June 2008


NICHOLAS BLAKE – The Private Wound.

Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1968. US hardcover: Harper & Row, 1968. US paperbacks: Dell, 1970 (first cover shown); Perennial, 1981. Many British paperback editions, including Pan, 1971. Australian pb: J. M. Dent, 1987 (second cover shown).

NICHOLAS BLAKE The Private Wound

    “Nicholas Blake” is an author that I’ve neglected over the years (among many), and I’m trying, with a modicum of success, to catch up with some of them. I put the author’s name in quotes, since Blake was in real life the well-known Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis, but as Blake, his primary sleuthing character was a fellow named Nigel Strangeways, who appeared in 16 of his 20 detective novels.

   Since The Private Wound is one of the four that Strangeways is not in, I’ll refrain from saying more about the gentleman for now — it will wait until I read one that he is in — except to say that one source on the Internet mentions that primary model for Mr Strangeways was Day-Lewis’s contemporary writer and poet, W.H. Auden.

   Day-Lewis was born in Ireland, and presumably had roots there all his life, which goes a long way in explaining the often poetic view of Ireland in the late 1930s there is to be found in The Private Wound. What one does not expect (or at least I did not) was the sensuality, the down-right earthiness, of the brief affair in which writer Dominic Eyre, visiting Ireland from England, finds himself enmeshed with Harry, short for Harriet, the wife of Eyre’s host, Flurry Leeson. (Flurry is short for Florence, “not an uncommon Christian name for men in Ireland.”)

   Here, with your permission, is a short introductory quote, from the very first page:

   When I remember that marvelous summer of 1939, in the West of Ireland almost thirty years ago, one picture always slips to the front of my mind. I am lying on a bed drenched with our sweat. She is standing by the open window to cool herself in the moonlight. I see again the hour-glass figure, the sloping shoulders, the rather short legs, that disturbing groove of the spine halfway hidden by her dark red hair which the moonlight has turned black. The fuchsia below the window will have turned to gouts of black blood. The river beyond is talking in its sleep. She is naked.

NICHOLAS BLAKE The Private Wound

   Blake died in 1972, and The Private Wound was the last detective novel he wrote. His first was A Question of Proof, which appeared in 1935, which is why I think of him as a Golden Age writer. But a paragraph such as the one above could have appeared in very few novels written in the 1930s, or so I’m conditioned to believe. If I’m in error, I don’t mind, please let me know.

   I’m weak on Irish history — but not as much as I was before I read this book. I knew that there was always a fierce hostility between the Irish and the English — and as Eyre soon discovers, Flurry was part of it. What I did not know was that certain factions in pre-war Ireland were seriously considering negotiations with Germany; uprisings in Ireland would seriously divert England’s attention to their west, rather than keeping their eye on what the Nazis were doing. And a conflict between Germany and England would leave the Northern counties open for takeover.

   I may not have that exactly right. The book that Blake wrote is not a history book, per se, but Dominic Eyre finds himself in the thick of things, of that there is no doubt: suspected both of being a spy and by all of the neighboring countryside of cuckolding his landlord. ((As note of technical accuracy, it is Flurry’s younger brother Kevin who owns the cottage where Eyre is staying.))

NICHOLAS BLAKE The Private Wound

   In the sentence before last, the latter is true, but the former is not, and thus the story is made. It makes for a formidable tale of detection as well — I will not tell you who the victim is, and who becomes Eyre’s partner in solving the crime — and I confess that I did not know who the killer was until two pages before All Is Revealed. And I should have. Known, that is, and much earlier. All in all, nicely done, in a sad and beautifully haunting sort of way.

   The same Internet source suggests that The Private Wound is considered the most autobiographical of the author’s works in the mystery genre. That may or may not be true — I have no way of knowing otherwise — but it does help explain the strange framing device. That the tale begins with “Dominic Eyre” describing the events that happened to him thirty years before is not so unusual — it was the closing short epilogue which was, when first read, the puzzler.

   The title comes from The Two Gentlemen from Verona: “The private wound is deepest.”

— November 2004


[UPDATE] 06-14-08.    I’ll be posting a review one of Blake’s detective novels with Nigel Strangeways in it sometime soon, perhaps not tomorrow, but by Monday at the latest.

