July 2008


THE MAN INSIDE. Warwick Films/Columbia, 1958. Jack Palance, Anita Ekberg, Nigel Patrick, Anthony Newley, Bonar Colleano, Sid James, Donald Pleasence. Based on the novel by M. E. Chaber. Director & co-screenwriter: John Gilling.

THE MAN INSIDE

   Jack Palance plays Chaber’s well-traveled insurance investigator Milo March in this black-and-white Cinescope feature from the late 1950s. Considering all of the capital cities in Europe that the film takes place in, not to mention the opening scenes in New York City, I think the film ought to have been in color.

   Especially considering who his co-star was, and I don’t mean Nigel Patrick. The look that Palance gives Anita Ekberg from the bottom of a rooming-house set of stairs, with her at the top looking down, in the tightest-fitting dress you can imagine — well, maybe you can imagine, and no, while black-and-white may cut it in some movies, it does not in this one.

THE MAN INSIDE

   Reviews for this movie online are few and far between, but they range from “tawdry” to “classic British noir,” and of course the truth (or rather, my opinion) is somewhere around halfway between. (Although it is a crime film, sure enough, it doesn’t really qualify as noir, and if it had been filmed in color, as suggested above, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to call it noir.)

   Story line: A mousy accountant named Sam Carter (played by Nigel Patrick, last seen here in The League of Gentlemen) waits 15 years before finally stealing a near priceless diamond from a Manhattan jewelry dealer, and Milo is the guy the insurance company sets on his trail.

   Complicating matters is that Milo is not the only one after the diamond, and Trudie Hall is one of them, although (according to her) she has a legitimate claim on it. Villainous Martin Lomer (Bonar Colleano) does not, and ever their tracks shall cross.

THE MAN INSIDE

   From Lisbon, to Madrid (where March picks up an eager-to-please taxidriver assistant, amusingly played by Anthony Newley), to Paris, to London by train — I love movies that take place on trains, and this one’s no exception.

   There is, in fact, to pick up on a word I just used in the last paragraph, as much light humor in this mystery as there is violence, and I enjoyed that as well — the humor, I mean.

   The title of the movie (and of course prior to that, the book) comes from the fact that everyone has two sides to them: the outward one that everyone sees, and the man inside, who finds he cannot resist temptation and if and when given the opportunity, will take immediate action and advantage of it.

   As a small side note, one that I meant to mention above, Nigel Patrick was so well-disguised as the accountant-turned-thief (and then killer), I did not recognize him. With glasses and a mustache, he was that accountant, played to perfection with a capital P.

THE MAN INSIDE

   Jack Palance’s youthful skull-faced features take some getting used to, as does his Texas accent, but his brash way of approaching matters soon make the unusual casting decision long-forgotten.

   As for Miss Ekberg, in 1958 she was very nearly the Eighth Wonder of the World. No acting ability would have been required, but the modicum she possessed at the time this movie was made was surely enough.

   Of movies recently reviewed here on the blog, director John Gillings’s previous one was The Pirates of Blood River (1962). The Man Inside apparently came before the bulk of the ones he did for Hammer.

REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


SARAH STEWART TAYLOR Judgment of the Grave

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR – Judgment of the Grave. St. Martin’s Press: hardcover, June 2005; paperback, August 2006.

   Sweeney St. George, temporarily relieved of her academic teaching duties, pursues her interest in funerary art (mainly gravestones) by relocating to Concord to do primary research on the bizarre headstones carved by a Revolutionary era stonecutter. She finds herself following the trail already opened up by another scholar who’s disappeared and is presumed to be dead.

   I prefer Sweeney in her academic setting, where she seems more at home, but the novel, if somewhat over ingenious in its plotting, is still a pleasing mix of scholarship and murder, both of them natural lures for the always inquisitive protagonist.

ANN WALDRON Unholy Death

ANN WALDRON – Unholy Death in Princeton. Berkley, paperback original, March 2005.

   A novel somewhat in the same vein as the one above. It features a protagonist (McLeod Dulaney) who’s a prizewinning journalist doing research for a biography on an abolitionist newspaperman at Princeton Seminary.

   In comparison with Taylor’s book, however, Waldron’s novel is cluttered with forgettable characters and really awful dialogue, further compromised by a meandering plot and an improbable climax.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:

   The Sweeney St. George mysteries:

O’ Artful Death. St. Martin’s, hc, 2003.
Mansions of the Dead. St. Martin’s, hc, July 2004.
Judgment of the Grave. St. Martin’s, hc, June 2005.
Still As Death. St. Martin’s, hc, Sept 2006.

