LISBON. Republic Pictures, 1956. Ray Milland, Maureen O’Hara, Claude Rains, Yvonne Furneaux, Francis Lederer, Jay Novello. Director: Ray Milland.

   It takes more than a big name cast to make a movie that’s worth watching, and here’s a case in point. All the action in this “action adventure” movie, which is how I’ve categorized it, takes place in stretch of time less than five minutes long in the last ten minutes of this ninety minute movie. Blink (or more likely, doze off) and you’ve missed it.

   The rest of the story consists of talking, talking and more talking — but in the fanciest rooms and eating places in Lisbon — and taking tours of the city with the characters cheerfully pointing out to each other various points of interest. The string-laden orchestration by Nelson Riddle in the background is (to my ears) both annoying and badly timed.

   The story is this: Maureen O’Hara wants to pay Claude Rains (a gentleman crook of the best sense of both words) to facilitate the release of her much older (and very wealthy) husband from behind the Iron Curtain. Rains, in turn, hires Ray Milland (a smuggler of high fashion perfumes) and his boat to assist in the transfer at sea.

   There’s a little bit of dounle-crossing and ulterior motives at work all around here, including Milland’s attraction to both Maureen O’Hara and Yvonne Furneaux (as Rains’ “secretary”), but there’s nothing here that needs 90 minutes of running time. If you’d like to see a travelogue of the city of Lisbon in 1956, I’m sure you can do better in that regard as well.

CARTER BROWN – Negative in Blue. Signet Q6220, paperback original; 1st printing, December 1974.

   I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart (or is it my head?) for Hollywood-based private eyes. Which is probably why, of the many series characters created by Australian mystery writer Alan G. Yates (who writes as Carter Brown), my favorite is Rick Holman.

   Holman bills himself as an “industrial consultant,” and specializes in clearing up nasty messes, invariably involving homicide, which film colony stars find themselves in, with causing any bad publicity for the stars or studios involved. He, like Shell Scott, is a direct descendant of my beloved Dan Turner, Robert Leslie Bellem’s wonderful Hollywood shamus of the pulps, and is one of the very few of the breed still active.

   This is the best Carter Brown of recent memory. Two opposing factions are involved in all kinds of skullduggery concerning the negative of an unfinished movie whose female star died of an overdose of barbiturates. A member of one of the factions catches a shotgun blast in the face, and Holman steps in to investigate.

   Although the process by which Holman solves the mystery is glossed over to the point of being ignored, the pace, as always with Brown, is excellent, building to a stunning, satisfying conclusion. If you haven’t yet sampled one of Brown’s more than a hundred novels, here would be a fine place to begin.

From this Portland OR based folk- and blues-singer 2011 CD Rose City Ramble:

CHRISTOPHER BUSH – The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1953. No US paperback edition. First published in the UK: Macdonald, hardcover, 1952.

   On page 176 is a challenge to the reader that can’t be ignored, and I quote: “Too hard for you? Well, maybe it is, but it;ll do you no harm to try to think it out.” So in spite of some tough alibis and some quite unbelievable behavior on the part of Ludovic Travers’ client, no, it wasn’t too hard at all.

   Usually I’m the lazy kind of reader who is entente to sit back and let the author do all of the tedious work with timetables, fingerprints and such, but as I say, that’s the kind of challenge that can’t be turned down. In fact even though some of the details were off, in smoe ways I like my version better.

   The affair concerns a hunt for a missing wartime hero; a blackmailer posing s a retired army officer; and the secret connecting them. Travers has an unusual working arrangement with Scotland Yard, having his own detective agency, but on a consultant basis he’s able to call freely upon the services and assistance of Yard personnel.

   This is purely a puzzle story, although there’s nothing wrong with that. The characters do suffer the humility of cavorting around with their strings showing, however, and the timetables and alibi-taking in a word is best described as sloppy.

Rating: C.

Bibliographic Notes:   Between 1926 and 1968 Christopher Bush wrote an amazing 63 detective novels under his own name, all with Ludovic Travers as the lead detective. Also listed in Hubin are one novel as by Noel Barclay and another 13 as by Michael Home, some indicated as only marginally criminous.

THE MASK OF FU MANCHU. Cosmopolitan Pictures, 1932. Boris Karloff (Dr. Fu Manchu), Lewis Stone (Nayland Smith), Karen Morley, Charles Starrett, Myrna Loy, Jean Hersholt, Lawrence Grant, David Torrence. Based on the novel by Sax Rohmer. Director: Charles Brabin, with Charles Vidor (uncredited).

   If you’re looking for some over the top pre-code horror, trust me when I say that The Mask of Fu Manchu doesn’t disappoint. Featuring Boris Karloff as the title villain, this movie has kidnapping, a torture chamber featuring metal spikes, diabolical mind control via reptile, and its fair share of decidedly politically incorrect (by today’s standards) “yellow peril” racial paranoia.

   After all, Fu Manchu isn’t just a ruthless criminal; he’s also determined to defeat the “white race.” But with Karloff portraying Sax Rohmer’s best-known fictional character, it’s more camp than menace, making this a rather spicy horror adventure. It’s pure pulp, and it’s great.

   In The Mask of Fu Manchu, considered by some to the best cinematic adaptation of the Sax Rohmer’s works, our infamous Chinese villain seeks out the sword originally belonging to Genghis Khan. That sword, along with the Mongolian warlord’s mask, will allow Fu Manchu to become Genghis Khan’s mystical reincarnation here on earth. Fu Manchu wants to use that power to defeat his collective archenemy; namely, the white race!

   It’s up to good Englishmen to stop him. Sir Denis Nyland Smith (Lewis Stone), along with archeologist Terry Granville (Charles Starrett) and his fiancée, Sheila (Karen Morley) are on scene to save the day. But Fu Manchu isn’t going to be defeated so easily. Especially when he has his sadistic daughter, Fah Lo See (a decidedly out of place Myrna Loy) by his side.

   At a running time just shy of 70 minutes, The Mask of Fu Manchu manages to pack in a lot of action and exotic adventure. All of it appears to be in the spirit of escapist entertainment, rather than in the service of a broader artistic agenda. Indeed, as a horror film that doesn’t aim to address any deep philosophical questions about human nature, this one does everything that it’s supposed to and then some. Recommended.

Holly Golightly is a British singer-songwriter named after the character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Stylistically her music sounds to me as best described as garage rock with more than a hint of folk-blues. Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs is a group that consists of her musical partner Laywer Dave and herself.

This is the title track of their 2011 CD:

WILLIAM PATRICK MAYNARD – The Destiny of Fu Manchu. Black Coat Press, hardcover, March 2012; paperback, April 2012.

   A confession before going farther with this review, Black Coat Press is my publisher, and I am friends on Facebook with William Patrick Maynard, but otherwise this review is as honest as I can make it.

   Pastiche is a difficult art at best. The writer usually will suffer in comparison to the original, and if he surpasses the original is too often denied the recognition he deserves. A perfect example is Barry Perowne’s pastiche of E. W. Hornung’s Raffles stories, where little that Hornung wrote is anywhere near as entertaining as Perowne’s stories, but Perowne is only a footnote today.

   Both Philip Jose Farmer and Fritz Leiber were better writers than Edgar Rice Burroughs when they tried their hands at Tarzan pastiche, and I don’t think anyone would argue Ian Fleming was anywhere near as good a writer overall as Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks, or William Boyd who all tackled James Bond with varying grades of success. Having written several Arsene Lupin pastiche, I can tell you no matter how good the story is, you always come in second to the original.

   The saga of Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu has already suffered this humiliation earlier with Rohmer biographer Cay Van Ash writing two novels featuring Rohmer’s characters that both far exceeded the best work Rohmer himself did in terms of story, thrills, and sheer writing skill.

   I say this not to fault Rohmer, whose work I enjoy, but merely to state the obvious, that Rohmer himself never did justice to his own creation, in my opinion. His best books in the series do not come anywhere near Van Ash’s Ten Years Beyond Baker Street and The Fires of Fu Manchu.

   Now William Patrick Maynard has taken up the saga of the Devil Doctor, and like Cay Van Ash before him, has far exceeded the best Sax Rohmer had to offer.

   The Destiny of Fu Manchu does take a note from Rohmer in that it plunges right into the story with Dr. John Petrie, the Watson to the evil doctor’s nemesis Sir Denis Nayland Smith, pushed into the affair on his own doorstep.

   Next we are swept off to Corfu, and a new narrator, Michael Knox, an archaeologist who is a bit of a rotter with women, and hardly the most heroic of figures, stumbling on the kidnapping of Kara, Mrs. Petrie, and finding himself in the midst of the world of the Si Fan. He is thrown headlong into one incident after another, eventually finding himself about to be killed on the Orient Express by a homicidal dwarf traveling as a five year old girl.

   And we are off, Ethiopia, London, Egypt, Munich … as Knox finds himself a pawn in an increasingly dangerous and confusing game caught between a civil war for control of the Si Fan, Sir Nayland Smith, the weakness of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and Hitler’s pre-War power grabs.

   At times who is on whose side is as confusing as an Eric Ambler novel, with Knox a pawn of Fu Manchu’s rival, the horribly disfigured Esteban Milagro, aka Thomas Valley, aka Khunum-Khufu, aka …; Helga Grauman, aka Fah lo Suee, Fu Manchu’s daughter, whose memory of that fact was removed by her father; Sir Denis Nayland Smith who just saved Hitler and Mussolini from assassination by the Si Fan; and of course Fu Manchu himself who may or may not be calling the shots and manipulating everyone to his own evil goal having been deposed from leadership of the Si Fan after his failure to kill Hitler and Mussolini.

   This is all splendid pulp, rapidly paced, and surprisingly as atmospheric as the original. Maynard’s imagination never fails him, and he manages to keep the complex plot in the air with remarkable ease. Characters from past Rohmer novels and from Cay Van Ash’s books make cameos or have full roles, and there is even a nod to Guy Boothby’s Italian Menace of an earlier age, Dr. Nikola.

   Everything turns on Fu Manchu’s plot to avert the coming war by so devastating the West with a terrible plague that he can seize power.

   To the extent he can, Maynard avoids the obvious pitfalls of anachronism. The term Oriental is tossed around freely as it would be in that day and age, and the characters are far from prescient. Nayland Smith is blind to everything but defeating Fu Manchu, though not unaware of other evils, the narrator redeems himself, but not without suffering, and in the end the world is saved from one terrible fate at the cost of another.

   Maynard’s willingness to allow this bit of historical irony to weigh on the otherwise satisfactory conclusion without any heavy-handed message is one of the book’s pleasures. He is well aware of our foreknowledge, but never allows that to color his characters or their actions. They are merely reacting in the moment as most people do in times of stress and danger.

   If you loved Rohmer, I think this will entertain you, and if, like me, you always thought Rohmer’s own Fu Manchu tales lacked a bit, then this should please you. Maynard has the voice down pat, and frankly he is a better storyteller overall than Rohmer, whose best work was not in the Fu Manchu series.

   This is full-blooded old-fashioned pulp writing, fully aware of all the flaws and evils of the Yellow Peril fiction it represents, but managing to both entertain and remind us of our own prejudices and those of the time it is set in at the same time.

   It is the best Fu Manchu novel Sax Rohmer never wrote.

Bibliographic Note: William Patrick Maynard is also the author of The Terror of Fu Manchu (2009).

HARRY KEMELMAN – Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet. Morrow, hardcover, 1976. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1977. Reprinted several times.

   This is the sixth in Kemelman’s acclaimed series about Rabbi David Small, and it is very good indeed, although not much of a mystery. It is as much about temple politics and Jewish life in suburban Barnard’s Crossing, Massachusetts, it is a mystery novel.

   The book’s only death (murder is barely even suggested) involves an old man and his allergy to penicillin, and the possible switching of two bottles of pills. This is tied in with the temple matter of the sale of a block of stores and the purchase of land for a religious retreat, which the rabbi opposes.

   Suburban Jewish life is limned as sharply as ever, with some old friends being joined by many new faces. Though the “mystery” is not great, this is a very satisfying book. It’s as if the people of Barnard’s Crossing are old friends: they’re still squabbling about temple directions, still attempting to overrule the rabbi, still givig in in the end.

   Warning: Read the books in order, as this gives away the solutions of earlier books.

Bibliographic Notes:   There were 11 Rabbi Small novels, beginning with Friday the Rabbi Slept Late in 1964, and after running through the days of the week, the series ended with That Day the Rabbi Left Town in 1996, the year Kemelman died. He was in his late 80s.

   He also wrote a collection of short stories, The Nine Mile Walk, published in 1968, but written before he began the Rabbi series. These were primarily puzzle stories and featured college professor Nicky Welt as the amateur detective involved.

