The Florentine Dagger is a very strange curio - "A Novel for Amateur Detectives". I like the unusual, but unfortunately this creaks like old floors.
Author and playwright Ben Hecht was known as THE Hollywood screenwriter (of over 70 films), and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Known for his crisp dialogue and fast plotting, his films include The Front Page, Scarface, Nothing Sacred, Gunga Din, Wuthering Heights, Spellbound and Notorious, as well as unofficially, Gone With The Wind, The Shop Around The Corner, Cleopatra, Mutiny on the Bounty, Casino Royale and The Wizard of Oz. Nominated six times for the Academy Award (he won twice), you can see why, as a movie fan, I was attracted to this, however, this was written in the early 1920's and not everyone will enjoy the dated style.
New York playwright Julien De Medici has a successful show on Broadway, starring his beautiful fiancé Florence. Her father Victor Ballau is the producer, pleased to announce his daughter's engagement in his Park Avenue apartment. That night Florence receives a distressing phone call - and leaves the theatre in the middle of the play - Julien follows her to her father's apartment where they discover Victor stabbed though the heart with an ancient dagger. The room is ransacked and full of strange 'clews': a false beard, a candlestick, an ebony crucifix on the body, dinner set for two, a dress on the fire escape. Since the dagger with the sinister and romantic past once belonged to his accursed De Medici family, Julien somehow thinks he is the killer (?). Perhaps he is unaware his evil blood has twisted him into a dual personality (?). Why was Florence in the apartment alone for a good length of time before Julien found her? Maybe a shock has split her mind into two compartments creating a dual personality capable of patricide? Maybe she is merely acting. Julien muses throughout that he has inherited the curse of his ancestors he cannot escape, and although Florence was arrested and then released, he is quick to throw her under the bus as a delusional maniac.
Lieutenant Norton has little to do here, as Julien and his friend Dr. Lytton concoct and track down their wild theories: the main one is, obviously, the victim set this scene up before stabbing himself in the heart, as he lost his fortune on the stocks. Perhaps Florence is not only his daughter, but his lover (?) And where is her Mother - maybe she also has a murderous split personality (?) It does come to a conclusion, and the assailant is plausible, but this is the type of novel that needs a final chapter for the reader to be told "why", "how", and reveal a back story you couldn't possibly know - the kind of ending no amateur detective could have deduced.
I've just scratched the surface as this novel has a surplus of melodrama. First published in 1923, it is written in a very florid style, with short staccato sentences unappealing to read. I wondered why I finished it. A pleasing note is that each chapter features a lurid heading for what is to come:
Chapter 7 - The Haunted Room - In which an apoplectic scientist explodes - In which invisible footsteps sound in a dark corridor - In which Julien DeMedici opens a letter - The Woman of the hidden eyes - Floria, the lady of the dagger - In which underworlds collide - The staircase to Hell and a strange passion - A voice that spoke over the telephone.
Or maybe Chapter 10 appeals to you - In which a pathologist reasons himself into a railroad trip - Francesca of the spiral eyes - The ancient science of demonology - The visiting shadow - The dagger that glistened against the moon.
This review actually makes it sound better than it is, I found it pedantic and uninvolving. This was also made into a film for which Hecht wrote the screenplay in 1935. I found a Tower Mystery hardcover, published by World Publishing in 1942, and mistakenly thought this was written that year. Writing styles in 1940 were very different from the serialized sensations of 1920, and it shows here.
If you would like to read it, it is available online for free downloads on many sites.
1923 / Hardcover / 256 pages
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