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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 3, No. 22 |
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with a 1940s all-girl band: TOO DEAD TO SWING  |
Musician Katy Green joins
a magical murder tour
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Two years ago, Hal Glatzer's audio-play "Too Dead To Swing" was released on tape by Audio-Playwrights of San Francisco--six hours of radio-style drama about a mysterious series of murders aboard a railroad train carrying an all-girl band through California circa 1940.
Glatzer originally claimed his audio play was adapted from an unsold novel by Hannah Dobryn, a former neighbor of his who had unsuccessfully attempted to market a series of mystery novels featuring 1940s girl musician Katy Green. Dobryn finally died in obscurity, Glatzer explained, and left him her manuscripts with the proviso: Get them published someday.
Well, it was a great gimmick--and Glatzer has proved a worthy heir. "Too Dead to Swing," the first in a series of Katy Green mysteries, has just been published as a trade paperback ($13.95, Perserverance Press)--but with Glatzer's byline.
Foul play? Not in the least. You see, there never was a Hannah Dobryn. Glatzer made her up, along with the book. Either that or he bumped Hannah off, buried her in his backyard and has erased all traces that she ever existed. Either way, it works for me because "Too Dead to Swing" is a delightful read, no matter who wrote it.
Maybe I have a special reason for liking this nostalgia-laced mystery, even though I've never met Glatzer and know little about him. For one thing, it takes place in the California landscape I grew up in during the same years. It even stops in my hometown, Santa Cruz, and plays out a whole chapter at the legendary Coconut Grove dance hall on the Boardwalk, one of my all-time favorite places.
Furthermore, it's an old-fashioned railroad train mystery--and we haven't had anything like it since the hilarious "Silver Streak" with Gene Wilder.
When we first meet Katy Green, she's out of work and in serious danger of being stranded in L.A. without enough money to catch a train home to her place in New York City. She's growing more desperate by the minute as she meanders along the beachfront in Santa Monica, telling us "I chewed gum for lunch," but couldn't afford the shrimp cocktails they were selling at the ocean-view joints.
By luck, she runs into
Ted Nywatt, a former boy friend and leader of The Ultra Belles,
an all-girl swing band he put together not long before. While
they're getting reacquainted, Ted's violinist falls--or was pushed--off
the pier and is severely injured. Could Katy possibly fill in
for her? Well, since nobody from Carnegie Hall has called lately,
she jumps at the chance.
 The audio-play version |
 Author Hal Glatzer |
As Katy gets to know her sister musicians, she realizes they're quite a motley crew. There's a heavy-drinker; a left-winger who may be a lesbian; a pair of puritanical sisters who used to be vaudeville stars; a lovely singer, who's having an affair with ladykiller Ted--and so on. Somebody has taken a real dislike to the band, too, because one by one the girls start meeting with ghastly "accidents."
All this takes place while the band is going by train from the Los Angeles area up the California coast, over to San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento and Lake Tahoe at the Nevada border, then back for the final gig in San Francisco. Glatzer does a marvelous job of re-creating these communities as they were on the verge of the U.S. entry into World War II. For anybody who loves 1940s band music--and grew up in California--"Too Dead to Swing" is going to be an everlasting delight.
If I had to bellyache about anything, it might be that Katy Green doesn't really do quite enough to qualify as the "detective" of the story. But she's a pretty interesting observer and seems to really understand not only the period she's living in, but also the dynamics of a touring musical group.
There's enough color and excitement for this to make a pretty good movie--at least the TV brand of movie--and it certainly takes us behind the scenes of an environment that's endlessly fascinating. It might also give quite a few young pop musical stars the chance to both act and play a kind of music we don't much opportunity to hear anymore.
© 2002 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The book
cover reproduction is © 2002 by John Daniel & Co. of
Santa Barbara. The audio-play cover is © 2000 by Audio-Playwrights.
The photo of the author is by Saul Feldman.
Ron
Miller is the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the
official companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series.
He currently teaches "The Curious History of Mystery"
at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, Washington.
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