This collection of authors came from Part 7 of the online Addenda to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV. Al recently received an email from the first of these writers, Kip Chase, who lives in San Luis Obispo CA. Mr. Chase cleared up several questions about his entry in CFIV, which we’re very pleased to include here.

CHASE, KIP. Pseudonym of Trevett Coburn Chase, 1928- , q. v. Under this pen name, the author of three detective novels included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below. SC in all three: Mr. Justine Carmichael, a retired LAPD chief of homicide, now confined to a wheelchair. (Note: That the detective’s name is Justine, rather than Justin, as intended, was a typing error which was not caught and perpetuated its way through all three books.)
      Killer Be Killed. Hammond, UK, hc, 1963. Setting: Mexico
      Murder Most Ingenious. Hammond, UK, hc, 1962. Add setting: California. [An impossible crime included in Locked Room Murders by Robert Adey: A wealthy estate owner is found knifed to death in his well-guarded art gallery, and a valuable Gaughin painting stolen.]

      Where There’s a Will. Hammond, UK, hc, 1961. Setting: California.

CHASE, OLIVE (MAUD?). 1908-1987?. Add tentative middle name and year of birth. With either Stanley Clayton or Stewart Burke, co-author of four mystery-oriented plays published by French (UK) between 1965 and 1978. All four are included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. To these add the following:
      Impact, with Maureen Nield, 1935-2004, q.v. French (London), 1982. (Play.) Synopsis: “Wife kills unfaithful husband, doctor helps cast suspicion on sister-in-law.”

CHASE, TREVETT COBURN. 1928- . Add confirmed year of birth. Pseudonym: Kip Chase, q.v.

CHITTENDEN, F(RANK) A(LBERT). 1910-1998. Add year of death. Author of five crime novels published in the UK between 1947 and 1954; all are included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. Of these, only one was later published in the US; see below:
      Strange Welcome. T. V. Boardman, UK, hc, 1949. Coward-McCann, US, hc, 1949. Setting: England. [Shown is the cover of a German edition.]

CLAPPERTON, RICHARD (GUY). 1934-1984. Add year of death. Born in Scotland; miltary service in Australia, early 1950s. Proofreader, cartoonist; author with three novels included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below. SC: Private eye Peter Fleck appears in all three.
      No News on Monday. Constable, UK, hc, 1968. Setting: Australia. US title: You’re a Long Time Dead, Putnam, 1968. [Peter Fleck is hired to find a woman but finds her dead.]
      The Sentimental Kill. Constable, UK, hc, 1976. Setting: Australia. [Is famous British author Temple Wilde really missing, or has he just chosen to disappear on a sentimental journey to Australia?]
       Victims Unknown. Constable, UK, hc, 1970.
      _You’re a Long Time Dead. Putnam, US, hc, 1968. See: No News on Monday (Constable, 1968).

CLARK, LAURENCE (WALTER). 1914-1987. Add year of death. Born in England; journalist & free-lance writer, founder of the publishing firm Veracity Ventures Ltd., 1964. Author of one novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      Murder of the Prime Minister. Veracity Ventures, UK, hc, 1965. Setting: England, 1812. [The assassination of President Kennedy is juxtaposed against that of Spencer Perceval 151 years earlier.]

CLAY, MICHAEL JOHN. 1934-2000. Add year of death. Pseudonym: John Griffin, q.v.

GRIFFIN, JOHN. Pseudonym of Michael John Clay, 1934-2000, q.v. Add year of death. Under this pen name, the author of 11 espionage thrillers included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. All were published Robert Hale in the UK between 1976 and 1981. SC: Richard Raven, in all.

GRUDIN, ROBERT. 1938- . Ref: CA. Add as a new author entry. An educator, editor, and writer, including a study of William Shakespeare.
      -Book. Random House, 1992. Setting: Academia. [A parody of scholars, literary ideologies, and the academic novel: an author of an out-of-print novel that offended other academics in its parodies of literary thinking is threatened by murder.]

NIELD, MAUREEN. 1935-2004. Add as a new author entry. Playright; co-author of the mystery drama listed below:
      Impact, with Olive Chase, 1908-1987?, q.v. French (London), 1982. (Play.)

SKIPALONG ROSENBLOOM. Eagle-Lion/United Artists, 1951. “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom, Max Baer, Jackie Coogan, Hilary Brooke, Fuzzy Knight, Raymond Hatton. Written by Eddie Forman and Dean Reisner. Directed by the indefatigable Sam Newfield.

