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The Rheingold Route
Musical Studies
- GenresMystery Thriller
276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
67 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Maling
33 books8 followersArthur Gordon Maling (born 1923) is an American writer of crime and thriller novels.. He graduated from Francis W. Parker School, Chicago in 1940; in 1944 he received a B.A. from Harvard University. In the Second World War Maling was an ensign in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1945. From 1945 to 1946 he was a reporter for The San Diego Journal. After 1946, he worked as an executive manager for Maling Brothers, a retail shoe chain.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 26, 2020
Arthur Maling, the author of 1980’s winner, The Rheingold Route, is a difficult author for whom to collect biographical background. Various sources I consulted agreed in giving the following information: he was born into a famous shoe family, Maling Brothers, he went to Harvard, he served in the Navy during World War II, and went back to running Maling Brothers after (or at the same time as) writing his books. I finally found a source with more interesting information about him, but that turned out to be a different mystery blog that is also reviewing the Edgar winners, but faster. I’ll have more to say about that column in my next posting, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to benefit from their research.
The book was equally obscure – like some other past winners, such as The Lingala Code, I could only get my hands on a used copy, which again turned out to be an old library’s copy. The Fairfax County Public Library, to be specific. Patrick Henry Branch.
What the Rheingold Route is, is a particular route from London to Switzerland through the Netherlands using a train called the Rheingold Express. A shady lawyer in London named Garwood simultaneously sets two men in motion along this route. He hires a man named John Cochrane to smuggle three hundred thousand pounds from London to Switzerland; he tells Cochrane that these funds belong to a woman who is soon to die and whose son (Garwood’s nephew) hopes to get the funds early and avoid estate taxes. Garwood also hires another shady character named Kenneth O’Rourke to intercept Cochrane and recover the money before Cochrane gets there. To keep things tidy, he coerces Cochrane to using the Rheingold Route and it becomes obvious to us that this is to make things easy for O’Rourke. Why Garwood is setting two contradictory schemes in motion is part of the mystery, though most readers won’t be very surprised at the reason.
John Cochrane is an expert smuggler who joined the smuggling game after a personal tragedy that saps his will to live. You might wonder if it was just an unfortunate coincidence that Maling’s hero has the same name as O. J. Simpson’s lawyer – after all, the O. J. trial was in the 90s and The Rheingold Route was published in 1979. But the real-world Johnny Cochran had already defended Lenny Bruce by 1979 so presumably was in the news. What bothers me more about Maling’s Cochran is that he is another in a recurring series of “troubled” protagonists who the reader is supposed to find intriguing because of their flaws and then their flaws are strenuously explained away to return their character to perfect plainness. Cochrane’s quickly vanishing flaw is first hinted at on p. 20, when we learn that the death of someone named Stephanie sent Cochrane into a spiral that left him unemployable and unable to love – and thus susceptible to join the high-risk and ethics-free world of smuggling.
Meanwhile, his antagonist O’Rourke is quite amoral and has been reassured by Garwood that the death of his quarry is not a deal-breaker. O’Rourke is comically racist, vain, and xenophobic. A big deal is also made of the fact that he is bisexual – to me 1979 is very late in the history of mystery for sexual orientation to still be part of a villain’s profile. Maybe Maling was only trying to demonstrate that O’Rourke is so vain that he can not imagine anyone of any sex or orientation not finding him irresistible.
So a cat and mouse ensues between Cochrane and O’Rourke which actually I started to find more interesting when it got into the technicalities of travel. The European scenery and milieu was also surprisingly interesting and partly made up for the unconvincing characters.
(review first appeared on www.vladimirmortsgna.com)
The book was equally obscure – like some other past winners, such as The Lingala Code, I could only get my hands on a used copy, which again turned out to be an old library’s copy. The Fairfax County Public Library, to be specific. Patrick Henry Branch.
