I had high hopes for Mr Bowling Buys A Newspaper, but can't say it won me over. Raymond Chandler found it "One of the most fascinating books...I have read it a dozen times...buying it right and left to give away". This dark, satirical portrayal of a murderer received considerable attention when it was published in 1943, but despite praise from Chandler, it went out of print for more than 60 years.
Mr. Bowling is a sour character. He dislikes his room in London, and the other renters in the house no better. Life seems pathetic to him. Things improved of course, since he killed his dreadful wife. When their house collapsed during a bombing, he found her constant screaming easily snuffed by suffocation; who could say she didn't die in the wreckage? An insurance man, Mr. Bowling knew a wealthy client was leaving his money to a dog shelter instead of his family, but when this man discovers Mr. Bowling was trying dodgy paperwork to transfer some to himself, well, he was easily choked out. The next day, Mr. Bowling buys a newspaper, eager to read of the murder. Nothing.
These two deaths seem to have reason, but Mr. Bowling has such a dislike to everything, he can barely keep up pretence. He concludes it would be best if he was arrested and hung.
He is a killer who wants to be caught.
His new rooming house has friendly lodgers, the kind who invite you round for games of cards. Mr. Winthrop did so and was choked to death on the stairway, left for anyone to discover. When the Nandles invite him to their country house, Bowling was left with Mr. Nandle of an evening, and Nandle was promptly strangled. Random attacks, with victims left in plain sight, yet fate has it that Mr. Bowling is never accused, let alone arrested and hung - you would think he could just turn himself in - and he tries!
There is a twist in the story, where the clouds part, a beam of light shines down upon a fair lady - not even attractive, just fair - and Mr. Bowling, cupid-struck, is moved to rethink his plans. Or, is it now too late?
These points may make it sound more interesting than it is, for I found it a slog to be around such a negative character. Despite people around him offering help and friendship, including attention from willing young girls, he's a sociopath who thinks only of himself - likely sneering with laughter behind their backs. His daylight fantasies of being arrested and the ensuing chaos encourage him to continue killing.
This seemed quite the book I look for - the reissued Collins Crime Club edition I thought would be a keeper - but the overall feeling reading it was pedantic. How can a murderous sociopath be so dull? There are several sidelines and characters that seem to go nowhere, and it was hard to finish. The twist at the end came too late and was too far fetched at that point to be redeeming.
Donald Henderson had written other works before the success of Mr. Bowling, which he says he wrote in about a week and a half, straight into the typewriter, with no idea of what the ending would be - likewise his next title Goodbye To Murder, written in about ten days. The lack of planning does give this a meandering quality.
Kudos for creating a unique murderer, even if I felt the execution lacking.
This was dramatized for the stage, a teleplay twice produced for British television, and the film rights were sold.
Donald Henderson died at only 41, just three years after his first success with Mr. Bowling in 1947, leaving two other titles Goodbye To Murder (1946), and A Voice Like Velvet (1946).
1943 / Tradeback / 193 pages
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