The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor
Encyclopedia
The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor is a 1937 crime novel
by Ernest Borneman
writing as Cameron McCabe. It was first published in London
. The book makes use of the false document
technique: It pretends to be the true story of a 38-year-old Scotsman
called Cameron McCabe who writes about a crucial period of his own life, during which several people close to him are murdered.
from Nazi Germany
in 1933, with practically no command of the English language
. However, he was a quick learner, considered the detective story
he was writing "no more than a finger exercise on the keyboard of a new language", and had finished it when he was not yet 20 years old.
" is a character in a movie who, after the shooting is completed, is completely removed from the film, for whatever reason. The same idea also holds true for documentaries
, where in the editing
process the large amount of raw footage
is cut down to a manageable size and where it can happen that a particular part of the film is completely removed from the final version.
in the form of Cameron McCabe's confession
, is set in London in the mid-1930s. McCabe works in the film industry
and has made himself a name as a supervising film editor
working mainly on feature film
s. One day his boss, Isador Bloom, orders him to cut out altogether a young aspiring actress, Estella Lamare, from a movie which has just been produced. As the picture is about a love triangle
McCabe does not see the point in doing as he was told and immediately suspects some foul business. He does not know then that this is in fact Bloom's revenge on Lamare for "showing him a cold shoulder" when he made a pass at her.
One Friday morning soon afterwards, Lamare's body is found on the floor of John Robertson's workplace at the studio, which happens to be a state-of-the-art
cutting room. The place is equipped with an automatic camera which, once it has been set, starts recording the moment the door to the room is opened. Estella Lamare has died from stab wounds, and although the roll of film showing her slow death can be found it cannot be decided exactly how she died. On the film Ian Jensen, her partner in her last movie (from which she was to be cut out), can be seen struggling with Lamare, but the cause of her death may have been either an accident or suicide
, or murder
.
As Jensen is nowhere to be found Scotland Yard
assumes that he is Lamare's murderer and that he has escaped to his native Norway
. However, four days later, on December 3, 1935, his body is found in a shabby rented room in a cheap boarding house
in London. Jensen has been poison
ed and, at a point in time when he was already dead, shot in the head.
The police investigations are conducted by Detective Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard. Right from the start there is antagonism between Smith and McCabe: Each suspects the other of knowing more about the case than he admits, with Mc Cabe repeatedly assuming the role of detective while Smith seemingly has no idea how to solve the crime. Eventually the confrontation between the two antagonists escalates—their "game" turns into a "fight"—when Smith has McCabe arrested for the murder of Ian Jensen. McCabe refuses to be represented by a lawyer during his trial
("a layman conducting his own defence"), and systematically tries to break down the case against his person and to win over the jury
to his cause.
In the course of the trial a number of facts about the people involved in the two deaths are revealed. For example, we learn that McCabe himself is a "morally uprooted" man who has replaced "eternal values" with "values of the moment". Until his arrest he has a relationship with Maria Ray, the actress who, together with Lamare and Jensen, forms the love triangle in the recently completed film. Although Maria Ray is the love of his life, McCabe cannot help starting an affair with Dinah Lee, his secretary
, and, by carrying on two relationships at the same time, double-crossing both women. In his defence he even goes so far as to use Ray's own promiscuity
—she has had affairs with both McCabe and Jensen—to question her credibility
as a witness for the prosecution. He also insinuates that Smith has used doctored evidence
to build up his case against him.
The members of the jury are impressed, pronounce a verdict
of "Not guilty", and McCabe is acquitted
. Smith now turns out to be a policeman who cannot lose but who actually loses his job as a result of McCabe's acquittal. When McCabe eventually tells him that he is Jensen's murderer after all it is because he realizes that he has irrevocably lost Maria (as well as Dinah), who would not even speak to him on the phone, and that there is not anything left in this world that might keep him alive. Now that he has written his story down for posterity he no longer minds being the target of Smith's revenge, who thinks McCabe's belated confession is the last straw. McCabe posts his manuscript
to an old journalist called A.B.C. Müller whose acquaintance he has recently made and immediately afterwards is found shot. Smith is arrested, tried, and hanged
.
With Cameron McCabe dead, the addressee of his manuscript continues the narrative, a part of the book which is entitled "An Epilogue by A.B.C. Müller as Epitaph
for Cameron McCabe". Müller sees to the proof reading and the publication of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor and becomes an avid collector of review
s of the book, comparing it with the fiction of Hemingway
, Dashiell Hammett
, and even James Joyce
. At the same time he deplores, and condemns, the "arrested development of the criminal mind", in particular of course McCabe's.
