STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Death Bed. John Marshall Tanner #2. Dial Press, hardcover, 1980. Ballantine,paperback, May 1982; Bantam, paperback December 1991.

   Stephen Greenleaf has received a great deal of critical acclaim for his novels featuring John Marshall Tanner. former lawyer turned private eye. Tanner’s territory is the San Francisco Bay Area, where his cases take him into the homes of the rich and powerful, as well as into the lowest dives in the city; the author draws heavily on his knowledge of politics, business, and local events to flesh out Tanner’s investigations. Greenleaf has been hailed as the successor to the Raymond Chandler/Ross Macdonald  tradition, and it is easy to see why.

   Like Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, Tanner is less a fully developed character than an observer. Hints are thrown out about his past and private life, but they are not elaborated upon, and frankly the reader doesn’t care. Greenleaf makes extensive use of simile, as Macdonald did, but with far less success; often he seems to be stretching a point, reaching for a likeness that simply doesn’t come off.

   He is a successor to the tradition of the hard-boiled private eye developed by these writers in the sense that he is an imitator, and his work makes one wonder why we need further imitations.

   Death Bed begins with a scene reminiscent of Philip Marlowe’s meeting with Colonel Stemwood in The Big Sleep. Maximilian Kottle, dying millionaire, wishes to hire Tanner to find his estranged son, Karl. Kottle waxes philosophical about life and death — perhaps too much so for a man in such pain and close to death — and Tanner agrees to find his son for him.

   Karl’s mother, flamboyant romance novelist Shelley Withers, can give few clues to her son’s whereabouts, but through solid detective work — one of the strong points of this series — Tanner traces Karl, and is getting close when Belinda Kattie, beautiful young wife of Maximilian, calls to say Karl has contacted his father and is coming to see him. Shortly afterward, Maximilian dies, and Tanner considers the case closed.

   He is then free to undertake a search for missing investigative reporter Mark Covington, but soon discovers the Kottle case is not only still open, but also linked to the journalist’s disappearance.

   There arc a few surprising twists here, but the case builds to a rather predictable conclusion. and the primary villain (there are many, of various sorts) is introduced so late in the narrative that the solution comes a little out of left field. Chandler and Macdonald simply did it better.

   Other novels featuring John Marshall Tanner are Grave Error (1979), State’s Evidence (1982), and Fatal Obsession (1983 ).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

JAMES CORBETT – Vampire of the Skies. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1932. Ramble House, US, softcover, 2014.

   Reviewing a James Corbett novel is a challenging task, the reviewer says modestly. The temptation is to quote the entire novel, getting the ordeal over with by causing no pain at least to the reviewer, since no one is likely to believe what is to be said about the novel. As Corbett himself put it in another and even worse — or better, depending on your point of view — novel: ‘”The whole thing is so fantastic as to appear incredulous.” But in recognition of our esteemed editor’s sensibilities, the temptation to reprint the book will be resisted.

   This is the fourth James Corbett novel that this reviewer has read. The first, THE MERRIVALE MYSTERY, was recommended to Bill Pronzini as an “alternative classic,” and Mr. Pronzini agreed that it fit that category. The second was THE MONSTER OF DAGENHAM HALL, which is essentially THE MERRIVALE MYSTERY revisited, and thus a howler in its own right, although it would be bad enough standing on its own.

   Corbett, at least in the books mentioned, will be appreciated by those who  enjoy the egregious mystery. His RED DAGGER, on the other hand, does not deserve to be described as awful; it is purely poor. But not to read the novel, and no one but a masochist should, would mean missing a gem from the literature, so it is provided herewith:

   “Have you a cigarette?’ she asked
   Cavanagh threw his case on the desk
   “You seem upset? he suggested lighting a match and holding it to her lips.”

   There are certain types of readers to whom Corbett will not appeal. He should be avoided by those who like fine writing, by those appreciate good description; by those who enjoy characterization and who think it helpful to be able to tell the characters apart; by those who do not appreciate non sequiturs or the almost-right word; by those who think real clues are essential in a mystery; by those who want detection and fair play; and by those who expect a writer to remember what he has written just a page before.

   Finally, Corbett should be shunned by those who do not care for low, albeit unintentional, humor and who therefore do not find the following quotations risible:

   “First it made him furiously angry, then apoplectic, then diabolically insane with rage, and for the last quarter of an hour it affected his stomach.”

   
    “Then he thought of England and Horatio Nelson, of Drake, Cabot, and Mussolini, of the multifarious regulations of the British Police Force, of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and sundry little oddments, then perspired up the ladder.”