What the Rheingold Route is, is a particular route from London to Switzerland through the Netherlands using a train called the Rheingold Express. A shady lawyer in London named Garwood simultaneously sets two men in motion along this route. He hires a man named John Cochrane to smuggle three hundred thousand pounds from London to Switzerland; he tells Cochrane that these funds belong to a woman who is soon to die and whose son (Garwood’s nephew) hopes to get the funds early and avoid estate taxes. Garwood also hires another shady character named Kenneth O’Rourke to intercept Cochrane and recover the money before Cochrane gets there. To keep things tidy, he coerces Cochrane to using the Rheingold Route and it becomes obvious to us that this is to make things easy for O’Rourke. Why Garwood is setting two contradictory schemes in motion is part of the mystery, though most readers won’t be very surprised at the reason.
John Cochrane is an expert smuggler who joined the smuggling game after a personal tragedy that saps his will to live. You might wonder if it was just an unfortunate coincidence that Maling’s hero has the same name as O. J. Simpson’s lawyer – after all, the O. J. trial was in the 90s and The Rheingold Route was published in 1979. But the real-world Johnny Cochran had already defended Lenny Bruce by 1979 so presumably was in the news. What bothers me more about Maling’s Cochran is that he is another in a recurring series of “troubled” protagonists who the reader is supposed to find intriguing because of their flaws and then their flaws are strenuously explained away to return their character to perfect plainness. Cochrane’s quickly vanishing flaw is first hinted at on p. 20, when we learn that the death of someone named Stephanie sent Cochrane into a spiral that left him unemployable and unable to love – and thus susceptible to join the high-risk and ethics-free world of smuggling.
Meanwhile, his antagonist O’Rourke is quite amoral and has been reassured by Garwood that the death of his quarry is not a deal-breaker. O’Rourke is comically racist, vain, and xenophobic. A big deal is also made of the fact that he is bisexual – to me 1979 is very late in the history of mystery for sexual orientation to still be part of a villain’s profile. Maybe Maling was only trying to demonstrate that O’Rourke is so vain that he can not imagine anyone of any sex or orientation not finding him irresistible.
So a cat and mouse ensues between Cochrane and O’Rourke which actually I started to find more interesting when it got into the technicalities of travel. The European scenery and milieu was also surprisingly interesting and partly made up for the unconvincing characters.
(review first appeared on www.vladimirmortsgna.com)
Want to read
November 10, 2019Synopsis: Cochrane wanted to get out of smuggling, but is forced to go one more time. He's been betrayed and the authorities have his name.
January 30, 2018
A reluctant smuggler who wants to get out of the business is blackmailed into one last run. Meanwhile, the client who hired him has also hired a thug to catch him and turn him over to the authorities, or worse.
This book won the Edgar Award for best crime novel but is so obscure now that to read it I had to buy a used copy sold by a library that no longer needed it. Some books that I have bought in that fashion turn out to be forgotten masterpieces - I wish I could say the same about The Rheingold Route. It aspired to be an Oceans 11-style split-second crime caper, but the plots and counterplots struck me as arbitrary. At the end it was exciting in spite of itself, but the villains were too ridiculously villainous, and the troubled hero who was supposed to win our affection despite his checkered past turned out not to be responsible for those tragedies in the past.
This book won the Edgar Award for best crime novel but is so obscure now that to read it I had to buy a used copy sold by a library that no longer needed it. Some books that I have bought in that fashion turn out to be forgotten masterpieces - I wish I could say the same about The Rheingold Route. It aspired to be an Oceans 11-style split-second crime caper, but the plots and counterplots struck me as arbitrary. At the end it was exciting in spite of itself, but the villains were too ridiculously villainous, and the troubled hero who was supposed to win our affection despite his checkered past turned out not to be responsible for those tragedies in the past.
September 16, 2022
This book has pretty average reviews, but I found it to be entertaining and with an interesting plot. The bit of romance thrown in fit well with the primary characters.
October 17, 2008
I came to this book with an expectation that I would enjoy it (which I did, eventually) and that I had already read it (which I hadn't). I now realize that I must have read at least one of Maling's Brock Potter books. The Rheingold Route is a stand-alone.
