November 2017


REVIEWED BY JONATHAN LEWIS:


TORMENTED. Cheviot Productions, 1960. Richard Carlson, Susan Gordon, Lugene Sanders, Juli Reding, Joe Turkel. Director: Bert I. Gordon.

   Sometimes a movie that isn’t particularly good sticks with you and you wonder why. What was it about the film that makes it difficult to completely forget? Was it a sense of childhood nostalgia, a great performance by a lead actor, or the film score? Or was it something else?

   In the case of Tormented, a mediocre thriller, it’s the general quirkiness of it all that made it linger in my mind well after watching. Directed by Bert I. Gordon, who is generally known for his work in the science fiction genre, Tormented combines elements of both film noir and horror to tell a story about how a man’s guilt drives him to the brink of madness and then some. The black and white film has a notably idiosyncratic jazzy score that, while often out of place, actually makes the film better than it would have been without it.

   Set on an island, the film effectively uses its geographical setting and its score to tell the story of doomed protagonist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson). Stewart is a jazz musician about to be married to a girl who lives on the same island. But his former girlfriend Vi (Juli Reding) won’t let him go. She’s determined to keep him in her grasp. But it’s she who ends up falling out of his grasp after an accident leaves her struggling not to plunge from a damaged lighthouse railing. But it is not to be. For Tom decides that one way to have Vi out of his life once and for all is to let her plunge to her death.

   But these kind of things have a way of boomeranging. It isn’t long before Tom begins seeing footsteps in the sand and seeing visions of Vi. Did she die after all? Or is she haunting him from beyond her watery grave? Is it all in his head, or is a ghost really tormenting Tom Stewart?

   Truthfully, it doesn’t matter all that much and the sub-par acting by a lot of the supporting cast doesn’t do much to propel the film forward. But there’s just enough weirdness in the movie to make it a moderately enjoyable horror film. As far as the character of Tom Stewart, it’s a part that Carlson was meant to play.

REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:

   
BRIAN FREEMANTLE – Charlie’s Apprentice. Charlie Muffin #10. St. Martins, US, hardcover, 1994. No US paperback edition. First published in the UK by Century, hardcover, 1993.

   Now that Anthony Price has retired Davis Audley, I suppose that Freemantle and his scruffy agent Charlie Muffin, are my favorites in the espionage line.

   The old director of Charlie’s Department has died, and Charlie really doesn’t know what to expect from his lady Deputy Director either. He’s more than a bit apprehensive when they finally call him in, but glad that they’ve quit ignoring him anyway. His relief is short-lived, though — he’s taken off the active agent rolls and assigned as a trainer.

   His first trainee is from the sort of semi-aristocratic background that he detests, but Charlie sets about to make the best of it for the moment. Concurrently, in China an agent in place is the last Jesuit establishment is beginning a process that will land him in very deep rice. And Charlie’s masters are up to something nasty.

   Everything and everybody converge in a typically convoluted fashion, of course, though we and Charlie are kep guessing until the end. Freemantle tells the story from multiple viewpoints, adding a piece at a time, and does so quite effectively.

   Charlie is still Charlie: the Eternal Prole, scruffy, resentful, watchful, a step ahead of everybody, and determined not to be the loser whatever the game. His old Russian lover, Natalia, has a role to play, too. Freemantle is one of the best of what he does, and for me, at least, Charlie Muffin is a character for the ages.

— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #14, August 1994.

      The Charlie Muffin series

1. Charlie Muffin (1977) aka Charlie M
2. Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie (1978) aka Here Comes Charlie M
3. The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin (1979)
4. Charlie Muffin’s Uncle Sam (1980) aka Charlie Muffin U.S.A.
5. Madrigal for Charlie Muffin (1981)
6. Charlie Muffin and Russian Rose (1985) aka The Blind Run
7. Charlie Muffin San (1987) aka See Charlie Run
8. The Run Around (1988)
9. Comrade Charlie (1989)
10. Charlie’s Apprentice (1993)
11. Charlie’s Chance (1996) aka Bomb Grade
12. Dead Men Living (2000)
13. Kings of Many Castles (2001)
14. Red Star Rising (2010)
15. Red Star Burning (2012)
16. Red Star Falling (2013)

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


TOUS PEUVENT ME TUER. Da.Ma. Cinematografica / Sofradis, France, 1957. Aka: Anyone Can Kill Me and Everyone Wants to Kill Me. Andre Versini, Anouk Aimee, Peter van Eyck, and some very fine actors whose names would mean nothing to you. Written & directed by Henri Decoin.