One day in London Müller bumps into Maria Ray, whom he has not seen again since the trial, and they have a talk. To Müller's surprise, she claims that McCabe committed suicide—as an act of revenge, in order to get Smith convicted for murder. She also tells Müller that Smith was in love with her. At the end of the novel, Müller on the spur of the moment wants to propose to Maria Ray but then decides instead to "shoot her dead".
Thus, in Borneman's novel, Estella Lamare is "the face on the cutting-room floor", both literally and metaphorically.
felt rather cheated while critics and reviewers such as Milward Kennedy
, E. R. Punshon, Ross McLaren and Sir Herbert Read
liked the novel for its ingenuity ("a detective story with a difference"). Eric Partridge
considered it a mine of information on contemporary English slang
and quoted extensively from it in his lexica. The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor saw eight reprints in various pocket editions and also appeared in French
and German
translations but was never brought out in the United States.
Forgotten for decades, Borneman's first novel was rediscovered in the 1960s by Ordean A. Hagen, who praised it as one of the milestones of crime fiction in his Who Done It?. In the early 1970s Julian Symons
, in his history of crime fiction entitled Bloody Murder, famously referred to The Face as "the detective story to end detective stories".
However, the identity of the author was a mystery itself. Neither Symons nor the Gollancz publishing house knew anything about a Cameron McCabe, not even whether he was still alive or not. Accordingly, when Gollancz brought out their 1974 facsimile edition, only a few months after Symons had mentioned the novel, they advertised for McCabe's heirs and placed the royalties
in a trust fund.
Two months later, still in 1974, Julian Symons reviewed the Gollancz reprint, revealing, after some research, the real name of the author as a certain Ernst Wilhelm Julius Bornemann, a man about whom he said he knew nothing except his name ("More information from readers would be welcome"). Another reviewer, British novelist and screenwriter Frederic Raphael
, also admitted having no idea who the author was. Only then was it found out that Bornemann was the Borneman, the famous sexologist
who was alive and well, living in the small Austria
n village of Scharten, and teaching at several universities both in Austria and his native Germany
.
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
by Ernest Borneman
Ernest Borneman
Ernst Wilhelm Julius Bornemann was a German crime writer, filmmaker, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, jazz musician, jazz critic, psychoanalyst, sexologist, and committed socialist. All these diverse interests, he claimed, had a common root in his lifelong insatiable curiosity...
writing as Cameron McCabe. It was first published in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The book makes use of the false document
False document
A false document is a literary technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction. By inventing and inserting documents that appear to be factual, an author tries to create a sense of authenticity beyond the normal and expected suspension of disbelief for a work of art...
technique: It pretends to be the true story of a 38-year-old Scotsman
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
called Cameron McCabe who writes about a crucial period of his own life, during which several people close to him are murdered.
Plot introduction
Borneman began working on this novel — his first — shortly after arriving in EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in 1933, with practically no command of the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. However, he was a quick learner, considered the detective story
Detective Story
Detective Story is a film noir which tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. It features Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell, Lee Grant, among others. The movie was adapted by Robert Wyler and Philip Yordan...
he was writing "no more than a finger exercise on the keyboard of a new language", and had finished it when he was not yet 20 years old.
Explanation of the novel's title
The proverbial "face on the cutting room floorCutting room floor
The term cutting room floor is used in the film industry as a figure of speech referring to unused footage not included in the finished film. In fact offcuts of film are retained in a special cutting room bin and numbered during the editing process in case they are required later...
" is a character in a movie who, after the shooting is completed, is completely removed from the film, for whatever reason. The same idea also holds true for documentaries
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, where in the editing
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
process the large amount of raw footage
Footage
In filmmaking and video production, footage is the raw, unedited material as it had been originally filmed by movie camera or recorded by a video camera which usually must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or similar completed work...
is cut down to a manageable size and where it can happen that a particular part of the film is completely removed from the final version.
Plot summary
The novel, written in the first personFirst-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
in the form of Cameron McCabe's confession
Confession
This article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...
, is set in London in the mid-1930s. McCabe works in the film industry
Film industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
and has made himself a name as a supervising film editor
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
working mainly on feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s. One day his boss, Isador Bloom, orders him to cut out altogether a young aspiring actress, Estella Lamare, from a movie which has just been produced. As the picture is about a love triangle
Love triangle
A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it usually implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two...