   While doing some additional research on Peter Driscoll, the author of Pangolin, a spy thriller I reviewed here only a day or so ago, I discovered the sad news of his death, a fact not known to Al Hubin and the Revised Crime Fiction IV before now.

   The Wikipedia entry for Driscoll is not very large. It’s only one sentence long, followed by a list of the books he wrote:

    “Peter Driscoll (4 February 1942 – 30 October 2005) was a bestselling British author of international thrillers in the 1970s who first worked in South Africa then, in his later life, became Chief Radio News subeditor with Radio Telefís Éireann.”

   Taken from an interview with Mr Driscoll and appearing in his entry in Contemporary Authors, he had this to say about his early career:

    “I wrote my first story at age six, but was not certain I wanted to make a career of writing until I was fourteen. From then on I saw everything in my life as a preparation for that step, a conscious gathering of experiences that would one day be put to use. My first big breakthrough came when I sold the movie rights to my second novel, The Wilby Conspiracy. Since then, like most free-lancers, I’ve had ups and downs, with the ups predominating so far.”


   Here below is a checklist of all of Peter Driscoll’s crime fiction, expanded upon from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

DRISCOLL, PETER (John). 1942-2005.

      * The White Lie Assignment (n.) Macdonald, UK. hc, 1971. Lippincott, US, 1975. [Albania] “Michael Mannis, a freelance photographer, knew how the Albanian Secret Police dealt with spies. So it took a great deal of money to tempt him into accepting a mission to cross the Albanian frontier and photograph the Chinese missile sites there. He certainly earned it hte hard way when he discovered that his contact was a fugitive double agent with Russian killers waiting for him at the end of the run.”

PETER DRISCOLL

      * The Wilby Conspiracy (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1973. Lippincott, US, hc, 1972. [South Africa] Film: Optimus, 1975 (scw: Rod Amateau, Harold Nebenzal; dir: Ralph Nelson; starring: Sidney Poitier, Michael Caine). “A white mining engineer plunged into an underground world of intrigue and violence. A beautiful, sensual woman whom he must trust. A black fugitive whom he must save. And hanging in the balance, the fate of a vast, vicious struggle between a clandestine revolutionary organization and a diabolically efficient secret police amid the ugly slums and breathtaking wilderness of present-day Africa.”

PETER DRISCOLL

      * In Connection with Kilshaw (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1974. Lippincott, US, hc, 1974. [Ireland]

      * The Barboza Credentials (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1976. Lippincott, US, hc, 1976. [Mozambique] “British-born Joe Hickey is charged with finding a mercenary killer in Africa’s dark heart. But time is running out for this ex-cop turned Rhodesian sanctions-buster, and the life he has to save – as the seconds tick relentlessly by – is his own.”

PETER DRISCOLL

      * Pangolin (n.) Macdonald, UK, hc, 1979. Lippincott, US, hc, 1979. [Hong Kong]

      * -Heritage (n.) Granada, UK, hc, 1982. Doubleday, US, hc, 1982. [Algeria; 1945-62]

      * Spearhead (n.) Bantam, UK, hc, 1988. Little-Brown, US, hc, 1989. [South Africa] “The story of the terror and strife of a South Africa in deep racial conflict. Major Patrick Marriner, a retired British paratrooper and Falklands veteran, is recruited by the Black Nationalist leader Kumalo’s exiled comrades to do the seemingly impossible — free Kumalo before the National Intelligence Service can rid themselves of international humiliation.”

PETER DRISCOLL

       Secrets of State (n.) Bantam, UK, hc, 1991

       Spoils of War (n.) Bantam, UK, hc, 1994 [Kuwait]

JULIAN SYMONS – Bogue’s Fortune.

Perennial Library; paperback reprint, 1980. Harper & Brothers, US, hc, 1957. Other US paperback editions under this title: Dolphin, 1961; Carroll & Graf, 1988, 1993. First published in the UK as The Paper Chase: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1956. Paperback reprints under this title: Fontana, UK, 1958, 1966; Corgi, UK, 1970; Beagle, US, 1971.

JULIAN SYMONS Bogue's Fortune

   This is the book I began reading immediately after I finished The India-Rubber Men, by Edgar Wallace, and reviewed here not too long ago. It is also the book that I contrasted the Wallace book to in the comments that followed, saying:

    “But after I finished writing up my review of the Edgar Wallace book, I started one by Julian Symons. The difference between the two — well, what comes to mind first, it’s like comparing night with day, or very nearly so.