   A surprisingly sharp comedy in the anything-goes mode of Hellzapoppin and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, co-written by a guy who went on to Dirty Harry and other prestigious Clint Eastwood flicks, and helmed by a director who routinely churned out a clunker or two every week for PRC.

   Let me pause here and reflect on something I read so long ago I’d most forgot about it, let alone who wrote it and where I read it, but it goes something like this: When we think of the B-movie classics, we tend to remember the noirs, the westerns and the horror films, because tragedy is easy to do. It’s hard work doing comedy and practically impossible to do it in a low-budget film.

   Skipalong Rosenbloom is a happy exception, performed with gusto by a willing ensemble, laced with a few surprisingly subtle jokes (Maybe too subtle for its own good; did anybody but me laugh when Jackie Coogan kicks an obnoxious brat and snarls, “Child actors are murder.” ?) and directed with the slapdash abandon one normally associates with Same Newfield — only here it works.

   The whole thing is framed as 50s television show, complete with commercials, obviously satirizing the Hopalong Cassidy craze of that time. Maxie Rosenbloom takes the title part (surprise!) and runs with it, obviously delighted to be the star of the piece. Max Baer is just as good, snarling threats and gloating wonderfully at each new dastardly plot. Hillary Brooke makes an enthusiastic frontier vamp, with just the right amount of over-playing, while Western Icons Fuzzy Knight and Raymond Hatton lend a bit of authenticity to the whole thing — particularly Fuzzy as Sneaky Pete, cinema’s most enthusiastic henchman ever.

   As for the film itself, I’m not going to repeat any of the outrageous jokes; take my word for it, they anticipate what Mad comic books would start dong the next year — Jackie Coogan even looks a bit like Melvin. Raymond Hatton lives in a ranch house about the size of a tool shed, and at one point when Sneaky Pete wants to eavesdrop, he simply sticks his head in the window, unnoticed by all.

   From this we go on to chases, gun battles, fist-fights, falling off a mountain and a particularly brutal gopher-beating. That’s right: a gopher-beating. This is, in short, a film in its own little world, like no other movie ever — and I mean that in a good way.

ARMITAGE TRAIL – Scarface. Edward J. Clode, hardcover, 1930. Dell #D336, paperback, December 1959. Reprinted several times in various editions. Film: United Artists, 1932 (starring Paul Muni & Ann Dvorak; directed by Howard Hawks).

   Story of the rise and fall of a Sicilian gang boss in Chicago. And the concurrent rise and rise of his brother to Chief of Police who must stop him! And his sister, seduced by his #1 gunman!

   Tony “Scarface” Camonte is a rising star in the Irish mob. Then he pulls a job, killing a rival mob boss, and things get too hot for him at home. So he enlists in the Army in the War to End All Wars (I only recently realized that the reason that Veteran’s Day is always November 11 (as opposed to, say, the second Monday in November), is that it was originally Armistice Day. Armistice literally means to stop fighting. So after the War to End All Wars ended — there of course would never be another war! That’s what the holiday was celebrating! No more war! So anywho, when that name began to get too silly they changed the name to Veteran’s Day, celebrating the armed services rather than the end of war.)

   In any case, it turns out that a hitman can make an excellent soldier. He shows real leadership ability during a battle where as a mere Sergeant he is forced to take control of his unit when all of the higher ranking officers are slaughtered. And he makes a good showing of it, winning the battle with strategic, fearless leadership. He’s already seen plenty of life and done plenty of killing before the war — unlike his brother at arms. He’s cool as a cucumber and twice as dangerous (assuming, of course, that the cucumber had botulism (a recent groaner I heard: ‘In the old days plastic surgery was frowned upon. These days when you hear about Botox, no one raises an eyebrow’).

   While leading his troop, a shell fragment slices his face, blood pouring out like a turnip. His face forever maimed, he is unrecognizable by even his closest family! (i.e. sis and bro mentioned above).

   When he returns to Chicago, he finds out that the papers had reported him a casualty of war and his family’s already grieved his passing. He figures to just go with it, gets a fresh identity, and resumes his path to ‘greatness’. Prohibition is now a thing and all the punks are getting rich. The City is divided into four rival gangs. But each one, like any business, would rather have a monopoly. If you’re not growing you’re dying. So they’re all out to get each other. Scarface deigns to choose to join the mob he figures strongest.

