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The Lenient Beast
A man is found dead in a backyard in Tucson, Arizona, but the police find it difficult to find any motive for murder. The victim had recently lost his wife and three children in a car crash. One might think from his circumstance that it was suicide, but if so, what had happened to the gun? Frank Ramos thinks he knows the answer, but can he persuade anyone of the truth?
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
2 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Fredric Brown
808 books354 followersFredric Brown was an American science fiction and mystery writer. He was one of the boldest early writers in genre fiction in his use of narrative experimentation. While never in the front rank of popularity in his lifetime, Brown has developed a considerable cult following in the almost half century since he last wrote. His works have been periodically reprinted and he has a worldwide fan base, most notably in the U.S. and Europe, and especially in France, where there have been several recent movie adaptations of his work. He also remains popular in Japan.
Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons.
Never financially secure, Brown - like many other pulp writers - often wrote at a furious pace in order to pay bills. This accounts, at least in part, for the uneven quality of his work. A newspaperman by profession, Brown was only able to devote 14 years of his life as a full-time fiction writer. Brown was also a heavy drinker, and this at times doubtless affected his productivity. A cultured man and omnivorous reader whose interests ranged far beyond those of most pulp writers, Brown had a lifelong interest in the flute, chess, poker, and the works of Lewis Carroll. Brown married twice and was the father of two sons.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 28, 2019
I love Fredric Brown and I can never really figure out why. I don't think his books are great, or even very good most of the time. They just make me really, really happy. They're naturally told and well-visualized and always full of surprising tangents and inventions. I always learn something weird about phonographs or the history of linotype or something. And he just has his own particular style, which is on the surface a very normal, unobtrusive style, could be anyone, just some guy from the 50s with a job and mortgage, but is also somehow deeply, secretly weird; just off enough to make the whole thing electrifyingly creepy, but also super fun? I don't know, I just love it. Hope his corpse is still down there writing more. This one wasn't great, even within the bounds of his own work, but somehow I loved it even more than usual. I don't know, it's a mystery. Study continues...
Want to read
January 31, 2017This book is copy 40 of 200 hardcovercopies for sale.
The book is signed by John Pelan who wrote the introduction, Ron Lesser who did the artwork and there is a facsimile Signature of Fredric Brown.
The book also contains 3 additional short stories.
007 - Introduction by John Pelan
019 - "The Lenient Beast"
217 - "Don't Look Behind You"
233 - "I'll See You at Midnight"
263 - "The Spherical Ghoul"
The book is signed by John Pelan who wrote the introduction, Ron Lesser who did the artwork and there is a facsimile Signature of Fredric Brown.
The book also contains 3 additional short stories.
007 - Introduction by John Pelan
019 - "The Lenient Beast"
217 - "Don't Look Behind You"
233 - "I'll See You at Midnight"
263 - "The Spherical Ghoul"
May 5, 2012
Intriguing story, you know who the killer is from the start. The ending is completely different than what I thought it might be. Each chapter is told from a different characters first person POV. I found this style most interesting as how it highlighted how people see a situation though totally different prisms.
July 17, 2020
Retomo mis relecturas de Fredric Brown y creo que hoy toca uno de sus mejores libros, uno que en su momento me sorprendió muchísimo por el recurso de cambiar el narrador -no hay un protagonista sino que los diferentes capítulos van tomando el punto de vista de los diferentes personajes- algo que después habré visto muchas veces pero todavía hoy recuerdo cómo me pegó en la adolescencia descubrir que… ¡se podía hacer eso! Otra cosa que destaca, y que probablemente noto ahora con esta relectura, es lo ajeno que es este policial a los códigos del propio género. No hay ningún misterio a resolver, la identidad del asesino se devela al capítulo 3 y lo que prefiere Brown en este caso es un estudio de personajes que interactúan ante la investigación de un homicidio. Y más aún, la propia interacción entre ellos es lo que en verdad el escritor busca narrar porque nos lleva de un lado para al otro, primero con lo que los personajes piensan de los otros personajes pero luego eso es contrapesado con los otros personajes piensan de los anteriores y, además de todo, acerca de sí mismos. Un ida y vuelta fabuloso, sí. En breve, podríamos decir que La bestia dormida gira sobre un psicópata, un asesino en serie por piedad, y la investigación que dos policías muy distintos hacen sobre su último asesinato, pero eso es quedarse corto y ni da a entrever lo mucho que implica esta historia. Brown profundiza aquí cómo pocos en la novela psicológica y entrega un relato magnífico, uno que no ha envejecido un ápice en más de 60 años. Para descubrir y maravillarse.
