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A review by paul_cornelius
No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
5.0
One of the few times a protagonist comes out okay at the end of a JHC novel. Ah, but who is the protagonist. That is really never clear until towards the end. The book has several potential candidates but either fools you or misdirects you. In a way, this is almost an early example of modernism being brought to the detective story. It was shocking when Hitchcock fooled his audiences in 1960, with Psycho. JHC anticipated him by more than 20 years. This work could be regarded as literature, instead of mere fiction, if people still make that a dividing line.
No Orchids also has a wonderful shifting perspective on events. Going from one character to another, JHC gives multiple sides to this story. And the final part almost reads like a film script, crosscutting from several scenes back and forth. Very cinematic. My regard for JHC increased after reading this book.
I do gather I read the revised and rewritten edition of No Orchids from 1962. That was obvious with the referrals to television sets in hotel rooms and apartments, something that would not have been there in the 1939 edition. In a way, however, I wanted to read the early 1939 edition, because I remember George Orwell's essay about the book when I read it in his collected works some 35 years ago. But there was also some insight gained because I had just read the second of JHC's novels, The Dead Stay Dumb, right before reading this one. The Dead Stay Dumb is much inferior work. This version of No Orchids displays a smoothness and maturity of dialogue that simply didn't exist in the second novel. It's the work of someone who has grown enormously from the The Dead Stay Dumb level of writing. Good novel.
No Orchids also has a wonderful shifting perspective on events. Going from one character to another, JHC gives multiple sides to this story. And the final part almost reads like a film script, crosscutting from several scenes back and forth. Very cinematic. My regard for JHC increased after reading this book.
I do gather I read the revised and rewritten edition of No Orchids from 1962. That was obvious with the referrals to television sets in hotel rooms and apartments, something that would not have been there in the 1939 edition. In a way, however, I wanted to read the early 1939 edition, because I remember George Orwell's essay about the book when I read it in his collected works some 35 years ago. But there was also some insight gained because I had just read the second of JHC's novels, The Dead Stay Dumb, right before reading this one. The Dead Stay Dumb is much inferior work. This version of No Orchids displays a smoothness and maturity of dialogue that simply didn't exist in the second novel. It's the work of someone who has grown enormously from the The Dead Stay Dumb level of writing. Good novel.