Either way, I expected such a charge to be greeted with a certain amount of incredulity. And that’s why, before heading off to church with Aunt Sadie earlier today, I’d made a phone call to Brainert.
Reading Timothy Brennan’s book the night before, not to mention having that odd dream, had started me thinking about the book itself. And when it came to solving a literary mystery, Brainert was my go-to guy. I nodded my head in his direction and he rose to his feet.
“After Penelope tipped me off to her suspicions this morning, I went straight to the college library and checked out a copy of this.”
He held up a hardcover book with yellowing pages. The white type on the black cover read The Neglected. A small frame of spot art below the title showed a man’s silhouette, lost in a crowd, and the author’s name: Kenneth Franken.
“Franken was more than Deirdre’s wife and Timothy Brennan’s son-in-law. He was also an author in his own right—a failed one. Franken’s first novel was published in the early 1990s. The genre was ‘dysfunctional family drama,’ and it had been published by Salient House, back when they were an independently owned publisher and not part of a European media conglomerate. The cover copy states the author spent five years writing this novel, his literary debut.”
Brainert passed the book around. When it got to me, I studied the back, which carried an author photo of the younger Kenneth Franken. At that time, he wore oversized horn-rimmed glasses—which he’d obviously traded for either contacts or laser surgery—and there were no silver temples yet in sight. He was just as model handsome, though, and the author was described as “an associate professor of English at New York University,” and a promising young voice “who was single and living in Manhattan.”
“How did you find this?” Linda asked in obvious admiration.
“I never forget a book,” boasted Brainert. “If I never read it, I read about it. And if I didn’t read about it, then I saw the book in the store.”
I passed the volume to Seymour.
“Kenneth Franken’s literary debut was a bust,” Brainert continued. “His novel was greeted by tepid reviews and general indifference.”
He reached into the shirt pocket of his pale blue button-down and drew out several three-by-five cards covered in tiny, cramped handwriting.
“The New Yorker said The Neglected was ‘a flawed effort featuring a cast of uninteresting characters.’ ”
“Ouch!” cried Seymour.
“Publishers Weekly was kinder,” Brainert continued, squinting at his own handwriting. “They said, ‘Mr. Franken has a unique literary voice, and his novel contains some sharp observations, but too few to recommend this raw, freshman effort. . . . ’ ” Brainert shrugged. “So Kenneth Franken vanished from the literary scene as quickly as he appeared. But two years after the disappointing reception for The Neglected, we see the marriage of Kenneth Franken and Deirdre Brennan announced in The New York Times.
“And here’s where it gets really interesting, because eighteen months after Kenneth Franken married Deirdre Brennan, the Jack Shield franchise—which had shown steady decline in sales and quality—was suddenly revived with the publication of three new Shield novels in quick succession. Each of these titles garnered rave reviews, as critics who’d grown bored with the series suddenly became enthusiastic fans again.”
“Coincidence?” said Seymour.
“I thought so,” Brainert replied. “And I didn’t believe Penelope, either, when she called me this morning and suggested that Kenneth Franken might be the real author of Shield of Justice.”
Brainert sighed. “My skepticism vanished this afternoon when I read The Neglected.”
The book made its way around our circle and back to Brainert. He tapped the volume with his index finger.
“Now, remember that Franken’s first novel had a tiny print run and was read only in literary circles—which was darn lucky, because it’s obvious that Franken mined his failed first novel for characterizations, descriptions, and situations for use in the last three Jack Shield novels.”
I heard more gasps and cries of denial. Milner Logan was practically apoplectic.
“Calm down, Milner,” said Brainert. “It wouldn’t be the first time a popular writer had to turn to ghostwriters. Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, may not have written many of the novels attributed to him. And in the 1920s, struggling pulp wannabes like C. M. Eddy Jr. and Elizabeth Berkeley paid my ancestor H. P. Lovecraft to ghostwrite stories for them. Why, it’s even said that in his heyday, Jack London bought story ideas from Sinclair Lewis!”
I smiled woodenly as I reminded myself that Brainert couldn’t help it. The tone of a know-it-all college professor talking to dimwitted freshmen just came naturally to him, especially when he was worked up about the subject.
“Okay,” Milner said. “So the chronology works. Where’s your proof?”
“I would never make such a bold claim without evidence to back it up,” Brainert said indignantly. “A close reading of The Neglected gave me all the proof I need.”
Brainert shuffled through his notes. “For instance,” he said. “Jason Carmichael, the calculating villain in Shield of Night, bears more than a striking resemblance to Carmichael Fahl, the calculating father of the protagonist in The Neglected. Indeed, the two characters are described with nearly the same words.
“Carmichael Fahl had ‘a shock of white hair and mud green eyes the color of a stagnant tarn’ and Jason Carmichael’s had ‘a shock of silver hair and mud green eyes the color of a stagnant pool.’ ”
“What in hell’s a ‘tarn’?” asked Bud.
“A small lake or pool,” said Seymour.
“Oh. Same thing then, eh?”
“Come on!” said Milner. “That’s just coincidence. It has to be.”
“How about this?” Brainert replied. “Tandy Miller, the free-spirited artist from The Neglected, was transformed into Candy Tyler, the free-spirited music producer for Shield of Night. The two characters share similar biographies, both lived in Hell’s Kitchen flats described the same way, and they shared the same fates—both were beaten to death by their heroin-addicted boyfriends.”
Milner was still shaking his head, but his conviction was on the wane.
“And then there’s the suicidal bureaucrat Philip Breeland, who is transformed into the suicidal police commissioner Pete Land in Shield of Honor. Both characters even have wives named Maisy Donner!”
Brainert looked at Milner. “How common is a name like Maisy Donner?”
Brainert’s string of comparisons continued, until it was clear to everyone—including Milner—that Timothy Brennan hadn’t written those last three Shield novels, but hired his brand-new son-in-law to write them instead. And for his part, Kenneth Franken had splintered his old, failed literary work to provide the fuel.
It worked, too. Those novels sold like gangbusters—each a hard/soft best-seller. New titles probably would have continued to sell—as long as they were ghostwritten by Franken. If only Brennan hadn’t announced that Shield of Justice was “his” final novel and that he was turning to nonfiction.
“Follow the money and you find the motive,” said Seymour. “I still think it was Deirdre. She stood to inherit her father’s estate.”
“Maybe not,” said Brainert. “There’s Bunny, Timothy’s third wife. I’m sure she’ll contest any will that doesn’t give her full control of the estate.”