thirteen men

I bought Tiffany Thayer's Thirteen Men at the Salvation Army for a quarter, and at first glance I thought it was probably a sappy 1930s romance novel written by a female named Tiffany about a baker's dozen of lovers.  Tiffany, however, was a man, and the book is far from sappy.  The men in question are twelve jurors chosen for the trial of a pathological murderer called the Phantom.  Earlier, the Phantom had gone on a cold-blooded cross-country killing spree, then turned himself in to an incredulous cop who declared, "I've got a nut here who wants to be cracked."  The Phantom, of course, is the thirteenth man.

The lives of the twelve jurors are then detailed up to the point when each receives his jury duty summons, reinforcing the notion of how no verdict is without prejudicial experience.  And then there's the history of the person on trial.  (Sure, we know it from Twelve Angry Men but that was 1954 and this was published two decades earlier.)  Mr. Thayer was apparently pretty way-out there in terms of some of his theories (read more about him here) and fond of writing sci-fi tales, but in this case he's dealing primarily with the honest or dishonest, arrogant or timid, bizarre or mundane creatures that tend to amount to life on this planet.

Thayer's work is not regarded too highly and was scorned by his literary peers, but I have to admit, this is a crazy, strange, page-turner of a read.  It reminds me of a sensationalized version of John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy, the first book of which came out in 1930, also the year that Thirteen Men was published.  The fast-flowing biographies of these diverse thirteen, the slang of the day, the cynicism, the political incorrectness, the trial and jaded aftermath -- if you're a fan of the American Dirty Thirties, this is worth checking out.  Also featured in my Sun Dial Press copy are a whole side-set of intriguing pen and ink drawings by Mahlon Blaine, the first of which -- the Phantom himself -- is pictured here.      

***

Mother of Marty Durkin, the Tearney boys, Dean O'Banion, "Scarface Al" Capone, Johnny Torrio, Tony Lombardo and a thousand other celebrities, Chicago took "the Phantom" to her capacious bosom and tried to make the world believe that he, too, was a home product.  The feature writers warmed to the subject they loved.

From Thirteen Men, Tiffany Thayer