Bird Isle-Jack Vance mystery novel, book review

Bird Isle-Jack Vance mystery novel (author’s preferred title)

AKA: Bird Island and

Isle of Peril

Bird Isle was written by Jack Vance in 1947 and had a draft title of Forbidden Island.  It was first published ten years later in 1957 by Mystery House publishers with the title Isle of Peril under the pseudonym of Alan Wade.  This written date of 1947 makes it the first mystery novel Vance wrote, or at least the first written mystery novel that was not lost.  (Although Bird Isle is really more of a comic novel than a mystery.)  In the 1988 Underwood-Miller release the title was changed from Isle of Peril to Bird Isle with Jack Vance listed as the author.  The 2002 Vance Integral Edition the title was changed again, this time to Bird Island.  The 2018 Spatterlight Press release reverted back to the title of Bird Isle. It is 136 pages long.

Bird Isle has about as much plot as a Marx Brother's movie with a plethora of odd characters and strange events.  Despite this, it is engaging to read and easy to follow.  But it is more of a comic novel than a mystery.  Although it is sometimes dismissed as an uninteresting early Vance work, I really enjoyed reading it because of the novelty, humor and quirky characters and creatures.  As indicated on the back cover of the Spatterlight issue, this novel was "inspired by the great P.G. Wodehouse." 

Bird Island is a fictitious island about two miles off the coast of Monterey, California that is rumored to have once been owned by a gang of bootleggers.  Most of the island is now owned by a Mr. Coves who owns and operates Bird Island Hotel.  Also on the island with ten to twenty acres of her own is Miss Pickett owner and operator of "Miss Pickett's Fine Art Academy and Finishing School for Select Young Ladies."  Our main character, Milo Green, who has an unpleasant encounter with Miss Pickett, describes her as having a "chin like the working end of a pipe wrench" and a "face like a salt water crocodile."  She is extremely strict and controlling with her students and forbids "lipstick, nail polish, bop records, jive talk and the cha-cha."  (Vance frequently mentions boats and jazz in his mystery novels.)

Although Mr. Coves' hotel rooms are very reasonably priced, he has few customers because the old hotel is in need of major repairs and renovation.  Coves can barely pay the taxes and bills so in order to obtain the money needed to fix up his hotel he decides to sell off sections of the island that he does not use.  He divides this into five lots of from 10 to 28 acres each and includes a provision that they are not allowed to be subdivided.  Miss Pickett is the only other land owner so is very upset with this plan because she likes privacy and does not want the island to be developed.  When Coves persists in his plan to sell lots, Miss Pickett decides to purchase one of the plots that is adjacent to hers so she can insure some privacy.  But she continues to have frequent complaints and concerns, especially after the strange group of new land owners arrive.

Milo Green is the first outside person to show an interest in purchasing a lot and he arrives in his small sloop from Sausalito.  Milo writes limericks which he sells to children's magazines.  He refers to his writings as "doggerel."  Two months ago he purchased a winning lottery ticket for the Mexican Grand National and ended up with $20,000 after taxes.  (We are informed in the novel that back then houses in San Francisco sold for half of that amount, so it was a considerable sum of money.)  Milo purchases ten acres with a view and plans to build a house on it.  In the meantime he meets Miss Pickett's young, attractive niece, Celia, and a friendship and romance develop much to Miss Pickett's dismay and disapproval.  Miss Pickett does not like Milo and is very protective of her niece, Celia, whom she just hired as one of her teachers.  Miss Pickett had an unpleasant interaction with Milo earlier so insists that her niece have nothing to do with that "insolent young boor."

A retired business man, Mortimer "Slippy" Archer, who seems to have a shady past and now dabbles in nude photography, buys another parcel.  So does a San Francisco attorney who plans to use his plot as a retreat for him and his secretary.  The most eccentric person who purchases a parcel is a character named Ike O'Rourke.  O'Rourke is described as having "elemental vigor" and a straggly yellow beard.  He is from Alaska, arrives with his dogs and is said to speak "knowingly of tundras, and igloos and dog sleds."  He also seems to enjoy pointing his shotgun at others, has a peculiar odor, likes to grind up and eat pemmican and has a powerful love potion developed by Eskimos.  There is also an explorer from Africa who arrives with his pet baboon named Banjo who was a "gift of Batonga, chief of the Pulu Tribe."  The hotel cat, named Rexie, seems to develop a particular antipathy for Banjo whom he considers to be an intruder.  Rexie also unintentionally creates mischief and loves cheese, often stealing it from the chef's cheese cellar.

Additionally we encounter a university student intruder who comes to the island to gather fifteen different species of bird manure, a ginseng business scam to which Milo subscribes, a stalker who seems to assault others, some finishing school students who almost cause a scandal after they pose for nude photos, a mysterious shoe thief, and a visiting mystic named Mahmoud Singh with the "silhouette of a cucumber" who sends out "Questing Vibrations" while in a "supra-somatic state" in order to "compose the corporeal frame while Seeking Essences wing and soar above the island" in order to locate a bootlegger's treasure rumored to be somewhere on Bird Island.  The mystic insists on brewing his morning coffee "in a small copper brazier fired by camel dung."  There is also a hotel visitor, Tiger Joe Connolly, who was just released from San Quentin Prison and seems to have an interest in blackmailing and drug smuggling.  He too has heard rumors that Big Ben Manzio, who use to own the island, "left a lot of boodle around here somewhere."  Tiger teams up with his old pal Slippy, the nude photographer, in a scheme to run everybody off the island in order to find the treasure for themselves while using the island for their illicit drug smuggling from Mexico.

I liked Bird Isle largely because of the eccentric characters, odd humor, and novelty of it.  But don't read it expecting a mystery novel with a well-developed plot.  It is more P. G. Wodehouse than Agatha Christie.  Also if you are not quite certain what ambergris is, you might want to look it up before reading the novel.  Bird Isle should appeal to many Vance fans if they don't mind the over the top, quirky humor.  I’ve read Bird Isle three times so far and rated it a 4 each time or “Really liked it.”