   He proves his worth right away, volunteering to sever of the head of their 2nd strongest rival. This he does, in a daring assassination at a fancy gala, in front of the Mayor and all the best people robber and their purchased politicos, everybody who’s anybody.

   It’s, to me, the best scene in the novel by a longshot. And it’s where I first learned the importance of a ‘gun girl’. A ‘gun girl’ is a cool, good looking, classy dame, in fancy threads, with silky tone, who carries your gun for you. She hands you the gun when you give her the sign, and she takes it right back when you’re done with it so you can escape unscathed. No evidence in tow.

   Here’s how it works:

   Tony “nodded slightly. She gave him a look of understanding, then, with every appearance of affection, caught his right hand and gently maneuvered it beneath the table. His hand found her knee, rested there. And he thrilled at the contact. But she did not shrink. Then he felt cold steel against his flesh and his eager fingers clutched an automatic. His thumb slipped off the safety catch and he waited. Some woman sang a comic song that made Tony laugh – even in the tenacity of the moment then the chorus came on…the jazz band blared madly….The din was tremendous…..Tony took careful aim and fired three times, so rapidly that the reports almost merged into each other. He saw Hoffman slump forward as he jerked the pistol under the table and slipped it back to Jane. Her fingers were cool and steady as she took it from him.”

   Tony ends up taking over the mob and then taking over the city: the bosses, the cops, the booze, the whores. Til his brother, chief of police, is told to clean the place up.

   And the showdown.

      —————–

   Armitage Trail, the pen name of Maurice Coons, died aged 28 in 1930, the same year he published Scarface and sold the film rights to Howard Hughes for 25 grand. Immediately moving to Hollywood, screenwriter W.R. Burnett relates that Trail drank heavily and lived flamboyantly, getting fat, wearing wide-brimmed Borsalino hats, and hiring a servant, only to die of congestive heart failure in the Paramount Theatre. The only info I found on him was on Wikipedia (if you can call that a source) and this great website I happened upon: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=303

   The book is okay but not great — and is soiled by Scarface developing a conscience by the end, naming names and setting the table for a cleanup of the city. I’d put it on par with Burnett’s Little Caesar — the latter which maybe wins by a nose by the protagonist’s consistent immorality. Better than both is Louis Beretti, reviewed here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=79372

CHARLES WILLIAMS – The Wrong Venus. New American Library, hardcover, 1966. Signet Signet T4158, paperback, 1970. Perennial Library, paperback, 1983. Film: Universal, 1967, as Don’t Just Stand There! (starring Mary Tyler Moore & Robert Wagner).

   Boarding a commuter from Geneva to London, Lawrence Colby, freelance fixer, is libidinally drawn to the seat next to leggy Martine Randall, a smoother operator than he.

   Slapstick hijinks ensue as hundreds of Colby’s smuggled self-winding Swiss watches, concealed in his multipocketed sweater, spontaneously self-wind via turbulence and start ticking like timebombs and tinkling their alarms.

   She helps him out of the jam, neutralizing the watch mechanisms by dipping them in a pool of crème de menthe clogged in the airplane bathroom basin.

   In exchange, he agrees to help her with a problem of her own.

   The world’s best-selling romance writer has finally had sex. Now she can’t write romance novels anymore. She thinks they’re silly.

   Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Miss Romance, her agent has embezzled her money and was counting on the big advance on the next novel to cover it up. So now he needs a ghost writer to write it.

   He’s hired a retired 30’s hardboiled pulpster, who’s completed the manuscript. But the sex writing is too terse for the romance spinster set. So a second ghostwriter has come in to fix it. A blonde bombshell PR pro who has disappears right before she finishes the edits.

   Bringing back the bombshell ain’t easy, as she’s kidnapped, chased by the mob, and is constitutionally anarchic, nonchalant, and impossible to control.

   The novel approaches postmodern territory when Charles Williams lay bare the writing process whereby the hardboiled manuscript is massaged into Harlequin romance before the reader’s very eyes.

   Very entertaining caper novel. Has anyone seen the movie?