   The McLeod Dulaney mysteries:

The Princeton Murders. Berkley,pb, Jan 2003.
Death of a Princeton President. Berkley, pb, Feb 2004.
Unholy Death in Princeton. Berkley, pb, Mar 2005.
A Rare Murder in Princeton. Berkley, pb, Apr 2006.
The Princeton Imposter. Berkley, pb, Jan 2007.

DON VON ELSNER – Just Not Making Mayhem Like They Used To.

Signet S2040; paperback original, December 1961.

   Have you ever read fifty pages into a book late into the evening, look up at the clock, see that it says that it’s one o’clock in the morning, and realize that the last 30 pages haven’t made much sense at all?

   I hate to say it of any book, but that’s what happened to me with this one. It’s not that I was tired, which is what I assumed the next morning, and maybe that’s what you’re thinking too, but no, that wasn’t it. I tried again, on and off, the whole week that followed. I struggled, I skimmed, and I skipped, and if you want to forgo reading the rest of this review for any of the reasons listed, you’d be right. I wouldn’t blame you in the least.

   This is the second recorded adventure of Colonel David Danning, lawyer, bridge player, and judo expert, among other accomplishments. If nothing else, the titles of his cases are designed to catch your attention. Expanded from the author’s entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      Those Who Prey Together Slay Together. Signet D1943, June 1961.

DON VON ELSNER

      Just Not Making Mayhem Like They Used To. Signet S2020, Dec 1961.
      Don’t Just Stand There, Do Someone. Signet S2134, 1962
      You Can’t Do Business with Murder. Signet S2214, Dec 1962
      Who Says a Corpse Has to Be Dull. Signet G2407, 1963
      Pour a Swindle Through a Loophole. Belmont 92-604, Sept 1964
      Countdown for a Spy. Signet D2829, Jan 1966.

DON VON ELSNER

      A Bullet for Your Dreams. Lancer 73-709, 1968.

   Yes, I agree; the originality does tend to tail off toward the end. For the record, Von Elsner’s other mysteries feature Jake Winkman, a professional bridge player who helps out the CIA from time to time:

      How to Succeed at Murder Without Really Trying. Signet 1963. Reprinted as: The Jake of Diamonds. Award, 1967 (not a misprint)
      The Ace of Spies. Award 1966

DON VON ELSNER

      The Jack of Hearts. Award 1968

   According to Contemporary Authors, Don Von Elser (1909-1997) was a Life Master of the American Contract Bridge League, which explains why his heroes happen to be expert players too.

   Danning is hired by an underwriters association in Mayhem to find out why so many small businessmen have been committing suicide recently at such an unnatural rate. Danning immediately suspects a gang of blackmailers at work, and he accepts the job. Five months later, he’s still working, with no results to speak of. On page 22: “A vague pattern began to take shape in Danning’s mind.”

DON VON ELSNER

   But then, at long last, the logjam breaks. Danning comes across the story of Homer Pettingill, the man whose misadventures were related to the reader in Chapters One and Two, and hold on to reins, honey, we’re off to the races, and the book doesn’t stop until page 142 and the case is closed.

   Assisting Danning are his adoring secretary Nell Sheridan, who has to prod him into taking cases to boost his disposition; Dr. Greta Nevin of UCLA, who possesses the longest and loveliest legs of any psychology professor in the world; his son Bob, whom he calls Duke, and vice versa, and who looks exactly like him; and a whole agency of private detectives at his continuous beck and call.

   As I type this, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I may have simply been in the wrong mood to read this book, but here’s what is it that goes wrong, as far as I’ve been able to decide, humorous approach prevailing or not.

   Danning’s case is built upon nothing but coincidence and guesswork. Two guys in a hotel chosen at random might be the pair of con men that they’re looking for – of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world – and yes, they are the ones they’re looking for, a silly escapade with the married folks in the room next door notwithstanding.

   I’ve have thought they’d have investigated the mechanics of the crime and the actual way it was pulled off, but no, no questions are asked along those lines, save very obliquely. But after all of the fancy scheming to get the goods on the bad guys – I skimmed a lot here – it turns out in the recap and the explanations at the end, it all depends on guess what? The mechanics of the crime and the actual way it was pulled off.