   An oddball little movie, part noir, part rom-com, part murder mystery, part prison film—and 100% engrossing.

   The film starts with Tony (Andre Versini) a guy in his 20s working as a street vendor (selling reversible bow ties: perfect for casual or formal wear) while romancing Anouk Aimee, and in some kind of shady deal with Cyril (Peter van Eyck.)

   As is the way of these things, just as the romance is blossoming, the deal comes up: a 5-man jewel heist, filmed with suspense and shadowy lighting worthy of The Asphalt Jungle, interrupted not by the cops, but by casual conversation about love, bicyclists, chauffeurs and taking a leak.

   Then we get one of those bursts of idiot logic that carries you along in a movie till you stop to think about it: In order to give themselves an alibi, the quintet of heisters break into a distillery and get drunk, making enough mess to look like they’ve been there all night. They are duly all sentenced to a year in jail and agree to divvy the loot upon release.

   And then, one by one, separated by months, they begin to die.

   First a fall from a catwalk, then an apparent suicide, an accident with a freight elevator… and as their numbers dwindle, they start looking at each other with increasing suspicion, fear, and finally murderous intent.

   Writer-Director Decoin does a fine job evoking the prison atmosphere while ratcheting up the tension. He also knows when to back off and let his characters breathe a bit. To his credit (and that of the actors) they never seem like cliché figures playing out their roles to move the plot along, but rather like real men in danger, bound by a code of silence that leads them inexorably to a cunning resolution, surprising and beautifully realized, with brutal action, a western-style face-off in a saloon, and a romantic fade-out.

   If there’s any problem with Tous Peuvent, it’s the constantly shifting tone between taut suspense, soulful romance and droll comedy. One is never sure how much to take seriously or when to just sit back and have a laugh. But the comic moments seem to grow naturally out of the characters themselves, and if you can just let the movie happen on its own terms, you’ll get a kick out of it.

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REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:



CORNELL WOOLRICH
“I’m Dangerous Tonight.” All American Fiction, November 1937 (Volume 1, Number 1). Collected in (among others): The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich Southern Illinois University Press, hardcover, 1981; Vampire’s Honeymoon, Carroll & Graf, paperback, 1985. Available as a free download (various options) from www.archives.org.

    — “Señor Flatfoot.” Argosy Weekly, February 03, 1940. Collected as “One Night in Zacamoras” in Six Nights of Mystery, Popular Library #258, paperback 1950, as by William Irish. Readable online at www.unz.org.


   THE thing, whatever it was — and no one was ever sure afterwards whether it was a dream or a fit or what — happened at that peculiar hour before dawn when human vitality is at its lowest ebb. The Blue Hour they sometimes call it, l’heure bleue — the ribbon of darkness between the false dawn and the true, always blacker than all the rest of the night has been before it.

   â€œI’m Dangerous Tonight” is one of those stories that edge the fringe of the supernatural, hint, snap, and pull back from going too far, but only just. It’s almost a Janus Solution story (term coined by Frank McSherry) save the supernatural has a bit more weight than the natural.

   Like many of Woolrich’s plots, it doesn’t bear too much thinking about. The setting is Paris, where a disgraced FBI agent, Frank Fisher, is out to find Fed killer Belden, head of a dope-smuggling ring. Swirling around those events is a cursed dress that seems to make women go mad with evil, and acts as a catalyst to the events that end Fisher’s quest. Fate looms heavy, and every woman who wears the gown feels its siren’s call, “I’m dangerous tonight…”

   Fisher is bitter, guilt-ridden, and -driven. Belden is a back-shooting murderer and dope pusher, and the dress itself is simply evil. It is Gothic noir out of the Weird Menace pulps with just a hint of madness.

   There is always a rational explanation for everything in this world — whether it’s the true one or not. Maybe it is better so.

   If not in the front rank of the master’s work, this is nonetheless a fine example of the kind of power and control Woolrich could exert, grabbing the reader by the lapels and whispering of unkind and uncaring blind fate, here stalking from the fine shops of Paris to the smoky Apache haunted nightclubs, with doomed people briefly finding love and even bad men finding something worse than them moving just beyond the lights.

