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Type of bind: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Oak Grove
Manufacturer: Oak Grove
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 168
Printing Date: April 29, 2008
Publishing house: Oak Grove
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 54163
Studio: Oak Grove
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a selection from CHAPTER 1: YOU can never tell what a drunken Irishman will do. You can make a flying guess; you can make a lot of flying guesses. You can list them in the order of their probability. The likely ones are easy: He might go after another drink, start a fight, make a speech, take a train... You can work down the list of possibilities; he might buy some purple paint, chop down a maple tree, do a fan dance, sing 'God Save the King,' steal an oboe... You can work on down and down to things that get less and less likely, and eventually you might hit the rock bottom of improbability: He might make a resolution and stick to it.
I know that that's incredible, but it happened. A guy named Sweeney did it, once, in Chicago. He made a resolution, and he had to wade through blood and grey coffee to keep it, but he kept it. Maybe, by most people's standards, it wasn't a good resolution, but that's aside from the point. The point is that it really happened.
Now we'll have to hedge a bit, for truth is an elusive thing. It never quite fits a pattern. Like-well, 'a drunken Irishman named Sweeney'; that's a pattern, if anything is. But truth is seldom that simple.
His name really was Sweeney, but he was only five-eighths Irish and he was only three-quarters drunk. But that's about as near as truth ever approximates a pattern, and if you won't settle for that, you'd better quit reading. If you don't, maybe you'll be sorry, for it isn't a nice story. It's got murder in it, and women and liquor and gambling and even prevarication. There's murder before the story proper starts, and murder after it ends; the actual story begins with a naked woman and ends with one, which is a good opening and a good ending, but everything between isn't nice. Don't say I didn't warn you. But if you're still with me, let's get back to Sweeney.
Sweeney sat on a park bench, that summer night, subsequent to God. Sweeney rather liked God, although not many people did. God was a tallish, scrawny old man with a short but tangled beard, stained with nicotine. His full name was Godfrey; I say his full name advisedly, for no one, not even Sweeney, knew whether it was his very first name or his last. He was a little cracked, but not much. No more, perhaps, than the average for his age of the bums who live on the near north side of Chicago and hang out, when the weather is good, in Bughouse Square. Bughouse Square has another name, but the other name is much less appropriate. It is between Clark and Dearborn Streets, just south of the Newberry Library; that's its horizontal location. Vertically speaking, it's quite a bit nearer hell than heaven. I mean, it's bright with lights but dark with the shadows of the defeated men who sit on the benches, all night long.
Two o'clock of a summer night, and Bughouse Square had quieted down. The soapbox speakers were gone, and the summer night crowds of strollers who were not habitues of the square were long in bed. On the grass and on the benches, men slept. Their shoelaces were tied in hard knots so their shoes would not be stolen in the night. The theft of money from their pockets was the least of their worries; there was no money there to steal. That was why they slept.
'God,' said Sweeney, 'I wish I had another drink.' He shoved his disreputable hat an inch farther back upon his disreputable head.
'And I,' said God. 'But not bad enough.'
'That stuff again,' Sweeney said.
God grinned a little. He said, 'It's true, Sweeney. You know it is.' He pulled a crumpled package of cigarettes from his pocket, gave one to Sweeney, and lighted one himself.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Blackmask is to be commended for republishing a lot of pulp era fiction which has gone public domain. The downside is that apparently they seek out a copy of the original, scan it and then OCR the images. This causes a lot of typos; in this book, for instance, the word "time" is almost always rendered as "tune", and sometimes you have to figure out that "bun" means "him". Of course these are all real words, so they are not caught by spellcheck..
That aside, this is an engaging little mystery, and perhaps the Chicagoest book I have read. Brown gives you enough clues to figure out more or less what's going on, but the real draw is the engaging character of Sweeny.
One reviewer below called the book homophobic. I think that's an overstatement. A book from 1949 is not going to have a modern view of homosexuality, but the atitude is very "live and let live", and Sweeny does come to respect the shop-keeper a bit.
Is it hard-boiled or an action thriller? Not really. Sweeney is a man of culture as much as deeds, and is only really in danger once, but Brown makes shoe-leather as interesting as shoot-outs.