   Which you’ve got to read to believe. I don’t, not even for a minute. There’s a good chance that you’ll disagree with me on any or all of this, but I have a hunch that you won’t.

THE CURMUDGEON IN THE CORNER
by William R. Loeser

S. VAN DINE The Benson Murder Case

    …We are often reminded that it is not polite for critics to discuss who did it or how. I say that, if we are going to write criticism – which I define as discussion of strengths and failings of books and authors – of detective fiction, the who and how are exactly what we should be writing about. To the extent the means and/or the murderer is memorable, the book is memorable – as detective fiction …

   In the interest of space and weight, I recently took along a paperback copy of S. S. Van Dine’s The Benson Murder Case (1926) to the laundromat rather than some hard cover book higher on my reading list. This is the public’s introduction to Vance, and Vance’s first exposure to detection which came to overshadow various connoisseurships and collecting interests among his hobbies.

   In it he gives long disquisitions on the superiority of psychological to physical evidence, which, while boring, are at least better than the parade of esoteric trivia he later became infamous for. Vance does make a good and important psychological deduction in the early going; that the vain and lecherous Alvin Benson could have been murdered only by a male intimate because he wouldn’t have granted an interview to a woman or a mere acquaintance while not wearing his toupee and false teeth.

S. VAN DINE The Benson Murder Case

   Having done so, Vance permits and occasionally abets his foil District Attorney Markham to harass the innocent suspects, who had conveniently grouped themselves in the neighborhood of Benson’s house on the fatal night like Christmas carolers, for the middle 3/4 of the book, merely remarking from time to time, “Markham, you’re going at it the wrong way.”

   Markham endures this amateur criticism in silence with only one outburst in the middle of the book and list of suspects, inquiring as to what the right way might be. Vance replies to this effect, “You wouldn’t understand,” and the inquisition goes on until only one person remains uncleared (i.e. heretofore unsuspected).

S. VAN DINE The Benson Murder Case

   Then, with the aid of a bit of illegal entry, Vance deftly breaks that gentleman’s alibi, forces his confession, and sits back to await the plaudits of the dumbfounded official investigators. Based on this book, Philo Vance doesn’t deserve “a kick in the pance,” just avoidance. (This is one author about whom Thomson’s opinion and mine are at great variance.)

   Two minor points. One of the suspects, a supercilious fop almost in Vance’s class, is presented as a caricature to be ridiculed. Van Dine was sailing very close to the wind here. New York City buffs will be interested to learn that at the time of writing, Sutton Place/York Avenue was more prosaically known as Avenue A.

– From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar-Apr 1979       (slightly revised).


FOOTNOTE: H. Douglas Thomson, referred to at one point in this review, was the author of Masters of Mystery: A Study of the Detective Story (Dover, 1978; originally Collins, UK, 1931). E. F. Bleiler called it “the first English-language work devoted to serious criticism and history of the detective story.”

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA:

  S. S. VAN DINE – The Benson Murder Case. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926. Hardcover reprints include: A. L. Burt, no date (shown); Gregg Press, 1980. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #333, 1945 (shown); Fawcett Gold Medal T2006, no date (ca.1968); Scribner’s, 1983 (shown).

[UPDATE] 07-18-08.   I’ve just posted another review of The Benson Murder Case, this one by Mary Reed, not in reply, but written independently by her and sent to me late last year. (I’ve just pulled it out of my “to do” list, which as usual, I’m way behind on.)

         — Steve

MANNING LEE STOKES – The Dying Room. Mercury Mystery #124; digest-sized paperback; no date stated. Hardcover edition: Phoenix Press, 1947.

MANNING LEE STOKES

   This is strange — really strange, as a matter of fact. There are six copies of this book available for sale on ABE as I type this, and five of them are the paperback version. Guess which one’s the least expensive? The hardcover edition from Phoenix. Even without a dust jacket on the hardcover, explain that if you can.

   Manning Lee Stokes was born in 1911 and died in 1976, and at best, he had what you might call a mixed writing career. The Dying Room was one of his earliest books — his first four were published by Phoenix, beginning in 1945, and in chronological order, this one’s the third. From Phoenix he went to paperback originals (Graphic Books) and then wrote several others for another designed-for-libraries hardcover publisher, Arcadia House. One book was published Dell in 1958, but from 1960 on, he wrote nothing that appeared under his own name.

MANNING LEE STOKES

   He wrote some of the early Nick Carter spy thrillers from Award in the 1960s, for example, a few of the John Eagle “Expeditor” men’s adventure novels from Pyramid in the 1970s as by Paul Edwards, and as Ken Stanton, all eleven of the “Aquanauts” books (with leading character Tiger Shark) that came out from Macfadden and Manor, also in the 1970s. (I have all the Expeditor books, I believe, but I have no explanation as to why I have NONE of the Aquanauts books.)

   Stokes also wrote some of the sex-oriented SF-Fantasy “Blade” novels from Pinnacle, or so I’m told, but there’s certainly no reason to go into that, or at least not here. One other series character whom he created and who is worth mentioning is Christopher Fenn, who solved a couple of the cases from Arcadia House in the late 1950s, including The Case of the Presidents’ Heads, shown smoewhere below and to the left. Fenn was a private eye or criminologist of perhaps no great renown, but he is listed on Kevin Burton Smith’s PI website, so he has not been totally forgotten.

MANNING LEE STOKES

   But there is private eye that Kevin does not know about — a rare event — a gent called Barnabas Jones who appeared in both The Wolf Howls “Murder” (Phoenix Press, 1945) and Green for a Grave (Phoenix Press, 1946). And something that Al Hubin does not know about (yet) is that Barnabas Jones also shows up for a short appearance in The Dying Room. Even though Jones is not the leading character and his part is small, his role is a relatively important one, substantially more than a walk-on or cameo, and I’ll get there very shortly.

   Before I do, however, let me say this up front. The Dying Room is a much better book — and detective novel — than I expected it to be. Phoenix Press is not noted for its gems and works of art in the world of crime and mystery fiction, but you could do much worse than finding a copy of The Dying Room to read somewhere and somehow, hopefully not paying too much for it, no more than ten to fifteen dollars or so, and maybe less if you’re lucky. (My copy cost me five dollars if you were to split the money up as part of a group lot, and when I found it among the others, my first reaction was that I paid too much.)

MANNING LEE STOKES

   Telling the tale is Tom Fain, an ex-soldier with a splinter of a German shell embedded in his brain. About to be moved into the “dying room” at the Fort Tyner station hospital after his latest unsuccessful surgery, Fain decides to make a break for it. And with the help of a sympathetic nurse’s aide named Helen, escape he does.

   On his way to see his ailing stepmother, the only mother he has ever known, he stops to visit with an old friend — the aforementioned Barnabas Jones, who offers him a job, but with other things on his mind at the time, Fain turns him down. (Mr. Jones makes another appearance and more importantly, in his professional capacity, later on.) Failing to reach his stepmother before she died, and avoiding a pickup by a pair of MP’s on his trail, Fain heads back to New York (and Helen) on an airplane — which is where the story begins, or at least the mystery part.

MANNING LEE STOKES

   Fain sits next to a good-looking girl — no, change that, make it a beautiful girl — with whom he strikes up a lively conversation. Things are going well, but there’s nothing like a small disaster to get a story really going. Both Fain and the girl survive the crash. He’s more or less OK, but she is not. Her memory is gone, and a new one — one of her former life — has replaced it. Unfortunately there is a two-year gap in what she remembers. She doesn’t remember Fain, but being convinced that he helped save her life, she invites him to her new (old?) home to recover.

   There was a question mark there, as you will have noticed. Is the girl the missing heir to a considerable fortune? Or is she a fraud? Fifty million dollars is at stake. (I did say considerable.) Several persons try to hire him — it turns out that he, before the war, was a private eye himself. And as it turns out, and not too surprisingly, someone is playing a dangerous (and deadly) game, and Fain, as he quickly discovers, was never given the rules under which it’s being played.

MANNING LEE STOKES

   But as a detective, Fain gives his clients their money’s worth, and in similar fashion does Stokes the author. A six-point summary on page 98 is as precise and to the point as any I’ve read in a work of detective fiction in quite a while. No power point presentation could have produced anything better.

   The ending gets a little too melodramatic, perhaps — well, no perhaps about it — and the prologue most certainly could have been ditched, which very nearly goes without saying, as most prologues could be (should be) ditched, but (and this is a big but) this book is as entertaining as anything I’ve watched on television this week.