May 25, 2021
Fredric Brown seldom disappoints. This one features shifting POV by chapter and quite a bit of social commentary hidden beneath a police procedural.
July 22, 2023
I feel funny giving out 5 stars so freely, but Fredric Brown again really surprises me.
I've read 3 of his mysteries and when I think about it, none of them have a traditional ending. All the parts of the usual mystery tale are from mystery noir-town, but so far the resolution or culmination of the plot end in "What the hell is the meaning of life, anyway?" - town.
There is some social commentary in this one about prejudice and a few confusing references to not acted upon misogynistic impulses that stand out in our modern age. BUT it is written in such a way maybe it is up to the reader to take from it what they bring to the reading table.
As an aside, this is the second book of his I see some characters having feelings of suicide but not actually doing it. I don't know what to make of it other than he is a very different writer than I am used to.
I've read 3 of his mysteries and when I think about it, none of them have a traditional ending. All the parts of the usual mystery tale are from mystery noir-town, but so far the resolution or culmination of the plot end in "What the hell is the meaning of life, anyway?" - town.
There is some social commentary in this one about prejudice and a few confusing references to not acted upon misogynistic impulses that stand out in our modern age. BUT it is written in such a way maybe it is up to the reader to take from it what they bring to the reading table.
As an aside, this is the second book of his I see some characters having feelings of suicide but not actually doing it. I don't know what to make of it other than he is a very different writer than I am used to.
February 15, 2014
Another excellent crime thriller by Fredric Brown, and one of the few of his books that I physically own and don't just read on my Kindle. Just discovered this by chance in the Oxfam Book Store I am volunteering in.
This has a number of intriguing narrative devices and plot points that are ever more fascinating as they are so unusual for the time this novel was written in:
The 16 chapters are written from the first person point-of-view of five different characters, one of them the eponymous killer who is already revealed Columbo-style in the first chapter. The various narrators offer a variety of points-of-views focusing on religious beliefs and mania, racial prejudices, observations on the other characters, mercy killings, alcoholism and sexual unfaithfulness etc. The nominal hero of the story is a Hispanic cop who in passing quotes Schopenhauer's theory on suicide. Given that this is a Fredric Brown book it comes as little surprise that we even get a throwaway but succinct Alice in Wonderland reference. The final outcome is unconventional, yet satisfactorily logical within the framework of the overall story.
Why Fredric Brown is no longer widely known will forever remain a mystery for me given that lesser crime writers of his time are still widely published and easily available.
This has a number of intriguing narrative devices and plot points that are ever more fascinating as they are so unusual for the time this novel was written in:
The 16 chapters are written from the first person point-of-view of five different characters, one of them the eponymous killer who is already revealed Columbo-style in the first chapter. The various narrators offer a variety of points-of-views focusing on religious beliefs and mania, racial prejudices, observations on the other characters, mercy killings, alcoholism and sexual unfaithfulness etc. The nominal hero of the story is a Hispanic cop who in passing quotes Schopenhauer's theory on suicide. Given that this is a Fredric Brown book it comes as little surprise that we even get a throwaway but succinct Alice in Wonderland reference. The final outcome is unconventional, yet satisfactorily logical within the framework of the overall story.