McCabe does not see the point in doing as he was told and immediately suspects some foul business. He does not know then that this is in fact Bloom's revenge on Lamare for "showing him a cold shoulder" when he made a pass at her.
One Friday morning soon afterwards, Lamare's body is found on the floor of John Robertson's workplace at the studio, which happens to be a state-of-the-art
State of the art
The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time. It also refers to the level of development reached at any particular time as a result of the latest methodologies employed.- Origin :The earliest use of the term...
cutting room. The place is equipped with an automatic camera which, once it has been set, starts recording the moment the door to the room is opened. Estella Lamare has died from stab wounds, and although the roll of film showing her slow death can be found it cannot be decided exactly how she died. On the film Ian Jensen, her partner in her last movie (from which she was to be cut out), can be seen struggling with Lamare, but the cause of her death may have been either an accident or suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
, or murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
.
As Jensen is nowhere to be found Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
assumes that he is Lamare's murderer and that he has escaped to his native Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
. However, four days later, on December 3, 1935, his body is found in a shabby rented room in a cheap boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
in London. Jensen has been poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
ed and, at a point in time when he was already dead, shot in the head.
The police investigations are conducted by Detective Inspector Smith of Scotland Yard. Right from the start there is antagonism between Smith and McCabe: Each suspects the other of knowing more about the case than he admits, with Mc Cabe repeatedly assuming the role of detective while Smith seemingly has no idea how to solve the crime. Eventually the confrontation between the two antagonists escalates—their "game" turns into a "fight"—when Smith has McCabe arrested for the murder of Ian Jensen. McCabe refuses to be represented by a lawyer during his trial
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...
("a layman conducting his own defence"), and systematically tries to break down the case against his person and to win over the jury
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
to his cause.
In the course of the trial a number of facts about the people involved in the two deaths are revealed. For example, we learn that McCabe himself is a "morally uprooted" man who has replaced "eternal values" with "values of the moment". Until his arrest he has a relationship with Maria Ray, the actress who, together with Lamare and Jensen, forms the love triangle in the recently completed film. Although Maria Ray is the love of his life, McCabe cannot help starting an affair with Dinah Lee, his secretary
Secretary
A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
, and, by carrying on two relationships at the same time, double-crossing both women. In his defence he even goes so far as to use Ray's own promiscuity
Promiscuity
In humans, promiscuity refers to less discriminating casual sex with many sexual partners. The term carries a moral or religious judgement and is viewed in the context of the mainstream social ideal for sexual activity to take place within exclusive committed relationships...
—she has had affairs with both McCabe and Jensen—to question her credibility
Credibility
Credibility refers to the objective and subjective components of the believability of a source or message.Traditionally, modern, credibility has two key components: trustworthiness and expertise, which both have objective and subjective components. Trustworthiness is based more on subjective...
as a witness for the prosecution. He also insinuates that Smith has used doctored evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
to build up his case against him.
The members of the jury are impressed, pronounce a verdict
Verdict
In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. The term, from the Latin veredictum, literally means "to say the truth" and is derived from Middle English verdit, from Anglo-Norman: a compound of ver and dit In law, a verdict...
of "Not guilty", and McCabe is acquitted
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
. Smith now turns out to be a policeman who cannot lose but who actually loses his job as a result of McCabe's acquittal. When McCabe eventually tells him that he is Jensen's murderer after all it is because he realizes that he has irrevocably lost Maria (as well as Dinah), who would not even speak to him on the phone, and that there is not anything left in this world that might keep him alive. Now that he has written his story down for posterity he no longer minds being the target of Smith's revenge, who thinks McCabe's belated confession is the last straw. McCabe posts his manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
to an old journalist called A.B.C. Müller whose acquaintance he has recently made and immediately afterwards is found shot. Smith is arrested, tried, and hanged
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
.
With Cameron McCabe dead, the addressee of his manuscript continues the narrative, a part of the book which is entitled "An Epilogue by A.B.C. Müller as Epitaph
Epitaph
An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial...
for Cameron McCabe". Müller sees to the proof reading and the publication of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor and becomes an avid collector of review
Review
A review is an evaluation of a publication, a product or a service, such as a movie , video game, musical composition , book ; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert, a play, musical theater show or dance show...
s of the book, comparing it with the fiction of Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
, and even James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
. At the same time he deplores, and condemns, the "arrested development of the criminal mind", in particular of course McCabe's.