   That someone never recognized that this book would make for an awfully good movie is something to be regretted. Filmed in black-and-white, with some professionally done noir-ish touches, perhaps, maybe even a great one.

— July 2006



[UPDATE] 07-11-08. Looks like I never told Kevin about Barnabas Jones, but I will today. (One of course wonders immediately if the gent is related to the later Barnaby Jones of TV fame. Probably not. There are a lot of Joneses in this country.)

   Barnabas Jones’s brief appearance in The Dying Room is now included in Part 5 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, along with a complete listing for each of the PI series he did, both early in his career.

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE. Warner Brothers, 1951. Ruth Roman, Richard Todd, Mercedes McCambridge, Zachary Scott, Daryl Hickman. Based on the novel A Man Without Friends, by Margaret Echard (Doubleday, 1940). Directed by King Vidor.

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

   Except for a short but crucial opening sequence, this little known black-and-white film begins (as many other noir-type movies have, as I’ve pointed out before) with someone getting off a bus in a small town in the West or South, only to find themselves in middle of a case of murder, or a situation where passions are so inflamed that a murder is about to happen.

   Except that the person getting off the bus is not Alan Ladd or Glenn Ford or Dana Andrews, it’s Ruth Roman. The town is apparently somewhere in the west Texas desert country, and but Shelley Carnes is definitely a loner of sorts, an actress who’s temporarily left her troupe and who’s planning to stay at a dude ranch in the area, needing a short respite from too much traveling on the road.

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

   The opening few scenes, which I mentioned as being crucial, are exactly that. A young man named Richard Trevelyan (Richard Todd) has been convicted of killing his tramp of a wife, only to be given a stay of execution at the last minute and granted a new trial. The new trial has ended in a hung jury, with one woman managing to persuade five others that he is not guilty.

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

   Enter Shelley Carnes. Trevelyan has returned but has gone into hiding. Shelley does not know it, but the dude ranch she is given directions to (with ulterior motives) has closed for the year. Liza McStringer (Mercedes McCambride) and her invalid brother own and operate the ranch, but they agree to let her stay.

   It turns out that Liza was the holdout witness, and the local folks are pretty divided about it, since Trevelyan certainly looks guilty, nor has he said anything to anyone about the killing. So, given all this, who do you suppose Shelley meets accidentally, and who do you suppose she …

   I hope you’re with me, because if I continue, I would be telling you the whole story, and that’s not what I intend to do. But as sure as Shelley is about Richard, it is obvious that some doubts still remain.

   As for the players, Todd, an English actor, is miscast as a man of the desert, no matter how much is made of where he was educated or brought up, but believe it or not, his part is not the most important.

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

   It might be Ruth Roman’s picture — and I’ll get back to that in a minute — and for the role she plays, she certainly makes the best of it. I think this is the earliest movie I’ve seen her in. I remember her most from her later days in television, where she gradually found herself playing much more mature roles. (She may be best known for her role as Sylvia Lean on Knots Landing, circa 1986.)

   Here she appears slim and vibrant and not quite so sure of herself, and for each of these reasons, but particularly the latter, she’s largely sympathetic as a woman who finds herself in a situation that moves continuously (and elusively) beyond her control.

   But the most fascinating character in the movie is Liza McStringer. Mercedes McCambridge was by far not the most glamorous movie star in the world, and in fact until the 1970s, she did not do many movies at all, concentrating first as a radio star, then in TV, but never in a continuing series. (She was the voice of the demon in The Exorcist, and she had to sue in order to get the screen credit she was to have been given.)

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE

   But if nothing, Mercedes McCambridge is one of the most intense actresses (she’s the one on the right) I can think of now, and that is what she is in this movie, absolutely intense. I think if I were on a jury, and she were of the other opinion, I can only imagine how easily persuaded I might be.

   The romance in this movie is there only to hang a pretty good murder plot on, which come to think of it, isn’t really all that strong, either. I think that there’s a mutual symbiosis between the two, each making the other half of the story stronger, helping disguise a weakness at the center of the tale in the best possible way it might have been done.

   Of the five authorial bylines in this installment of the onlineAddenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, there may be only two actual authors involved. These entries come from Part 25. Besides the incidental alphabetical proximity between two of them, there’s no other connection.