    “Symons’ story is witty and clever, and filled with engaging people — some of whom are obviously wrong-intentioned or have taken wrong turns in their life — but still engaging. The story line is filled with puzzling events that make me (the reader) want to keep reading to see what comes next, and this is the test where I think The India-Rubber Men comes up short, or at least it did with me.

    “(So far I’ve only just begun Symons’ book, but neither did I turn out the light on it when it got late last night, as I did a number of times with the one by Wallace.)”

   I confess that I got sidetracked in reading Bogue’s Fortune – since the time I started the book and now, my wife and I have been watching the entire 13-episode season of Eli Stone on DVD, not crime-related but we both think it’s a fabulous show. But I finished the book in one last gulp last night, closing the pages around 2 a.m., and now here I am and ready to report.

JULIAN SYMONS Bogue's Fortune

   Don’t expect a long analysis of all of Symons’ work, however, or any, for that matter. This is the first one I can recall ever having read, but no matter if it’s typical of his crime fiction – and I suspect not – it will not be my last.

   He was in thriller mode when he wrote this one – which is what brought up the comparison with Edgar Wallace in the first place – and I’m sticking with my original impression. It’s witty and clever, and filled with engaging people, as I said earlier.

   The story – at least he’s getting to it, you say, and I am – begins with a chap named Charles Applegate about to embark on a new career, that of instructor at Bramley, an ultra-progressive school for delinquent children somewhere outside of London. He has an ulterior motive, as he is no teacher, only a detective story writer looking to place his next mystery in such an establishment.

   After some hugger-mugger on the train down, his first night at the school is marred by the discovery of his also newly-arrived colleague dead in the victim’s own bed in the room next door. Murder it is, committed with the knife that Applegate took from one of the students around meal time the evening before.

   This all in the first 50 pages, and by page 72 he is having the following conversation with Hedda Pont, the young matron of the school and the niece of the director. She is as equally progressive as the school, which of course part of her charm to Applegate:

JULIAN SYMONS Bogue's Fortune

    “I hope you’re not going to the police,” she said.

    “The police.” Applegate was quite disconcerted. “Do you know, that never occurred to me. I should have rather a lot of explaining to do.”

    “That’s wonderful. Let’s do some investigating on our own.” Her blue eyes were bright as tinsel. Was it significant, Applegate wondered, that this should be the simile that occurred to him?

   Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is Hedda who has a better head on her shoulders for detecting than does Applegate, and perhaps even more physically active in the case that follows as well. One begins to think that Symons is being a bit satirical here, and once started thinking in this direction, one cannot begin to stop. Nor should one, and the way the ending plays out will only reinforce that thought.

   I do not think that Symons was thinking so much of Wallace when he write this, however, and while I am also not so very familiar with John Buchan, the latter’s name is invoked on page 135, in the following conversation that closes Chapter 16:

    “Good night.” He turned out the light.

JULIAN SYMONS Bogue's Fortune

    “Do you know the most fascinating thing of all?” Her voice came from the darkness.

    “What’s that?”

    “The face peering from the tower. And the man with the lobe missing off his ear. Positively too John Buchan for words.”

   Don’t get the wrong idea from the first sentence in that last selection. Hedda’s previous sentence had been, “A girl just can’t be ardent all the time. Will you turn out the light? Good night.”

   While both the beginning and end of this thriller adventure, combined with a little bit of detection, meet my prior expectations and then some, the middle sags a little, beginning with a 20 page exposition of the facts of the matter by one of the participants on the adversarial side, or at least his version of them, and no, it is not really known for a while whose side he is on, besides his own, and the jury may safely disregard this entire remark – or at least the second half of it.

   The overall rating, then, if I were to give one, still averages out to much better than average. Much. (And if you were to ask, I would have to say that the US title is the better one. By far.)

PETER DRISCOLL – Pangolin.

Detective Book Club; hardcover reprint (3-in-1 edition), May 1979. Macdonald & Jane, UK, hc, 1979; Granada/Panther, UK, pb, 1980; Corgi, UK, pb, 1989. J. B. Lippincott, US, hc, 1979; Popular Library, US, pb, date not stated.

