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The Case of the l6 Beans
This," interrupted the Sicilian in back of him coolly, and drilling even harder into Parradine's spine with that small hard object," is a snatch, Parradine. No beat up, but a snatch. A hundred-grand snatch! And don't bother to set up any yodelling, because you know as well as me that there's two heavy doors--no, three--shutting this room off from even the floor where the elevator stops. Yeah, Parradine, it's a hundred-grand snatch, and with 6 people in it. So you see we mean business! All 6 of us. Just how that hundred grand is to be cut up ain't none of your concern. Excepting perhaps that it's your estate who's gonna kick in with it.
- GenresMystery
Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1944
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About the author
Harry Stephen Keeler
167 books55 followersBorn in Chicago in 1890, Keeler spent his childhood exclusively in this city, which was so beloved by the author that a large number of his works took place in and around it. In many of his novels, Keeler refers to Chicago as "the London of the west." The expression is explained in the opening of Thieves' Nights (1929):
"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
"Here ... were seemingly the same hawkers ... selling the same goods ... here too was the confusion, the babble of tongues of many lands, the restless, shoving throng containing faces and features of a thousand racial castes, and last but not least, here on Halsted and Maxwell streets, Chicago, were the same dirt, flying bits of torn paper, and confusion that graced the junction of Middlesex and Whitechapel High streets far across the globe."
Other locales for Keeler novels include New Orleans and New York. In his later works, Keeler's settings are often more generic settings such as Big River, or a city in which all buildings and streets are either nameless or fictional. Keeler is known to have visited London at least once, but his occasional depictions of British characters are consistently implausible.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 9, 2015
Las historias de Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967) son extravagantes, imaginativas y geniales. Están basadas en casualidades improbables y giros inesperados. Keeler bautizó a su manera de crear historias como webword plot, donde la multitud de tramas conforman una tela de araña que devienen en carambolas imposibles, al final de las cuáles el lector no puede más que sonreír ante el ingenio y el talento del escritor.
‘El caso de las 16 judías’ (The Case of the 16 Beans, 1944) comienza cuando Boyce Barkstone recibe una noticia sorprendente: su abuelo le ha dejado como testamento únicamente 16 judías de diferentes clases, cuando él esperaba un herencia de 100.000 dólares. Además, están auditando los negocios inmobiliarios de la familia Barkstone, descubriéndose un desfase de 5.000 dólares, del que acusan a Boyce. La posibilidad de ir a la cárcel es muy real, lo que también implicaría no poder contraer matrimonio con su prometida. A partir de aquí Boyce empezará a elucubrar por qué su querido abuelo le ha hecho esta faena. En otra trama paralela, sabremos de la intención de Gilbert Parradine de hacerse con un libro único, La salida, que pretende contener todo el saber de la Antigua China, aplicado a cualquier caso en cualquier época. ¿Podrá ayudar este libro a sacar de apuros a los protagonistas?
Harry Stephen Keeler escribió cinco novelas, de lectura independiente, donde aparece el libro 'La salida' (The Way Out): ‘El abanico de pavo real’, ‘El libro de piel de tiburón’, ‘El libro de las hojas de color naranja’, ‘Dos señoras extrañas’ y ‘El caso de las 16 judías’.
El Instituto Editorial Reus publicó en España 55 novelas de Harry Stephen Keeler entre los años 40 y 60 del pasado siglo. Me resulta incomprensible que a fecha de hoy ninguna editorial haya apostado seriamente por la reedición de estas obras, aparte de unas pocas más que no llegaron a traducirse nunca. Y es que Keeler tiene novelas absolutamente geniales.
‘El caso de las 16 judías’ (The Case of the 16 Beans, 1944) comienza cuando Boyce Barkstone recibe una noticia sorprendente: su abuelo le ha dejado como testamento únicamente 16 judías de diferentes clases, cuando él esperaba un herencia de 100.000 dólares. Además, están auditando los negocios inmobiliarios de la familia Barkstone, descubriéndose un desfase de 5.000 dólares, del que acusan a Boyce. La posibilidad de ir a la cárcel es muy real, lo que también implicaría no poder contraer matrimonio con su prometida. A partir de aquí Boyce empezará a elucubrar por qué su querido abuelo le ha hecho esta faena. En otra trama paralela, sabremos de la intención de Gilbert Parradine de hacerse con un libro único, La salida, que pretende contener todo el saber de la Antigua China, aplicado a cualquier caso en cualquier época. ¿Podrá ayudar este libro a sacar de apuros a los protagonistas?
Harry Stephen Keeler escribió cinco novelas, de lectura independiente, donde aparece el libro 'La salida' (The Way Out): ‘El abanico de pavo real’, ‘El libro de piel de tiburón’, ‘El libro de las hojas de color naranja’, ‘Dos señoras extrañas’ y ‘El caso de las 16 judías’.
El Instituto Editorial Reus publicó en España 55 novelas de Harry Stephen Keeler entre los años 40 y 60 del pasado siglo. Me resulta incomprensible que a fecha de hoy ninguna editorial haya apostado seriamente por la reedición de estas obras, aparte de unas pocas más que no llegaron a traducirse nunca. Y es que Keeler tiene novelas absolutamente geniales.
queued-up
June 21, 2016Oh my god, Harry Stephen Keeler was a real author! I thought HSK was a joke Twitter account … which indeed it is … but in fact HSK existed and was the author of innumerable crappy mysteries, the kind you read for the irony, like the winning entries in the annual Bulwer-Litton fiction contest.
