SEAN DOOLITTLE “Summa Mathematica.†First published in Crime Spree (*). Reprinted in The Best American Mystery Stories, 2002, edited by James Ellroy & Otto Penzler (Houghton Mifflin, softcover, 2002).
There are stories, depending on who starts to read them, simply cannot be put down. This particular story may not appeal to you, I understand that, but having spent well over half my life teaching mathematics, this is one that, well, I simply could not be put down.
It’s the story of a math professor whose mind, in the middle of teaching a calculus class, goes blank. All of a sudden, numbers no longer make sense to him any more. All the medical profession can tell him is that he has “nonspecific acalculia.†Which translated, means “beats us, chum.â€
Later on, working the late shift at a burger barn, a customer makes him an offer he can’t refuse: pay up his gambling debts, or else. One of the “for elseâ€s is to work for the boss as his financial accountant, which ordinarily wouldn’t turn out so bad, but under the circumstances, wouldn’t you just know?
I don’t know just how this short but effective tale fits in as a “mystery†story, but I guess “mystery†covers a lot of territory as a subgenre of general overall fiction. (*) The real mystery comes in when it comes to trying to discover where this story was first published. Google fails me. And if you were thinking of Crimespree magazine, as I was, that particular magazine didn’t start up until 2004. What am I missing?
RICHARD HULL My Own Murderer. Julian Messner, US, hardcover, 1940. Penguin, US, paperback, [date?]. Also published as Murder by Invitation, Mystery Novel of the Month, paperback, 1941. First published by Collins, UK, hardcover, 1940.
I’ve said this before but I like the sound of it, so I’ll say it again: We read mysteries to see clues come together; we read crime novels to watch plans fall apart. In My Own Murderer, things fall apart very nicely indeed.
Narrator Richard Sampson is a London solicitor whose evening is disrupted when an old friend and client drops by his flat and confesses to murder. Alan Renwick is brash, domineering and somewhat of a boor, but Sampson decides to hide him out and help him escape — for reasons of his own.
What follows is the sort of thing you might expect if Georges Simenon wrote The Odd Couple. Richard and Alan bicker, make plans, cook, clean, cover their tracks, quarrel over domestic duties, and finally arrange a dash for freedom. Or so it would seem.
Along the way, Sampson learns more and more about his old chum, none of it very nice, but he doesn’t tell us much about himself until Renwick’s escape plan is launched, and things start coming apart. When he does it’s with an engaging and very readable candor that moves the story nicely along.
I have to say none of it surprised me much, but it’s done with charm and a sense of pace that had me sitting up and turning the pages long, long after my bedtime.
COLIN WATSON – Broomsticks over Flaxborough. Inspector Walter Purbright #7. Eyre Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1972. Published in the US as Kissing Covens, Putnam, 1972. Berkley N2675, paperback, 1974.
Who else would give his police constables names such as Pook, Palethorp, Brevitt, call the high priestess of an amateur witches’ coven Mrs. Pentatuke, describe the ultimate degradation of ladies as “being trapped in their hostess’s lavatory with an unsinkable turd.”
Yes, we’re undoubtedly back in Flaxborough again, where that most urbane of policemen, Inspector Purbright, with his faithful henchman, Sergeant Love, investigates the strange disappearance of one of the handmaidens of this particular Satanic master.
Throw in a strange murder by stabbing (with the horn of a ritual fertility mask no less), crafty Miss Lucilla Teatime, currently treasurer of the Edith Cavell Psychical Research Foundation, a hilarious promotional campaign for Lucillite, a brand new detergent, and we have a typical Flaxborough milieu.
Grand stuff, neatly clued, beautifully observed, wittily written. Personally I can’t get enough of Colin Watson.
– Reprinted from The Poison Pen, Volume 4, Number 2 (April, 1981). Permission granted by publisher/editor Jeff Meyerson.
C. S. HARRIS – Who Speaks for the Damned. Sebastian St. Cyr #15. Berkley, hardcover, April 2020. Paperback, March 2021. Setting: England, 1814.
First Sentence: Alone and trying desperately not to be afraid, the child wandered the narrow, winding paths of the tea gardens.
Nicholas Hayes, a son to the late Earl of Seaford, had been convicted of murder, transported to Botany Bay, and assumed dead. Instead, he returned to London and was murdered. An Asian child who had been with Hayes, finds the body and goes to Hayes’ former friend James Calhoun, valet to St. Cyr. After which, the child disappears. It is now up to St. Cyr to find the child and uncover the murderer.