   No one ever wrote more convincingly of what lurked just beyond the light than Woolrich.

   I chose these two stories, not only because I read them recently, but because they could not be less alike, save the voice for both is distinctly that of Woolrich.

   Where “I’m Dangerous Tonight” suggests something ancient and evil, “Señor Flatfoot” is a straight forward action tale that was well suited to Argosy, and an example of something of the variety of Woolrich’s work, which encompassed, not only suspense and the weird, but also adventure, a hint of science fiction (“Jane Brown’s Body”),international intrigue (“Tokyo 1941”), and romance, as might be expected of anyone successful in a pulp career.

   O’ROURKE was enjoying a gin-and-lime under the arcade fronting the Plaza when the government changed on him. Or around him, whichever way you care to put it.

   â€œFlatfoot,” which incidentally was the cover story for that issue of the famous pulp, opens with the New York cop of the title in Latin America on a matter or extradition (waiting for his prisoner to get over typhoid in the local hospital), but before he can accomplish that job, he’ll find himself in the middle of a revolution amid beautiful dark eyed and passionate young women, ambitious generals with an eye for wristwatches, and up to his neck in murder.

   While fully in the Woolrich vein, the hero of “Flatfoot” could as easily have come out of Black Mask or one of those Warner Brothers movies about tough New York types in exotic locales. It’s hard not to wonder reading it if maybe you didn’t see Pat O’Brien in the film somewhere and have it stored in your memory palace as half a dozen other films.

   At times you can nearly hear O’Brien narrating.

   Things get more complicated when O’Rourke is recruited to display his skills as a detective to solve a murder that arises, not that you would think it would matter much with all the dead piling up around him.

   Of course O’Rourke ties it up all neatly:

   â€œI don’t want thanks,” remonstrated O’Rourke, wrinkling his forehead at her. “You don’t thank a duck for swimming or a bird for flying, do you? I just don’t know any different, that’s all. That’s my job; that’s why they call me flatfoot.”

   Neither story is a lost masterpiece by Woolrich (neither is reprinted much either, especially “Señor Flatfoot.”). Both are solid and entertaining pulp tales though, and each in its way shows just how much in control of the material he was as a professional. O’Rourke’s little coda could almost be Woolrich speaking. Writing was his job, and even in a lesser mode he did it well, and with an economy and skill that was admirable.

CHRISTOPHER B. BOOTH – Mr. Clackworthy. Chelsea House, hardcover, 1926.

   What I know about Booth is that he was a prolific writer for the pulp magazines in the 1920s and 30s, with just under three and a half pages of entries in Cook and Miller’s Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction. These are only the detective stories. On Bill Contento’s FictionMags site, I also see a smattering of western stories for him, and these are only the tip of the iceberg, as relatively few of the western magazines have been indexed yet.

   According to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, Booth wrote ten novels under his own name, all from Chelsea House, and eight more as by John Jay Chichester, also all from Chelsea House. Also to his credit is one book on which he shared the writing duties, and that was with Isabel Ostrander, another long-time writer for the pulps.

   To point out that you can not always trust the Internet for factual information, some sites suggest that Christopher B. Booth was a pseudonym for Isabel Ostrander. Not so, even though Ostrander (who died in 1924) really was the lady behind ‘Robert Orr Chipperfield,’ ‘David Fox,’ and ‘Douglas Grant.’

   Chelsea House was the hardcover publishing arm of Street & Smith Publications, which also produced Detective Story Magazine, where most (all?) of the novels were serialized first.

   Or cobbled together out of short stories, as was the book at hand, Mr. Clackworthy. There are nine of them in this volume. Of the book which was the sequel to this one, Mr. Clackworthy, Con Man, I do not know if the same is true. Hubin in CFIV does not say yes, which may very well mean no. (I suspect the answer is yes, however.)

   Enough of the general background, I suppose. To get down to business, you should know first of all (or based on the second title, you may have already deduced) that Mr. Clackworthy was one of those protagonists so often on the wrong side of the law in the 1920s, a con man. I imagine someone could write a thesis if not a dissertation on such individuals in the world of crime fiction.

   Here is an off-the-wall question. What character in what novel(s) would qualify as the last in the line of such con men, preying mostly on the rich and unscrupulous, but not necessarily giving to the poor, of which Mr. Clackworthy does not make a general practice?