Why Fredric Brown is no longer widely known will forever remain a mystery for me given that lesser crime writers of his time are still widely published and easily available.
July 18, 2018
review of
Fredric Brown's The Lenient Beast
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 17, 2018
I'm on a Fredric Brown roll. This was the 2nd novel I read by him. The 1st one was Night of the Jabberwock. That set expectations about what other work might be like. This wasn't really like that. It's more serious crime fiction, more psychological — it might even be as good as Patricia Highsmith in that dept & that's high priase from me.
When I was a teenager & just starting to listen to classical music I discovered Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique early on. I liked it very much. Since the music was reputed to've been inspired by a state of opium intoxication I took it to mean that people who used such drugs cd still produce work of substance instead of just being burn-outs. That might seem like a duh moment but I was young.
""It's Berlioz," I said. "Hector Berlioz, one of the most underrated of the great composers. Because, I suppose, most people think of him as modern, whereas he was far ahead of his time. When he composed what we're listening to now, Symphonie Fantastique, in eighteen thirty, Beethoven had been dead only three years, and Wagner was only seventeen. And Richard Strauss was only five when Berlioz died in eighteen fifty-nine."" - p 17
This was written in 1956, a good 13 yrs or so before I discovered Berlioz. I never thought of him as "modern", I might've thought of him as 'early Romantic'.
The novel's most unique structural feature is that the detective hero meets the murderer right away & we soon learn that, yes, he is the murderer but no-one believes the detective. The novel basically just puts it all in place. The chapters are organized as 1st person accts from 5 of the characters, 1 of them being the murderer, John Medley. Hence we learn in the 1st chapter, the 1st of Medley's chapters, that Medley's the killer:
"Always there is such a reaction as this. But this time had been different from the others, because this time for the first time I had had to discover the body myself and face the police. And knowing from the moment of the kill that it would be that way, I had remained calm. Especially since arising this morning I had acted my role within my mind as well as in my physical actions. I had actually forgotten—almost—that the body was there until it was time for me to discover it. Everything had simply been in abeyance until then and until the police had come and gone.
"Now was the time for my suffering, and I suffered.
"When I was calm enough I prayed. Again, again I asked God why He asks so much of me. Although I know. He is right, and He is merciful. He asks much, but someday He will take away from me the mark of the beast and I shall be free. Someday He shall extend His mercy even unto me." - p 23
This has a copyright date of 1956. I was born in 1953. When I was a kid we only went out to eat at fast food burger places. I didn't even know what pizza was until I was a teenager in the 1960s. As an adult, I've usually attributed that to the lack of money of my family or to the lack of willingness on my family's part to spend money or to the lack of food variety in my family.
""Hell, we're going to eat first. It's after one. How'd you go for pizza?"
""Show me one," I said. That's one thing I owe Frank Ramos; he introduced me to pizza pie. I'd never heard of it until I teamed up with him." - p 25
So maybe pizza was a rarity in my area when I was a kid. I found this online:
"For years, what Baltimore knew about pizza, beyond delivery chains, was cornered by Matthew’s, which opened in 1943 and until recently claimed pretty much all the accolades and “best of” awards available here. The pizzeria’s customers included not only its Highlandtown neighbors, but well-heeled adventurers from the north, who chewed on the thick, airy crust before or after performances at the Creative Alliance across the street.
"In the early years, says Chris Maler, who purchased Matthew’s from a family friend 18 years ago, Matthew’s didn’t even call itself pizza. “It was tomato pie,” he says. “It was crust with tomato sauce. If people wanted cheese, they’d grate some on top.”" - http://baltimorestyle.com/life_of_pie/
& this:
"In 1950, at age 16, John Coruzzi, Pizza John’s founder, immigrated to America from his hometown of Abruzzi, Italy. His first job was as a baker in East Baltimore, but his dream was always to have his own Italian restaurant. In 1966, after 10 years working as a Pizza maker and learning his craft at Squire’s Italian Restaurant in Baltimore, John decided to go into business for himself and opened the original Pizza John’s Carryout in a storefront at 131 ½ Back River Neck Rd., in Essex, Md." - http://pizzajohns.info/a-part-of-mary...