There is nothing better than a book that captivates your attention from the very beginning. One is introduced to several of the main and recurring characters, learns about their backgrounds, and is taken straight into the story.
Harris sets the story up beautifully, providing multiple motives and suspects. Nothing here is obvious. She also effectively conveys the fear felt by young Jai, alone in a foreign country. He is a character who touches the heart but also allows for an interesting look at China during this period. The historical information woven into the story is both informative and harshly factual. Harris makes no attempt to soften the image of this time and confirms that bigotry has always existed.
Honorable characters have great appeal. When asked why Sebastian, a Viscount, after all, spends his time chasing murders, especially when the victims are despicable characters themselves, he responds: “Making certain a killer doesn’t get away with what he has done is an obligation we the living owe to the dead — no matter how unsavory we consider them to be.” … “Am I not my brother’s keeper?” …”And because I believe we are all connected, every living thing one to the other, so that I owe to each what I would owe to myself.” What a perfect definition of equal justice under the law.
The relationship between Devlin and his wife Hero is so well done. The intimacy is neither gratuitous nor salacious, and dialogue is very natural. Harris does involve Hero in the investigation, but in a way that makes sense for a woman of her time and rank.
The story is well-plotted. It moves along at a good pace and presents twists at just the right points although one might wish authors weren’t quite so predictable in their timing. That said, it is nice when one is surprised by a plot twist. The story grows with one revelation upon another. Rather than confusing, this adds to the intrigue of the story. The inclusion of information on the forensics of the time adds veracity and interest.
Good dialogue makes all the difference, particularly when twinged with humor— “How precisely does one go about accosting a man in the middle of a ball in order to discuss the murder of someone who once ran off with his wife.” “I don’t know,” said Sebastian. “But I’ll think of something.”
Who Speaks for the Damned is an excellent read. The mystery is solved with an ending that speaks to humanity and puts paid to all the ugliness caused by man. It draws one in from the start and keeps one engaged to the very end.
Kimberly Prescott (Anne Baxter) is a young South African heiress of a diamond company living in a Spanish villa. She has had a trying year: her father had committed suicide while her brother, Ward, is believed to have died in a car accident. One night, there arrives a man (Richard Todd) who claims to be her late brother. Kimberly is angry with what she considers to be a distasteful joke.
The man is insistent, however, and can back up his claims with photographs and a detailed knowledge of their shared childhood. He swiftly installs himself in Kimberley’s villa and into her life, while local inspector Vargas (Herbert Lom) remains confused and concerned. Everyone considers Kimberley to be mad and even she begins to doubt herself. And then she realises her life is in danger.
This 1958 thriller riffs on one of the most intriguing of old chestnuts – the long-lost relative who may be an imposter, which was also the premise to Golden Age writer Josephine Fey’s 1949 novel Brat Farrar. Director Michael Anderson gives us a suspenseful, gothic melodrama which keeps the viewers wondering just how it will end. Richard Todd, who had just appeared in Yangtse Incident for Anderson, makes his character casual, creepy and occasionally even considerate, while Anne Baxter remains on the right side of hysterical. She does much of the heavy lifting here, appearing in most scenes, and maintains a difficult balance between anxiety and determination, while never appearing weak.
Of particular mention is Herbert Lom, surely one of the most underrated actors of his generation, who remains sympathetic as Vargas. He is intrigued and suspicious, but stymied by Ward’s plausible explanations. There’s also a quite excellent twist in the tale, which should not be considered too much beforehand.
This was another I saw on the Talking Pictures TV channel, on Christmas Day, and it was better than many current TV offerings. Anyone wanting a cosily creepy evening viewing, in the Daphne du Maurier tradition of clifftop terror, will do well to check this out.
MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI, Editor – The Mammoth Book of Pulp Action. Carroll & Graf, trade paperback, December 2001.
There was only one story, Fredric Brown’s classic “Don’t Look Behind You,” that I’d read before in this solid anthology of what the editor calls Pulp Fiction though not all the stories were published in the pulps. Since there are too many to go through one by one, I will just comment on some of them.
The volume opens with Erle Stanley Gardner’s “The Kid Clips a Coupon,” which features The Patent Leather Kid (a sort of Simon Templar/Raffles type character), who manages to steal $70,000 while clearing an innocent man of murder. Though Gardner wasn’t much of a prose stylist, I find his stories featuring minor series characters like the Kid or Lester Leith compulsively readable.