Rated by buyers 
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I enjoyed reading this novel, all right-- parts are so bad they deserved to be enshrined in one of Pronzini's Gun In Cheek books. To say that the psychology in this novel is sound is akin to saying that an abandoned shack in the woods would pass building code inspection. And I'm not even factoring in Brown's homophobia (which, even as a straight guy, I found annoying) or the fact that a chronic alcoholic-- I'm sorry, _heavy drinker_-- could function as well as this reporter does. The ending, in which the reporter keeps the killer at bay (for several hours!) is deliciously bad in the best tradition of wretched pulp fiction. I recently read a few W. R. Burnett novels (Little Ceasar and Asphalt Jungle) which were written a decade or two before this but hold up a lot better. Brown has written some good stuff, but this novel doesn't deserve its "classic" status.
Rated by buyers -
Our guy, Sweeney, is so far over the top the only reason we believe him is because he's our narrator. Sweeney would make Hecht & McArthur's "Front Page" newspapermen look like weenies. Sweeney doesn't just occasionally drink too much; he binges out and spends weeks in the gutter, broke, filthy, and homeless. When Sweeney sobers up (just moderately), he is such a star reporter, his employer's leap to cater to his every whim. Like Wow!
In this 40's era Chicago-noir, Sweeney,while in a nearly comatose binge, witnesses a strange crime site through a plate glass door. A woman (is she dead?) is sprawled on the floor with a fearsome, slavering dog guarding her. No one can get by the dog to see what is wrong. The woman slowly rises, and drops her gown in a spectacular manner. Sweeney decides then and there 1) this is the most beautiful woman in the world and 2) he, Sweeney the Magnificent, will spend a night with her. And anything he wants badly enough, he gets.
Though Sweeney is a little uncertain if what he witnessed was an alcohol-induced hallucination, he finds out quickly it was the real thing. The police think The Ripper, who has terrorized Chicago with three victims, has made an abortive attack on the lady, but her dog saved her. She is an at-risk witness who might be in further danger. Sweeney intends to solve the crimes and get the girl.
Frederic Brown is an edgy writer with a razor sharp sense of humor. When Sweeney theorizes, we don't know if he is putting us on or himself. Mr. Brown is concise and sardonic with a crafty throwaway style. He leaves us always slightly off-balance, and then walks away. Take it, or leave it. Most readers will take it and line up for more.
Rated by buyers 
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Fredric Brown was blessed with the ability to make the mundane and everyday activities sound like either a great event or, at the least, somewhat otherworldly. The opening chapters of The Screaming Mimi is a good example of this. Each time we are introduced to a person or a situation, it turns out to be different to the very first impressions that are created. Not only does it provide entertaining reading but it helps keep you on your toes.
Sweeney, a newspaper reporter, witnesses the strange aftermath of an attempted stabbing murder. The victim is a beautiful woman, a stripper who survives the attack and, while still in shock goes into her performance routine in front of astounded bystanders. As a result of the shock from the attack, she is unable to identify her attacker, but the details make it clear that she was close to being the latest victim of a killer known as The Ripper.
Sweeney makes it his business to discover the identity of The Ripper for two equally important reasons. The very first is because it would make a sensational story and as a reporter, he can�t resist a good story. The second is that by following up the story he would get to meet the stripper and as a man he can�t resist a beautiful dame!
The pace is brisk, the dialogue is amusing and direct as Sweeney conducts his own investigation by following up hunches and suspicions. It�s a very entertaining investigation with an ending worth waiting for. If you can possibly get your hands on this, or any of Fredric Brown�s books for that matter, it�s worth the effort.
Rated by buyers -
Living in L.A. many years ago, I was given a bunch of 'crime' books to review for a Film producer. I had never been very interested in mystery/dectective novels (especially Agatha Christie-type stuff), and didn't think I was in a for a treat with the bunch written by some, by then deceased, guy named Frederic Brown. Well, reading 'The Screaming Mimi' and others was an epiphany for me. My scepticism was quickly swept aside, and I was enthralled by the intelligence, movement and tremedously engaging style of Frederic Brown. Once began, there was no way I was going to put any of his books down if I could avoid it. These days I have 'The Screaming Mimi' (thank goodness!) but, sadly gave away 'His Name Was Death' and 'Jabberwocky,' etc. And these days I wait in vain to find those books again. If you have Fredric Brown crime novels, you're lucky :-)
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