DO NO HARM. “Pilot.” NBC, 31 January 2013. Steven Pasquale as Dr. Jason Cole (chief of neurosurgery at Independence Memorial Hospital) and as Ian Price, his alternate personality; Alana de la Garza as Dr. Lena Solis, a neurologist at IMH and Dr. Cole’s love interest; Ruta Gedmintas as Olivia Flynn, Dr. Cole’s estranged former fiancé; Phylicia Rashad, as Dr. Vanessa Young, chief of surgery at IMH; Lin-Manuel Miranda as Dr. Ruben Marcado, a clinical pharmacologist at IMH and Dr. Cole’s friend. Directed by Michael Mayer. Can be purchased for streaming at Vudu. This first episode can be seen on YouTube here.

   Thanks once again to Wikipedia for providing not only the list of cast members, but who they are on this short-lived series. And by short-lived, I mean it. It lasted for all of two episodes before being yanked from NBC’s 2012-2013 mid-season schedule. (The remaining eleven episodes were burned off later that summer when no one’s watching anyway.)

   But, hey, this the pilot episode is not all that bad. It’s good enough to see why it was picked up as a series in the first place. It was obviously way ahead of its time. (An excuse you’ve probably heard before, I’m sure, and in this case it may even be true.)

   What it is, as you may have deduced from the credits above, if you looked closely enough, is yet another takeoff of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, variations of which will run from now to eternity, each one with a new creative twist. In this case the focus is on a Dr. Jason Cole, an extremely talented neurosurgeon who has a problem. At night, every night, he shares his body with his evil side, who takes over for exactly twelve hours.

   He’s been controlling the damage his other half can do, but the medication is starting to lose its effectiveness, and his alternate personality is starting to cause all kinds of problems, including the would-be new woman in his life, Dr. Lena Solis. She may, in fact, never speak to him again, while on another front his career is starting to hang by a thread.

   Well, what do you think? Is this the basis for a long-running TV series or not? It’s well-directed, and the acting, dialogue and photography are all fine. It must be the premise. From what I’ve told you, and from watching the trailer, can you be the judge? (I’m assuming that nobody reading this has ever seen the show, since by all accounts, no one did.)

HOLD THAT WOMAN! PRC, 1940. James Dunn (skiptracer Jimmy Parker), Frances Gifford, George Douglas, Rita La Roy. Director: Sam Newfield. Currently available on YouTube.

   Yes, I know that skiptracers (guys who track down people who have not kept up payments on their purchases) are not exactly private investigators, but it does take a certain amount of detective work on their part combined with enough finesse to get the unpaid for goods out of the non-payers’ hands without causing a major incident.

   This is exactly where Jimmy Parker slips up. Trying to repossess a radio set from a woman’s apartment, she defies him and calls in the cops, who (straining credulity) take her side of it. It turns out, though, that she has a very good reason for wanting to hold onto the radio, and it has to do with a small cache of jewels stolen from a famous movie star.

   Or in other words, the two cases are connected. The movie is only just over an hour long, and not a minute of it is wasted. It’s non-stop action mixed with a strong swallop of comedy from beginning to end, as you’d probably guess from the presence of James Dunn, his usual jovial unruffled self, as the aforementioned skiptracer. He was married at the time to Frances Gifford, who is both beautiful and exceptionally efficient as his fiancee and (eventually) his wife, that latter event totally against the wishes of her father, a crusty old cop who sees Jimmy as a good-for-nothing lightweight.

   If you’ve read this review all the way down to here, lots of fun awaits you with this one.
   

MAN BAIT. Hammer Films-UK / Lippert Pictures-US, 1952. George Brent, Marguerite Chapman, Diana Dors, Raymond Huntley. Peter Reynolds, and Meredith Edwards. Screenplay by Frederick Knott, based on The Last Page, a play by James Hadley Chase. Directed by Terence Fisher.

   A Pleasant surprise with the unlikely title Man Bait showed up on the bottom half of a double bill DVD billed as “Hammer Noir,” one of a series of co-productions between Hammer Studios and producer Robert Lippert.

BORING BACKGROUND – SKIP THIS PART: Robert Lippert was a producer of legendary cheapness and dubious ethics who churned out a slew of low-budget movies in the 1950s & 60s, mostly aimed at rural audiences and double bills. His favorite actors were Sid Melton, who didn’t need a script, and Margia Dean, whom he was sleeping with. When he hired bigger “name” actors (heavyweights like Cesar Romero or Rod Cameron) it was usually on a profit-sharing deal where the profits never materialized. As far as I can tell, the only ones who ever got a fair shake from Lippert were Sam Fuller, who carried a gun, and George Raft, who had Mob connections.

