BILL KNOX – Seafire. Webb Carrick #6. Long, UK, hardcover, 1970. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1971.

   
   Webb Carrick is normally the first officer on the cruiser Marlin under “stubby bearded Captain James Shannon,” but Carrick has temporarily been assigned to duty as Commander of the research vessel Clavella which he is to meet in the fishing village of Quinnbeg.

   The Clavella is on a fairly standard mission studying plankton to to insure the waters off Scotland’s coast stay healthy and productive, but Carrick is no sooner ashore in Quinnbegg when he meets a hostile and suspicious populace convinced the research vessel is responsible for recent disastrous catches and the scientists aboard are doing more than studying plankton.

   They aren’t far off either. Something is going on that Carrick hasn’t been made privy to, and before he lays this problem to rest, the fishing industry will be threatened, the British economy will face ruin, countless lives will be endangered, and nuclear brinkmanship, Russian sleeper agents, and murder will all raise their ugly head.

   Those unfamiliar with this series might be surprised to discover Bill Knox managed to get some eighteen titles out of the fish police and Webb Carrick, and most of them fast paced intelligent thrillers mixing mystery, seafaring, the lore of the Scottish coast and its rich history and mysterious geography, along with solid detection, suspense, and adventure. You might expect tales of smuggling, illegal fishing, and industrial pollution from such a series, but Knox throws in spies, and even a bit of SF (*) and old fashioned terror of the Deeps into the mix, all as neat as a good Scotch.

   Bill Knox is best known for his long running Scottish procedural series about cops Thane and Moss, but that is only a small part of his prodigious output. In addition to Thane and Moss and Carrick and the Fishery Protective service Knox also wrote the Talos Cord thrillers about a tough UN agent as Robert McLeod, the Jonathan Gaunt “Remembrancer’ series, several books about Andrew Laird marine insurance investigator, and a handful of stand alone books and non-fiction. A journalist from Glasgow Knox learned earned his crime writing skills as a crime reporter, and it shows in a clear concise and well researched style that combines with a vivid imagination.

   His particular gift was mastering the ideal mix of mysterious events, compounding suspense, likable characters, adventure, and an enviable gift for the relentless rousing climax.

   Seafire (a type of plankton causing all the problem here) produces  a typically masterful Knox outing in which little is what it seems and Carrick has his hands full bringing the bad guys to bear and solving a threat that reaches far beyond the small fishing villages where it began.

   If you aren’t familiar with the Webb Carrick series, I highly recommend them. I’ve read at least half of them and never been disappointed. Witchrock, Devilweed, Blacklight, and Stormtide are particular favorites in the long running series.
               ___

    (*) From Conan Doyle on, British thriller writers have never shied from a touch of Science Fiction to color their plots, from William LeQueux and E. Phillips Oppenheim and mysterious electronic eyes that sink battleships. to Edgar Wallace and King Kong, Margery Allingham and Mr. Campion, to John Creasey’s Dr. Palfrey and Ian Fleming and his imitators, SF has often injected itself into the genre, and in recent years become more common with the American breed.

JOHN CREASEY – The Scene of the Crime. Inspector Roger West. Berkley F1245, paperback; 1st printing thus, June 1966. Published earlier by Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1961, and by Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, hardcover, 1961.

   It is not particularly pleasant to watch a man plan and carry out two murders that, with his logic, seem almost straightforward and natural. A warped mind is revealed with all of its rationalities, and more chilling because of that. What can you say about a man who loves his family so much that he will kill them so they will never learn the truth about him?

   Inspector West’s family becomes involved when they go house-hunting, only to find the one the murderer’s wife has her heart set on it.  And his sons do a bit of Hardy boys adventuring, though much more dangerous, as part of first love, with the murderer’s daughters.

   A case is built against the wrong man, doubt sets in, and that case so carefully constructed must somehow be torn down, Since knowledge of the real murderer is the reader’s from the beginning, a sense of urgency floods over everything.

   Human interest deduction, with the emphasis on “human.”

Rating: *****

MOSS ROSE. 20th Century Fox, 1947. Peggy Cummins, Victor Mature, Ethel Barrymore, Vincent Price, Margo Woode, George Zucco, Patricia Medina, Rhys Williams. Based on the novel by Joseph Shearing (correction made in Comment #6). Director: Gregory Ratoff.

   A Victorian era murder mystery, in which a chorus girl first plays detective and then attempts a surprising sort of blackmail. The main clue in the death of her friend is a rose, found in a Bible at the scene of the crime.

   Peggy Cummins’ character is naive, audacious and charming, all at the same time. I found myself rooting for her, and I didn’t know why. As a mystery the story could have used some extra finesse, however. The finger of suspicion jumps a bit too quickly here.

   Searching for the source of a lost detective novel — 13 (The Thirteenth Guest), Bucharest 1941

Hello everyone,

   I’m conducting research on a Romanian detective novel published in Bucharest in 1941 under the title 13 (The Thirteenth Guest).

   The book was attributed to Edgar Wallace, but after careful comparison, it doesn’t match any known Wallace work.

   The novel includes the following characters and elements:

– Edgar Paragon, owner of Paragon Motors
– Rolster, Windover, Kirstone
– Villa Alice, a country mansion near a large factory
– An invitation numbered 13, an automobile accident, an inheritance, and several murders.

   Structurally, it has 13 chapters (111 pages), no chapter titles, and reads like a 1930s–early 1940s European or Anglo-German pulp mystery or industrial crime story.

   Below are the opening lines of Chapter I from the Romanian text (translated):

   On the green hill before the dark wall of fir forest, in the middle of a wide park with old trees, stood Villa Alice. From the flowerbed, bright with thousands of blossoms, a terrace rose toward the glass doors of the house. The large arched windows of the upper floor looked out across the fields toward the chimneys and rooftops of Paragon Works — one of the largest machine factories in the world. On the gatepost, a brass plate simply read “Edgar Paragon.”

   I am looking for any pre-1940 English or German novel, serial, or pulp story with similar characters or plot elements.

   Has anyone seen a story or serial featuring Edgar Paragon, Villa Alice, or an “invitation numbered 13”?

   Any lead — author name, magazine title, or publisher — would be deeply appreciated.

   Thank you in advance,

         Doru-Calin Ciobanu

WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – The Hundred-Dollar Girl. PI Joe Puma #6. Dutton, hardcover, 1961. Signet S2205, paperback, 1962.

   Sports — in particular football, boxing, and golf — play strong roles in many of Gault’s mysteries. Ex-jock Brock Callahan solves pro-football-related crimes in Day of the Ram and Dead Hero (1963). One non-series book, Fair Prey (1956), published under the pseudonym Will Duke, has a golfing background; another, The Canvas Coffin (1953), deals with the fight game and has a boxer protagonist. The Hundred-Dollar Girl likewise deals with the seedy world of professional prizefighting.

   This novel is also the seventh and last to feature Gault’s other series character — and second private eye -Joe Puma. Puma is tougher than Callahan, more of a loner, but imbued with the same human qualities; Anthony Boucher wrote of him, “He is big and muscular and can give and take punishment; he drinks and wenches and has his own ideas about professional ethics. But Gault has created him so firmly and skillfully that he is a man and not a pornographic puppet … an understandable and not too happy man, sometimes likable, sometimes exasperating and always real.”

   Puma made his first appearance in a pseudonymous book — Shakedown (1953), as by Roney Scott — but it wasn’t until 1958 that he emerged in full style; his first two major cases, End of a Call Girl and Night Lady, were published that year by Fawcett Crest, and three others followed in 1959-60. The Hundred-Dollar Girl is Puma’s only hardcover appearance.

   Hired by Terry Lopez to keep her young boxer husband from being forced by his unscrupulous manager, Gus Galbini, to throw a fight, Puma is almost immediately plunged into a murder investigation when Galbini turns up dead. Galbini’s wife also hires him: She has special reasons for wanting to find out who killed her meal ticket.

   A variety of hoodlums and beautiful women complicate matters and lead Puma on a perilous course to the (surprising) identity of Galbini’s killer. The Dutton edition’s dust jacket blurb calls this “a story of violence and death at ringside, replete with action and color and full of the authentic atmosphere of life in the ring and life in the underworld.” For once, dust jacket blurb is not only accurate but justified in its praise.

   Gault also brought Joe Puma back in The Cana Diversion,but he brought him back dead: The central premise of that novel is Brock Callahan’s search for Puma’s murderer. Those of us who liked Big Joe as well as we like Callahan, if not more so, may never quite forgive Bill Gault for so cold-bloodedly knocking him off.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

M. E. CHABER – The Flaming Man. Milo March #18. Holt Rinehart & Winston, hardcover, 1969. Paperback Library, paperback, June 1970; cover art by Robert McGinnis. Steeger Books, softcover, 2021.

   Milo March isn’t quite a private eye, but as an freelance insurance investigator, he’s the next best thing. He’s hired in this case to handle a building fire in L.A. that occurred soon after the riots there. Worse, three bodies are found in the ashes, all three burnt beyond identification. Since the owner of the building has disappeared, it is assumed he is one of three.

   As long time mystery readers, we know better than that, don’t we?

   On a hardboiled scale ranging from 1 to 10, the best I can offer is 2.5, and at that, I think I’m stretching it. The pace is leisurely. Nothing much happens until it does and the book is over. Milo can be a little tough when he needs to be, but it doesn’t happen often enough. He does do a lot of drinking, and I mean a lot. He has a bottle or glass of liquid spirits in hand that averages out to nearly every other page. He is at one time forced to drink Cokes steadily over several pages. Never again, he says.

   This is a book that at least one reader found entertaining enough to keep reading, but taking two months to do so is another long stretch of time that I thought maybe I should tell you about. You can take it from there.

THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES “A Message from the Deep Sea.” 19 September 1971 (Season 1, Episode 1.) Thames Television, UK. John Neville (Dr. Thorndyke), James Cossins, Bernard Archard, Terence Rigby, Eve Pearce. Based on the story by R. Austin Freeman. Director: James Goddard. Currently streaming on PBS/Masterpiece.

   The title of the overall two-season British series will tell you most of what might need to know, even if it’s managed to miss your attention all of the time since it first appeared. The stories presented were based on various detective stories written at the time Sherlock Holmes was around and solving mysteries, penned  by various authors who were Conan Doyle’s contemporaries, mostly forgotten or not, justified or not. Comparatively speaking, I hasten to add.

   This one’s by R. Austin Freeman, whose books are still generally available, and to the extent that they’re still being reprinted today. In this first episode of the series, Dr. Thorndyke, his most well-known detective, solves a case of young woman who’s found murdered in her room in a semi-reputable rooming house, her throat cut.

   The setting of the tale is sumptuous, as is almost always the case in British TV productions such as this, while Dr. Thorndyke – who is much younger and more handsome than I have ever pictured him – continually rags on the police as constant tramplers of the evidence, saying that it is the facts that matter, not preconceived and half-cocked ideas that count for nothing.

   In that regard, I confess to being guilty of following the facts well enough, as presented, but having little idea what to do with them. No matter. It is still a pleasure to follow a tale that has the right idea, done more than well enough.
   

   The link below is to Dan Stumpf’s new website as an author (as Daniel Boyd), but toward the bottom of one of the pages (hunt for it) is a link to his also very new blog. It looks like a lot of fun to me, and I speak from experience. Recommended!

         https://danielboydauthor.com

LIA MATERA – Where Lawyers Fear to Tread. Willa Jansson #1. Bantam, paperback original, 1987. Fawcett, paperback, 1991.

   When Susan Green, editor-in-chief of the Malhousie Law Review, is found murdered in her office, there is no shortage of suspects. Besides other various editors. There are all of the faculty, of course, and numerous spouses, lovers, distinguished alumni,and so on.

   Willa Jansson, former senior articles editor, unwillingly pressed into service as Susan’s replacement, also turns detective. Almost everyone is suspected in turn, and many of them are guilty (of something). An intense sort of story, in a cluttered sort of way.

      The Willa Jansson series —

Where Lawyers Fear to Tread, Bantam, 1987.
A Radical Departure, Bantam, 1988.
Hidden Agenda, Bantam, 1988.
Prior Convictions, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Last Chants, Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Star Witness, Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Havana Twist, Simon & Schuster, 1998.

PIERS ANTHONY – Sos the Rope. Pyramid X-1890. Paperback original; 1st printing, October 1968. Cover art by Jack Gaughan. Serialized earlier in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-Aug-Sept 1968, Collected in Battle Circle (Avon, paperback, 1978).

   A strange triangle formed between two men and a woman becomes the key to the future of a post-war semi-feudal society, There are the warriors whose problems are solved by the force of arms, by trial by combat. And there are the crazies, who supply the traditions of learning and the past.

   Any form of unifying leadership is discouraged by the secret underground manufacturers of all supplies, and it is Sos’ friend Sol who threatens to provide that leadership, with the help of Sos, which would upset the balance of this precarious society. Sola is the wife of Sol, who bears the daughter of Sos. And it is Sos who is sent to end Sol’s leadership, and who then becomes the one who must be destroyed, What he has built, he must also destroy.

   A dilemma, unresolved. To strive for the benefits of civilization again, or to maintain the present because with it civilization brings destruction? What to do with an empire that cannot withstand those who have the power and wish to keep it for themselves?

   Much much more than for Lin Carter’s “swords and sorcery.”

Rating: *****