   “Corbett for thrills” is what his publishers say about him. “Corbett for laughs” is my description, unless the preposterous happens to thrill you.

   If anyone is still reading at this point, except for the long-suffering editor who must read this review before he rejects it, a doomed effort to describe what the book is more or less about:

   A police constable observes an airplane flying at an estimated 2,000 feet in a “circumlocutory motion,” whatever that might be. The plane circles him seventeen times, and then a body is hurled from the plane onto a hayrick. On investigation, the constable discovers the corpse of “a remarkably young woman,” who later we are told looks 25 and is actually 23. This isn’t important, as much as Corbett tells us isn’t important, or interesting, or even correct, when it’s mot outright contradictory.

   The body has a gaping knife wound somewhere, though it’s a little unclear where and around the wound are the “marks of animal-like teeth. The murderer has actually drank his victim’s blood.” The latter is a conclusion that is never substantiated, but the vampire of the title has to be justified.

   The corpse at one time is wearing a brown mackintosh and at other times is not and has “disordered hair,” as if that’s a surprise after a free fall of 2 000 feet followed by a rather abrupt halt.

   “Well, the Yard sent down Malcolm Dacre. That act, in itself, showed intelligence. Manifestly Scotland Yard proved itself a going concern. But it has been going a long time …”

   This gives you some idea of Corbett’s prose and exposition style. It doesn’t get worse. How could it?

   “It was the Birmingham case that made him [Dacre] famous, where Reuben Morrison, a well-known jeweler, was found with his throat cut. Dacre disposed of the suicide theory …”

   There are no flies on Dacre, you’ll note.

   “Malcolm Dacre was what he looked. He never tried to look otherwise. He was an intellectual, and, with it all, he was genuinely modest. There was real discernment in his dark, glowing eyes, and the trick he had of bringing his lips together boded ill for any chance suspect …

   “He had seventeen crime solutions to his credit– ‘scalps,’ he called them — and, in every instance, they were murder cases where no clue presented itself.”

   Since there is one clue in this case, Dacre is obviously ahead of the game. He finds the clue — “the complete half of a gold bangle,” leaving us to wonder what an incomplete half might be– in the hayrick and conceals that fact from everyone, including his chief. “Perhaps, in some mysterious way, that other half would come into his possession. If it did, he would recognise it. How? That was his secret.” And he keeps his secret, for the bangle is never mentioned again.

   Among other problems that Corbett has is a strange time sense, or Dacre very fast with foot and mouth. At 10 p.m. Dacre decides to dine at a hotel. He orders and eats his meal, smokes a cigarette, is called to the local police station that is three minutes away, interviews the man who might be the father of the victim, discusses the case with the Chief Constable, and walks back to the hotel, arriving there “about ten-thirty.”

   Later on, Dacre himself observes a plane circling seemingly the mandatory seventeen times — we are never vouchsafed an explanation for this behavior by the plane’s pilot or even told why anyone was counting –and another body is thrown out, from about 4,000 feet on this occasion.

   This time the body hits the ground. As might be imagined, “the body was crushed beyond all recognition.” Well, except for the face and the area of the knife wound with the teeth marks around it. Corbett isn’t going to let small things like physics and blatant contradictions spoil a good story.

   As an example of the author’s very short memory — indeed, from one page to the next — the suspect, whose own plane, an Avro, is not available, escapes our less-than-keen detective. “When our backs were turned, he darted like a shot across the lawn, climbed into that Bristol Fighter, and, with the aid of the efficient self-starting apparatus, got away like a flash of lightning.”

   Captain Trevor Holmes, who is working with Dacre, takes off in that same Bristol Fighter to pursue the villain. “‘He has gone after your suspect, Dacre, and I believe he will catch him. Remember, he has got a Bristol bus, with one of the new model Jupiter engines, and at the rate he is going, no Avro could possibly keep ahead of him.””

   Some other items are the detective’s searching “furtively” while being watched by three people the odd impression that a red herring is a lure, the wonderful notion that “Oh yeh!” and “Sure thing! can be said with an “American twang,” the puzzling simile “It was like looking for an ostrich in a forest of monkeys!” to describe something difficult to locate, the detective’s superlative deduction of “Your daughter was a straight, God-fearing girl. That is the impression she has given me — even in death!”

   Finally, this description of Mountdale, the villain’s residence, which frankly baffles this reviewer: “It somewhat resembled the French villas found at Paris Plage, except that the design was entirely English, while in that respect it was unique.” (Explanations on a postcard, please.)