Highlandtown & Essex were both far from where I grew up so it's no wonder we never went there. It's interesting to imagine a time when pizza might've been a rarity in this country. Now it's so common Rump cd build the wall separating the US from Mexico w/ it & still have some left over to wall in the White House.
"The world was upside down for Alice. Maybe she was waiting for the White Rabbit to come along and take a gold watch out his pocket and look at it, and then show her the way down the rabbit hole into schizophrenia." - p 45
The reference to Lewis Carroll hence reminding me of the previous (& 1st) bk I read by Brown, Night of the Jabberwock. But it's not the references to Berlioz & Carroll that most get to me here, it's the reference to one of my favorite comedic songwriters & a 10" record that I have in my own collection:
"Most of what lighter music I have is on ten-inch LP's, so I turned on the phonograph to warm up and started looking through the stack of ten-inch records. Medley from South Pacific."
[A favorite of my mom's when I was a kid.]
"Songs by Tom Lehrer. That would do it, and I hadn't listened to them for a couple of months now. Macabre as a charnel house and funny as hell. I put the record on." - p 47
"Thank God Alice doesn't get in a state like that often. On second thought, why should I thank Him? Maybe if a true Christian gets one of his legs cut off he thanks God for leaving him the other leg, but I'm not that way. As Red would put it, I'm not that kind of hairpin." - p 68
I've never understood why Christians don't go into more situations where they're likely to be killed. That way they cd get to Heaven faster. It wdn't be suicide, wd it? Or is that a technicality? Moslems make it easier for their sheep to delude themselves that they'll ascend to Paradise by allowing suicide bombing. Maybe someone shd organize a Christian-Moslem dance where the Moslems are all suicide bombers. Anyway, I missed my chance by making the above quote so long, I cd've just written "Thank God Alice" & left the rest to our imaginations.
This bk is so fifties, I mean I was there, I remember. The police detectives don't even have a way to call back to their office other than using pay phones:
""Well," Red asked me, "should we save a dime and phone from here?"" - p 80
The autopsy reveals that the victim's health was poor:
"["]His general health and physical condition were really something. Raeburn says he should've been in a hospital; it was a wonder he managed to walk around."
""What all was wrong?"
""About everything. Enlarged heart. Anemia—extremely low red corpuscle count. Both lungs about half calcified—although t.b. didn't seem to have been active. Liver and kidneys both in bad shape.["]" - p 82
Even that reminds me of the '50s & early '60s b/c I got iron shots for anemia when I was about 9. Those were the days. I'm glad I'm old b/c I can remember when health care in the US wasn't mainly an opportunity for intermediaries to steal entire family fortunes:
""Got enough money left in that wallet to pay off for the ambulance ride and the hospital here?" Frank asked. "It's on the house if you're a pauper, but you sound solvent to me."
""Should have a hundred left." He managed to turn his eyes far enough to look at the intern, and the intern nodded and said, "Half of that ought to cover it, easy."" - p 129
$50 for an ambulance ride in 1956. Contrast that to 2018: "he got an ambulance bill for $2,400, for a ride of less than two miles." ( https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/... ) According to the "Inflation Calculator" from "Dollar Times": "$50.00 in 1956 had the same buying power as $459.93 in 2018" ( https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation... ). $459.93 is approximately 1/5th of $2,400. So what accounts for the additional $2,000 if inflation doesn't? Some might say: 'the-cost-of-improved-health-care'. I say GREED.
Then again, maybe the intern in the story is wrong. I went to an Emergency Room in the last 20 yrs b/c of extreme pain from an absessed tooth. An intern who'd never dealt w/ such a problem before, gave me a local anesthetic injection that he sd wd last for days that might've lasted for 15 minutes. He sd "Don't worry about the cost, I don't care if I get pd for this." or something very close to that. The bill for just his services was around $1,000. It wasn't the intern who was GREEDY, it was the hospital adminstration.
