The Tooth and the Nail

by Bill S. Ballinger

The copyright notice stated that the novel had appeared previously in condensed form in the March 1955 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Genres: Crime, Mystery

244 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1955

About the author

Bill S Ballinger received his B.A. in 1934 at the University of Wisconsin. From 1934 he worked in advertising, and as a radio and television writer. After traving Europe and the Near East, Ballinger moved to southern California, to take advantage of the television 'boom' of the 1950s as a script writer. Between the years 1977 and 1979 he was an associate professor of writing at the California State University, Norhtridge. In 1960, Ballinger received for his TV work Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ballinger’s “The Tooth and the Nail” uses a clever ploy of alternating chapters to keep the reader in suspense. One set is a flashback and the other a flash forward. The two sets of chapters are both intriguing on their own, but are seemingly disconnected for much of the novel. And, even when you begin to see the connection, don’t think you have solved all the riddles until the end. Ballinger could have written this as a police procedural with a detective slowly fettering out the clues. He didn’t. He could have written this as a straight first-person exposition from the lead character’s point of view. He didn’t. Thus, as a reader, you effectively get the mystery puzzle and the background history of motive on parallel tracks.

One set of chapters is a murder trial, told step by step through direct and cross-examination with objections and bench conferences thrown in. This is in the style of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series. You are thrown in the middle of a trial and only learn that the body or corpse has not been found, but a finger has and a bullet and, of course, a tooth, and some form of flesh and type O blood. It’s not much materially for the prosecution to work with, but they have put a case together, a convincing case. And, no, completely destroying the corpse doesn’t get a killer in the clear. It just makes him look more sinister.

The other set of chapters concerns a magician, Lew Mountain, including his running away to join the circus at seventeen. We follow Lew as he has a meet-cute event with Tally, a beautiful woman whose cab pulls up in front of his hotel with her unable to pay the cab fare as her wallet is missing. Lew kindly pays her fare and puts her up, no strings attached. He eventually includes her in his magic act because what good is a magician without his gorgeous assistant and then marries her for good measure.

Lew explains in his narrative: “It all began on the day I met Tally Shaw. Meeting her, with due apologies to the poets, was not the same as listening to a nightingale sing in a garden, or finding a spring of cool water after thirsting for days in a desert.”

Tally has a mysterious past. She has nobody from her past she ever talks about except her deceased uncle. She arrived with two bags, one heavy with something, and which she is reluctant to discuss the contents. Is she on the run from someone? Is someone after her? What is in the heavy bag? What loot does she have? Ultimately, there is a question of whether Lew can trust her. Is she an innocent or a femme fatale on the run looking for the next sucker to take care of her?

As noted earlier, Ballinger runs these two seemingly separate stories out throughout the novel. There are no names in common in the two stories. There is a murder, but it’s unclear how that is connected to Lew and Talley. Ballinger is quite adept at producing different types of novels which are not carbon copies of what else he has produced.

[WJEP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ballinger's storytelling is addictive.

From the introduction to this edition The Tooth and the Nail / The Wife of the Red-Haired Man:

"The book, which became an instant bestseller, reintroduced a gimmick (the Sealed Mystery) previously used by Harper from 1929 to 1934 -- a thin blue wrapper bound into the book, three-quarters of the way through, challenging the reader to either break the seal and read the conclusion of the story, or return the book and get their money back."

When I finished chapter 16 (50 pages from the end), I stopped and asked myself if I wanted a refund (the Signet paperback only cost a quarter). No, I would rather keep reading, but I tried to guess the solution to the mystery.

The book was written as two seemingly disconnected stories alternating between even and odd chapters. The mystery was how they were connected. One story was a courtroom trial of man accused of murdering and dismembering his chauffeur. The other story was about a magician and his squirrelly wife. The solution seemed obvious to me. I was wrong about one important detail I thought he chopped off his own finger, but otherwise I nailed it.

Maybe because the main character was a magician, the whole thing seemed too stagy and fantastical. But I read this very quickly, in only a couple of sittings, so I must have liked it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the gimmick that keeps on giving. As I described in my review of Bill S. Ballinger's Portrait in Smoke, the author's narrative method is deceptively simple: First-person chapters alternate with third-person chapters with each narrative line raising questions about the other until the plot elements fuse at the end of the book. This time out, the first-person story of magician Lew Mountain alternates with the third-person story of a murder trial--but who is on trial for killing whom? And how exactly does Lew Mountain figure into the court case? The answers are great fun to discover.

[Shenyang Xu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book used the so-called ＂narrative trick＂，which is popular among Japanese mystery books nowadays，however， Bill did an imaginative attempt in that year.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill Ballinger was an excellent story teller, and, although I figured out the end well before he told it, The Tooth and the Nail is one of his best. Although written in 1950, the story is fresh and engaging. We follow two stories: one of a magician whose wife has been murdered by a con man determined to steal some counterfeit printing plates, and one of a man on trial for the murder of a mystery man. The two stories eventually interweave and the ending, while predictable, is satisfying. The trial scenes are particularly well written, some of the best I have read.

