ILARIA TUTI – Flowers Over the Inferno. Supt. Teresa Battaglia #1. Soho, hardcover, April 2019. Translated from the Italian by Ekin Oklap.

First Sentence: There was a legend that haunted that place, the kind that clings like a persistent odor.

   Inspector Massimo Marini’s arrival at the crime scene of his new posting in Northern Italy is less than auspicious, particularly when he mistakes a male officer for his new superior. In her sixties, Superintendent Teresa Battaglia is overweight, diabetic, and has other health issues, but is known to be an excellent profiler.

   Teresa and her team have been called to a gruesome scene: the body of a naked man whose eyes have been removed. Marini is determined to win his superior’s respect, but can Teresa’s and Marini’s very different styles find the perpetrator?

   The story’s evocative opening, set in 1978, has a very Gothic feel to it. Tuti then does an interesting segue to a child in the present, and then to the crime scene and the introduction of Marini, Teresa and the first example of her analytic skills— “She wondered why he had requested a transfer from a big city to this small provincial precinct… We run away from what scares or hurts us—or from what holds us captive.” As opposed to the usual cooperative relationship between the lead and subordinate, this begins very differently but with intent.

   The story is told from four perspectives: that of Teresa, Marini, members of the group of four young children, and the killer. Plus, in the background, is the School with its rules of “Observe, record, forget.” Each voice is very clearly differentiated and important to the story.

   Tuti has a remarkable voice. It is one which compels one and yet tempts one to draw away from it as it can resonate too clearly at times— ”Solitude was an unobtrusive housemate; it took up no room and never touched anything. It has no smell or color. It was an absence, an entity defined in contrast to its opposite. Yet it existed; it was the force that made Teresa’s cup of chamomile tea shake on its saucer on those nights when sleep refused to come to her rescue.”

   It is fascinating watching Teresa build her profile while training Marini— “Criminology is an art. … It’s not magic; it’s interpretation. Probability, statistics. Never certainty.” Teresa is truly a complex, compelling character.

   Beyond the story being a suspenseful mystery, the plot touches on relevant and important themes. Among them is the importance of compassionate and empathetic touch along with the instinct to nurture which is contrasted with man’s unfathomable ability for cruelty. Yet there are still nice touches of humor— “Ed Kemper would dissect the bodies of his victims to play around with their internal organs.” “Do you mind if I throw up?” “Not all over my evidence, Inspector.”

   When one realizes the motive, it’s someone one wouldn’t expect. After all, one never expects that learning about the killer can break one’s heart.

   Flowers Over the Inferno is an incredible book which will be on my “Best of 2019” list. It is one which touches on every emotion and leaves a mark on one’s soul. It stays with one long after the final page and leaves one wanting more. How wonderful to know this is the first of a trilogy.

Rating: Excellent

SHADOW OF SUSPICION. Monogram, 1944. Marjorie Weaver, Peter Cookson, Tim Ryan, Pierre Watkin, Clara Blandick, J. Farrell MacDonald, John Hamilton. Director: William Beaudine.

   Maybe it’s because of energetic pace director William Beudine put his players through, but here’s a prime example of a detective movie that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but you can sit back and enjoy it anyway.

   At stake is a valuable diamond necklace that any number of people would like to get their hands on. It’s being sent to the Los Angeles branch of Cartell Jewelers, but a dashing young chap (Peter Cookson) with a glint of larceny in his eyes is hanging around, making a pest of himself, suspiciously so. He also has his eyes on the manager’s pert and sassy secretary (Marjorie Weaver), which suggests he’s one of the good guys.

   But is he? He has a partner (in crime?) with a hearty, tall-tale telling fellow (Tim Ryan) from the New York branch, but why do they feel they need to swap names? And if they’re the good guys, who hired them and who are they working for?

   Not a lot of questions such as this are answered, even by the movie’s end, but somehow it just doesn’t seem to matter. The pace only falters during a trip across country with the secretary, who unknowingly has the necklace in her possession safely (?) tucked inside a pair of bronzed baby shoes.

   Once in New York, it’s a short and quick wrap-up, no holds barred. Overall, some parts of this film are well done, others will have you scratching your head. Myself, I’d call it a draw — and forgive me for all the questions marks!

BRYNN BONNER “Jangle.” Novelette. Session Seabolt #1. First appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May 2007.

   Many of you, and I’m willing to wage a majority of you, are collectors of one thing or another: books, magazines, records, DVDs, comic books, Lego sets, Star Wars toys, whatever. And even if you’re not, I think you can identify with those of us who do haunt library sales, old used book and record stores, tag sales (garage sales, perhaps, where you live), hoping that the next place you visit will be The One.

   Such is the case in this short tale. Session Seabolt is the owner of a used record store, and when she’s not in the shop, she loves to go browsing all of the garage sales in the area:

   It’s happened to me. I know the feeling. The author (not her real name) has nailed it perfectly.

   What Session has found is almost irrelevant at this point, but since I’m sure you’d like to know — I know I was, and Ms Bonner puts off telling us for as long as she can. An early pressing of Bob Dylan’s first LP, the one containing several tracks that didn’t appear on the version finally released to the public. Some of the early ones did get into circulation, and they’re worth thousands of dollars.