   There is only one suspect in the novel, so spotting the bad guy is not exceptionally difficult despite the lack of clues. Corbett’s general rule is to make the most likely person guilty, when he doesn’t make the guilty person someone who has not appeared in the case until the end of the book. Still, there is a kicker of the most improbable sort at the end based on something the detective had noticed seven years before but hadn’t shared with anyone, As Dacre himself puts it: “This case is approaching an anticlimax.”  Yes,indeed. And it also reaches an anticlimax.

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE November 1948. Cover by George Salter. Overall rating: **½

ROY VICKERS “The Death Position Enigma.” Department of Dead Ends story, Coincidence and a mistake combine to help solve an old murder case, Inverted detection. (2)

GEORGES SIMENON “L Chateau de L’Arsenic.” A curious doctor takes it upon himself to investigate a chateau about which rumors are flying. (3)

LESLIE CHARTERIS “Salt on His Tail,” The Saint salts a mine twice. Unbelievably obvious. (1)

JOSEPH SHEARING “Love-in-a-Mist.” An aged spinster allows her secret love to get away with murder. (3)

RONALD KNOX “The Motive,” First appeared in the Illustrated London News, December 1937, A John Dickson Carr “best,” Suicide as a motive for murder, (4)

THOMAS WALSH “Getaway Money.” Drake helps save an old friend’s son from a murder rap. (3)

FULTON OURSLER “The Thrill Is Gone.” First appeared in Collier’s, 1942. A daring man discovers that his wife really didn’t kill her first husband, (4)

M. P. SHIEL & JOHN GALSWORTHY “A Case for Deduction.” A challenge to the reader is the weirdest combination of circumstances that could be believed only if true. (0)

MIRIAM BRUCE “Dear Louisa.” A series of letters from a woman having troubles with her son. (2)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Johnny on the Spot.” 1936. An attempt to go straight gets Johnny into trouble with gang, and it is up to his girl friend to stop then in time. Real suspense/ (4)

STEFANIE MATTESON – Murder at Teatime.  Charlotte Graham #2. Diamond, paperback original; 1st printing, March 1991.

   This second installment of the adventures of actress and movie star Charlotte Graham takes place in Maine, where a world-famous professor and expert on herbal remedies is poisoned by one of the products found growing in his own garden.

   The motive may have been his stout opposition to the proposed economic development of the island where he’s living (golf course, hotel and condos), or it may have been connected to his valuable collection of herbal incunabula (books printed before 1500), discovered to be missing soon after his death.

   Charlotte Graham is deliberately modeled on the old-fashioned Katharine Hepburn type of movie star, independent, only occasionally regretting that she has put her career over love and marriage. She is, however, in love with the world and nearly everything in it. Although at first Charlotte finds herself nervous in a place that “didn’t have sidewalks,” she is soon won over by the raw beauty of Maine and its inhabitants.

   And where else in the country would she be asked by the harried chief of police to aid him in his investigation, simply because of her past exploits in the field? (It must always be a chore for a mystery writer to get his/her amateur detective involved in what should really only be a police investigation. In a way it’s refreshing to see Matteson make no bones about it, and get Charlotte Graham right to work.)

   This is but one example of how this case maintains itself as a direct descendant of the mysteries of the Golden Age of Detection. As another, there are only a few major suspects on the relatively isolated island. Their alibis have to be checked out individually, their motives examined in both direct and casual conversation, and in the end they are all gathered together in a final confrontation, during which the murderer bolts and pursuit must follow.

   A love of books and the lore of book collecting are also important ingredients of this novel, along with the herbs and the pitfalls of life in academia. If I thought Matteson’s first book, Murder at the Spa, too often slowed down to nearly a halt by the intrusion of as much about the spa business as I wanted to know, she certainly makes up for it with this one, which has just about everything I’m looking for in a detective novel.

            _____

PostScript:  I did have a little bit of trouble with the ending, however, and with a [WARNING: Major Plot Alert] I’m going to tell you about it. (Don’t read farther without having read the book first, if you’re going to.)

   The problem is, as I see it, is that the evidence that eventually traps the killer is found carelessly left lying in a book as a bookmark. I don’t know about you, but I’d ever murdered anybody, I’d be a little bit more careful about incriminating myself than this. (Of course, I’d be the kind of killer who keeps returning to the scene of the crime over and over again, looking and looking for anything at all that I’d missed!)