After reading the first couple of chapters, I put the book aside. It may have been simply "where my head was at," but I wasn't very interested in a story that seemed to be all about criminals and their ways of double-crossing each other.
But, since I'd committed to reading all the Edgar winners in this category, I went back to it. As the book goes on, the protagonist, John Cochran, a currency smuggler, is shown to be a much more sympathetic character than I'd found him at first. His opponents display their character flaws, which will trip them up in the end.
One thing I especially enjoyed about this book was the way Maling used changing points-of-view to build suspense and move the story along. This is not a new technique and in fact was used by both Forsyth and Follett in their own Edgar winners, which I read recently. In The Rheingold Route we don't get a law enforcement viewpoint, but we do get a couple of chapters told from the POV of an innocent bystander who is caught up in the actions of the villainous O'Rourke. I thought Maling did a particularly nice job with the various feelings this character experienced during the course of his "adventure."
I also appreciated how Maling essentially let the reader figure out what was going on (why the person who had hired Cochran also hired his pursuer) without explaining every detail. Eventually the protagonist has a conjecture about the motive, but the important thing is the chase.
Cochran (not his real name) is a character with a complicated past that has brought him from being a U.S. Treasury agent to a life as a currency smuggler with a false passport. He's a man who has made bad choices for good reasons, and who has known great sorrow as a consequence. At the end of the book, all is not neatly tied up with a fancy ribbon, but Cochran can se possibilities for a better future.
For an international thriller that focuses, not on the fate of nations, but simply on money and the ways it is used, misused, and moved around, I don't think you can do better than The Rheingold Route.
After reading the first couple of chapters, I put the book aside. It may have been simply "where my head was at," but I wasn't very interested in a story that seemed to be all about criminals and their ways of double-crossing each other.
But, since I'd committed to reading all the Edgar winners in this category, I went back to it. As the book goes on, the protagonist, John Cochran, a currency smuggler, is shown to be a much more sympathetic character than I'd found him at first. His opponents display their character flaws, which will trip them up in the end.
One thing I especially enjoyed about this book was the way Maling used changing points-of-view to build suspense and move the story along. This is not a new technique and in fact was used by both Forsyth and Follett in their own Edgar winners, which I read recently. In The Rheingold Route we don't get a law enforcement viewpoint, but we do get a couple of chapters told from the POV of an innocent bystander who is caught up in the actions of the villainous O'Rourke. I thought Maling did a particularly nice job with the various feelings this character experienced during the course of his "adventure."
I also appreciated how Maling essentially let the reader figure out what was going on (why the person who had hired Cochran also hired his pursuer) without explaining every detail. Eventually the protagonist has a conjecture about the motive, but the important thing is the chase.
Cochran (not his real name) is a character with a complicated past that has brought him from being a U.S. Treasury agent to a life as a currency smuggler with a false passport. He's a man who has made bad choices for good reasons, and who has known great sorrow as a consequence. At the end of the book, all is not neatly tied up with a fancy ribbon, but Cochran can se possibilities for a better future.
For an international thriller that focuses, not on the fate of nations, but simply on money and the ways it is used, misused, and moved around, I don't think you can do better than The Rheingold Route.
January 2, 2009
I loved this book. I will read more of his. The main character smuggles money out of England. He is hired by a man that says he is the Lawyer of the man that normally hires him. That makes him wary but he knows a lot of detais. In the next chapter this lawyer hires another man to follow and rob him once on the content. The chapters alternate between these two characters points of view. Ocassionally a minor character too.
January 17, 2015
Winner of the Edgar in 1979 for Best Novel, this stand alone crime caper steps outside of the genre. John Cochrane is a divorced American stranded in England who survives as an illegal currency courier. He takes on an assignment that unravels, sending him on a different trajectory.
June 20, 2016
Not an easy book to find in my quest to read all Edgar award winners; thx to an inter- county library loan, another one bites the dust; a tasty morsel of a book but not an entree
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews