Payment Deferred

One of my go-to sources for something to read when I just need something to read is the Gutenburg Canada site. I find it more manageable than the US site: not as many books, most of them 20th century fiction, with new additions highlighted and annotated. Some of their titles are actually not in public domain in the US, and you’re only supposed to download books that are in public domain in your country, but since I read them in HTML form and don’t actually download them…I’m declaring myself legal.

So two nights ago, I needed something to read, and this was at the top of the list:

Payment Deferred (1926)  [The first of Forester’s two mystery novels, written with all the skill that one would expect from the creator of Horatio Hornblower. As for the plot, we won’t give it away, except for commenting that crimes can have unforeseen consequences!]

Well, let’s give it a try…

An hour later, I forced myself to put the Kindle down and go to sleep….

…that hasn’t happened in a while.

I finished the book last night and yes, it’s a juicy little proto-Breaking Bad sort of story (and Crime and Punishment and The Tell-Tale Heart…) centered on a mild-mannered fellow doing a Very Bad Thing with the consequences spreading ever so slowly but surely. There’s no mystery about the crime – it happens near the beginning and is quite predictable – but the question is about guilt and discovery, corruption and paranoia.

It’s not high literature, nor is it subtle – the one annoying element is the character of the wife, who is just too dim and pathetic for words – but it was oddly compelling, satisfyingly dark, with a fantastic ending.  A perfectly decent way to spend a couple of hours.

I discovered that the novel was dramatized, first on Broadway, and then on film, starring Charles Laughton, who fits the role very well, even  as he hams it up pretty effectively in some scenes. The movie is pre-Hays Code, so there’s no tip-toeing around an adultery subplot – with participants regrouping in the morning after a night together. There’s a very startling moment of Laughton actually tossing a kid over a wall. I mean – throwing him. I can’t say as much for the characters of the mother and daughter (a young Maureen O’Hara) – the latter character being older than she is in the book, which loses, I think, a valuable aspect of the family dynamic. The character of the son also seems to have gotten lost on the way to the screen, which is too bad – what happens to him is a shocking and crucial plot turn in the book.  The last plot twist is essentially the same in book and movie, although the book version is much more powerfully done. The last shot of the film is pretty great, though, as Laughton faces the consequences – payment no longer deferred, indeed.

 

All right, that’s that. Now to go search for something to read….