JOSIAH E. GREENE – Madmen Die Alone. Morrow, hardcover, 1938.

   Joseph Parisi, a homicidal inmate at the Exeter Hospital insane asylum, turns up missing one night. Circumstances are such that it is unlikely he managed to escape on his own; and it appears the only person who could have freed him is brilliant research psychiatrist Dr. Hubert Sylvester.

   But then Sylvester is found on the premises, brutally stabbed to death. Captain Louis Prescott of the local police is called in to investigate, and finds himself confronted with a maze of conflicting relationships among the hospital’s employees. not to mention attitudes and behavior that make him wonder if perhaps some of the keepers aren’t just as insane as their charges.

   A second murder, of a shady Italian restaurant owner named Luigi Toscarello, intensifies the hunt for Parisi; it also implicates Parisi’s family, thereby opening up a whole new can of worms for Prescott to sift through. Did Parisi kill both Sylvester and Toscarello? Did someone else kill both of them? Or are there two murderers, one at the asylum and one outside it, each with different motives?

   Despite some first-novel flaws — viewpoint lapses, too many exclamation points — and a bunch of ethnic stereotypes, Madmen Die Alone is a solid novel of detection, with a well-depicted background, interesting insights into psychiatry circa 1938, and a neatly clued solution. Fans of fair-play deductive puzzles should enjoy it.

   Greene published one other mystery — The Laughing Loon (1939), set in the Minnesota lake country — before abandoning the genre to write mainstream novels.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

KENNETH ROBESON – Red Snow. Doc Savage #24. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1969. Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, February 1935.

   A strange red snow that disintegrates everything in it path threatens America’s defenses and it is up to Doc Savage and his crew of assistants to find ist source, He actually gets onto the trail of Ark, the villain of the tale, because of the fear the latter’s gang has of the reputation of Doc Savage, Ark, the “scholar of evil,” is working for a foreign government to destroy national leaders while the enemy fleet is waiting off shore.

   Doc is hampered by an accusation of murder by the Miami police. It does not ring true and serves only to boost the plot a little. Otherwise he has no more difficulties than usual. One witness is discovered on page 71. Note that Doc cannot tell whether or not a woman is lying!

Rating: **

JACQUES MESRINE – The Death Instinct. Originally published in French as L’Instinct de Mort.  Filmed as  L’instinct de mort (released in English as Mesrine: Killer Instinct) is the first part of a 2008 French biographical crime film about Jacques Mesrine, a notorious real-life French gangster. Directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Vincent Cassel.

   Autobiography of a French bank robber.

   Mesrine lives for thrills. His favorite is the double bank robbery. You rob one bank, and when the cops are busy responding, you go down a couple blocks and rob another.

   When he’s out of the clink, he’s living high on the hog. Truffles and champagne, whores and heists.

   Ironically, with a sense of justice. He keeps his word.

   When he takes a whore for a wife, she can leave the life. She can trust him. When the pimps show up to reclaim their property, he slaughters them, burying their bodies in the park. He’s no use for pimps.

   He promises the warden he’ll escape by a certain date. He won’t disappoint.

   He tells his buddies, he’ll be back to free them. You can set your watch by it. Odds be damned.

   He only robs the rich and banks and corporations. Don’t be a hero, he’s only there for the money. But he’s only half a Robin Hood. He’ll keep the plunder and have a party.

   On the lam, he never lays low. He stays in Paris, robbing banks maskless.

   He’s clearly a psychopath. There’s no remorse. It’s all society’s fault. Everything he does.

   At the same time, you kinda root for the guy. He’s a manly Man. The ladies love him, and men like a man whose word is gold.

   The title’s wrong. He doesn’t want to die. He loves life. He loves it so much that he cannot bear to lose his soul to the doldrums, to the mind-numbing horseshit of stupid orders by the stupid tyrants of workaday life, school, and institutions.

   He despises arbitrary abuse of power by middle managers. He’s sick of sycophants and hypocrisy. He’d rather die on his feet than live on his hands and knees.

   And he does.

         —

   It’s a good read. He does a thrilling job detailing his exploits: the robberies, the murders, the prison escapes. It makes you a bit ill to keep such close company with a psychopath. But don’t screw him, he won’t screw you. I promise.

GRAHAME GREENE – The Ministry of Fear. Heinemann, UK, 1943. Viking Press, US, 1943. Penguin #530, US, 1946. Reprinted many times.