Anyway, that's it, I've managed to review this bk w/o telling you much about it — as was my intention. It was great & it managed to remind me of my childhood — & if you read this bk, or have read it already, you'll realize that that's a deliberately loaded statement.
Fredric Brown's The Lenient Beast
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 17, 2018
I'm on a Fredric Brown roll. This was the 2nd novel I read by him. The 1st one was Night of the Jabberwock. That set expectations about what other work might be like. This wasn't really like that. It's more serious crime fiction, more psychological — it might even be as good as Patricia Highsmith in that dept & that's high priase from me.
When I was a teenager & just starting to listen to classical music I discovered Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique early on. I liked it very much. Since the music was reputed to've been inspired by a state of opium intoxication I took it to mean that people who used such drugs cd still produce work of substance instead of just being burn-outs. That might seem like a duh moment but I was young.
""It's Berlioz," I said. "Hector Berlioz, one of the most underrated of the great composers. Because, I suppose, most people think of him as modern, whereas he was far ahead of his time. When he composed what we're listening to now, Symphonie Fantastique, in eighteen thirty, Beethoven had been dead only three years, and Wagner was only seventeen. And Richard Strauss was only five when Berlioz died in eighteen fifty-nine."" - p 17
This was written in 1956, a good 13 yrs or so before I discovered Berlioz. I never thought of him as "modern", I might've thought of him as 'early Romantic'.
The novel's most unique structural feature is that the detective hero meets the murderer right away & we soon learn that, yes, he is the murderer but no-one believes the detective. The novel basically just puts it all in place. The chapters are organized as 1st person accts from 5 of the characters, 1 of them being the murderer, John Medley. Hence we learn in the 1st chapter, the 1st of Medley's chapters, that Medley's the killer:
"Always there is such a reaction as this. But this time had been different from the others, because this time for the first time I had had to discover the body myself and face the police. And knowing from the moment of the kill that it would be that way, I had remained calm. Especially since arising this morning I had acted my role within my mind as well as in my physical actions. I had actually forgotten—almost—that the body was there until it was time for me to discover it. Everything had simply been in abeyance until then and until the police had come and gone.
"Now was the time for my suffering, and I suffered.
"When I was calm enough I prayed. Again, again I asked God why He asks so much of me. Although I know. He is right, and He is merciful. He asks much, but someday He will take away from me the mark of the beast and I shall be free. Someday He shall extend His mercy even unto me." - p 23
This has a copyright date of 1956. I was born in 1953. When I was a kid we only went out to eat at fast food burger places. I didn't even know what pizza was until I was a teenager in the 1960s. As an adult, I've usually attributed that to the lack of money of my family or to the lack of willingness on my family's part to spend money or to the lack of food variety in my family.
""Hell, we're going to eat first. It's after one. How'd you go for pizza?"
""Show me one," I said. That's one thing I owe Frank Ramos; he introduced me to pizza pie. I'd never heard of it until I teamed up with him." - p 25
So maybe pizza was a rarity in my area when I was a kid. I found this online:
"For years, what Baltimore knew about pizza, beyond delivery chains, was cornered by Matthew’s, which opened in 1943 and until recently claimed pretty much all the accolades and “best of” awards available here. The pizzeria’s customers included not only its Highlandtown neighbors, but well-heeled adventurers from the north, who chewed on the thick, airy crust before or after performances at the Creative Alliance across the street.