“Motel†by Evan Hunter seems to be added for the author’s name value since the only action in it is the pounding on the motel room’s walls by the guy in the next room. It’s three chapters depicting the beginning, middle and end of an adulterous relationship, and should be in The Mammoth Book of Adultery if/when that’s published (or maybe Carroll & Graf already has in the five years since this one came out). Judging by the long list of other Mammoth Books listed in the beginning, it’s only a matter of time.
“Burn, Corpse, Burn” by Bruno Fischer, despite its lurid title, is a sad, sentimental supernatural tale about a lonely man who sees the body of a young woman floating in the water while ice fishing. “The Pulp Connection” by Bill Pronzini has his Nameless sleuth solve the murder of a man killed in the locked room containing his pulps. Not only is this a homage to John Dickson Carr but also to Ellery Queen since the victim leaves a “dying message” clue.
“Caravan to Tarim'” by David Goodis is a pretty good Arabian adventure story rather than a crime tale per se. “The First Five in Line” is the opening twenty pages of an unfinished novel by Charles Willeford. Intriguing is the word. “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Slay” by Frederick C. Davis has a man returning to his home town to open a factory, trying to solve the murder of a lawyer friend and. confronting a nest of vipers.
“Dog Life” by Mark Timlin is the only story written for volume. A man avenges the murder of a petty crook/informant though his motive and identity isn’t revealed. Finally, “The Pit” by Joe R. Lansdale is about a small town of redneck types who kidnap any strange men of a certain age who pass through, hold them prisoner while training them and pit them against each other in an unarmed fight to the death.
There are quite a few more stories that are well worth reading in the 630 pages of this fat paperback.
— Reprinted from The Hound of Dr. Johnson #44, March 2006.
PAUL RUSE – The Alumni Murders. Tower, paperback original, 1980.
This is a page-turner. While obviously as exploitative as horror movies such as Prom Night, which just played here on network television, here is a book that in its own way, you may find equally difficult to let loose of.
And the story is very nearly the same. To revenge a hurt inflicted years in the past, someone is hunting down and killing those judged responsible. This time the story takes place at a high school reunion party, somewhere by a small lake in Kansas.
The killer is unknown, but once the deaths begin, easily spotted. What I found most remarkable was that the characters, while sometimes crudely and pulpishly drawn, were actually strong enough to command my attention all the long while before the first killing takes place, fully seventy percent of the way into the book.
Rating: C plus
–Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 5, No. 2, March/April 1981.
HIS KIND OF WOMAN. RKO, 1952. Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price, Tim Holt, Raymond Burr, and Jim Backus. Written by Frank Fenton and Jack Leonard. Directed by John Farrow and Richard Fleischer (uncredited.) Available on DVD and for rent from Vudu and Amazon Prime, among others.
RICHARD FLEISCHER – Just Tell Me When to Cry. Carroll & Graf, hardcover, 1993.
I always thought of HIS KIND OF WOMAN as a lop-sided little movie, no great shakes, but modestly enjoyable. I went out with a girl like that once. Then I read Fleischer’s memoir, and now I see it in a whole different light. A good book can do that for you.
Briefly, WOMAN deals with the travails of Dan Milner (Robert Mitchum) a down-on-his-luck gambler lured to a Mexican resort where everyone seems to be playing a part, except for the one genuine actor, Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price.)
Turns out the whole thing has been engineered by deported gangster Raymond Burr, who means to kill Mitchum and enter the country under his name. Yeah, it sounds over-complicated to me, too. I mean how hard can it be to get a slightly irregular passport? But that’s the story, and Bob ends up on Ray’s yacht, tied, tortured, running, fighting, running, shooting, running, ducking, and generally making mayhem in some remarkably grim moments, fraught with tension—
–Or they would be, except that the movie keeps cutting back to Vincent Price and his genuinely funny attempts at rescue. The comedy works, the grim stuff works, but side by side, they keep undercutting each other. I kind of like it myself, but I have to say on any objective level it just doesn’t work.
So like I say, I always thought of this as a fun little misfire, till I read Richard Fleischer’s engaging memoir, JUST TELL ME WHEN TO CRY, which devotes a whole chapter to WOMAN and reveals that the damn thing cost almost a million dollars.
It seems director John Farrow finished this film, and like all RKO movies at the time, it went to studio owner Howard Hughes to be screened before release. Hughes thought the ending could be punched up a little, so he called Fleischer in, and Fleischer agreed, maybe it could. So Hughes made some suggestions, Fleischer fleshed them out, producer Robert Fellows added on to the yacht set, Hughes came up with more ideas, Fleischer did his thing, Fellows added on to the yacht, more ideas, more yacht, more funny business with Vincent Price, more shooting, more ideas….
