Bardin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 30, 1916. He had a difficult childhood during which nearly all of his immediate family died of various ailments. He enrolled in the University of Cincinnati only to have to leave in his first year in order to sustain himself by working full-time. He worked as a ticket-taker and bouncer at a roller-skating rink, later taking a clerking job at a bookstore where he would educate himself by reading, mostly at night. He moved to Greenwich Village in New York City during 1943.
In 1946 he entered a period of intense creativity during which he wrote three crime novels which have later become appreciated by connoisseurs of psychological crime literature. They were relatively unsuccessful at first, one of them not even being published in America until the late sixties. He went on to write four more novels under either the pen-name Gregory Tree or Douglas Ashe; in Julian Symons' opinion, these novels were "slick, readable, unadventurous crime stories." Bardin also wrote three more novels under his own name; two of these works were considered "serious." He also worked in public relations, journalism and as a creative writing teacher at New York's New School for Social Research. He moved to Chicago in 1972 for approximately three years where he became managing editor of a magazine for the American Medical Association and later the managing editor for two magazines for the American Bar Association. He then returned to New York City where he resided in its East Village until he died on July 9, 1981.
His most acclaimed works, The Deadly Percheron, The Last of Philip Banter and Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly experienced renewed interest in the seventies when they were discovered by British readers. An introduction by Julian Symons in an omnibus of these works published throughout the United Kingdom and America recounts their emergence:
Denis Healey was the guest of honour at a Crime Writers' Association dinner a few years ago, one of those years when he was no more than a shadow Minister, and so had time for criminal frivolity. In the course of his speech Mr Healey showed a considerable, almost a dazzling, knowledge of crime fiction. It was an impressive performance, one nearly too much for some of the audience. People who write crime stories are often not great readers of them, feeling perhaps that anything they read will be inferior to what they have written. And when, near the end of his peroration, Mr Healey picked out for special praise the crime novels of John Franklin Bardin, they looked at each other in astonishment. Who was John Franklin Bardin? One is safe in saying than no more than a dozen of the hundred and fifty people at dinner than night had ever heard of him.
Symons, who edited the omnibus, had difficulty tracking down any information regarding Bardin. He was unable to find any American critic who had heard of him and even his original publishers did not know how to contact him or even find out whether he was still alive. He was eventually tracked down, willing and eager to see his work republished.
The novels are distinguished by a combination of the hard fiction style of the late forties and a pervasive and morbid sense of psychology, in most cases pathological (psychiatrists and general discussions of insanity pervade the works). The protagonists are subject to extraordinary situations which provoke intense feelings of distress and mental agony, communicated to the reader with a lucidity that makes his storytelling logic surrealistic, fantastic, persuasive and disturbing at once.
The Deadly Percheron tells the story of a psychiatrist who encounters a patient with apparent delusions and a strange story to tell, but who does not otherwise exhibit signs of mental instability. His story turns out to have at least some connection to reality, drawing the psychiatrist into a complicated reality hack that changes his life. The Last of Philip Banter sees a man receiving (or apparently writing) disturbing predictions about his life. The predictions partly become true, the effect of the predictions themselves being destructive and mind-altering.
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly, perhaps his most acclaimed work, is a complicated story told almost entirely in terms of the psychology of the protagonist Ellen, a mental patient who experiences mental disintegration caused seemingly by her own mind, the actions of others and mysterious occurrences that go unexplained.
Bardin himself gives his literary influences as Graham Greene, Henry Green and Henry James. Symons writes: "Bardin was ahead of his time. He belongs not to the world of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, but to that of Patricia Highsmith or even that of Poe.
The Deadly Percheron 1946 by Dodd, Mead in the United States. In England 1947 by Victor Gollancz. In paperback in the USA & UK, 1976-1991 first as part of The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus and then in a separate edition. 1998 by Poisoned Pen Press. In Scotland, 2000 by Canongate Books, Ltd (Canongate Crime Classics). 2006 Millipede Press
The Last of Philip Banter 1947 by Dodd, Mead in the United States. In England 1947 by Victor Gollancz. In paperback in the USA & UK, 1976-1991 first as part of The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus and then in a separate edition.
Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly in England 1948 by Victor Gollancz. In the United States 1967 by Macfadden-Bartell (paperback). Again in paperback in the USA & UK, 1976-1991 first as part of The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus and then in a separate edition. In Scotland, 2001, by Canongate Books, Ltd (Canongate Crime Classics).
The Case Against Myself (Published under the pseudonym Gregory Tree) 1950 by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. 1951 by Bantam. In England, 1951 by Victor Gollancz.
The Burning Glass 1950 by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. In England, by Victor Gollancz.
The Case Against Butterfly (Published under the pseudonym Gregory Tree) 1951 by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States.
A Shroud For Grandmama (Published under the pseudonym Douglas Ashe and in England under the pseudonym Gregory Tree) 1951 by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. In England, 1952 by Victor Gollancz. In USA, 1970 by Paperback Library (retitled The Longstreet Legacy).
So Young To Die (Published under the pseudonym Gregory Tree) 1953 by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. In England, 1952 by Victor Gollancz. In the USA, 1969 by Macfadden-Bartell (paperback).
Christmas Comes But Once A Year 1954 by Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. In England, 1954 by Peter Davies.
Purloining Tiny 1978 by Harper and Row in the United States.
Print media
The Deadly Percheron, Millipede (now Centipede) Press, 2006
Online
John Franklin Bardin fan site
John Franklin BardinJohn Franklin BardinJohn Franklin BardinJohn Franklin Bardin