PETER DRISCOLL Pangolin

   It’s wrong to generalize, I know, so generally speaking, I never do. But I still think that the English write espionage thrillers better than anyone else. And while this particular novel written by British author Peter Driscoll never won any awards, it certainly offers many more high points than low.

   Driscoll is probably best known for his book, The Wilby Conspiracy (Macdonald, 1973), and basis for the movie of the same name, but back in the 70s and 80s, he wrote a number of others, all presumably spy thrillers as well. (As a measure of a small comeback, ending a six-year hiatus in 1988, three more books were added to his total.)

   This one takes place in Hong Kong, back in the post-Viet Nam era, but before the British gave up control to the Chinese. A group of would-be adventurers down on their luck plan a kidnapping that will net them ten million dollars, if they can pull it off. The victim, they know — and this is what makes him so valuable — is the undercover head of American CIA operations in the Far East.

PETER DRISCOLL Pangolin

   What they do not know is that the man, whose wife has been sleeping with one of the kidnappers, is in the midst of a delicate espionage operation involving the head of the Chinese missile program. Moro rebels in the Philippines are involved, as well as a typhoon, the Hong Kong police, the British foreign office, and of course the CIA.

   It’s obvious that Driscoll must have spent some time in Hong Kong, and some of the greatest pleasures he supplies are the sights, sounds and smells of that city as it was 20 years ago. There are double-crosses galore, as well as massive (and painful) errors of judgment, great detective work, and did I mention double-dealing?

   Not an award-winner, as I stated above — it’s just a little too predictable for that — but it still packs a pretty good punch, providing the reader several full evenings’ worth of intrigue of the sit-back fasten-the-seatbelts-on-your-armchair kind of novel.

— Jan 2002



[UPDATE] 06-14-08.    The full list of Forgotten Books submitted for this past Friday can be found on Patti Abbott’s blog, where the idea first began.

   And I have discovered some bad news. While doing some research on Peter Driscoll the author, I learned that he died in 2005, a fact not known to Al Hubin and the Revised Crime Fiction IV until now. Look for a separate posting later today on this blog for a short tribute to him.

BOB GARLAND – Derfflinger

Manor Books 17181; paperback original. First printing, 1978. Trade paperback reprint: Writer’s Showcase Press, 2000.

BOB GARLAND Derfflinger

   The Manor edition of this title is a very scarce book. As I type this, there is only one copy online on ABE. Manor books never did get distributed very widely, and when (or where) they did, the authors generally never had any “name appeal,” or not at least on the ones that were paperback originals. Usually an author wrote one or maybe two books for them and nobody else, and nobody ever heard from them (the authors) again.

   Which is why it surprised the something out of me to learn that Bob Garland, now a retired business executive, has written a total of four other book-length adventures of Humboldt Prior, computer manufacturing executive for Intercontinental Data Processing, of New York, NY. The order in which the adventures occur and in which the books were published is a little confusing, and I will try to elucidate as best I can.

   The only one published at the time it was written, I think, is the one at hand. As stated above, the book was reprinted as a trade paperback by Writer’s Showcase Press, in October 2000, and as such it is denoted as a Second Edition. (I do not know if the book has been revised for this edition, but there is the possibility, as there is a good chance Manor chopped it up and did a quick “make it fit” procedure on it, even before WordPerfect came along and made it easy.) It is interesting to note, however, that this 2000 edition is described as the “Second Humboldt Prior Mystery.”

   The other books in the series are the following, in order as published. All are trade paperbacks:

R.I.P. 37E: The Third Humboldt Prior Mystery Writer’s Showcase Press, October 2000.

Slaying the Red Slayer: The First Humboldt Prior Adventure. Writers Club Press; 2nd edition, April 2001. [If there was ever a First Edition, I do not know about it.]

BOB GARLAND Derfflinger

The Elephant Mask: The Fourth Humboldt Prior Mystery. iUniverse, January 2004.

Tradedown: The Fifth Humboldt Prior Mystery. iUniverse, December 2005.

   The only one of these last four which I have is a copy of the third adventure, R.I.P. 37E. I have not read it, but from a quick peek inside, the story appears to have taken place in 1979, so there is the possibility that it was written back then, around that time, but it was never published until Garland retired from his day job.