   I am not an expert, so nor will I even attempt to list any of the other characters who would fall into the category. If you can help, please do, otherwise we shall leave the matter to someone who needs a thesis if not a dissertation on their academic record. (Of course such a someone then would be also obliged to put into perspective WHY con men who preyed mostly on the rich and unscrupulous were so prevalent in the 1920s. One can guess, though.)

   As a start to such a project, it belatedly occurs to me, if you will allow such an interjection such as this, may be Yesterday’s Faces #3 : From the Dark Side, by Robert Sampson (Bowling Green Press, 1987), a rollicking account of all sorts of bad guys who inhabited the pages of the pulp magazines.

   And by the way, before it slips my mind and we head off into the review itself, I would like to point out that in the pages of Detective Story Magazine Mr. Clackworthy met another of that magazine’s regular characters, Johnston McCulley’s lisping pickpocket, Thubway Tham, on at least one occasion: “Mr. Clackworthy and Thubway Tham” (Detective Story Magazine, March 4, 1922). Even though Cook-Miller suggests that only Booth was the author, this may be the first team-up on record between two characters created first by two separate authors. (Does one count, however, Arsene Lupin Versus Holmlock Shears, by Maurice LeBlanc, Richards, 1909? One must posit some ground rules, one supposes.)

   Further investigation into the subject reveals another story of interest: “Thubway Tham and Mr. Clackworthy,” by Johnston McCulley (Detective Story Magazine, February 18, 1922, or two issues earlier). You can read this story in the recent edition of Tham thtories from Wildside Press, Tales of Thubway Tham, although in that edition the story is called “Thubway Tham Meets Mr. Clackworthy.”

   One source does suggest that the team-up was a three-part serial. This may be so, but if indeed it is, I have not yet uncovered a third tale in the triptych, and to this date, the matter rests, for now.

   Let’s get on with the review. The best way to do that, I decided the moment I started reading it, is to quote the opening paragraphs, right from the beginning:

   â€œThe greed of the human heart!” Mr. Amos Clackworthy, confidence man deluxe, sighed as he laid down his newspaper, which was folded to the want ad pages. He had been for some time engrossed in an analytical perusal of the “Business Chances” column.

   James Early, whose record at police headquarters credited him with the alias of “The Early Bird,” was standing at the window of Mr. Clackworthy’s [Chicago] Sheridan Road apartment, gazing glumly at the stream of traffic that flowed past in its usual Sunday afternoon flood. The Early Bird was a lost soul during those times when there was none of Mr. Clackworthy’s nefarious schemes under way to occupy his mind and to keep his wits sharpened.>P>

   All con men naturally work on the concept of greed, as many a Nigerian knows full well today. Booth’s prose style is not all that dissimilar to that of his contemporary (at the time), Erle Stanley Gardner, whose Lester Leith stories for Detective Fiction Weekly started out in very much the same fashion.

   Most of Mr. Clackworthy’s victims well deserve it — greedy bankers, swindlers, unscrupulous investors, and so on – getting their comeuppance in a rough and tumble sort of justice, in a naive, twinkle-in-the-eye sort of way, but even innocent banks sometimes fell afoul of his various and sundry plots and plans. (But were banks truly innocent of wrongdoing in the 1920s? Perhaps Booth’s readers did not really think so.)

   In any case, these stories were written, read and enjoyed in a different time and place. If you’re read this far into the review and other commentary, however, I see no reason why you shouldn’t read and enjoy them, too, even if no one is writing them like this any more.

— November 2005


UPDATE #1: Thanks to the eagle-eyed Monte Herridge, one of the nine stories has been identified so far. It is “Mr. Clackworthy Tells the Truth,” from the October 19, 1920, issue of Detective Story Magazine, the cover of which is shown here to the right. If and when others are identified, you will read about it here first.

   This particular story, amazingly enough, can be read online. (Follow the link.) What is interesting is that some editing was done when the story appeared in book form. Small descriptive sentences and paragraphs were removed. If you want to read the complete text, in other words, you have to go back to the primary source.


UPDATE #2. Very early on this blog, some 10 years ago now, I posted the results of my continued research into the stories in the three collections of Clackworthy stories, identifying as many as possible of the stories contained in each. (The third collection was published by Wildside Press in 2006.) You can read the post here.