"In the early years, says Chris Maler, who purchased Matthew’s from a family friend 18 years ago, Matthew’s didn’t even call itself pizza. “It was tomato pie,” he says. “It was crust with tomato sauce. If people wanted cheese, they’d grate some on top.”" - http://baltimorestyle.com/life_of_pie/
& this:
"In 1950, at age 16, John Coruzzi, Pizza John’s founder, immigrated to America from his hometown of Abruzzi, Italy. His first job was as a baker in East Baltimore, but his dream was always to have his own Italian restaurant. In 1966, after 10 years working as a Pizza maker and learning his craft at Squire’s Italian Restaurant in Baltimore, John decided to go into business for himself and opened the original Pizza John’s Carryout in a storefront at 131 ½ Back River Neck Rd., in Essex, Md." - http://pizzajohns.info/a-part-of-mary...
Highlandtown & Essex were both far from where I grew up so it's no wonder we never went there. It's interesting to imagine a time when pizza might've been a rarity in this country. Now it's so common Rump cd build the wall separating the US from Mexico w/ it & still have some left over to wall in the White House.
"The world was upside down for Alice. Maybe she was waiting for the White Rabbit to come along and take a gold watch out his pocket and look at it, and then show her the way down the rabbit hole into schizophrenia." - p 45
The reference to Lewis Carroll hence reminding me of the previous (& 1st) bk I read by Brown, Night of the Jabberwock. But it's not the references to Berlioz & Carroll that most get to me here, it's the reference to one of my favorite comedic songwriters & a 10" record that I have in my own collection:
"Most of what lighter music I have is on ten-inch LP's, so I turned on the phonograph to warm up and started looking through the stack of ten-inch records. Medley from South Pacific."
[A favorite of my mom's when I was a kid.]
"Songs by Tom Lehrer. That would do it, and I hadn't listened to them for a couple of months now. Macabre as a charnel house and funny as hell. I put the record on." - p 47
"Thank God Alice doesn't get in a state like that often. On second thought, why should I thank Him? Maybe if a true Christian gets one of his legs cut off he thanks God for leaving him the other leg, but I'm not that way. As Red would put it, I'm not that kind of hairpin." - p 68
I've never understood why Christians don't go into more situations where they're likely to be killed. That way they cd get to Heaven faster. It wdn't be suicide, wd it? Or is that a technicality? Moslems make it easier for their sheep to delude themselves that they'll ascend to Paradise by allowing suicide bombing. Maybe someone shd organize a Christian-Moslem dance where the Moslems are all suicide bombers. Anyway, I missed my chance by making the above quote so long, I cd've just written "Thank God Alice" & left the rest to our imaginations.
This bk is so fifties, I mean I was there, I remember. The police detectives don't even have a way to call back to their office other than using pay phones:
""Well," Red asked me, "should we save a dime and phone from here?"" - p 80
The autopsy reveals that the victim's health was poor:
"["]His general health and physical condition were really something. Raeburn says he should've been in a hospital; it was a wonder he managed to walk around."
""What all was wrong?"
""About everything. Enlarged heart. Anemia—extremely low red corpuscle count. Both lungs about half calcified—although t.b. didn't seem to have been active. Liver and kidneys both in bad shape.["]" - p 82
Even that reminds me of the '50s & early '60s b/c I got iron shots for anemia when I was about 9. Those were the days. I'm glad I'm old b/c I can remember when health care in the US wasn't mainly an opportunity for intermediaries to steal entire family fortunes:
""Got enough money left in that wallet to pay off for the ambulance ride and the hospital here?" Frank asked. "It's on the house if you're a pauper, but you sound solvent to me."
""Should have a hundred left." He managed to turn his eyes far enough to look at the intern, and the intern nodded and said, "Half of that ought to cover it, easy."" - p 129
$50 for an ambulance ride in 1956. Contrast that to 2018: "he got an ambulance bill for $2,400, for a ride of less than two miles." ( https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/... ) According to the "Inflation Calculator" from "Dollar Times": "$50.00 in 1956 had the same buying power as $459.93 in 2018" ( https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation... ). $459.93 is approximately 1/5th of $2,400. So what accounts for the additional $2,000 if inflation doesn't? Some might say: 'the-cost-of-improved-health-care'. I say GREED.
