I Was Jack Mortimer - Alexander Lernet-Holenia

 I cannot fathom why the prolific Lernet-Holenia hasn't been translated into English more often.   It seems to me only Baron Blagge (reviewed below), Count Luna and this are available.   He wrote a novel about the Count St Germain - that's obviously of wide interest, so what are we waiting for?

Anyway, I Was Jack Mortimer is very different to Blagge and Luna.   It is a contemporary (1933) satirical take on US gangster thrillers.   In that sense it shares the fantastical tone of Blagge.   Lernet-Holenia gives us a dark farce in which old school mores clash with modern mobsterism.

Cab driver Ferdinand Sponer picks up a fare at the station in Vienna.   The passenger asks to be taken to the Bristol Hotel.   Sponer heads across town.    He hears what he assumes is a truck backfiring.   It occurs to Sponer to ask which Bristol Hotel the man wants, the New Bristol or---   The man doesn't answer.   Because he's been shot dead by someone who must have hopped onto the cab's running board, done the dirty deed, and hopped off again - something only really possible with interwar cars.

Sponer does the decent thing.   He tries to interet the police in the murder, but can't manage to grab their attention.   He therefore decides to dispose of the body and get on with life.   He drives aimlessly around the city, even finds time to pop into a coin-op bar (what happened to those?) and chat up a couple of girls.   Before dropping his passenger into the Danube he has the sense to go through the dead man's papers.   Turns out he's Jack Mortimer, a banker from Chicago.   We subsequently learn more: Mortimer's bank specialises in laundering Mob money; he is or rather was a notorious lady's man.

It occurs to Sponer that he should go on the run, start a more interesting life somewhere else.   Meanwhile, why not make the most of the opportunity to enjoy the high life of Vienna?   He assumes Mortimer's identity and takes Mortimer's room at the right Bristol Hotel.   Also in town are Mortimer's latest conquest and her affronted husband...   The night doesn't turn out anything like Sponer anticipated.

It's all great fun.   The style is certainly modern for the time.   I like the way Sponer's imaginary police interrogations are handled.   I'm not 100% convinced by the translation but I don't speak or read German, so can't really criticise.   The proof reading was astonishingly bad - bloopers on the first page!!?  Get a bloody grip, Pushkin Press!