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Dead Ringer
Paperback
Published January 1, 1952
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August 11, 2025
“The Man in the Middle” (1952) ends up being a tale about an innocent man accused of being a serial killer, but what perhaps makes it a fascinating piece of literature is the journey of how the author takes the reader to that place. Most of the innocent-guy-on-the-run for the murder-he-didn’t-commit stories start with our hero waking up hung over and in a pool of blood with a beautiful corpse in bed with him. “The Man in the Middle” does not start out that way. Rather, it starts out telling us readers how a big town can be a creepy place and pretty grim. It starts with three men, stumbling a shuffling as they walked with the two on the outside with their arms around the man in the middle who was dead.
Our hero in this story, Big Vince MacLowerie, retired Marine Captain, and owner of one plastic arm and a story from the Korean War as to how he lost his arm, just happens to be leaving a bar and sees the threesome walk by. “A man with troubles of his own, with a plastic gadget for a hand and a pension instead of honest work, he was in no mood to be bumped by drunks.” But, MacLowerie stopped for a second, thinking he recognized his old buddy, Eddie Jackson of the old Fifth, but then realizes it is just a guy who is a dead ringer for him. It was a meaningless encounter on a fog-shrouded New York City street at an hour no honest man should be wandering around.
But then it turns out the man in the middle (remember him) is turned in to Homicide as an unidentified body with a couple of dozen holes in him, but no identification. The next morning, the police are passing around a photograph of the dead guy, showing it to a counterman at a diner when MacLowerie grabs it and says that he thinks he has seen him a couple of blocks away. Soon, MacLowerie is whisked off to police headquarters where Inspector Sanford and Lieutenant Hank Tepper start grilling him about what he saw and suddenly MacLowerie is involved. And later that night he gets a call from the real Eddie Jackson wanting to know what MacLowerie did putting him in the middle of a murder case.
MacLowerie is stumbling along through the novel, trying to do the right thing and always seems to end up in the wrong. It gets a little bit strange though when it comes out that one of the guys involved (perhaps the one killed) is involved in ferretting out Soviet spies and had a list of Communists that he was on to. It always gets odd when Eddie himself is taken off the board and then another person and another and each time MacLowerie manages to not have a decent alibi and been looking up the person to help solve the case himself. MacLowrie is in this sense the anti-hero hero, a decent guy just stumbling along, trying to do the right thing and ending up in trouble no matter how good his intentions. He even calls the police to tell them where the keys are after making off with a patrol car.
Findley writes “The Man in the Middle” in an understated manner rather than big, bold action.
Our hero in this story, Big Vince MacLowerie, retired Marine Captain, and owner of one plastic arm and a story from the Korean War as to how he lost his arm, just happens to be leaving a bar and sees the threesome walk by. “A man with troubles of his own, with a plastic gadget for a hand and a pension instead of honest work, he was in no mood to be bumped by drunks.” But, MacLowerie stopped for a second, thinking he recognized his old buddy, Eddie Jackson of the old Fifth, but then realizes it is just a guy who is a dead ringer for him. It was a meaningless encounter on a fog-shrouded New York City street at an hour no honest man should be wandering around.
But then it turns out the man in the middle (remember him) is turned in to Homicide as an unidentified body with a couple of dozen holes in him, but no identification. The next morning, the police are passing around a photograph of the dead guy, showing it to a counterman at a diner when MacLowerie grabs it and says that he thinks he has seen him a couple of blocks away. Soon, MacLowerie is whisked off to police headquarters where Inspector Sanford and Lieutenant Hank Tepper start grilling him about what he saw and suddenly MacLowerie is involved. And later that night he gets a call from the real Eddie Jackson wanting to know what MacLowerie did putting him in the middle of a murder case.
MacLowerie is stumbling along through the novel, trying to do the right thing and always seems to end up in the wrong. It gets a little bit strange though when it comes out that one of the guys involved (perhaps the one killed) is involved in ferretting out Soviet spies and had a list of Communists that he was on to. It always gets odd when Eddie himself is taken off the board and then another person and another and each time MacLowerie manages to not have a decent alibi and been looking up the person to help solve the case himself. MacLowrie is in this sense the anti-hero hero, a decent guy just stumbling along, trying to do the right thing and ending up in trouble no matter how good his intentions. He even calls the police to tell them where the keys are after making off with a patrol car.
Findley writes “The Man in the Middle” in an understated manner rather than big, bold action.
Displaying 1 of 1 review