   In the early 50s, Lippert discovered that the British government was subsidizing film production in England, and he could actually make movies cheaper there in partnership with a British studio. He hit upon the ploy of casting fading second-rank Hollywood “stars” (Raft, Romero, Scott Brady, Zachary Scott, and the like) for dubious box office power in the states, and a whole new sub-genre was born: the Anglo-American B-movie, which flourished, after a fashion, until the moguls at Hammer got a grasp on Lippert’s slippery bookkeeping.

AND NOW BACK TO THE MOVIE: This one stars audience-magnet George Brent and a very capable cast of Brits, including Raymond Huntley, playing his usual nasty martinet, Diana Dors as a sensuous not-quite-innocent, and Peter Reynolds, perfectly slimy as the small-time spiv who tempts our Diana into blackmail and murder — in a bookstore.

   The plot has some surprising twists in it, but the strength of Man Bait is in the characterizations and atmosphere. Director Terence Fisher perfectly evokes the feel of a little book shop — all nooks and crannies and crowded shelves — and the writers people it with real bookstore-types if you know what I mean.

   Which leads me to speculate on where they came from. I have read some of James Hadley Chase’s novels, and I’ll be charitable by saying characterization is not his strong suit. Man Bait is based on a stage play apparently by Chase, The Last Page. I can find no more about it, but the presence of Frederick Knott, just before he hit it big with Dial M for Murder leads me to suspect he played a strong hand in fashioning this film, and perhaps the play as well.

   Whatever the case, Man Bait zips along suspensefully, with Brent framed for murder and the police oh-so-slowly figuring things out as another killing looms just ahead. Terence Fisher makes an impressive directorial debut, and even George Brent, never terribly exciting, lends a surprising inner strength to his quiet role. This one’s a winner.

   It’s pilot season at the major TV networks as the networks look for new shows for the 2018-19 season. Here is a link to Deadline’s “Primetime pilot panic” where you can read what each network is looking at for next season:

         http://deadline.com/category/primetime-pilot-panic/

   The creation of the pilot dates back to radio days when audition shows were used to find a sponsor or stations to support the show as a regularly appearing series. While radio used the word “audition” for the first example of the possible series, TV uses pilot from “pilot project.”

   In the summer of 1940 CBS aired FORECAST, a series of radio episodes with the hope the audience would help them become a network series. Of these auditions two would become hits and continue to be remembered today, SUSPENSE and DUFFY’S TAVERN.

   Below is DEDUCTION DELUXE, an episode from FORECAST second and final season. Despite its pleas to the radio audience DEDUCTION DELUXE did not survive for a second episode.

DEDUCTION DELUXE “Problem of the Painted Poodle.” CBS Radio, July 28, 1941, Monday at 9pm (Eastern). Cast: Adolphe Menjou as Roger Boone, Verree Teasdale as Twyla Boone. Other Voices include: Arthur Q. Bryan, Verna Telton, and Gerald Mohr. Written by Keith Fowler and Frank Galen.

   The episode sounded like a vaudeville sketch with its simple character types and non-stop patter of gags, many still funny. The mystery of who painted a rich lady’s poodle green was better than average as the writers for the most part played fair with the clues.

   Real life married couple Adolphe Menjou and Verree Teasdale certainly had the right chemistry as PI Roger Boone and his wife Twyla Boone. The fatal flaw for the show was in the character of husband Roger Boone, a man who handled “clues, blondes and horses with equal enthusiasm.” Twyla seemed resigned to her husband sleeping with other women but I doubt the 1941 radio audience was as forgiving.

RUSSELL. Paramount Television – CBS Films Production; date unknown. Fess Parker as Charles Russell, Beverly Garland as Bonnie, Jay C. Flippen as Windy, and Paul Carr as Tracey. Created and written by Borden Chase. Directed by Arthur Hiller. Executive Producer: Gordon Kay. Produced by Frank O’Connor.

   I can find nothing about this pilot beyond the on screen credits and the copyright is unreadable. The pilot was done by Paramount. Fess Parker worked for Paramount between 1958 and 1962. The credit for CBS Films and the sales pitch epilogue probably makes this a pilot for a possible syndicated series. Since Fess Parker was starring in MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON in 1962 we can narrow the time for this show even further to 1958-61.

   While the story and characters were overly simple the show had a certain charm helped by a talented cast and a script that kept things moving.