   I’m really reaching now, but on Amazon.com, there is a short description of the last two books that tells us that Prior is “now … aging” (Elephant Mask) and is “now 60 years old” (Tradedown). Which really makes me feel old, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. It could be that these last two books were written recently, and not earlier.

   But where Slaying the Red Slayer fits in as nominally the “first” book in the series, I do not know.

BOB GARLAND Derfflinger

   In any case, Derfflinger certainly reads like a debut appearance, as in it an amateurish but enthusiastic Humboldt Prior agrees to help the widow of a friend in England who had been doing some investigation on his own into a ship salvaging operation conducted at the end of World War II. He was killed in an auto accident, but as Humboldt takes over the investigation, he too becomes the target of some very narrow scrapes.

   The reason the book reads like the first in a series is that Humboldt seems to be awfully new and/or naive in matters which he seems to be in over his head about. Almost, I hasten to add, because he is quite competent at what he normally does, in a global business sense, and he doesn’t mind admitting it.

   With a billion dollar operation behind him (Intercontinental Data), Humboldt gets around fairly easily and comfortably – to Scotland and then to Germany before heading back to England – on the company’s private Jet Star, with various nefarious villains on his tail most of the way.

   Not only is Humboldt amateurish but enthusiastic, but so is the story. It’s enjoyable enough, but until the end, which contains a surprise or two, there’s no meat to the tale at all, nor does it quite connect on many levels. On the other hand, enthusiasm is sometimes all it takes, and even though this may surprise you, given my comments so far, I discovered when I was finished that I really wouldn’t mind reading any of the four follow-up adventures at all.

   And so perhaps I will.

POSTSCRIPT.   If you would like to know something more about the primary focus of the travail that Humboldt encounters, you could do no worse than to look the word Derfflinger up on Google, say. It’s just a suggestion.

— July 2006


[UPDATE] 06-12-08.   To no one’s surprise, I am assuming, including my own, I have not yet read or obtained any of the other books in the series. There is still only one copy of the Manor edition of Derfflinger offered on ABE, and in fact it may be the very same book. I also do not know any more about the publishing history of the Bob Garland’s work than is stated here.

      The first paragraph below is good news recently received from Bill Contento:

    The online edition of THE CRIME FIGHTERS, by W.O.G. Lofts and Derek Adley, has been updated, now listing fictional detectives “Abbott, Detective” through “Hyer, Henry ‘Hank’.”

   Say the authors Derek Adley (1927-1991) and Bill Lofts (1923-1997) in their introduction:

    “… What we do claim, however, is that the number of detective types listed here is many times greater than in any previous work on this subject. In fact, we have had to limit the number of inclusions owing to space considerations. We already have a thousand or so sleuths in hand, so if this compilation proves to be a success adequate material for a second one is available, and omissions here could then be rectified.

    “This is essentially a bibliography of the following fictional characters:

       * the private detective

       * the private eye

       * the official police investigator

       * the amateur sleuth

       * the adventurer type of detective, such as Bulldog Drummond and Norman Conquest, who were always on the side of law and order, as well as Robin Hood types like the Saint who were active on both sides

       * the secret service agent of the Tiger Standish type, who nearly always worked with the Special Branch at Scotland Yard (but not those of the James Bond type, who were purely engaged in spying and espionage and rarely worked in collaboration with the police).

    “Thus, in general, we cover the fighters of evil-doers, but of course not including the American super-hero of the Superman type. The closest we come to this type is The Shadow and Doc Savage, who, while having certain mystic powers, are nonetheless ordinary men.”


   The information was never published in the authors’ lifetime. Says Al Hubin as part of his editorial introduction, “The text appears to have been written mostly in the 1960s and so does not cover detectives introduced later.”

   The only version of The Crime Fighters still in existence is apparently the photocopy of the original manuscript in the hands of Al Hubin, who’s working with Bill, Steve Holland and others to put the data online.

REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


KIM NEWMAN – The Man from the Diogenes Club.

MonkeyBrain Books. Trade paperback original, June 2006.

KIM NEWMAN Diogenes

   Richard Jeperson, a member of the little-known Diogenes Club and investigator of peculiar crimes, often in collaboration with the exotically beautiful Vanessa and commonsensical former policeman Fred Regent, was created by Newman in his pre-professional days, then revived in the 1990s in a series of stories (often of novella length) that have now been collected by an enterprising American small press publisher.