Then again, maybe the intern in the story is wrong. I went to an Emergency Room in the last 20 yrs b/c of extreme pain from an absessed tooth. An intern who'd never dealt w/ such a problem before, gave me a local anesthetic injection that he sd wd last for days that might've lasted for 15 minutes. He sd "Don't worry about the cost, I don't care if I get pd for this." or something very close to that. The bill for just his services was around $1,000. It wasn't the intern who was GREEDY, it was the hospital adminstration.
Anyway, that's it, I've managed to review this bk w/o telling you much about it — as was my intention. It was great & it managed to remind me of my childhood — & if you read this bk, or have read it already, you'll realize that that's a deliberately loaded statement.
February 17, 2020
Was an ok read, enjoyed it but it did drag some in the middle, getting a little bit too close to soap opera for me. Had nicely drawn characters and Brown used a different viewpoint in every chapter which was a nice touch.
Overall just wasn't much story there, even though the premise was interesting. I didn't see the ending coming and did think it was well done. Read another from Brown called Madball that was much better.
Hard to recommend unless you are just a Brown fan, again I still enjoyed it just not my cup of tea. Would hate to discourage anyone from reading since it is well written.
Overall just wasn't much story there, even though the premise was interesting. I didn't see the ending coming and did think it was well done. Read another from Brown called Madball that was much better.
Hard to recommend unless you are just a Brown fan, again I still enjoyed it just not my cup of tea. Would hate to discourage anyone from reading since it is well written.
September 27, 2020
1956 police procedural in which the killer is revealed early. Somewhat dated; a detective has to explain to the killer what a “bugged” room is, and at least one character harbors an attitude toward woman that you hope wasn’t indicative of the author’s - although you suspect it was.
Brown, a former detective himself, writes his world in a believable enough way. What’s ultimately unsatisfying is that the novel never really gets under your skin. There’s a thinness to it, and a distance, too.
Brown, a former detective himself, writes his world in a believable enough way. What’s ultimately unsatisfying is that the novel never really gets under your skin. There’s a thinness to it, and a distance, too.
February 27, 2018
While it doesn't really have the twists and turns that Brown is typically associated with, it does feature strong characters, a healthy dose of psychology, and an effective chapter-by-chapter first-person narrative that alternates between the major players. Less about the mystery, and more about the people.
February 26, 2020
Brown is just so smart; I love just about everything he's written and reread it every so often. Yes, even though I despise mysteries, thrillers, violence, intrigue... I still reread his crime fiction. Dang.
March 5, 2017
Brown's concept is creative, but I was expecting more of a suspense novel. So this is a somewhat mundane and slow-moving crime novel that raises some interesting philosophical questions. For example: is mercy killing a crime? Where do we draw the line between sanity and insanity? Are there times when we should circumvent the law in the name of justice?
The novel is structured as a series of monologues by several different characters. Two of the characters are police detectives. At least one of the characters is a murderer. The setting is Tucson, Arizona in the 1950's.
Fredric Brown, who is best remembered by science fiction lovers, wrote crime novels and stories as well as science fiction.
The novel is structured as a series of monologues by several different characters. Two of the characters are police detectives. At least one of the characters is a murderer. The setting is Tucson, Arizona in the 1950's.
Fredric Brown, who is best remembered by science fiction lovers, wrote crime novels and stories as well as science fiction.
April 25, 2017
Fredric Brown was known for his polished prose and innovative writing techniques (for his time).
His crime novels were also known for their "Wow! I didn't see THAT coming" endings.
The Lenient Beast features all three in an entertaining look at a "different" type of serial killer.
His crime novels were also known for their "Wow! I didn't see THAT coming" endings.
The Lenient Beast features all three in an entertaining look at a "different" type of serial killer.
Want to read
October 6, 2018Synopsis: a five-part tale of the perfect crime. The killer is a driven man because he cares so much for all of us!
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