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:


FURY AT FURNACE CREEK Fox, 1948. Victor Mature, Coleen Gray, Glen Langan, Albert Dekker, Reginald Gardiner. Written by Charles G. Booth, Winston Miller and David Garth. Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone.

   An unexpected delight from a team of generally undistinguished writers and a director best known for his work on Charlie Chan and Tarzan movies.

   FaFC starts out with both barrels blazing, as a mysterious order from General Blackwell reroutes a cavalry patrol, leading to the destruction of a nearby fort by hostile Indians in a well-staged melee. Fast-forward a few months, there is now a boom town near the site of the massacre, General Blackwell has died in disgrace, and his wastrel son (Mature) hits town, out to prove his dad never gave the disastrous order.

What follows is more than an hour of fast-paced action, mystery, and noirish cat-and-mouse as Mature maneuvers with and against the ruthless town boss (Albert Dekker), plots with a nervous witness marked for a quick back-shooting (Reginald Gardiner, very effective in an off-beat part for him), and faces down Dekker’s hired nasties (Roy Roberts, Fred Clark, Charles Stevens) — and then there’s Jay Silverheels as a murderous renegade circling around the scene……

   I don’t want to over-praise this thing, so let me hasten to add that Furnace Creek has none of the emotional resonance of a John Ford movie. Visually however, it’s right up there with Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine, particularly in a nighttime chase through the dark back alleys of a seamy mining town, a horseback pursuit across the plains, and a fine shoot-out in the ruins of the fort where it all started, as the wounded Mature crawls after the bad guys like a limping dog looking for the man that shot his paw.

   Two other things I want to mention: Coleen Gray, an actress who went from Red River to The Leech Woman, with stops along the way for Kiss of Death and The Killing, does remarkable work as the feisty heroine, and Charles Kemper (Uncle Clegg in Wagonmaster) contributes enjoyable comic relief as a guy who carries a tree trunk around with him.

   And finally, I just love the way gunshots always sounded in the old Fox Westerns; they had a flat, authoritative bang that was somehow evocative of danger and sudden death. Listen for them.

SZU-YEN LIN “The Miracle on Christmas Eve.” First English translation published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 2016. Reprinted in The Realm of the Impossible, edited by John Pugmire & Brian Skupin (CreateSpace, softcover, August 2017).

   The Realm of the Impossible is an anthology of — guess what? — locked room mysteries and other tales of impossible crimes, both new and old, written by authors from all over the world. If you’re a fan of the genre, as I am, if you don’t have have copy already, don’t hesitate. Put it on your Christmas wish list right now.

   Szu-Yen Lin is a young author from Taiwan with one detective novel already translated into English, that being Death in the House of Rain (2017), which I have not seen, but from the description, is filled with impossible crimes of all kinds.

   In this particular story, though, a father helps his young son stand up to the ridicule of his friends who do not believe in Santa Claus. Inviting them all for a Christmas Eve sleepover, they close up the boy’s room by sealing up the door and single window. Then all the boys and the father go to sleep on mats in the narrow hall just outside the locked door of the bedroom.

   They are awakened to the sound of music in the room. Entering the sealed room, to their wondering eyes they find: a Christmas tree, a dozen gifts in wrapping paper and a music box still playing. Even the non-believers are now convinced that, yes, indeed, there is a Santa Claus!

   While there certainly is no crime involved in this story, it certainly is a mystery story. One could only wish that the spooky magic of this cleverly contrived tale did not disappear as quickly as amateur detective Ruoping Lin comes up with his explanation, but that is totally mitigated by the secondary story of the relationship between a father and a son he loves (or a daughter, equally well).

   There is no instruction manual that hospitals give out to new fathers, but if you know of any such, this story will serve that purpose like few others I can think of.

   I’m going to take a two or three day break from the blog. Back soon!

   Have a great holiday everyone!!

REVIEWED BY JONATHAN LEWIS:


TONY ROME. Twentieth Century Fox, 1967. Frank Sinatra, Jill St. John, Richard Conte, Gena Rowlands, Simon Oakland, Jeffrey Lynn, Lloyd Bochner. Screenplay: Richard L. Breen, based on the novel Miami Mayhem by Marvin H. Albert writing as Anthony Rome (Pocket, 1960). Director: Gordon Douglas.

