Bird Isle

by Jack Vance, Alan Wade (Pseudonym)

Lying off the coast of Monterey, Bird Island is favored with tranquil beaches, coves and rocky hills. The island is home to a finishing school for girls, and a picturesque old hotel—in desperate need of repair. The hotel owner must sell plots of the island to finance renovation and enlargement. The buyers are an odd a whale hunter, an amateur photographer of artistic nudes, a fugitive from justice, a young poet who composes rhymes for greeting cards, and an explorer, accompanied by his pet baboon. Everything goes wrong, to the extent that even Rexie, the cheese-loving hotel cat is affected! So much for tranquility, on Bird Island… First published as Isle of Peril , Bird Isle mixes intrigue with humor, inspired by the great P.G. Wodehouse. Bird Isle is Volume 16 of the Spatterlight Press Signature Series.Released in the centenary of the author's birth, this handsome new collectionis based upon the prestigious Vance Integral Edition. Select volumes enjoyup-to-date maps, and many are graced with freshly-written forewords contributedby a distinguished group of authors. Each book bears a facsimile of theauthor's signature and a previously-unpublished photograph, chosen from family archives for the period the book was written. These uniquefeatures will be appreciated by all, from seasoned Vance collector to new reader sampling the spectrum of this author's influential work forthe first time. – John Vance II

Genres: Mystery

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Aka John Holbrook Vance, Peter Held, John Holbrook, Ellery Queen, John van See, Alan Wade.

The author was born in 1916 and educated at the University of California, first as a mining engineer, then majoring in physics and finally in journalism. During the 1940s and 1950s, he contributed widely to science fiction and fantasy magazines. His first novel, The Dying Earth , was published in 1950 to great acclaim. He won both of science fiction's most coveted trophies, the Hugo and Nebula awards. He also won an Edgar Award for his mystery novel The Man in the Cage . He lived in Oakland, California in a house he designed.

Reviews

[TJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bird Isle was written by Jack Vance in 1947 and had a draft title of Forbidden Island. It was first published ten years later in 1957 by Mystery House publishers with the title Isle of Peril under the pseudonym of Alan Wade. This written date of 1947 makes it the first mystery novel Vance wrote, or at least the first written mystery novel that was not lost. (Although Bird Isle is really more of a comic novel than a mystery.) In the 1988 Underwood-Miller release the title was changed from Isle of Peril to Bird Isle with Jack Vance listed as the author. The 2002 Vance Integral Edition the title was changed again, this time to Bird Island. The 2018 Spatterlight Press release reverted back to the title of Bird Isle.
For the most recent review and other Vance reviews please see:
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Bird Isle has about as much plot as a Marx Brother's movie with a plethora of odd characters and strange events. Despite this, it is engaging to read and easy to follow. But it is more of a comic novel than a mystery. Although it is sometimes dismissed as an uninteresting early Vance work, I really enjoyed reading it because of the novelty, humor and quirky characters and creatures. As indicated on the back cover of the Spatterlight issue, this novel was "inspired by the great P.G. Wodehouse."

Bird Island is a fictitious island about two miles off the coast of Monterey, California that is rumored to have once been owned by a gang of bootleggers. Most of the island is now owned by a Mr. Coves who owns and operates Bird Island Hotel. Also on the island with ten to twenty acres of her own is Miss Pickett owner and operator of "Miss Pickett's Fine Art Academy and Finishing School for Select Young Ladies." Our main character, Milo Green, who has an unpleasant encounter with Miss Pickett, describes her as having a "chin like the working end of a pipe wrench" and a "face like a salt water crocodile." She is extremely strict and controlling with her students and forbids "lipstick, nail polish, bop records, jive talk and the cha-cha." (Vance frequently mentions boats and jazz in his mystery novels.)

Although Mr. Coves' hotel rooms are very reasonably priced, he has few customers because the old hotel is in need of major repairs and renovation. Coves can barely pay the taxes and bills so in order to obtain the money needed to fix up his hotel he decides to sell off sections of the island that he does not use. He divides this into five lots of from 10 to 28 acres each and includes a provision that they are not allowed to be subdivided. Miss Pickett is the only other land owner so is very upset with this plan because she likes privacy and does not want the island to be developed. When Coves persists in his plan to sell lots, Miss Pickett decides to purchase one of the plots that is adjacent to hers so she can insure some privacy. But she continues to have frequent complaints and concerns, especially after the strange group of new land owners arrive.

Milo Green is the first outside person to show an interest in purchasing a lot and he arrives in his small sloop from Sausalito. Milo writes limericks which he sells to children's magazines. He refers to his writings as "doggerel." Two months ago he purchased a winning lottery ticket for the Mexican Grand National and ended up with $20,000 after taxes. (We are informed in the novel that back then houses in San Francisco sold for half of that amount, so it was a considerable sum of money.) Milo purchases ten acres with a view and plans to build a house on it. In the meantime he meets Miss Pickett's young, attractive niece, Celia, and a friendship and romance develop much to Miss Pickett's dismay and disapproval. Miss Pickett does not like Milo and is very protective of her niece, Celia, whom she just hired as one of her teachers. Miss Pickett had an unpleasant interaction with Milo earlier so insists that her niece have nothing to do with that "insolent young boor."

A retired business man, Mortimer "Slippy" Archer, who seems to have a shady past and now dabbles in nude photography, buys another parcel. So does a San Francisco attorney who plans to use his plot as a retreat for him and his secretary. The most eccentric person who purchases a parcel is a character named Ike O'Rourke. O'Rourke is described as having "elemental vigor" and a straggly yellow beard. He is from Alaska, arrives with his dogs and is said to speak "knowingly of tundras, and igloos and dog sleds." He also seems to enjoy pointing his shotgun at others, has a peculiar odor, likes to grind up and eat pemmican and has a powerful love potion developed by Eskimos. There is also an explorer from Africa who arrives with his pet baboon named Banjo who was a "gift of Batonga, chief of the Pulu Tribe." The hotel cat, named Rexie, seems to develop a particular antipathy for Banjo whom he considers to be an intruder. Rexie also unintentionally creates mischief and loves cheese, often stealing it from the chef's cheese cellar.

Additionally we encounter a university student intruder who comes to the island to gather fifteen different species of bird manure, a ginseng business scam to which Milo subscribes, a stalker who seems to assault others, some finishing school students who almost cause a scandal after they pose for nude photos, a mysterious shoe thief, and a visiting mystic named Mahmoud Singh with the "silhouette of a cucumber" who sends out "Questing Vibrations" while in a "supra-somatic state" in order to "compose the corporeal frame while Seeking Essences wing and soar above the island" in order to locate a bootlegger's treasure rumored to be somewhere on Bird Island. The mystic insists on brewing his morning coffee "in a small copper brazier fired by camel dung." There is also a hotel visitor, Tiger Joe Connolly, who was just released from San Quentin Prison and seems to have an interest in blackmailing and drug smuggling. He too has heard rumors that Big Ben Manzio, who use to own the island, "left a lot of boodle around here somewhere." Tiger teams up with his old pal Slippy, the nude photographer, in a scheme to run everybody off the island in order to find the treasure for themselves while using the island for their illicit drug smuggling from Mexico.

I liked Bird Isle largely because of the eccentric characters, odd humor, and novelty of it. But don't read it expecting a mystery novel with a well-developed plot. It is more P. G. Wodehouse than Agatha Christie. Also if you are not quite certain what ambergris is, you might want to look it up before reading the novel. Bird Isle should appeal to many Vance fans if they don't mind the over the top, quirky humor. I’ve read Bird Isle three times so far and rated it a 4 each time or “Really liked it.”

[Jaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in VIE as Bird Island.

[Erin Haight · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of his early forays into contemporary comic fiction, Bird Isle is simply not a very good work. There are some glimmers of Vance's brand of wit here, but the characters are ill-formed, the dialogue is sterile, and this generally reads like an early draft that should have been worked much harder prior to publication. And as it was originally published under a pseudonym, this was probably recognized by the author at the time. Most notable for its overwrought similes, this is a tale best left unexamined by all but the Vance faithful.