   I would like to have been able to greet this bizarre collection with some warmth, but I must report that it took me several months to make my way through Newman’s elaborate prose that, at times, brought me to the point of tossing the book in a box of discards, unfinished and unloved. Or at least by me.

   I’ve a high tolerance for the outré, to which several shelves of occult fiction mutely testify, but Kim’s ornate descriptions tended to make my progress slower than that of the proverbial snail and undercut much of the pleasure I might have taken in the fanciful tales of mummies, zombies, and a wayward golem, all of them preserved in intractable amber-like prose.

   >>>

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   The book Walter reviews is now out of print, and commands a premium price on the secondary market. (I always wanted to say that.)

  Contents:

      End of the Pier Show
      You Don’t Have to Be Mad
      Tomorrow Town
      Egyptian Avenue
      Soho Golem
      The Serial Murders
      The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train
      Swellhead

    Keith has very kindly expanded on his remarks of the previous post. 

— Steve

 

SEXTON BLAKE Crooked Skipper.

   I was a reader of the Sexton Blake Library from the age of eight or nine. The first title I read was The Case of the Crooked Skipper by John Hunter. [3rd series, Issue 249, October 1951]

   I liked the changes made by editor Bill Baker in 1956 and became an advocate in fan circles, making contributions while still at school to Herbert Leckenby’s Collector’s Digest.

   Mid-1961, on the departure of Mike Moorcock from Fleetway, I was offered the chance to become the SBL’s editorial assistant. I jumped at it and enjoyed the first year or so of my working life reading manuscripts and proofs, creating book and chapter titles and blurbs, running the readers’ letters section, keeping editorial ledgers and liaising with the accounts department over payments to contributors. It was an eye-opening experience that quickly gave me a firm grounding for a career in editing and writing.

   By the time Fleetway had abandoned the SBL, I was established at Micron Publications Ltd of Mitcham, Surrey, as the editor for a wide range of 64-page comic books of the type popularly known in Britain as picture libraries. In between these duties and writing scripts for the war and western titles, I persuaded the company’s principals that a market existed for a new British text magazine in the mystery field.

Collectors Digest.

   This allowed me to approach the Wallace family and their UK literary agents, A. P. Watt, for permission to use the Edgar Wallace name, then still prominently associated with thriller fiction, particularly through the Anglo-Amalgamated B-movie series.

   The rights were granted for a fairly nominal sum, and each monthly issue contained a reprint of an otherwise unavailable Wallace novelette or story, backed up with other, all-new fiction by contemporary crime writers, true crime articles, book reviews and readers’ letters. Many of the contributors were ex-SBL. One of the several who wasn’t was Nigel Morland, who professed to be a friend of the Wallace family.

   In hindsight, it was a mistake to have involved the Micron company. The firm was in financial difficulties with its publications, stemming largely from a failure to secure adequate distribution and possibly to have re-invested more of their earlier profits. In debt to its printers, Micron handed over the comics business to them on the basis that various series should continue, but only as English-rights reprints of material from a Spanish publisher.

   This terminated my employment, but I was to continue to run EWMM for them as a freelance editor. In a very short time, Micron decided to axe the magazine altogether and I began a battle to save it, negotiating alternative distribution, while Edgar Wallace Ltd stepped into the breach to act as publishers and meet printing and editorial costs.

Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine.

   I have letters on file from Nigel Morland ostensibly offering me support, telling me how “impressed” he was, how it was “first-class” and “excellent”. But many were written at a time when he must at least have had an eye on taking over my role.

    “Dear Keith, I had the new issue, and really do think you are doing it well. You’ve set a standard, and that is a high one. So far you seem to better it a little with each issue, which, after all, is the heart of all really good editing. Congratulations. Every good wish, Yours, Nigel.”

   Two months later, in late 1964, after expending a huge amount of time and energy on what had been “my baby” from the outset, I was bluntly informed by agent Peter Watt that Messrs. Edgar Wallace Ltd had appointed a new editor for the magazine and that after issue number six I should no longer be connected with its publication. I should receive an “ex gratia payment of ?50 when the final corrected proofs of No. 6 go to the printer.”