   Graham Greene has a rigid-and pretentious-habit of classifying his own work into two categories: “entertainments” and “novels.” While all of his work is suspenseful and contains criminous elements, the “entertainments” are more action-oriented and their mystery elements are stronger. The “novels,” on the other hand, tend to be quieter and deal with the religious thematic material that is one of Greene’s preoccupations.

   While the author appears to want to rank his “entertainments” as secondary within his body of work, it is apparent that no less effort goes into them than into the “novels”: all are well written, deeply characterized, rich in background, and highly suspenseful. In Greene’s case, whatever the label, the product is bound to be superior.

   As the hero of The Ministry of Fear states, “It all began … with a cake.” Arthur Rowe is at a neighborhood fete in World War II London, a fair to benefit a charitable group called the Comforts for the Mothers of the Free Nations Fund. One of the attractions is a cake — “made with real eggs” — which people are invited to guess the weight of. Rowe makes a guess, wanders off, and goes into the fortuneteller’s booth. The sorceress, a Mrs. Bellairs, does not tell him his future, but she docs tell him the correct weight of the cake. Rowe changes his bet and wins the cake — and more trouble than he can handle.

   Before he leaves the fete, several people try to get the cake back from him- The next day a mysterious gentleman moves into his rooming house and partakes of the cake with Rowe, making thinly veiled hints that Arthur should tum it over to him — and crumbling each piece offered to him. A bomb from a German plane breaks up their tea party, the cake is destroyed, the stranger seriously injured. When Rowe later inquires after him at the hospital, he finds he was spirited away by friends. And Rowe remembers something odd about the taste of the tea just before the bomb exploded ….

   Rowe becomes obsessed with finding out who tried to kill him-and why. His efforts involve him with a private inquiry agent named Rennit and his unfortunate assistant, Jones. A trip lo the offices of the Mothers of the Free Nations Fund brings him into contact with an Austrian brother and sister, refugees who will have a profound effect on the rest of his life. And a seance at the home of Mrs. Bcllairs, the erstwhile fortune-teller, ends in a murder and a narrow escape. A mental hospital where patients are held virtual prisoners, more dangerous episodes, and a touchingly ironic conclusion round out this tale of wartime intrigue.

   This is a gripping novel, although somewhat oddly constructed. The business about the cake makes it fairly obvious what is going on, but there are enough surprises, and Greene makes one care so much about Rowe that you won’t want to put it down. Fritz Lang filmed a highly moody version in 1944 with Ray Milland.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

ALDEN NORTON, Editor – Futures Unlimited. Pyramid T-2048; 1st printing, June 1969. Cover art by Peter Bramley.

An uneven look at the future, mostly through the past and the eyes of followers of Verne and Wells, two names which are inadequate today for the purpose of the cover blurbs, Scrapes the bottom of the barrel of unanthologized works and tosses them together with no sense of cohesion, No introduction to the book nor any comments before the stories. Who is Alden Norton? Overall rating: **½

A. MERRITT “Three Lines of Old French.” Told in the old style of a story related to someone else, and not really SF, except as being about the horrors of war and the power of suggestion, which together can trigger an escape to the past. (4)

ISAAC ASIMOV “The Callistan Menace,” Perhaps reprinted from Planet Stores in the days when a stowaway on an exploratory ship still seemed possible. (2)

LORD DUNSANY “The Hashish Man.” Pointless tale of a “story” produced by eating hashish. (0)

ANDRE MAUROIS “The Watcher of Souls.” The secret of life is sought, using 19th century techniques, in spite of the copyright date (mid-1950s). A scientist seeking to capture souls after death succeeds, but the secret dies with him, in spite of a friend’s rush to the death scene, No moral made. **

A. CONAN DOYLE “The Horror of the Heights.” First told in early days o aviation, so dated. Monsters at 40,000 feet are no longer a dangerous vision, A scientific horror story. (1)

ROSS ROCKLYNNE “Into the Darkness.” A comic being, playing in 47 bands if hyperspace has the urge to create life. Strangely moving, in an intergalactic style. (5)

ROBERT BLOCH “It Happened Tomorrow.” A seriously intended story of the machine takeover. It may happen, but not this way, with some sort of pseudo-life. Inconsistent. (1)

ARTHUR C, CLARKE “Exile of the Eons.” A Hitler-like ruler is banished to the end of time, Characters interesting, but they should have been better, (3)

JOHN W, CAMPBELL “Rebellion.” Mankind, bred for generations for docility by the invading Tharoo, must fight both their masters and themselves. Involves the invention of anti-gravity, which helps. (3)

COMING SOON! August 12!!