[Felipemarlou · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is one thing that can be said about Bill Ballinger, it is that he has an extraordinary ability to tell stories. The historical setting is contemporary with the publication of the novel, that is, the 1950s. You can breathe the whole atmosphere of bars and night clubs of New York at the time. But this is the least important because the novel could take place at the end of the 19th century. It is the story of crimes, the people who are surrounded by them... the story of revenge. And above all, as happened in Portrait in Smoke (1957) and in The Wife of the Red-Haired Man (1957), the writer's ability to draw from a fine thread and build a great investigation. Here Ballinger, at the halfway point of his cycle of mythical novels from the fifties, anticipates the technique later used in The Longest Second (1957) and the aforementioned The Wife of the Red-Haired Man. In this way, the odd chapters are dedicated to showing the third-person narration of a trial about which we know nothing (and in which the lawyer and prosecutor have entered into a relentless game of chess with which to dazzle the jury...it is impossible not to remember Arthur Storch and Ralph Bellamy in The Defender (1957), while the pair numbers chapters, in first person, recount in the past what happened to our protagonist, the conjurer Lew Mountain. And as with Nolan, another conspicuous conjurer, magic happens The magic of, when the time comes, converging both timelines, both narratives, to end up surprising the reader (in the positive sense of the term, of course), in an admirable and memorable way, with narrative precision almost as mathematical and relentless as a plane. of Fritz Lang in the cinema... Although this novel is not Chandler or Thompson because it neither plays in the league of the dialogues of the first nor does it have the wild madness of the second, it has the hallmarks of every good crime novel: skillful descriptive strokes (physical, psychological, and environmental), effective snippets of violence and surreptitious doses of sarcasm...This is what I call telling a story. Great Ballinger, highly recommended.
-----

SPANISH

Si algo se puede decir de Bill Ballinger es que tiene una capacidad extraordinaria para contar historias. El marco histórico es contemporáneo a la publicación de la novela, es decir los años 50's. Se respira todo ese ambiente de bares y night clubs del Nueva York de la época. Pero esto es lo de menos porque la novela podría suceder a finales del siglo XIX. Es la historia de unos crímenes, las personas que se ven rodeados con ellos... la historia de una venganza. Y sobre todo, como sucedía en Retrato en humo (1957) y en La mujer del pelirrojo (1957) la capacidad del escritor para a partir de un fino hilo ir tirando y construir toda una gran investigación. Aquí Ballinger en el ecuador de su ciclo de novelas míticas de los cincuentas, se anticipa a la técnica empleada luego en El segundo más largo (1957) y la citada La mujer del pelirrojo. De esta forma, los capítulos impares se dedican a mostrar la narración en tercera persona de un juicio del que nada sabemos (y en el que abogado y fiscal han entrado en un implacable juego de ajedrez con el que deslumbrar al jurado…imposible no acordarse de Arthur storch y Ralph Bellamy en The defender (1957), mientras que los capítulos pares, en primera persona, van desgranando en pretérito lo acaecido a nuestro prota, el prestidigitador Lew Mountain. Y como ocurre con Nolan, otro conspicuo prestidigitador, ocurre la magia. La magia de, llegado el momento, converger ambas líneas temporales, ambas narraciones, para acabar sorprendiendo al lector (en el sentido positivo del término, claro), de forma admirable y memorable, con precisión narrativa casi tan matemática e implacable como un plano de Fritz Lang en el cine... Aunque esta novela no es Chandler ni Thompson porque ni juega en la liga de los diálogos del primero ni tampoco posee la locura salvaje del segundo, tiene las marcas de la casa de toda buena novela negra: hábiles trazos descriptivos (físicos, psicológicos, y ambientales), eficaces retazos de violencia y subrepticias dosis de sarcasmo…Esto es lo que yo llamo narrar una historia. Grande Ballinger, muy recomendable.

[Fabio Pucci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Noir che si distingue per il suo particolare (soprattutto in relazione all'anno di pubblicazione) meccanismo: due linee narrative parallele di cui solo con il progredire delle pagine si scopriranno gli effettivi legami. Un meccanismo accuratissimo, in cui il lettore troverà un indubbio piacere intellettuale nello scoprire, non senza sorprese, come i tasselli verranno ricomposti.
Tutto preciso, accurato, sebbene un po' troppo cerebrale e con qualche digressione non necessaria (il racconto del passato circense del protagonista). Un buon romanzo, che per spiccare il volo avrebbe avuto giusto bisogno di quel tocco di follia in più, del colpo di scena narrativamente spericolato memore di John Dickson Carr o di certi lavori di Fredric Brown (del quale però ritroviamo alcune reminiscenze, dall'ambientazione in un'America un po' hard boiled allo sfondo circense).

***

[Mar Sán · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una trampa muy bien tendida

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: the story of a murder trial; but who's on trial? How does Lew Mountain figure into this case?