James Hadley Chase
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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James Hadley Chase is a pseudonym for British author Rene Brabazon Raymond (December 24,1906 – February 6, 1985) who also wrote under the names James L. Docherty, Ambrose Grant and Raymond Marshall. Chase, a London-born son of a British colonel serving in the colonial Indian Army who intended his son to have a scientific career, was initially raised at the King's School, Rochester, Kent and later studied in Calcutta. He left home at the age of 18 and became at different times a broker in a bookshop, a children's encyclopedia salesman and book wholesaler before capping it all with a writing career that produced more than 80 mystery books. In 1933, Chase married Sylvia Ray, who gave him a son. Following the US Great Depression (1929-1939), the Prohibition, and the gangster culture during this period, and after reading James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), he decided to try his own hand as a mystery writer. He had read about the American gangster Ma Barker and her sons, and with the help of maps and a slang dictionary, he composed in six weeks No Orchids for Miss Blandish. The book achieved remarkable popularity and became one of the best-sold books of the decade. It was a stage play in London's West End, was filmed in 1948 and in 1971 was remade by Robert Aldrich as The Grissom Gang.
During World War II he served as a pilot in the RAF, eventually achieving the rank of Squadron Leader. From this period dates Chase's unusual short story 'The Mirror in Room 22', in which he tried his hand outside the crime genre. It was set in an old house, occupied by officers of a squadron. The owner of the house had committed suicide in his bedroom and the last two occupants of the room have been found with a razor in their hands and their throats cut. The wing commander tells that when he started to shave before the mirror, he found another face in it. The apparition drew the razor across his throat. The wing commander says, "I use a safety razor, otherwise I might have met with a serious accident - especially if I used an old-fashioned cut-throat." The story was published under the author's real name in the anthology Slipstream in 1946.
Chase wrote most of his books using a dictionary of American slang, detailed maps, encyclopedias and reference books on the American underworld. Most of the books were based on events occurring in the United States, even though, he never really lived in the United States, save for two brief visits to Miami and New Orleans. In 1943 the Anglo-American crime author Raymond Chandler successfully claimed that Chase had lifted whole sections of his works in "Blonde's Requiem". Chase's London publisher Hamish Hamilton forced Chase to publish an apology in The Bookseller.
In several of Chase's stories the protagonist tries to find his place in the sun by committing a crime - an insurance fraud or a theft. But the scheme fails and leads to a murder and finally to a cul-de-sac, in which the hero realizes that he never had a chance to keep out of trouble. Women are often beautiful, clever, and treacherous; they kill unhesitatingly if they have to cover a crime. His plots typically centre around dysfunctional families and the final denouement jusifies the title!
He was wildly popular in Asia and Africa. He also enjoyed success in France and Italy where more than twenty of his books were made into movies. Joseph Losey's film version of Chase's thriller EVE (1945), made in 1962, was cut by the producers, the Hakim brothers. In the story Stanley Baker played by a British writer, Tyvian, who is obsessed by a cold-hearted femme fatale, Eve (Jeanne Moreau). "Do you know how much this weekend's going to cost me?" he asks Eve. "Two friends, thirty thousand dollars …and a wife." He was also extremely popular in Soviet Union during and after the perestroika years around 1990-1993.
Chase moved to France in 1956 and over to Switzerland in 1961, living a secluded life in Corseaux-Sur-Vevey, north of Lake Geneva, from 1974. He eventually died there peacefully, on February 6, 1985.