   To assuage her guilt, Session also takes an old stereo set, complete with turntable and speakers. I might have done the same.

   The rest of the story is not nearly as good as the beginning — it gets a little too complicated, and I don’t think I need to go into it. Well, here’s a hint: it has more to do with the other stuff she bought than the Dylan LP. I’ve told all there is to know about the really good part.

      —

PostScript:   According the introductory notes, this was to be the first of series. It was, but the second known Session Seabolt story didn’t come along until “Final Vinyl,” which appeared in the Sept-Oct 2012 issue of EQMM.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS – Blood and Thunder. Nate Heller #7. Dutton, hardcover, 1995. Signet, paperback, 1996. Amazon Encore, trade paperback, 2011.

   You already know I think Collins is underrated. Though they’ve been uneven, I think the Heller novels include his best work.

   Collins has one writing habit the irritates the hell out of me — he overuses the word “smirk.” And from the contexts, I think he mis-uses it sometimes as well.

   Nate Heller met the Louisiana Kingfish, Huey Long, back in Chicago in ’32. when Long was stump-beating for FDR. Now, in 1935, Long is preparing to make his own run for the Presidency. The only thing that kept Long from being a full-fledged paranoid is that there really were people out to get him, and now he’s got wind of another scheme. Heller finds himself offered a non-refusable sum of money to investigate down in Louisiana, so off he goes to the swamp country.

   As always, Collins does a thoroughly researched, thoroughly competent job of writing a historical crime novel. His prose style is breezy and semi-pulpish — and I’ve explained before that I do not intend that as a slur — and he always keeps his story moving.

   This one didn’t strike me as one of the strongest Hellers, but that’s more an impression than an analysis. I liked it just fine.

CARROLL JOHN DALY “The Egyptian Lure.” Novelette. Race Williams #18. First published in Black Mask, March 1928. Reprinted in The Snarl of the Beast: The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams, Volume 2 (Altus Press, 2016).

   Race Williams doesn’t call himself a Private Eye. He’d rather be thought of as a Confidential Agent, and in fact that’s what it says in the lettering clients see on his office door. By the time this story appeared, Williams was already a long-time fixture at Black Mask magazine. Readers had been enjoying — and heartily approving — his adventures since the first June issue of 1923.

   In “The Egyptian Lane” he’s, well, lured to the dive / strip joint of the same name by an envelope stuffed with money, with no name attached to the brief note accompanying it. It’s a tawdry joint — the owner of the joint is a Greek by the name of Nick — and it takes Williams a short while to track down the beautiful dancing girl who once lived in a convent but who is now his new client.

   He takes her under his wing, but thanks to a clever ruse of the men who are after her, he loses her again. Calling himself a dunderhead, there’s no way in hell the thugs who’ve abducted her can escape his wrath. Nor do they! The hunt the follows, urged on by his anger and consuming desire for vengeance, is what readers of Black Mask were waiting for, and that’s exactly what they got.

   And so did I. Race Williams is correct is not thinking of himself as any kind of “detective.” His methods are crude but effective, and a gun is his constant companion. The story is well told, the settings (from the dirty streets of Manhattan to the barren wastes of New Jersey) are well described, and the pace? It never lets up.

BECKY CHAMBERS – The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Wayfarers #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, ebook, March 2015; hardcover/trade paperback, August 2015. Harper Vpyager, trade paperbark, July 2016.

   Space opera as a subgenre of science fiction is making a comeback, and I for one, am quite pleased about that. To tell you the truth, though, over the past 20 years, I’d all but given up on science fiction as a field that held any interest to me. The old-fashioned kind of reading material was still being written; it was simply too difficult for me to keep abreast of the field and, in particular, who was still writing it.

   I won’t bother you any further with my problems. I’ve finally caught up with this book, the first in a series of three so far, and I’m glad I did. It’s a longish book, nearly 450 pages, and it took me nearly forever to finish it, but since in many ways it is largely plotless, it didn’t seem to make any difference if I was only able to read 40 pages or so every night or so.

   There is an overall story, mind you, but The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet consists mostly as a series of adventures the crew of the Wayfarer undergo as they make their way to their next job, which is that of punching “wormholes” in space from one established station to another which has no outlet on the other end.

   All this is fine, and the climax comes when they discover what it waiting for them at the other end of their journey, but the pleasure in reading this long odyssey comes through the relationships beteen the various members of the crew:

   The newly hired clerk Rosemary Harper, to begin with (human), who has to be introduced to the others very early on: other humans Captain Ashby and grumpy algaeist Corbin; Sissix, the Aandrisk (lizard-like) co-pilot; Dr. Chef, the perpetually outgoing Grum doctor and cook; the reclusive navigators and Sianat pair named Ohan; Kizzy and Jenks, both human but living in their own world of mech tech; and last but not least, Lovelace (Lovey), the AI who has supervisory control of the whole ship.

