must be investigated.

Bibliography

Babson, Marian. Only the Cat Knows. Open Road Media, 2020. 

Babson, Marian. "Review of Only the Cat." Kirkus Reviews, vol. 75, no. 7, 1 Apr. 2007, pp. 308. www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marian-babson/only-the-cat-knows. Accessed 20 July 2024.

Cooper, Ilene. Review of The Cat Next Door, by Marian Babson. Booklist, vol. 98, no. 15, 1 Apr. 2002, p. 1308.

Cooper, Ilene. Review of The Cat Who Wasn’t a Dog, by Marian Babson. Booklist 100, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2003, p. 67.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory, ed. Great Women Mystery Writers: Classic to Contemporary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.

"No Cooperation from the Cat." Publishers Weekly, www.publishersweekly.com/9780312332402. Accessed 20 July 2024.

Priestman, Martin. The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Zaleski, Jeff. Review of To Catch a Cat, by Marian Babson. Publishers Weekly, vol. 247, no. 47, 20 Nov. 2000, p. 50.