ADCOCK, LARRY. It is possible that this author of one book in the Revised Crime Fiction IV is also Thomas L(arry) Adcock, q.v., author of several other crime fiction novels.
      CB Angel. Popular Library, pb, 1977. Add setting: cross-country US. Also add British edition: NEL, pb, 1981. Leading characters: “The Lone Ranger” = Steve Yancy and “Tonto” = Jay Banks. [A pair of truckers team up with a woman known to them only as “Foxy Lady” and a voice.]

LARRY ADCOCK CB Angel



ADCOCK, THOMAS L(ARRY). 1947- . Pseudonym: Buck Saunders; possible other byline: Larry Adcock, q.v.. Born in Detroit; a former journalist and newspaper editor before turning to writing full time. Under his own name, the author of seven police procedurals included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, six of them with NYPD detective Neil Hockaday. Hockaday earlier appeared in a series of short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the first of which, “Christmas Cop” (March 1986) received an MWA Edgar nomination. The second Hockaday novel, Dark Maze (Pocket, 1991), won an Edgar in 1992 for Best Original Paperback.

THOMAS ADCOCK Dark Maze



ADLON, ARTHUR. Pseudonym of (Harold) Keith (Oliver) Ayling, 1898-1976; other pseudonym: Kaye Ayling, qq.v. Under this pen name, among other adult fiction, the author of a marginally crime-related novel previously included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Add the one indicated with an asterisk (*).
      (*) -Bad Girl Abroad. Chariot, US, pb, 1960, Setting: France. [Criminous and passionate adventures of an American teenager in the French Riviera.]

ARTHUR ADLON Bad Girl Abroad

      -The Prince of Poisoners. Chariot, US, pb, 1960.

AYLING, KAYE. Pseudonym of (Harold) Keith (Oliver) Ayling, 1898-1976; other pseudonym: Arthur Adlon, qq.v. Under this pen name, the author of one romantic spy thriller included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.
      Who Was Ellen Smith? Lancer, pb, 1967. “Her husband’s past was a mystery.and her own future depended on the answer. Where could she seek help?”

KAYE AYLING Who Was Ellen Smith?


AYLING, (HAROLD) KEITH (OLIVER). 1898-1976. Pseudonyms: Arthur Adlon & Kaye Ayling, qq.v. Born in Hampshire, England. Wartime service with the Royal Air Force; came to the US in 1940. Writer for Liberty Magazine and the aviation pulps in the 1940s; author of many non-fiction books about aviation and auto racing between 1941 and 1970. Also under his own name, the author of one espionage novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      The Last Enemy. Pyramid, pb, 1971. “International double-dealing in sex and revolution.”

KEITH AYLING The Last Enemy

IT’S ABOUT CRIME
by Marvin Lachman

   In clichesville, the equivalent of the gothic heroine is our old friend, the Private Eye — male variety. Frank Kane’s Johnny Liddell was a harmless example of the species — not vicious like Mickey Spillane but not possessing the social conscience of Mike Shayne of Lew Archer either. Recent reading of three of Kane’s books back-to-back showed that he “borrowed” liberally from himself. By the third book I had a feeling of déjà vu, and a fast rereading showed why, as the following quotes indicate. (NOTE: All page numbers are from Dell paperback editions.)

FRANK KANE

Poisons Unknown, page 63: “Gabby Benton was on her second cup of coffee, third cigarette, and fourth fingernail when Johnny Liddell stepped out of a cab. . . ”

Red Hot Ice, page 18: “Muggsy Kiely was on her third cup of coffee and her fourth fingernail when Johnny Liddlell walked into….”

Red Hot Ice, page 27: “Her legs were long, sensuously shaped. Full rounded thighs swelled into high-set hips, converged into a narrow waist. Her breasts were firm and full, their pink tips straining upward.”

Poisons Unknown, page 182: “The whiteness of her body gleamed in the reflected light from the windows. Her legs were long, sensuously shaped. Full rounded thighs swelled into high-set hips, converged into the narrow waist he had admired earlier in the evening. Her breasts were full and high, their pink tips straining upward.”

A Short Bier, page 60: “The whiteness of her body gleamed in the spotlight. Her legs were long, sensuously shaped. Full rounded thighs swelled into high-set hips, and converged into a narrow waist. A thin wisp of a brassiere made a halfhearted attempt to cover the full breasts, their pink tips straining upward.”

FRANK KANE

Poisons Unknown, pages 49-50: “The pealing of the phone at his ear was shrill, strident, insistent. Johnny Liddell groaned, cursed softly, and dug his head under the pillow. The noise refused to go away. He opened one eye experimentally, squinted at the window shade and noted that it still wasn’t light. He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes, but it wouldn’t wipe away.”