   Even though the crew faces many obstacles on the voyage, including an intense encounter with pirates, the overall feeling of the crew is that these as nice people, aliens or not, and they can figure out how to fix any strained relationships that occur along the way. Not treacly nice, but people who can manage to get along in close quarters very nicely. There, I’ve said the word again!

JOHN DICKSON CARR – The Door to Doom and Other Detections. Edited by Douglas G. Greene. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1980. International Polygonics, paperback, 1991.

   For this audience it goes without saying that mystery author John Dickson Carr will be remembered longest for his many unmatchable novels of locked-room detection, published both under his name and as the easily identifiable Carter Dickson.

   In his work the greatest emphasis was most often on atmosphere – and what better magician’s device to thwart he mind and eye of the reader could there be than clouds of (figuratively) black swirling darkness and ominous threats f the supernatural?

   Such hints rarely extended beyond what was needed to trick the reader’s thoughts into taking yet another false trail, however. Carr’s conservative roots never allowed him to stay an iota from the credo of fair-play detection he so firmly believed in. To the discerning reader, the clues were always there, but if you missed them, you needn’t worry — you were far from being alone!

   In his introduction to this anthology of previously uncollected short work, Douglas Greene downplays Carr’s ability at characterization, but I demur. True, as with most of Carr’s contemporaries in what is fondly called “The Golden Age of Detection,” the story was the thing. I still suspect that few who have read any of the cases solved by Carr’s most famous character, Dr. Gideon Fell, will ever forget the picture they have in their minds of that jovial, triple-chinned detective with the shovel hat, bumbling manners, and the razor-sharp mind for the smallest false detail. Carr just did not happen to believe that the personal lives of his detectives were a matter of concern to the reader.

   The stories in this collection are themselves a mixed bag. They range from the early stories of Carr’s first detective, Henri Bencolin of the Paris police, recently discovered in the pages of his college’s literary magazine, to a selection of radio plays from the famous CBS series Suspense, vintage early 1940s, to a trio of horror stores done a few years earlier for the pulp magazines. Needless to add, when Carr wrote a horror story, it was a horror story.

   Nor has Greene included (or more likely, could not find) a story, no matter its source, which does not reflect an obvious professional finesse in mixing plot with atmosphere.

   Also included are a pair of Sherlockian playlets, parodies for which the best one might say for them is that you had to be there. Closing out the book, just before the inclusive 26-page bibliography, is Carr’s famous essay on “The Grandest Game in the World,” the game he played with his readers for over forty years. The game of fool-them-if-you-can, but never at all costs.

   John Dickson Carr died in 1977. After finishing this book, the only regret one can have is that there are no more stories out there somewhere to be discovered someday to make up another such volume as this. There are more radio plays, to be sure, but so low is the state of dramatic radio in this country today, it seems highly unlikely that any publisher would consider a followup collection of more of these to have a chance for commercial success.

   But we have the novels, and the other stories, don’t we, a wealth of riches to read and enjoy, if not for the first time, why then, again and again.

BLACK LEGION. Warner Brothers, 1937. Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Dick Foran, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Joe Sawyer and Henry Brandon. Screenplay by Abem Finkel and William Wister Haines, from a story by Robert Lord. Directed by Archie Mayo and Michael Curtiz.

   I hate it when a film like this becomes relevant again.

   In its day, Black Legion was merely topical, based on the true story of a splinter group spun off of the KKK. Topical yes, but sometimes News becomes History, and you know what they say about those who don’t remember the past—they fail History Exams.

   Humphrey Bogart was still an also-ran in 1937, with The Petrified Forest behind him, and Dead End coming up, but also plenty of things like Swing Your Lady and The Return of Dr X in his future. He seems to have realized early on that this was an important part and he gives it the most self-effacing performance of his career.

   When Bogie plays Frank Taylor, the gullible working stiff, there’s no glimmer of intelligence behind his eyes, no imagination beyond the American Dream of a nice house with a white picket fence and a wife and child waiting there. And when an émigré (Henry Brandon) gets the promotion Frank was expecting and the dream is snatched from him, his expression of hurt and bewilderment is more than convincing: It’s scary.

   Even more so when Taylor starts listening to radio commentators warning of the tide of foreigners flooding into our country, here to take our jobs and pollute our heritage. So when a co-worker (Joe Sawyer, masterfully cast here) tells him of a “group of guys” that aren’t going to stand for this anymore, we pretty much know where he’s headed—though I suspect few viewers will foresee the outcome.

   This is because the writers do a fine job of keeping the Black Legion at the edge of silliness, with their preposterously grim oath (Bogie nearly chokes on it.) passwords and fake piety. But when the silliness turns grim and deadly, the laughter dies quickly.

   It would be easy at this point to start drawing parallels. Damn night irresistible in fact. But I ain’t gonna do it. Nossir, not me. Over the years, Black Legion has drawn some criticism for not being explicit about the KKK and racism, but I find that lack of specificity brings us to universality.

   Thus Black Legion is about bigotry, xenophobia and mob mentality, but it’s also about the ignorance in which they grow and the venality that feeds on them. And to me the parallels are just too plain to point out.

   Nine weeks at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1981 and Grammy Award winner for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.