   The new editor was to be Morland, whom I was told by Penelope Wallace and her husband, George Halcrow, was older and more experienced than me, and therefore would make a better job of the magazine.

   In a reaction typical of the many I received, T.C.H. Jacobs (Jacques Pendower), then a recent chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, wrote to me: “Their choice of an editor astonishes me. I have known Morland for many years and am unaware he has ever had editorial experience. But I do know that he has always claimed some connection with the Wallace family. Maybe it is true. I don’t know. He is certainly older than you, sixty.”

   I was then aged 21, had done a heap of work in the three and a half years since I’d left school and acquired something of a track record in Fleet-street and backstreet offices. Nevertheless, I was very disillusioned and deeply disappointed. Morland took the magazine in what I suppose was intended to be a more literary direction, eschewing the thriller, slightly pulpish tradition that I felt was truer to the Wallace oeuvre.

   And it didn’t last.

   A brief introduction from me seems to be in order. What follows below was originally a comment left by Keith Chapman (in his alter ego guise as Chap O’Keefe) following my recent review of Edgar Wallace’s The India-Rubber Men. I thought what he had to say informative and interesting enough for me to create a brand new post out of it. And so here it is.

— Steve



EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY MAGAZINE

   A fascinating thread! As has been observed, Edgar Wallace was a very big name in thriller fiction in the 1920s and ’30s, but he was not, of course, part of the Golden Age of Detection, which makes comparisons with Christie — even Symons — in many ways inappropriate. Wallace was still a big name after the Second World War and right up to the 1960s, when I founded and edited the Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine. At that time, his books and stories were already regarded as having a quaint flavor, which a daughter, Penelope Wallace, was largely responsible for trying to remove by supplying publishers with revised versions.

   Such revisions are, of course, an ultimately futile exercise and may even remove future points of appeal — something I realized even then though I was only 21 years of age. For the short time I ran the magazine, I concentrated on the “action” end of the mystery field, running the kind of stories Americans would have called “pulp fiction” and which I believe were written by authors who were worthy successors of Wallace himself. I also used full-color, vigorous pictorial covers that reflected this content.

EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY MAGAZINE

   Ultimately, the publishing company running the magazine — and employing me as the editor of it and a raft of digest-size “pocket libraries” — ran into financial difficulties and the Wallace family took over the magazine. I was replaced by a “more experienced” editor: elderly writer Nigel Morland who was said to be a family friend, and as a contributor to the magazine had previously flattered me with consistently favorable comment on my editorial work and policies.

   The illustrated covers were replaced by wholly typographical, two-color covers that at best were a poor imitation of Ellery Queen’s. The content changed, too, certainly abandoning what I considered the true Wallace tradition in preference for material that had more of a “whodunit,” intellectual slant.

   From the online FictionMags Index:

Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine

Publishers
      Aug-1964 – Nov-1964: Micron Publications, Micron House, Gorringe Park Avenue, Mitcham
      Dec-1964 – Jun-1967: Edgar Wallace Magazines Ltd., 4 Bradmore Road, Oxford
      1969? – 1970?: Edgar Wallace Magazines Ltd., 50 Alexandra Road, London SW19

Editors
      Aug-1964 – Nov-1964: Keith Chapman
      Dec-1964 – Jun-1967: Nigel Morland
      1969? – 1970?: Leonard Holdsworth, Kurt Mueller & James Hughes

THE MAN I LOVE. Warner Brothers, 1947. Ida Lupino, Robert Alda, Andrea King, Martha Vickers, Bruce Bennett, Alan Hale, Dolores Moran. Based on the novel Night Shift, by Maritta Woolf. Screenplay by Jo Pagano, Catherine Turney & W. R. Burnett (the latter uncredited). Director: Raoul Walsh.

   Believe it or not, the book this movie is based on is still in print (Scribner, trade paperback, 2006). From the Amazon description:

MARITTA WOOLF Night Shift

    “Originally published in 1942, Maritta Wolff ‘s Night Shift was an instant commercial success, receiving rave reviews and praise for her effortless grasp of human nature and stunning ear for dialogue. Now, it joins Wolff’s first novel, Whistle Stop, and her last, Sudden Rain, in a reissue that brings new readers to this riveting writer.