One day in London Müller bumps into Maria Ray, whom he has not seen again since the trial, and they have a talk. To Müller's surprise, she claims that McCabe committed suicide—as an act of revenge, in order to get Smith convicted for murder. She also tells Müller that Smith was in love with her. At the end of the novel, Müller on the spur of the moment wants to propose to Maria Ray but then decides instead to "shoot her dead".
Thus, in Borneman's novel, Estella Lamare is "the face on the cutting-room floor", both literally and metaphorically.
Characters in "The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor"
- Cameron McCabe – hardworking film editor
- Estella Lamare – a young aspiring actress
- John Robertson – who has a cutting room where the victim is found
- Isador Bloom – whom McCabe work for
- Ian Jensen – Lamare's co-star
- Inspector Smith – Detective from Scotland Yard
- Maria Ray – the actress who, together with Lamare and Jensen, forms the love triangle in the film
Literary significance & criticism
When the book was eventually published in 1937 traditionalists and purists of crime fictionCrime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
felt rather cheated while critics and reviewers such as Milward Kennedy
Milward Kennedy
Milward Rodon Kennedy Burge was an English civil servant, journalist, crime writer and literary critic. He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He served with British Military Intelligence in World War I and then worked for the International Labor Office and the Egyptian...
, E. R. Punshon, Ross McLaren and Sir Herbert Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....
liked the novel for its ingenuity ("a detective story with a difference"). Eric Partridge
Eric Partridge
Eric Honeywood Partridge was a New Zealand/British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the Army Education Corps and the RAF correspondence department during World War II...
considered it a mine of information on contemporary English slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
and quoted extensively from it in his lexica. The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor saw eight reprints in various pocket editions and also appeared in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
translations but was never brought out in the United States.
Forgotten for decades, Borneman's first novel was rediscovered in the 1960s by Ordean A. Hagen, who praised it as one of the milestones of crime fiction in his Who Done It?. In the early 1970s Julian Symons
Julian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
, in his history of crime fiction entitled Bloody Murder, famously referred to The Face as "the detective story to end detective stories".
However, the identity of the author was a mystery itself. Neither Symons nor the Gollancz publishing house knew anything about a Cameron McCabe, not even whether he was still alive or not. Accordingly, when Gollancz brought out their 1974 facsimile edition, only a few months after Symons had mentioned the novel, they advertised for McCabe's heirs and placed the royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
in a trust fund.
Two months later, still in 1974, Julian Symons reviewed the Gollancz reprint, revealing, after some research, the real name of the author as a certain Ernst Wilhelm Julius Bornemann, a man about whom he said he knew nothing except his name ("More information from readers would be welcome"). Another reviewer, British novelist and screenwriter Frederic Raphael
Frederic Raphael
Frederic Michael Raphael is an American-born, British-educated screenwriter, and also a prolific novelist and journalist.-Life and career:...
, also admitted having no idea who the author was. Only then was it found out that Bornemann was the Borneman, the famous sexologist
Sexology
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behavior, and function. The term does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sex, such as political analysis or social criticism....
who was alive and well, living in the small Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n village of Scharten, and teaching at several universities both in Austria and his native Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Release details
There have been four important editions of The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor:- the first edition, published in 1937 by Victor Gollancz LtdVictor Gollancz LtdVictor Gollancz Ltd was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century. It was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz and specialised in the publication of high quality literature, nonfiction and popular fiction, including science fiction. Upon Gollancz's death in 1967, ownership...
with their trademark bright yellow dust jacket; - a 1974 facsimileFacsimileA facsimile is a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. It differs from other forms of reproduction by attempting to replicate the source as accurately as possible in terms of scale,...
reprintReprintA reprint is a re-publishing of material that has already been previously published. The word reprint is used in many fields.-Academic publishing:...
by Gollancz of their 1937 edition; - a 1981 edition by Gregg Press (a division of G. K. Hall & Co.), Boston, Mass., containing an extensive Afterword which includes the tapescript of a long interview with Borneman conducted in 1979 by Reinhold AmanReinhold AmanReinhold Aman is a former chemical engineer and professor of German, and the publisher of Maledicta, a scholarly journal dedicated entirely to the study of offensive language.-Career:...