   Tony Rome is sunshine noir at its best. Although the plot is somewhat (I suspect deliberately) muddled and convoluted, the film works extremely well in portraying a private investigator doing his best to maintain his own personal standard of decency in a corrupt society where outward appearances obscure deception and internal turmoil.

   Frank Sinatra portrays the titular Anthony “Tony” Rome, a former Miami cop who is now working as a PI. And like many private investigators portrayed in fiction and on screen, he’s very much a loner. Aside from his bookie and a police lieutenant still on the force (Richard Conte), Rome doesn’t seem to have many stable relationships in his life.

   But that’s not to say that he couldn’t socialize more if he really wanted to. Enter Ann Archer (Jill St. John), a flirtatious divorcee living in Miami Beach, who ends up providing Rome with extensive information about a gangster who may be responsible for the death of Ralph Turpin (Robert J. Wilke), his former partner.

   Rome meets Ann for the first time after doing a big favor for Turpin, now working in hotel security. He ends up taking a girl who passed out in a hotel room home to her father. As it turns out she’s the daughter of a wealthy construction magnate married to a woman (Gena Rowlands) who is guarding a deep secret about her previous marriage. And Ann Archer is at the house, having slept there the night before.

   If it sounds somewhat confused, that’s because in many ways it is. But confusing doesn’t mean that there isn’t any clarity in the movie. Because at root, Tony Rome isn’t about plot as it is about as character and atmosphere. The viewer goes along on a journey with Rome as he travels through a city and a society reeking with corruption, deception, and greed. He’s not a white knight as much as he is a flawed knight. one who is tasked with battling modern society’s proverbial dragons.

REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:


JOE R. LANSDALE – Mucho Mojo. Hap Collins & Leonard Pine #1 [actually #2; see below]. CD Publications, hardcover, limited edition, 1994. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, softcover, 2009. TV: Reportedly serves as the basis for Season Two of the Hap and Leonard television series (Sundance, 2016-2018).

   Lansdale is well-known (at least to Bill Crider and me), but primarily for horror, in which field he’s a multiple award winner. This is his first “traditional” crime novel to my knowledge. Mysterious thinks it’s a breakout.

   Hap Collins is white, fortyish, and working in the rose fields of East Texas. Leonard Pine is black, the same, and gay (but not very cheerful) on top of it. They’re tighter than ticks on the proverbial redbone, and Leonard has a bad leg gotten saving Hap’s life during some shady doings.

   They are sort of drifting along when Leonard’s Uncle Chester dies and leaves him a hundred grand and his house, which changes a lot of things. They discover that Uncle Chester was going senile before he died, and had hinted to the local police that somebody was murdering black children. Then, while putting his house in shape, they dicover a bunch of kiddie porn magazines and dig up the bones of a 10-year-old child buried in a box under the floor.

   The police think Uncle Chester did it, but Leonard doesn’t believe it, so he and Hap begin to dig deeper. So to speak.

   This is an entertaining book, and Hap and Leonard are interesting and refreshingly different characters. I don’t know that they’re all that believable; 40-year-old field hands with as much on the ball as our dynamic duo strike me as more than a little unlikely, but hey it;s a story, right?

   And a good one, too. Lansdale knows how to spin a yarn. He’s got a good East Texas “voice”, and Hap narrates the story effectively, with a fair share of quips and country sayin’s. There’s a lot of dialogue, and not much of the brooding atmosphere you might expect from Lansdale. It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but you won’t know if it’s yours ’til you try a sip.

— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #14, August 1994.


The Hap Collins & Leonard Pine series —

1. Savage Season (1990)

2. Mucho Mojo (1994)
3. The Two-Bear Mambo (1995)
4. Bad Chili (1997)
5. Rumble Tumble (1998)

6. Captains Outrageous (2001)
7. Vanilla Ride (2009)
8. Devil Red (2011)
9. Honky Tonk Samurai (2016)
10. Rusty Puppy (2017)
11. Jackrabbit Smile (2018)


Bibliographic Notes: Unknown to Barry, who described this as the first in the series, there was one that had come out four years earlier, that being Savage Season, published by Mark V. Ziesing, a small press publisher based in California. Barry also seems to have assumed that the first edition of Mucho Mojo was done by Mysterious Press, but another small outfit called CD Publications, based in Baltimore, gets credit for that.

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