Novels
Year published | Title | Protagonist |
---|---|---|
1939 | No Orchids For Miss Blandish | Dave Fenner Slim Grisson |
1939 | The Dead Stay Dumb | John Dillon |
1939 | He Wont Need It Now | Bill Duffy |
1940 | Twelve Chinks and a Woman also The Doll's Bad News | Dave Fenner |
1940 | Lady, Here's Your Wreath | Nick Mason |
1941 | Get A Load Of This (short story collection) | |
1941 | Miss Callaghan Comes To Grief | |
1944 | Miss Shumway Waves A Wand | Ross Millan Myra Shumway |
1944 | Just The Way It Is | Harry Duke |
1945 | Eve | Clive Thurston Eve |
1946 | More Deadly Than The Male | George Fraser |
1946 | I'll Get You For This | Chester Cain |
1946 | Make The Corpse Walk | Rollo |
1946 | Blonde's Requiem | Mack Spewack |
1946 | Last Page (play) | |
1947 | No Business Of Mine | Steve Harmas |
1948 | The Flesh Of The Orchid | Carol Blandish The Sullivan Brothers |
1948 | Trusted Like The Fox also Ruthless | Edwin Cushman Grace Clark Richard Crane |
1949 | You Never Know With Women | Floyd Jackson |
1949 | You're Lonely When You're Dead | Vic Malloy Paula Bensinger Jack Kerman |
1949 | The Paw In The Bottle | Julie Holland Harry Gleb |
1950 | Lay Her Among The Lillies | Vic Malloy Paula Bensinger Jack Kerman |
1950 | Figure It Out For Yourself also The Marijuana Mob | Vic Malloy Paula Bensinger Jack Kerman |
1951 | Mallory | Martin Corridon |
1951 | Strictly For Cash | Johnny Farrar |
1951 | Why Pick On Me? | Martin Corridon |
1951 | But A Short Time To Live also The Pickup | Harry Ricks Clair Dolan |
1951 | In A Vain Shadow | Frank Mitchell |
1952 | The Wary Transgressor | David Chisholm |
1952 | The Fast Buck | Verne Baird Rico |
1952 | The Double Shuffle | Steve Harmas |
1953 | I'll Bury My Dead | Nick English |
1953 | The Things Men Do | Harry Collins |
1953 | This Way For A Shroud | Paul Conard Vito Ferrari |
1954 | The Sucker Punch | Chad Winters |
1954 | Tiger By The Tail | Ken Holland |
1954 | Safer Dead | Chet Sladen |
1954 | Mission To Venice | Don Micklem |
1955 | Mission To Siena | Don Micklem |
1955 | You've Got It Coming | Harry Griffin |
1956 | There's Always A Price Tag | Glyn Nash, Steve Harmas |
1956 | You Find Him, I'll Fix Him | Ed Dawson |
1957 | The Guilty Are Afraid | Lew Brandon |
1958 | Not Safe To Be Free also The Case Of The Strangled Starlet | Jay Delaney |
1958 | Hit And Run | Chester Scott |
1959 | Shock Treatment | Terry Regan |
1959 | The World In My Pocket | |
1960 | What's Better Than Money | Jefferson Halliday |
1960 | Come Easy - Go Easy | Chet Carson |
1961 | A Lotus For Miss Quon | Steve Jaffe |
1961 | Just Another Sucker | Harry Barber |
1962 | I Would Rather Stay Poor | Dave Calvin |
1962 | A Coffin From Hong Kong | Nelson Ryan |
1963 | One Bright Summer Morning | |
1963 | Tell It To The Birds | John Anson |
1964 | The Soft Centre | Valiere Burnette Paradise City Police Force |
1965 | This Is For Real | Mark Girland |
1965 | The Way the Cookie Crumbles | Paradise City Police Force |
1966 | You Have Yourself A Deal | Mark Girland |
1966 | Cade | Val Cade |
1967 | Have This One On Me | Mark Girland |
1967 | Well Now - My Pretty | Paradise City Police Force |
1968 | An Ear To The Ground | Steve Harmas, Maddox |
1968 | Believed Violent | |
1969 | The Whiff Of Money | Mark Girland |
1969 | The Vulture Is A Patient Bird | |
1970 | Like A Hole In The Head | Jay Benson |
1970 | There's A Hippie On The Highway | Harry Mitchell |
1971 | Want To Stay Alive? | Poke Toholo |
1971 | An Ace Up My Sleeve | Helga Rolfe |
1972 | Just A Matter Of Time' | |
1972 | You're Dead Without Money | |
1973 | Have A Change Of Scene | Larry Carr |
1973 | Knock, Knock! Who's There? | Johnny Bianda |
1974 | So What Happens To Me? | Jack Crane |
1974 | Goldfish Have No Hiding Place | Steve Manson |
1975 | Believe This - You'll Believe Anything | Clay Burden |
1975 | The Joker In The Pack | Helga Rolfe |
1976 | Do Me A Favour, Drop Dead | Keith Devery |
1977 | My Laugh Comes Last | Larry Lucas |
1977 | I Hold The Four Aces | Helga Rolfe |
1978 | Consider Yourself Dead | Mike Frost |
1979 | You Must Be Kidding | Ken Brandon Paradise City Police Force |
1979 | A Can Of Worms | Bart Anderson |
1980 | You Can Say That Again | Jerry Stevens |
1980 | Try This One For Size | Paradise City Police Force |
1981 | Hand Me A Fig Leaf | Dirk Wallace |
1982 | Have A Nice Night | |
1982 | We'll Share A Double Funeral | Perry Weston Chet Logan |
1983 | Not My Thing | Ernie Kling |
1984 | Hit Them Where It Hurts | Dirk Wallace |