The longest, last and saddest of Patrick Quentin's six "Puzzle" novels, though not the last of the mysteries he wrote featuring Peter and Iris Duluth, PUZZLE FOR PILGRIMS is nearly free of any fun. If you liked Malcolm Lowry's UNDER THE VOLCANO, the horrid human relationship hells of PUZZLE FOR PILGRIMS may entertain you. But otherwise, it's like a little stab in the heart for all of us who loved seeing Peter and Iris together, Peter the alcoholic theater producer who summoned the courage to sober up and face himself, and Iris the slumming Hollywood goddess who somehow shrugged and said, "I take this jerk" etc., despite her being utterly gorgeous and alluring on the Gene Tierney/Hedy Lamarr model. We watched them struggle with their love for each other, finally overcome obstacles and marry, get through the war, even get through amnesia! And what do we get here? A couple more like Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders in Rossellini weary, purgatorial VOYAGE IN ITALY, a couple no longer in love. In fact they've each found other, adulterous partners. Peter's gotten himself involved with brittle, English nympho Marietta Haven, while Iris is with Marietta's brother, UK expatriate novelist Martin Haven, a thatch of blonde hair and a boyish appeal. Iris' problem? Martin is still married, to wealthy vengeful harridan Sally Haven.
All of our characters are living in Malcolm Lowry's savage, colorful Mexico, if you can call it living, for most of the book is spent with each of them wondering if they've made the right choice and what has led them to this corner of the world, depraved bohemians and artists and trust fund babies whose very existences seem pointless. Into their lives a very specvial private eye comes to terrorize them, like Terence Stamp in Pasolini's TEOREMA--Jake, a man on the make if ever there was one. Little by little he insinuates himself into all of their lives, a big blocky stocky man who exudes testosterone, so much so that even Peter and Martin come under Jake's spell. The ending isn't as fabtastic as some of the previous Duluth masterworks: it's too much like some Ellery Queen novels of the period, THE MURDERER IS A FOX and CALAMITY TOWN among them. You'll see.
Patrick Quentin of course rivalled Ellery Queen for having the most homoerotics in a 1940s detective novel, but here the two collaborators Wheeler and Webb really go to town; it's as though they decided to write an X-rated scenario and just left out the explicit markers. There's Jake, stripping Martin of his pjs, reducing him to shivers, threatening to hunt for an expensive woman's bracelet up poor Martin's arse; there's Jake, easily outdoing tough narrator Peter in terms of manliness at every turn, so at ease with his masculinity he's always shedding his clothes whenever Peter's around, dropping his trousers on the floor and parading au naturel to stun Pete with his flopping, swaggering manhood; there's Jake wearing nothing but tight, bulgy white jockey shorts, collapsing onto Peter and making "short convulsive jerks" with his body, toppling him to the carpet of the bedroom. You think Mexico's hot? It was ice cold till Patrick Quentin got there and worked out all the possibilities of love between brutal, film noir men.
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