This one, about an heir who inherits 16 dried beans from his wealthy grandfather because of a series of improbable misunderstandings, is eccentric, dated in a hilariously racist way, and written so poorly it's actually fun to read. In short doses, that is. Reading it is a bit like the experience of enjoying a horrible old science fiction movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000 … full of laughs but you don't want to wear yourself out by watching back-to-back episodes.
So for now, three chapters in, I'm putting The Case of the 16 Beans on my reading-episodically shelf. I'll pick it up again from time to time, whenever I need a good laugh.
This one, about an heir who inherits 16 dried beans from his wealthy grandfather because of a series of improbable misunderstandings, is eccentric, dated in a hilariously racist way, and written so poorly it's actually fun to read. In short doses, that is. Reading it is a bit like the experience of enjoying a horrible old science fiction movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000 … full of laughs but you don't want to wear yourself out by watching back-to-back episodes.
So for now, three chapters in, I'm putting The Case of the 16 Beans on my reading-episodically shelf. I'll pick it up again from time to time, whenever I need a good laugh.
November 17, 2013
I was dubious about the Keeler hype but I've got to say - this book was something else. I'm hooked. If you can't make it through the first section you'll have to trust me when I say - it gets better.
June 9, 2017
At the "peak" of his career in the 1940's writing unbearably convoluted and somewhat insane detective fiction, Harry Stephen Keeler in posterity has earned the reputation as the Ed Wood of detective fiction.
Having only read one of his previous works, "The Riddle of the Traveling Skull" many years ago, I had forgotten how batshit crazy this man was. Not your run of the mill and a little off kilter crazy but more a full on "what the hell was wrong with this man?" kind of crazy. I mean, what does one do with this story?
To briefly summarize this mess, we start with a young man cut out of an inheritance named Boyce Barkstone(!) who has been cut out of his inheritance by his grandfather and instead been given a sack of 16 random beans. Intriguing!
Rather than just take the slight in stride and move on in his life (because what kind of novel would that be) Boyce spends a good 75 pages or so researching the history of beans, Chinese soil, and some kind of mad Da Vinci code of legumes where he believes a secret message lies.
Wait, what??
Just as this is close to mercifully wrapping up, Boyce's story is yanked away from us and we are transported to a story about a theater manager pursuing a rare book of Chinese(again) wisdom. But not any book of Chinese wisdom, a compilation of all the Chinese wisdom ever recorded throughout history! Sounds great! Of course this book has almost nothing to do with anything else that happens as we next encounter a kidnapping, a legless man from China(again!) who rides a "roller-skate cart(?) , and more bizarre codes, this time from sparrow eggs.
If all this isn't enough to make you jump out of a window (or if you're a more sensible person, simply toss this book out of a window instead), the horrible dated and racist characters in this book are cringe worthy enough on their own. The dialects of Black , Italian, Chinese, and a plethora of other "ethnic" characters all have passages of truly unreadable strings of dialogue.
Oh, did I mention there are characters with names like, Vanzwell Cooperider, Ochiltree Jark and Bogardus Sandsteel?
I can't give this book one star simply because of the mere mind numbing insanity and audacity of it all. If ever there was a book that exemplified the "it's like a train wreck you know is coming but you can't take your eyes off of it" this is it.
Having only read one of his previous works, "The Riddle of the Traveling Skull" many years ago, I had forgotten how batshit crazy this man was. Not your run of the mill and a little off kilter crazy but more a full on "what the hell was wrong with this man?" kind of crazy. I mean, what does one do with this story?
To briefly summarize this mess, we start with a young man cut out of an inheritance named Boyce Barkstone(!) who has been cut out of his inheritance by his grandfather and instead been given a sack of 16 random beans. Intriguing!
Rather than just take the slight in stride and move on in his life (because what kind of novel would that be) Boyce spends a good 75 pages or so researching the history of beans, Chinese soil, and some kind of mad Da Vinci code of legumes where he believes a secret message lies.
Wait, what??
Just as this is close to mercifully wrapping up, Boyce's story is yanked away from us and we are transported to a story about a theater manager pursuing a rare book of Chinese(again) wisdom. But not any book of Chinese wisdom, a compilation of all the Chinese wisdom ever recorded throughout history! Sounds great! Of course this book has almost nothing to do with anything else that happens as we next encounter a kidnapping, a legless man from China(again!) who rides a "roller-skate cart(?) , and more bizarre codes, this time from sparrow eggs.
If all this isn't enough to make you jump out of a window (or if you're a more sensible person, simply toss this book out of a window instead), the horrible dated and racist characters in this book are cringe worthy enough on their own. The dialects of Black , Italian, Chinese, and a plethora of other "ethnic" characters all have passages of truly unreadable strings of dialogue.
Oh, did I mention there are characters with names like, Vanzwell Cooperider, Ochiltree Jark and Bogardus Sandsteel?
I can't give this book one star simply because of the mere mind numbing insanity and audacity of it all. If ever there was a book that exemplified the "it's like a train wreck you know is coming but you can't take your eyes off of it" this is it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews