FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES – Station Wagon in Spain. Farrar Straus & Cudahy, hardcover, 1959. Paperback reprints include Avon G-1054, 1960; Fawcett Crest 1066, 1967.

   I have to confess, I struggled with Frances Parkinson Keyes (pronounced like skies). I did not want to read her books and I certainly didn’t want to like them.

   From the time I started reading heavily my mother, aunt, and cousin — all female — were pushing Keyes at me, and like a mule I balked. I grew up in the South, I did not need more maudlin memories of the Civil War and fading plantations beneath drooping willow trees. I certainly didn’t need them from a conservative Republican author of New England stock and the wife of a conservative Republican senator.

   Let us just say that at the time that was enough for me to lay in a stock of garlic, wooden stakes, and a crucifix to protect myself.

   Resistance wasn’t easy. Copies of Keyes’ works were everywhere I went, and those three ladies were very persuasive. And Keyes didn’t help. The first time I ate at Antoine’s in New Orleans, all I could think of over the crepe and cherries jubilee was that now I’d have to read Dinner at Antoine’s. Then too, The Chess Players was about the fascinating chess master Paul Morphy who had been a Confederate spy during the Civil War. It was an obvious conspiracy.

   It wasn’t until a ski trip to Red River in New Mexico that fate and Mrs. Keyes caught up to me. I took a nasty spill early that morning on a patch of ice and had a bit of a concussion. The medic told me to go back to the lodge and rest — not sleep — going to sleep alone after a concussion can be the last thing you ever do — just hang around the lodge — under observation lest I slip into a coma — and rest.

   Boredom and minor concern — not a good mix.

   I don’t know how many of you are familiar with ski lodges, but they are singularly lonely places when the ski slopes are open. There is no television, no radio (unless you like Mariachi music or country western — it was New Mexico after all), and nothing to read. They are designed only for partying apres skiing and sleeping when you can’t party anymore.

   There was no bookstore in Red River, not even a paperback kiosk at the convenience store. There may have been a library, but no one at the ski lodge knew where and with over 100 inches of snow on the ground and temperatures in the mid teens I didn’t feel like venturing out exploring. It was starting to snow too.

   But there she was, with the only book in the entire town apparently — Frances Parkinson Keyes.

   With all the resignation of a rabbit about to be eaten by a wolf I sat down to my fate.

   I won’t lie to you. It was not the start of a life long love affair. I still resist Southern Plantation novels with the same passion I reserve for cold cauliflower, but grudgingly she won me over. A convert — more of less.

   Between 1919 and her death in 1970, Keyes wrote a whole slew of novels, no small number of which were bestsellers. They are primarily women’s books: vivid descriptions of clothes, elegant meals, lace finery, furniture, chandeliers, and social mores mixed with a bit of melodrama and a good deal of history.

   Keyes was a prodigious researcher and traveler, largely self educated and endlessly curious. She had a reporter’s eye and a pleasant gossipy style that combined to make the ideal mix for her legions of readers.

   And as it turned out she was a fair to middling mystery and suspense writer.

   At least two of her novels are fair play mysteries — Dinner at Antoine’s, which features a well handled change on the least likely suspect theme, and The Royal Box, about a poisoning of an American diplomat in the royal box at London’s Ellen Terry Theater. She also penned three novels of romantic suspense — Victorine, The Heritage, and Station Wagon in Spain.

   Station Wagon in Spain, as you have no doubt already figured out, was the book in the lodge.

   The hero of the novel, one Allan Lambert, has worked all his life and only recently come into money, and he doesn’t quite know what to do, so when he gets one of those infamous Spanish Prisoner letters (the equivalent of today’s Nigerian con) instead of laughing it off or reporting it to the Postal authorities, he buys a beat up old wood paneled station wagon and ships it to Spain to have a little fun.

   This being Keyes, she not only explains what the Spanish Prisoner con was, but gives a nice little history of it dating back to the first instance in 1542 and some idea of how the Postal authorities and Spanish police deal with it.

   Allan soon finds himself knee deep in murder, politics, criminal gangs, romance, and ancient revenge.

   Station Wagon in Spain is an exceptionally good read of its type. Nothing revolutionary, but Keyes’ novelist’s eye adds a depth to the proceedings missing in the standard model. She knows how to choreograph action,, construct a plot, and build to a pay off — in fact the book doesn’t have just one payoff, but two — three if you count the inevitable romance.

   They are pretty good payoff’s too — one of them almost Poesque and damn well handled. It has a real edge and more than a touch of that passionate nature so dear to the Spanish character and history.

   This isn’t the work of a mainstream novelist slumming in genre fiction.

   Well, yes, it’s dated now. Her prose is a little stiff and formal. She lingers over details that her readers loved but most lovers of suspense would as soon skip, and her attitudes are those of a woman of her day, class, and social position — albeit an extremely well traveled and cosmopolitan woman of her time.

   She isn’t Leslie Ford, but she’s not exactly Eleanor Roosevelt either.

   And yes, I have since read a good many of Frances Parkinson Keyes novels — even some of the Southern plantation novels like River Road and Steamboat Gothic.

   She was an obsessive and keen researcher, had a travel writer’s eye for the telling detail, a novelist gift for creating comfortable if not compelling characters, and despite her protests to the contrary, a real gift for suspense and mystery plotting.

   If you like Helen MacInnes, Martha Albrand, Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, Charlotte Armstrong, or Nora Lofts you might well enjoy her suspense and mystery novels, and if you like historical novels she was one of the masters of that form.

   Her work is aimed at her primarily female audience, but there is nothing to keep a man from enjoying them with a little judicious skipping here and there — there is only so much I feel the need to know about Damascus silk, and all that sumptuous descriptions of food remind me of is that I ought to order a pizza for dinner.

   I recovered from the concussion — no comments — got back on the ski slopes the next day, and when I got home rounded up all the Keyes novels my family had been pushing on me for years. I still have some of them, battered, dog eared, and once much loved.

   The first one I read was the Paul Morphy novel, The Chess Players.

   I enjoyed it too.

   If you’re in the mood for fictional comfort food, you could do much worse, and for all her flaws, her virtues still out weigh them. She is largely forgotten today, as the once popular works of past generations generally are, but there are still pleasures to be found, and you will likely feel more than a little appreciation for a time and a writer who appreciated literacy, construction, and respected her readers intelligence.

   She was a most literate and accomplished lady.

   As best selling writers from the past go, she is still well worth getting acquainted with.

   Crime Fiction Bibliography:   [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

KEYES, FRANCES PARKINSON (née Wheeler). 1885-1970.

    Dinner at Antoine’s (n.) Messner 1948.
    The Royal Box (n.) Messner 1954.
    Victorine (n.) Messner 1958.
    Station Wagon in Spain (n.) Farrar 1959.

PETE HAMILL – Dirty Laundry. Bantam, paperback original, 1978.

   Sam Briscoe, 200 pounds of Irish Jew, is not a private eye, but a newspaper reporter — very nearly the next best thing, as I’ve implied before — presently free-lancing, but once a top columnist for a New York paper. (Hamill makes no secret of the fact that he regards this series as an integral part of his imaginary autobiography.)

   A one-time girl friend calls on Sam for help, but on her way to him she’s smashed up while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. The night is cold, and Sam has no idea that the killer’s trail will soon be leading him into sunny Mexico, and involve him deeply in the affairs of some renegade revolutionaries from Cuba.

   And thereby all the ingredients of the traditional hard-boiled paperback novel are here — crime, passion, greed, lust, and revenge; the fire isn’t. And yet, if your taste runs toward the fulfillment of adolescent male fantasies, I think you’ll like it just fine.

Rating:   C plus.

[UPDATE] 03-15-11.   I had the impression back in 1979, that Sam Briscoe was going to hang around as a character a lot longer than he did, which was only two three books.

   Of course with a line like the one below, excerpted from an online biography, you can understand that the writing of PBO mysteries was not going to be a career-changer for him:

    “He [Pete Hamill] has been a columnist for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and New York Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. He has served as editor-in-chief of both the Post and the Daily News.

   And as they say, there is more, much more. The Sam Briscoe books are not mentioned.

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

PETE(r) HAMILL. 1935- .
      Dirty Laundry (n.) Bantam 1978 [Sam Briscoe]
      The Deadly Piece (n.) Bantam 1979 [Sam Briscoe]

      The Guns of Heaven (n.) Bantam 1983. [the third Sam Briscoe adventure; see comments]

DOROTHY GARDINER – The Trans-Atlantic Ghost. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1933.

   The detective in what was Mrs. Gardiner’s first mystery novel has a well-chosen name, I think you’ll agree, but the fact is that while Mr. Watson indeed did work for 20 years for the New York Police Department, he was for all that time a minor clerk, a statistician. (Though, of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that!)

   The locked room murder he’s called upon to solve in this book is in California, however, where he finds himself as part of an around-the-world cruise he’s about to embark on, as he heads back home to his native England for good.

   The locked room is in an English castle that’s been transported across the ocean and rebuilt in the hills of California by a wealthy millionaire; there is some talk of ghosts, and some obnoxious louts who call themselves policemen, led by the appropriately named Captain Bulnose; and lots of suspects.

   What makes this book so disappointing is difficult to describe without giving the entire solution away, and you may as well have your own chance at it. Allow me to suggest, however, that it’s the obvious one, and one that at one point Watson is solemnly assured could not be the explanation.

   Of course we shouldn’t assume that everyone knows the truth, or speaks it, but some tiny spark of imagination is to be expected as well, isn’t it?

   There are some nicely humorous scenes to be pleased with, such as when the string on Watson’s pajamas gives way at one crucial point, and to be honest, this was no real chore to read, but as a mystery, it’s (sadly) rather a silly one.

Rating: C minus.

[UPDATE] 03-12-11.   A scarce book, with only a single copy of the US edition listed on ABE, and my copy has no jacket, thus no image above.

   I don’t know much about the author, but according to one website: “Dorothy Gardiner was born in Naples, Italy. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado. In 1917, she graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in History. During the Second World War she was in charge of all the files and records for the North-Atlantic Area office of the American Red Cross.”

   From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, a list of her mystery fiction:

GARDINER, DOROTHY. 1894-1979.
      The Transatlantic Ghost (n.) Doubleday 1933 [Mr. Watson]
      A Drink for Mr. Cherry (n.) Doubleday 1934 [Mr. Watson]
      Beer for Psyche (n.) Doubleday 1946
      What Crime Is It? (n.) Doubleday 1956 [Sheriff Moss Magill]
      The Seventh Mourner (n.) Doubleday 1958 [Sheriff Moss Magill]

       Lion in Wait (n.) Doubleday 1963 [Sheriff Moss Magill]

   She also edited For Love or Money: The 1957 Anthology of the Mystery Writers of America (Doubleday Crime Club, 1957).

    ● Reported first by Jiro Kimura on his Gumshoe website, mystery and SF writer Edward Wellen died on January 15, 2011. Noted primarily for his short fiction, Mr. Wellen wrote two crime novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and one collection of criminous short stories:

EDWARD (Paul) WELLEN 1919-2011.
      Hijack. Beagle, pb, 1971.

      An Hour to Kill. St. Martin’s, hc, 1993.
      Perps. Five Star, ss collection, hc, 2001.

   Hijack was a science fiction novel with a considerable crime component; the blurb on the front cover says “The Mafia takes to space!” A shorter version was published earlier in Venture SF (May 1970).

   A list of Wellen’s short SF can be found here on ISFDB, while some of his short work in the mystery (and western) field can be found here in The FictionMags Index.

   The earliest story there is “Enough Rope,” 2-Gun Western, August 1953, which is enough to qualify him as a pulp fiction writer, a category whose number is sadly decreasing every month.

    ● The death of author Barbara Whitehead was reported first by UK mystery writer Martin Edwards on his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

   Martin says in part: “Barbara came to crime fiction late after writing historical romances and non-fiction. Her first crime novel, Playing God, had an interesting background of the York mystery plays. It became the opening entry in her “York cycle of mysteries”, which eventually ran to eight titles spanning a decade of publication. Her main character was Detective Superintendent Bob Southwell and she was especially good at evoking the atmosphere of York Minster and the wonderful old city around it.”

BARBARA (Maude) WHITEHEAD. 1930-2011. Series character Inspector Robert Southwell in all titles:

       Playing God (n.) Quartet 1988; St. Martin’s, 1989.
       The Girl with Red Suspenders (n.) Constable 1990; St. Martin’s, 1990.
       The Dean It Was That Died (n.) Constable 1991; St. Martin’s, 1991.
       Sweet Death, Come Softly (n.) Constable 1992; St. Martin’s, 1993.

       The Killings at Barley Hall (n.) Constable 1995.
       Secrets of the Dead (n.) Constable 1996.
       Death at the Dutch House (n.) Constable 1997.
       Dolls Don’t Choose (n.) Constable 1998.

   The last four books have never been published in the US. For more information about her life and career, her webpage http://www.barbarawhitehead.com/ is still online.

   We’re still in the process of going through some of the typos and other small errors that always creep into a project like this, but Part 40 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is now online. (Follow the links.)

   There are the usual additions: newly discovered series characters and settings for the novels, a few new authors and novels, dates of birth and death added or corrected. A whole gamut of facts and additional information about our favorite hobby: reading and collecting detective and mystery fiction, some of it generated by the reviews and other discussions that have recently taken place on this blog.

   The corrections to Part 40 of the online Addenda will be made in the next couple of days, but one of the highlights of this particular installment deserves a post here on this blog all to itself, the discovery of a female identity to a masculine byline that occurred frequently in the heyday of the hard-boiled detective pulp magazines.

   I’ll let Victor Berch tell you all about it in the very next post.

JEANNETTE COVERT NOLAN – “I Can’t Die Here.” Julian Messner, hardcover, 1945. Detective Novel Classic #49, digest paperback, no date [1946].

   Described inaccurately as a “whilom” lieutenant of the State Police (Illinois?), Lace White is fifty, unmarried, and a writer of historical novels. In this novel, one of several featuring her, she is an obviously intelligent woman who nonetheless operates with no apparent police training and seemingly no common sense.

   Though Dudley Shane, who has married into the rich Motley family in Capital City, has, or so we are told, a saint for a wife, Shane is a womanizer, without much staying power it would seem. Thus he has enemies, and thus he is shot one night and dies in his apartment, but not before one of his lovers has taken an overdose of amytal.

   Called in as a special investigator, White detects well with people, not well with tangible evidence. Finding blood near the door of Shane’s office, she does nothing about it until the evidence is no longer needed. The murder weapon is a .38 Colt revolver, with, as you will no doubt not be surprised to hear, a working silencer, which White accepts unquestioningly.

   Considering who the murderer is, the deceased’s actions — before he becomes deceased, of course — are inexplicable. The author portrays White, against type, as a foolish risk taker. Finally, the manifold awesome coincidences don’t help matters any.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   Bill guessed the locale of this novel to be Illinois, but Al Hubin in his Revised Crime Fiction IV, says it was Indiana, only one state to the right.

   Here’s a list of all six Lace White books, as adapted from CFIV. These are author’s only works of crime fiction:

JEANNETTE COVERT NOLAN.   1897-1974.

       Where Secrecy Begins (n.) Long 1938.
       Profile in Gilt (n.) Funk 1941. [aka Murder Will Out, Detective Novel Classics #8, 1942]

       Final Appearance (n.) Duell 1943.
       “I Can’t Die Here” (n.) Messner 1945.
       Sudden Squall (n.) Washburn 1955.
       A Fearful Way to Die (n.) Washburn 1956.

   Nolan’s papers were donated to the University of Southern Mississippi Library as part of their de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection.

   Quoting from their website:   “During her lifetime, Ms. Nolan wrote over forty-five children’s books including biographies, essays, and historical non-fiction. Although she wrote for both children and adults, she is most noted for her work in children’s literature. In 1961, she was awarded the Indiana Authors’ Day Award for Spy for the Confederacy. In 1968, Ms. Nolan was added to the Indiana University Writers Conference Hall of Fame. The next year she was named a Litterarum Doctor, an honorary doctor of letters and literature. She died on October 12, 1974.”

ANN CARDWELL – Crazy to Kill. Mystery House, hardcover, 1941. Black Cat Detective #10, digest paperback, 1944. Harlequin #22, Canada, pb, 1949. Macfadden 35-119, paperback, 1962. Nightwood Editions, softcover, Canada, 1990. The book was also converted to an opera with this title by James Reaney, Sr., and John Beckwith; it was performed in Canada in 1989.

   After spending ten years in Resthome, a private hospital for “nervous” cases, Agatha Lawson, a spinster in her early sixties, is due to be released. Unfortunately, just at this time a grisly series of attacks and murders involving the staff starts taking place at the hospital.

   Since Lawson is around at the time of each episode, she feels that she is more than capable to solve the case, particularly in view of the incompetence of Lieutenant Hogan of the local police.

   Also aware that Hogan is beyond his depth, the authorities bring in another detective, this one willing to consult with Lawson. Between them, the murderer is apprehended.

   One of the rare mysteries with a mental institution setting and one of the rare… But that mustn’t be revealed.

   Forget that this novel was published by Mystery House, a publisher of third- and fourth-rate novels. While not in the first rank, this is nonetheless quite readable.

Bibliography: Adapted from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin —

    ANN CARDWELL. Pseudonym of Jean Makins Powley, 1902-1966. Daughter of a judge in Stratford, Ontario.

   Crazy to Kill. Mystery House, 1941.

   Murder at Calamity House. Arcadia House, 1947.

GEORGE WORTHING YATES – The Body That Wasn’t Uncle. William Morrow, hardcover, 1939. Reprint paperbacks: Dell #52, mapback edition, 1944; Dell #645, 1952.

   When a man off the train at Princeton Junction [New Jersey] heads straight across the snow for the Villars farm, the number one question asked later is, did he ever get there before he collapsed and died of atropine poisoning? And why did Sidney Villars claim the dead man to be his long-lost brother, Stephen Small?

   Ex-Scotland Yard Inspector Hazlitt Woar, now a private eye at loose ends in Bermuda, is called in by Katheren Meynard, a friend of the family who suspects fraud, but not murder. Woar, who speaks in riddles and short, clipped sentences, does a capable job of detection and fulfills while doing so a romance evidently begun in an earlier entry in the series, the courtship finally ending in a most curious fashion indeed.

   There is a class of detective novel, however, and this is one of them, in which you keep getting the distinct impression that the author is deliberately withholding information solely to keep the reader from solving the puzzle. The merely mysterious is emphasized, and not the mystery.

   Or in other words, characters are murkier than they need to be, and with murkier motives. To no avail, this time: there’s only one person the killer could be. Strangely enough, New Jersey trooper Lt. Gurney could have come straight from the pages of Black Mask, and equally so the ambitious, high-minded D.A. named Hellenberger.

   As for Woar himself, though, he has a tweedy and entirely British charm all his own.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:   [Adapted from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

GEORGE WORTHING YATES. 1900-1975. see pseudonym Peter Hunt (books)

      There Was a Crooked Man (n.) Morrow 1936.
      The Body That Came by Post (n.) Morrow 1937.   [Hazlitt Woar]
      The Body That Wasn’t Uncle (n.) Morrow 1939.   [Hazlitt Woar.]
      If a Body (n.) Morrow 1941.   [Hazlitt Woar]

   In collaboration with Charles Hunt Marshall under the joint pen name of Peter Hunt, Yates also wrote three earlier works of detective or mystery fiction. Alan Miller, about whom I know nothing more, was the leading character in these, including the provocatively titled Murder Among the Nudists (1934).

[UPDATE] 01-25-11.   I can’t say this with any degree of certainty, but I believe it was the earlier Dell paperback that I read. What’s strange is that I’m almost sure that I remember the bookstore where I found the book, but all I remember of the story is what you’ve just read yourself in the review above.

[UPDATE #2] 01-29-11.   Murder Among the Nudists, I am pleased — and quite surprised — to be able to tell you, has recently been reprinted by Ramble House.   (Thanks for the tip go to Jamie Sturgeon.)

PETER HILL – The Hunters. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1976. UK edition: Peter Davies, 1976.

   A rapist killer strikes in Suffolk, and Scotland Yard sends out its crack team of Chief Superintendent Robert Stauton and Detective Inspector Leo Wyndsor. Mark their names as they will return.

   In brief, Stauton is supposedly infallible, uncompromising, and suffers from hemorrhoids, while Wyndsor is a man for the ladies, who literally tear their clothes off for him. Yet as a team they make an efficient pair, gradually learning each other’s personalities and vices, each determined to succeed.

   The initial stages of the investigation are as routine as usual, but the story suddenly comes alive when Wyndsor takes on the local priest in an argument about the Church and the human condition — I say he wins. At the same time overtones of the occult begin to work their way in, and a local coven’s meeting the night of the murder makes mince of coherent alibi taking.

   It is a problem, but one overcome by a nifty piece of police work, in a tale filled with characters one grows to appreciate. A fine debut.

[UPDATE] 01-20-11.   I don’t remember this one at all. I probably wouldn’t have reprinted it if I hadn’t felt the need to remind myself that you can’t be right all the time. There were several more books in the series, but Staughton and Wyndsor obviously didn’t catch on and/or couldn’t maintain the momentum I thought I saw in their first outing. From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of all of Hill’s crime fiction under this name:

PETER HILL. Pseudonym of Peter Eyers-Hill, 1939- .

    The Hunters (n.) Davies 1976 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]
    The Fanatics (n.) Davies 1977 [Commander Allan Dice]
    The Liars (n.) Davies 1977 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]
    The Enthusiast (n.) Davies 1978 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]
    The Washermen (n.) Davies 1979 [Commander Allan Dice]
    The Savages (n.) Heinemann 1980 [Chief Insp. Robert Staunton]

Note: The last two titles had no US publication.

MARJORIE ALAN – Dark Prophecy. M.S. Mill, hardcover, 1945. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, December 1945. Originally published in the UK as Masked Murder (Hale, hc, 1945).

   Chapter 1:   “Of course, Valerie thought, as she laid it [the letter] down, she wouldn’t go.”

   Chapter 2:   “Directly she got into the train at Paddington she knew that she ought not to go to Wayfarers. Knew in a clear, definite premonitory flash, as unmistakably as though someone had spoken the words…”

   Had I but known, I wouldn’t have begun the book. But unlike our heroine, I at least was wise enough not to undertake this perilous journey.

       Bibliography:     [Adapted from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

MARJORIE ALAN.   Pseudonym of Doris Marjorie Bumpus, 1905- .

    Masked Murder. Hale 1945. US edition: Dark Prophecy, Mill 1945.
    Murder in November. Hale 1946. US edition: Rue the Day, Mill 1946.
    Murder Next Door. Hale 1950.
    The Ivory Locket. Hale 1951.

    Murder at Puck’s Cottage. Hale 1951.
    Dark Legacy. Hale 1953.
    Murder Looks Back. Hale 1955.
    Murder in a Maze. Hale 1956.

Editorial Comments:   This is essentially all I have learned about the author. One online source adds a birthplace (in England), but no one seems to have even a year of death for her.

    Confession time. I have not been posting all of Bill Deeck’s fanzine reviews I come across, generally choosing not to use any that are as short and dismissive as this one is. I’ve made an exception this time. Even though it’s short and dismissive, it’s also one (in my opinion) that gives a honest description and evaluation of the book.

    If you can’t get an idea of what the novel’s about in these 150 words or so, and whether you’d like it or not, I don’t think another thousand would help. You be the judge!