Red Hot Ice, page 40: “The telephone on the-night table started to shrill discordantly. Johnny Liddell groaned, cursed sleepily, and dug his head further into the pillow. The noise refused to go away. He opened one eye experimentally; he could see by the half-drawn shade that it was still night…. He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes, but it wouldn’t wipe.”

Red Hot Ice, page 90: “Muggsy Kiely … opened the door herself in response to his knock. She was wearing a robe that clung to a figure that was decidedly worth clinging to.”

A Short Bier, page 39: “Muggsy Kiely opened the door in response to his knock. She was wearing a hostess gown that clung to curves that were obviously worth clinging to.”

Poisons Unknown, page 20: “… seemingly unaware that the front of her housecoat had sagged open with breathtaking effect.”

A Short Bier, page 41: “…seemed unaware that the front of her hostess gown had sagged open with breathtaking effect.”

   With that technique, coupled with no great originality of plotting, it’s surprising Kane only wrote thirty-one books about his hero.

    Books reviewed or discussed in this installment:

FRANK KANE – Poisons Unknown. Ives Washburn, hardcover, 1953. Dell 822, paperback, 1955. Dell D334, pb, January 1960.

FRANK KANE

  —, Red Hot Ice. Ives Washburn, hardcover, 1955. Dell 991, pb, 1956. Dell 7292, pb, November 1967.

FRANK KANE

  —, A Short Bier. Dell First Edn B150, paperback original, July 1960.

AUSTIN J. SMALL – The Crimson Death.

Lead novel in the pulp magazine Detective Classics, March 1930.

   Austin J. Small is not a name well-known in mystery circles today, and all I knew about this story before I started reading it was the typically pulpish lead-in blurb: “Terror stalks at Gairlie” — with all that conjures up about ghosts, haunted castles and the like, but not — as a first impression — as being a “classic.”

AUSTIN J. SMALL

   But then the Gairlie Rubies are stolen, from a sealed room under observation at all times, and could it be? A locked room mystery that no one else knows about? Is Small going to play it straight? Can he be trusted to play fair with the reader?

   The investigation goes on, and doubts begin to creep back in. The Crimson Death strikes, and the first victim is a maid, slain in the library by an invisible killer that streaks her dress with red. Detectives from Scotland Yard are called in — but obviously they’re not at all familiar with anything close to resembling standard police procedural techniques. It’s not enough that the wrong questions are asked, but the answers they do get are often not revealed. Hopes fade fast.

   Am I revealing too much, considering the general non-availability of this particular work, to say that Small is more interested in writing science-fiction than an utterly fair detective story? Still, in spite of the frustrating nature of the incompetent investigation, and in spite of the dumb obstacles placed in the way of true love, there is a modicum of quaint naivete to go with the many pulp styled thrills and chills, thus making this sinister mystery not a complete failure.

   It comes close, though.

— From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar-Apr 1979       (slightly revised).


[UPDATE] 07-08-08. I’ve always assumed that this was the magazine version of one of Austin J. Small’s several crime and mystery novels published in hardcover, sometimes under the pen name of “Seamark,” but now that I have the means of checking into it more thoroughly, this is apparently not so.

   Which also means that in terms of an appropriate cover image, I’m stumped, for the first time in a long time. In its place, I have an inappropriate one, but it is one in my collection by the same author, and it appears to be the same kind of science-fictional overlap with the world of detective fiction. I’ve never read it, so I could be wrong, and don’t hold me to it.

   I no longer even have a copy of the magazine I read this story in. I must have traded it off for something I thought I’d rather have at the time. Little did I know then that I would need it now.

HENRY KANE – Until You Are Dead.

Signet S1835; paperback reprint, August 1960 (Barye Phillips cover). Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster, 1951. UK editions: T. V. Boardman, hc, 1952; ppbk, 1953. Earlier US paperback edition: Dell 580, 1952, mapback (Victor Kalin cover).

HENRY KANE Until You Are Dead.