    “Sally Otis works herself to the bone as a waitress, supporting her three children and a jobless younger sister. With her bills mounting and no rest in sight, Sally’s resolve is beginning to crumble when her swaggering older sister, Petey Braun, appears on the scene. Petey, with her furs and jewels and exotic trips, is an American career woman — one who makes a career of men. But when Petey gets a gig at the glamorous, rowdy local nightclub, it will forever alter the world of the struggling Otis family.

    “A swift-paced tale full of tension, excitement, violence, and even bloodshed, Night Shift possesses the vividness of a documentary and the page-turning quality of the best commercial fiction — even decades after its first publication.”

   Night Shift is not included in Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, but Whistle Stop is, although only marginally:

WOLFF, MARITTA M(artin). 1918-2002.
      -Whistle Stop (Random, 1941, hc) [Michigan] Film: United Artists, 1946 (scw: Philip Yordan; dir: Leonide Moguy).

   Whistle Stop the movie starred Ava Gardner and George Raft – now there’s a combination, for you – and IMDB describes the plot thusly:

    “When beautiful Mary returns home to her ‘whistle stop’ home town, long-standing feelings of animosity between two of her old boyfriends leads to robbery and murder.”

   This latter film is available on DVD, most easily by means of one the various box sets of Noir Films that everybody seems to be packaging together these days.

THE MAN I LOVE

   Both Jo Pagano and Catherine Turney have one book each in CFIV. For the former, it’s The Condemned, filmed in 1951 as Try and Get Me; for the latter, it’s The Other One, filmed in 1957 as Back from the Dead. Everybody reading this knows W. R. Burnett, or should, and of course in our circle director Raoul Walsh is even more well known, the circle being, of course, the extended realm of crime, mystery and adventure fiction.

   Which is a long, long introduction to convince myself, first of all, then maybe you, that The Man I Love actually belongs and should come up for discussion in a mystery-oriented blog.

   I’ll keep writing, and later on, I’ll ask what you think.

   The basic synopsis of the story as being the same as the book, as stated above. Ida Lupino is Petey Brown (not Braun; that was changed, for obvious reasons), the nightclub singer from New York who comes to visit her family in California and decides that their problems might as well be hers for a while. Robert Alda plays Nicky Toresca, the slick-talking nightclub owner she goes to work for, a man who’s hot for every woman he knows and meets, including Petey’s married sister, until the former puts an end to that.

   Not mentioned in the Amazon description is former jazz pianist San Thomas, played in solid if not stolid brooding fashion by Bruce Bennett (formerly Herman Brix, but who turned out to be an actor after all). Petey has been dallying around with her boss on a strictly hands-off basis – perhaps the only woman who’s been able to handle him that way – but when she meets San, it is lust at first sight, movie code or no.

THE MAN I LOVE

   Turns out, though, that San has baggage of his own. He’s divorced but still loves his wife who dumped him, and he’s currently but only temporarily AWOL from the Merchant Marine. There’s more. The woman living across the hall from Petey’s sister is bored with her marriage and her small twin babies, and she’s cheating on her husband, who’s a naively nice guy that Petey’s younger sister has eyes for.

   I think you have the picture by now. There is way too much plot to be covered adequately in one ninety minute movie, but what this is is obviously drama of the soap opera variety, gussied up a bit for the night time audience. Is it also a crime movie, as IMDB says it is? Not a bit of it.

   But is it Noir, as IMDB also suggests? Yes, absolutely, not completely, but yes. It’s the lighting. It’s the location. (Outside of the drab apartment where the Otis family lives, nightclubs and after-hours jazz spots predominate, with the opening scene worth 100% of the price of admission. Even though Ida Lupino is only lip-synching the words, the music is terrific).

   It’s also the sense of quiet desperation that exists in these people’s existences. It’s the ray of hope that exists and blooms in one area of their lives, only to diminish in another.

   So noir, yes. A crime film, no. I wish I could find a longer clip, but this one will have to do. It’s about the only scene of almost actual violence in the movie, and in it Petey stops the husband next door from committing a real act of violence on Nicky, the nightclub owner. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve never seen anything like it, and even if you have, you still haven’t seen anything like it.

   Are you back? To get back to the question I told you I was going to ask later, what do you think?

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