, the editor of the scholarly U.S. periodical MaledictaMaledictaMaledicta, The International Journal of Verbal Aggression, is an academic journal dedicated to the study of offensive and negatively-valued words and expressions. Its main areas of interest are the origin, etymology, meaning, use, and influence of vulgar, obscene, aggressive, abusive, and...
(Waukesha, WisconsinWaukesha, WisconsinWaukesha is a city in and the county seat of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in the Upper Midwest region of the United States. The population was 70,718 at the 2010 census, making it the largest community in the county and 7th largest in the state. The city is located adjacent to the Town of Waukesha...
); and, finally, - a 1986 PenguinPenguin BooksPenguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
edition (in the "Classic Crime" series), which also includes the Afterword of the 1981 edition (ISBN 0-14-008085-6).
Read on
- Francis IlesAnthony Berkeley CoxAnthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley and A. Monmouth Platts.- Life :...
's Malice AforethoughtMalice AforethoughtMalice Aforethought is a murder mystery novel written by Anthony Berkeley Cox, using the pen name Francis Iles. It involves a Devon physician who slowly poisons his domineering wife so that he may be with the woman he loves. It is an early and prominent example of the "inverted detective story",...
(19311931 in literatureThe year 1931 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs premiers. It would later be adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Oklahoma!....
) is a psychological thriller where the identity of the murderer is revealed right at the beginning of the novel and where the reader is granted insight into the workings of a criminal mind. - Freeman Wills CroftsFreeman Wills CroftsFreeman Wills Crofts was an Irish mystery author, one of the 'Big Four' of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.-Birth and education:Crofts was born at 26 Waterloo Road, Dublin, Ireland...
's The 12.30 from CroydonThe 12.30 from CroydonThe 12.30 from Croydon is a detective novel by Freeman Wills Crofts first published in 1934. It is about a murder which is committed during a flight over the English Channel...
(19341934 in literatureThe year 1934 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The first Flash Gordon comic strip is published.*Boris Pasternak and Korney Chukovsky are among those present at the first Congress of the Soviet Union of Writers....
) is written in a similar vein, with the protagonist awaiting trial but unable to assess his chances of being acquitted. - Raymond PostgateRaymond PostgateRaymond William Postgate was an English socialist, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet.-Early life:...
's Verdict of TwelveVerdict of TwelveVerdict of Twelve is a novel by Raymond Postgate first published in 1940 about a trial by jury seen through the eyes of each of the twelve jurors as they listen to the evidence and try to reach a unanimous verdict of either “Guilty” or “Not guilty”. Verdict of Twelve is set in England in the late...
(19401940 in literatureThe year 1940 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Aldous Huxley is a screenwriter for the movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.*Jean-Paul Sartre is taken prisoner by the Germans....
) is a mystery novel that draws on the author's socialistSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
beliefs to set crime, detection and punishment within a broader social and economic context. - Budd SchulbergBudd SchulbergBudd Schulberg was an American screenwriter, television producer, novelist and sports writer. He was known for his 1941 novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, his 1947 novel The Harder They Fall, his 1954 Academy-award-winning screenplay for On the Waterfront, and his 1957 screenplay for A Face in the...
's What Makes Sammy Run?What Makes Sammy Run?What Makes Sammy Run? is a novel by Budd Schulberg. It is a rags to riches story chronicling the rise and fall of Sammy Glick, a Jewish boy born in New York's Lower East Side who very early in his life makes up his mind to escape the ghetto and climb the ladder of success...
(19411941 in literatureThe year 1941 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Frank Herbert marries Flora Parkinson.*F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished work, The Last Tycoon, is edited and published by Edmund Wilson.-New books:...
) looks behind the scenes of the film industry and of individual people working in that business in Hollywood rather than England. - Ben EltonBen EltonBenjamin Charles "Ben" Elton is an English comedian, author, playwright and director. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement of the 1980s, as a writer on such cult series as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as also a successful stand-up comedian on stage and TV....
's Dead FamousDead Famous (novel)Dead Famous is a comedy/whodunit novel by Ben Elton in which ratings for a reality TV show, very similar to Big Brother, rocket when a housemate is murdered...
(20012001 in literatureThe year 2001 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The film version of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic book, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is released to movie theaters...
) is another example of a story where a murder is captured on film while the identity of the perpetrator remains in the dark, here in a late 20th century Big BrotherBig Brother (TV series)Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash...
-type reality televisionReality televisionReality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
setting.