   In order of publication, Until You Are Dead was either the sixth or seventh of Henry Kane’s series of detective tales featuring a suave Manhattan private eye named Peter Chambers. (The reason I’m not more definitive on this is that there were two of Chambers’ adventures in 1951. With nothing else to go on, I’m going to suggest that this one is #6, since it was came out from Simon & Schuster, who published the first five, and A Corpse for Christmas appeared from Lippincott, suggesting a change in publisher. The Christmas aspect of the latter also suggests that it was published later in the year, once again making Until You Are Dead the earlier one.)

   Such is life in the fast armchair-detective lane.

   Also of note is that Kane’s first three short stores, one of which, “Kudos for the Kid” (May 1947) may have been the overall first appearance of Peter Chambers, were published in Esquire, which was a prestigious magazine to be in at the time.

   After 1951, though, all of Kane’s novel length fiction in the US, most but not all adventures of Peter Chambers, came out as paperback originals, first from Avon, then Dell and many of the others including Signet, before both Kane and Chambers ended up in a series of X-rated books from Lancer in 1970.

HENRY KANE Until You Are Dead.

   Oops. I see I erred in one thing I just said. There was a series of novels about Inspector MacGregor that appeared in hardcover from Macmillan between 1965 and 1968. These all took place in New York City, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any of them. (I no longer remember all of the books I’ve seen.)

   It’s not clear how sharp an operator Chambers is, and how close to the legal edges he usually runs, but he seems to know his way around and to know a lot of people who come close to running the town. Really running the town, that is. But either way, he draws the line at aiding and abetting a jazz musician turned blackmailer — the guy had seen a killing in a night spot men’s room, a guy high in the rackets who tossed Kermit Teshle (that’s his name) a hundred dollar bill and left.

   Teshle wants more. Chambers says no. Enter Ivy Teshle, his sister, a girl who dances for a living while trying to make it to Broadway. (See either of the two covers shown.) She meets him in his office, worried about her brother, on page 15, and on page 17 she is kissing him. Chambers says yes.

   It is that kind of book, and Chambers is that kind of private eye, and Henry Kane is that kind of writer.

   Kermit ends up dead, and Chambers is in it up to his neck.

HENRY KANE Until You Are Dead.

   As a writing stylist, Henry Kane is pretty good. Not in Raymond Chandler’s league, but he can rattle off the dialogue when he wants to, which is often, and he can go into philosophical matters with equal ease. Once in a while these discussions become what in the vernacular might be called full-fledged rants, or here in New England, “wig-outs.” Example, pages 85 and 86:

   I went to the cabinet and broke out a new bottle of Scotch (here he goes again). I peeled the cellophane off the top and clipped off the cork. I poured into a shot glass and swallowed it. I poured again and put the bottle away. I held up the glass and looked at amber glistening in the sunlight and mused. People say I drink too much. The hell with them. People say that nobody can drink that much. The hell with them, I know people who drink more. People say I’ll have no liver left when I’m old. The hell with then, who wants a liver when you’re old? Literary critics rant. The … (excuse me). Let them rant (between drinks). I like to drink. So far, it agrees with me. When it stops agreeing with me, I’ll listen to the literary critics, as I sorrow under the burden of cirrhosis. There are all kinds of people. It makes for an interesting world. There are people who smoke three packs of cigarettes before they really get going for the evening in the night clubs. There are prime ministers who smoke eighteen fat cigars a day. There are people who buy pornographic books which they read every day but Sunday. There people who push against people on subways. There are people who play footsie with strangers at movies. There are people who drink four ice cream sodas at a smack. There are secret eaters of constant pickles. There are people who go for smoked tongue with mustard by the heap. There are people who slush through a pound of cream candies during one chapter of a thick book with significance. There are pistachio nut eaters. There are marijuana smokers. There are opium addicts. There are movie goers (including matinees). There are people devote celibate lives to devising instruments of mass destruction. There are soda-pop drinkers. There are frankfurter nuts. There are sun-bathers, vegetable eaters, vitamin girls, hormone boys, sidewalk psychiatrists, neon hunters, nylon oglers, stamp collectors, headline readers, glass crunchers, five-mile hikers, deep breathers, left-handed pitchers, sweepstake winners, golf players, winter swimmers, and guys that make parachute jumps at the age of a hundred and nine. There are even philosophical detectives.

   Me. I like to drink (among other things). So what?


   Whew. He caught me there, but only twice, thank goodness. (How about you?)

   With a passage like that to recommend this book, I wish the mystery had an ending to match. It’s OK, don’t get me wrong. It just isn’t up to the one I’d been waiting for. (I don’t think it could have.)

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