The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing

First edition of The Big Clock published by Harcourt Brace in 1946

This thriller by Kenneth Fearing is my favorite of his books; The Big Clock tells the enthralling story of George Stroud, family man and news executive, who is the last person to see his mistress Pauline Delos alive. The problem is that he knows his boss, powerful news magnate Earl Janoth, is the murderer. Janoth knows someone was in the shadows the night she was killed but he can't figure out who it was, and uses the vast media resources of Janoth Enterprises to track down this supposed murderer, most specifically his publication "Crimeways," which George Stroud heads up. Tasked with having to track himself down, Stroud must race against time to prove his own innocence and Janoth's guilt. The Big Clock is stylistically unique, especially for a crime novel from 1946, in that most of the chapters are told from a different character's point of view while juggling the plot. It is also poetically eerie in certain ways like how each member of George Stroud's family has a variation of the name George (i.e. Georgette and Georgia), and all of Janoth's publications have the same kind of title ("Futureways," "Newsways," etc.). Fearing's novel feels like it exists within a noir-ish microcosm of old New York and is tremendously fun to read. This first edition features great cover art attributed only to someone who signed "Roger" on the top right corner of the front cover.

Dagger of the Mind by Kenneth Fearing

Bestseller Mystery edition from 1941 

Originally published by Random House in 1941, Kenneth Fearing's Dagger of the Mind was reprinted in this digest-sized Bestseller Mystery (published by Lawrence Spivak) softcover later the same year. According to the title page, "Titles for the Bestseller Mystery are chosen from those mysteries which have had a large and continuing sale. Sometimes they are reprinted in full, but more often they are cut to speed up the story—always, of course, with the permission of the author or his publisher. This book has not been cut." Publishing has come a long way since 1941 and, thankfully, Fearing's second novel was spared from being ellipsed in any way. Fearing was a progressive mystery writer who began as a poet and brought new stylistic twists to a genre that was usually pretty formulaic. This book, although out of print since the 1960's, along with Fearing's other novels (a couple are currently in print on NYRB) definitely deserve reading.

Close-up of the Bestseller Mystery logo on the back cover