No Orchids for Miss Blandish

Excellent. Consistently hardboiled and dark from beginning to end, Chase doesn't let many rays of light into this tale. The pace just keeps getting faster and faster, and even when he shifts the main narrative point of view from the gang to a private detective, the book doesn't lose focus. Full of murders--and worse--no punches are pulled, but the writer knows when to leave the sordid rest of the story to our imaginations. The characters, although each can fit some sort of noir stereotype, begin to take on their own personalities, which deepens the impact of the book. The many twists in the tale are well done also - straining credibility just a bit, but not too far to lose the reader's trust. Can't wait to read more by this writer.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase was originally published in 1939. This is a very dark crime story with some of the most vicious, depraved criminals I have ever read about. This is a very American book with it’s mid-west setting but surprisingly the author was British. Apparently he particularly admire the work of James M. Cain and tried to duplicate his noir stories, although I found the brutality and earthiness more like the hard-boiled crime novels of the 1950s. No Orchids for Miss Blandish was quite controversial at the time due to its explicit descriptions of violence and sex and it has been adapted into a couple of films as well as a play.

When a newspaper announces that a millionaire’s beautiful daughter will show more be wearing her famous pearls to an event, a small gang of criminals decides they will get their hands on these pearls. The robbery goes awry and they end up with both the pearls and the girl. Another larger, more organized and certainly more violent gang called the Grissoms move in and take both the girl and the pearls. They secure a large ransom from her father, but since the girl has caught the eye of the psychopath son of the gang's leader, they keep the girl for him to use and abuse. The millionaire hires a private detective to track his daughter and this leads to a blood-bath of a conclusion.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a lurid, gritty, dark story. The writing is on-point considering the author used an American slang dictionary and articles about the criminal underworld to help give the story an authentic feel. While I wouldn’t recommend this book to many, I do admit that it both surprised and shocked me, and totally held my attention during the reading. show less

I heard everyone was reading bootleg copies of this in air raid shelters during the Blitz, so I sought it out. But when I finally read it, I was a bit disappointed; and not just because it's rather tame, more so because I don't think it compares with the American books it was supposed to imitate. I think I'd have needed something a little stronger and better written to have kept my mind off the sound of bombs coming over. Of cultural rather than literary interest.

I'm not sure why I picked this one up. I'd read another book my Chase a while back, and thought it was pretty awful. Not so this one. It was actually fairly good, given the genre. It's not Raymond Chandler, or even Dashiell Hammett, but still decent hard-boiled, noir detective fiction. I had no problems staying engaged. I'd give it 3*s +, were that allowed.

So, we have a gang of second-rate punks who decide to lift the diamond necklace of one Miss Blandish. Somehow they get stuck with Miss Blandish as well. But not for long. A higher-class gang of thugs disposes of the second-raters and snag Miss Blandish for themselves. After all, the diamond necklace is small potatoes, Miss Blandish should be worth a cool million in ransom.

The cops show more are all befuddled. They think Miss Blandish has been kidnapped by the second-rate punks, Riley and his gang, so go looking in all the wrong places. Riley and cohorts are actually well hidden in shallow graves.

But a former crime reporter, turned private eye, Dave Fenner, starts looking into things and begins to piece the strings together. Of course, there is lots of shooting and bodies pile up and so forth. It's also extraordinarily dark in that the not-quite-all-there Slim Grisson, son of Ma Grisson, the head of the higher-class gang, takes a fancy to Miss Blandish. They keep her drugged so he can spend time with her...or something.

One weird thing is that Slim Grisson liked watching TV. He had a 21-inch TV. Well, this book was written in 1939. There was barely any commercial TV until after World War II, i.e. a decade later. I don't believe that 21-inch TVs became common until the 1960s. I certainly don't remember such huge TVs in the early-to-mid 1950s, and I don't believe I got a TV that large until the mid 80s (also my first color TV). So, I have no idea how this makes sense. It's like the story was a 1930s period piece written in the 1980s by someone who had a lapse in his background research. It didn't spoil the story in any way, but it did seem rather weird to me. show less

After reading Orwell's essay "Raffles and Miss Blandish," I purchased and read this vintage curiosity and was surprised that Orwell would call it "brilliant" (he did, and not in a tone of sarcasm) or, for that matter, bother to write anything at all about this tawdry, relentlessly depressing, albeit mildly interesting novel of crime and amorality. Orwell apparently found it a useful contrast to "Raffles" and the good old days of gentlemen scoundrels. He further points out that the author had plagiarized the plot from Faulkner's "Sanctuary," and found Chase's version to be a "cesspool" and "pure fascism." This is hardly a recommendation, "brilliant" notwithstanding. None of the characters, including Miss Blandish herself, are in any way show more sympathetic, which is not to say that any decent person (that's you and I) is not appalled by the treatment these characters impose on each other. But hey, they're just cardboard, anyway. As an historical landmark, it seems to have taken the Chandler/Hammett/Cain tradition a leap forward as far as graphic description and "realism" are concerned, leading perhaps to Mickey Spillane and Ed McBain. All of these gentlemen, in my own humble opinion, are superior craftsmen by far. Chase even publicly apologized to Raymond Chandler for lifting entire paragraphs from his work and incorporating them into his own needy efforts. Unless you're doing research on the evolution of crime fiction, "Miss Blandish" is a waste of your time, believe me. You'll find George Orwell's essays, however, more than worth your while. Now these are indeed an example of brilliant writing. show less

Three small-time crooks decide to steal a valuable diamond necklace from an heiress but when things get out of hand they end up taking the millionaire's daughter with them. Not 'big-time' enough to handle a kidnapping, the mighty Grisson gang storm in and take the girl and the necklace away with them.

The novel is fast paced, featuring lots of snappy dialogue, with no pointless digressions. The author does a good job in bringing his characters to life, though his characterisation of Miss Blandish could've been better explored. Had he shown the reader more insight into Miss Blandish's mindset I feel the story woould've been better.

To have portrayed Miss Blandish's point of view in greater depth would've made the reader sympathise with her show more more. Granted, she doesn't feature in too many scenes, but she is still the central character, who I didn't really get to know as well as I would've liked. show less

This is a dark book. Full of violence this book is as grim as they come. Not as explicit as other writers I think it's actually made worse by the fact that everything is hinted at, kept just off-screen, so your mind has to fill in the horrible blanks.

I started this book late last night and as soon as I picked it up this morning I had to keep reading til it was over. Told in 3 parts the book switches between viewpoints as the story progresses. I wasn't expecting the book to suddenly go the angle it went. A quick, thrilling read. Though the ending was a bit predictable it's still worth reading.