“BIRTH OF A LEGEND.” First episode of the first and only season of the TV series Legion, United Paramount Network (UPN), two hrs., 18 April 1995. Richard Dean Anderson (Ernest Pratt), John de Lancie (Janos Bartok), Mark Adair-Rios (Huitzilopochtli Ramos), Jarrad Paul (Skeeter). Guest cast: Bob Balaban, Stephanie Beacham, Katherine Moffat, Jon Pennell. Creators: Michael Piller & Bill Dial. Director: Charles Correll.

   Teaming up Richard Dean Anderson, who had just finished a long gig as MacGyver, with John de Lancie, not nearly as well known except to Star Trek fans as the omnipotent and very charismatic alien being Q, was a felicitous idea that should have worked. But success or not in the annals of network TV is a chancy thing, especially when it comes to small fledgling networks, and as fate would have it, the series lasted only twelve episodes before fading away forever.

   The basic concept is hardly a new one. Sometime in the 1860s, Anderson plays a dime novelist named Ernest Pratt who gets mistaken by the townspeople of Sheridan, Colorado, for the fictional and very popular hero of his long series of books, Nicholas Legend. Far from being a hero himself, Pratt spends his days gambling and drinking in the saloons of San Francisco, but he has only himself to blame for the mixup: his stories are written in the first person and images of his face are prominently featured on all the covers.

   Learning from a good-looking female attorney (Katherine Moffat) that a warrant has been issued for his arrest in Colorado, it takes some effort, but he is finally convinced to take a trip there in order to clear his name. Causing the local townsfolk to believe that he was their savior by means of one of his many inventions is eccentric scientist Janos Bartok (de Lancie), but the deed has also severely disrupted the plans of wealthy landowner Vera Slaughter (Stephanie Beacham), who caused the charges against Legend to be drawn up.

   I doubt that I am the first to call this show a combination of Wild Wild West and Maverick, but I think the connection fits. The show is played for laughs as much as anything else, but since we’re in on the gag from scene one, I don’t believe that that was one of the primary causes of the series’ early demise. I do think, though, that Anderson may have portrayed his role a little too broadly. (He isn’t that funny.)

   This is the only episode I’ve watched so far from the set of DVDs just recently released, so I can’t tell you what kind of adventures that Legend and Bartok will have from here. This may also be one of those concepts that just has no place to go. This is a series that depended on both charisma and wacky 19th century inventions. There may not have been enough wacky inventions to go around.

C. J. HENDERSON – No Free Lunch. Jack Hagee #1. Diamond, paperback original, 1992.

   Jack Hagee had his genesis in Wayne Dundee’s Hardboiled, and the short stories were collcted by Gary Lovisi under the title What You Pay For (Gryphon Publications, 1990). I’ve seen them in neither form. Hagee is an ex-cop from Pittsburgh, and his home now is New York City. It’s a Big Apple decayed as that of Vachss and Solamita, and the first few pages are as grim, angst-ridden, and overwritten as anything you are likely to see.

   Hagee is visited by a singularly unappetizing fat man from Pennsylvania, whose fianceé has disappeared. The would-be client fears she has fallen with bad company at home and come with them to NYC, and wants Hagee to find her. Hagee, reluctant but broke, accepts the case.

   A trip to the Pennsylvania hometown reveals that the lady was a tramp and the client not as harmless as he appeared. Hagee returns to the city and begins hunting down the players. When he starts finding them people begin to die.

   This got some nice advance notices, including one by Richard Prather likening the thrill he got from it to the one he had upon reading Raymond Chandler. I’m not sure about Prather; maybe his memory failed him, or could be he mistook indigestion for a thrill. Something, anyway.

   Prose sample describing a woman’s red hair: “It jumped in long, fierce waves whenever she turned her head, crashing against her bare shoulders like the tide against white sand. It teased the blood with sparkling shocks — flaming crackles, the kind of look men kill their best friends over.” It all sounds painful.

   The writing gets in the way of the story. In some places it’s pretty good writing, in some places abysmally bad. but it gets in the way of the story. The whole thing was suggestive to me of an attempt by Mickey Spillane to imitate Raymond Chandler. There’s enough mindless violence and brutality to make up five modern PI novels. If you liked Spillane and Mike Hammer, you might like Henderson and Jack Hagee. I did (sort of), but I don’t.

      The Jack Hagee novels —

No Free Lunch (1992)
Something For Nothing (1993)

Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)

   Jack Hagee has also appeared in short stories and graphic novels. For more information, please consult the Thrilling Detective website.