By the time they finished (they thought) the make-believe yacht filled the biggest soundstage at RKO, Vincent Price held a mock birthday party to celebrate his first year on the picture, Bob Mitchum went on a set-smashing rampage, Lee Van Cleef was judged unsuitable as the main heavy (Remember, the film was finished when this was decided.) an exhaustive search turned up Robert J Wilke as a replacement but after a few days work, Raymond Burr was hired on a whim from Hughes to re-shoot all the original footage done by Wilke and Van Cleef.
But at length Fleischer and Fellows screened the new ending, with the extensive and expensive yacht scenes, for their Boss – who wanted it all redone because the boarding ladder was on the wrong side!
Now I never take any memoir as gospel — the form just allows too many temptations to promote oneself and settle old scores — but JUST TELL ME WHEN TO CRY can be read for sheer outrageous entertainment. Fleischer’s accounts of working with Walt Disney, Kirk Douglas, Rex Harrison and Howard Hughes (to name just a few) are laugh-out-loud funny, and he pauses now and then for pithy observations like:
“Hope deceives more people than cunning ever could.â€
“Directing is a democratic process in which everyone does just as I tell them to do.â€
And
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.â€
That last one seems particularly apt these days. And it’s just a sample from a book (and movie) I highly recommend.
FRONT PAGE DETECTIVE. “Murder Rides the Night Train.†DuMont, 1951 (Season 1 Episode 14). Edmund Lowe (David Chase). Guest Cast: Lyle Talbot, John Sebastian, John Harmon, Pamela Blake (as Pam MaGuire), Angelo Rossitto. Screenplay: Herbert Moulton, Robert Leslie Bellem. Director: Arnold Wester.
As the star of Front Page Detective, Edmund Lowe was 61, but to me he looked older. The series lasted only a year and on a minor network, so it isn’t one even fans of old TV shows bring up to talk about amongst themselves. Several individual episodes do exist, probably because it series went into syndication after its initial showing.
Lowe played David Chase, a newspaper columnist who always ended up helping the police catch criminals and other members of the underworld. There were (I believe) other members of the recurring cast, but none of them appear in this episode, almost all of it taking place on a train taking a former gangster to Washington to tell all to a congressional committee. The problem is, others still in the mob are not interested in having him do any of the talking he intends to do.
Although he is warned off, Chase chooses to take the same train, and in spite of a bodyguard close at hand, the subpoenaed gangster is shot and killed. The problem is, the dead man was alone in his train compartment with Chase right outside the door.
With only 30 minutes to tell the story, the “locked room†aspect of the story gets short shrift. It’s not set up properly for the viewer to have a chance to solve it, for one thing, and the fun of doing so is the only reason why killers do their work in such silly, complicated ways. I won’t tell you how it was done, but I will give you a hint. If you recognize the right name in the cast above, you will know all.
The rest of the cast consists of some semi-familiar character actors playing crooks of one kind or another, save for the welcome addition of Pamela Blake (under an assumed name) as a purported gun moll who is there only so the show doesn’t consist solely of a bunch of guys playing with guns. The locked room aspect was a nice surprise as well, even if it was mostly a dud.
JOHN K. BUTLER “No Rest for Soldiers.†Novelette. Published in Black Mask, October 1936. Not known to have been collected or reprinted.
It was one of John K. Butler’s Steve Midnight stories in Ron Goulart’s Hard Boiled Dicks (1965/67) that was one of the first pulp detective tales that I ever read. Midnight was a Los Angeles-based cab driver who kept running into dead bodies, and the name of the story was “The Saint in Silver.†I don’t know why, but while the rest of the stories in Goulart’s groundbreaking anthology have faded into memory, on an individual basis, the Steve Midnight story has stayed with me ever since.
Even though Butler’s name has been long forgotten by everybody else, he wrote well over a hundred stories for the pulps before going on to the movies and TV, with (according to IMDb) 69 credits. What this tells me, more than anything else, is that he could produce vivid, well-constructed storylines meant to keep his audiences reading or watching, and “No Rest for Soldiers†is a prime example.
Ernie, it seems, has been accused of killing of the silent owners of one such establishment. What’s worse is that he woke up in the same room as the dead man, not knowing whether he did it or not. Luckily for him, he has a good friend from the war, now a used car salesman, who decides to investigate on Ernie’s behalf.
Devoted to mystery and detective fiction — the books, the films, the authors, and those who read, watch, collect and make annotated lists of them. All uncredited posts are by me, Steve Lewis.