   Fess Parker played Charles Russell one of the greatest artists of the Old West, and a man of many talents and experiences. He was a good man who was as good with the gun as he was with a brush. Russell wrote about his times and travels through the Old West in books such as TRAILS PLOWED UNDER. Link from Project Gutenberg Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700941h.html.

   In an interesting twist, the premise of the series was not to be just a loosely based biography but instead the stories were to be based on Charlie Russell’s artwork. The pilot episode featured the famous painting “Innocent Allies.”

   The story had Charlie partnering with a man called Windy to run a cattle drive. When Charlie and a young hothead cowboy witness a stage robbery, the young cowboy overreacts and runs off to stop the robbery. His gunfire starts a stampede. Charlie warns others of the approaching stampede and rescues the beautiful and feisty Bonnie, the new owner of the saloon. Charlie tries to help the young man grow up while he paints for Bonnie “Innocent Allies” – his eyewitness account of the stage holdup.

   RUSSELL had the makings for a successful series but Westerns were fading during the years 1958-1961 as the PI and modern detective was growing in its popularity.

GLOBAL FREQUENCY . WB, 2005 Cast: Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero, Aimee Garcia as Aleph, Josh Hopkins as Sean Flynn and Jenni Baird as Dr. Katrina Finch. * The on-air credits were clipped from this YouTube copy of the 45-minute pilot. The series was created by Warren Ellis based on the popular award winning graphic novel series. John Rogers wrote the script, or at least he was the main writer for the pilot that was directed by Nelson McCormick. (Sources: IMdb and Wikipedia.)

   Before WB had made its decision about the fate of GLOBAL FREQUENCY the episode was leaked to the Internet. According to an email by creator Warren Ellis sent out to fans he claimed WB was so unhappy over the leak they rejected the pilot (CBR.com, July 29, 2005). It would not be the first time or the last Hollywood egos destroyed a quality program.

   Here is a YouTube clip explaining the premise.

   Global Frequency is a secret independent organization created to do the dirty jobs that threaten the world. Run by Miranda Zero, a former top spy, with the aid of Aleph, a young female computer expert who from a high tech base assists and contacts field agents.

   Global Frequency’s agents are a group of people with various talents and connections from all over the world waiting for that call that they are needed to save the world, or at least part of it. This is one of my favorite plot devices and the way it is handled would have hooked me on the series.

   The story began when disgraced ex-cop Sean finds the dead body of a Global Frequency agent. It seems San Francisco will be destroyed in 55 minutes. Sean joins in to help find the man who killed the agent and now is a threat to destroy San Francisco.

   Everything works here. The writing based on an award winning graphic novel series, the cast, the direction, the production, all are excellent. The characters are likable and developed. This even has the most elusive of all qualities, excellent chemistry between the actors.

   Every time I watch a TV thriller like GLOBAL FREQUENCY that blends technology and the human hero so entertainingly, I remember the objections that Hugh O’Brian had during SEARCH (NBC 1972) that the technology not upstage him and again I realize how better SEARCH could have been.

CALLAHAN. ABC – Carsey/Werner Company Production in association with Finnegan Associates, September 9, 1982. Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis as Rachel Bartlett, Hart Bocher as Callahan, John Harkins as Marcus Vox, and Peter Maloney as Mustaf. Created by Ken Finkleman. Developed and Written by David Misch and Ken Finkleman. Directed by Harry Winer

   This funny pilot spoof of the Indiana Jones movie unfairly faced some challenges that had nothing to do with the quality of the episode entitled “Appointment In Rangoon.”

   Plucky innocent Rachel Bartlett applies for the job of assistant to the Director of Research (Callahan) at the Regis Foundation. The job interview quickly expands from Callahan’s academic office into a dangerous thrill-filled chase across the world.

   Overly focused on his work, Callahan is clueless to how unaccustomed Miss Bartlett (as Callahan calls her) is to the action. But Rachel does not let the constant dangers to her life or her torn and increasingly disappearing dress stop her from helping Callahan to recover the object, stop the villain and save the world.

   However quality writing and acting does not always lead a pilot to series. CALLAHAN wanted to become an ABC series for the 1982-83 season. But TV cop spoof POLICE SQUAD had just bombed on ABC during the 1981-82 season. ABC’s pilots for the 1982-83 season had contained more than one Indiana Jones inspired pilot. ABC chose the action drama TALES OF THE GOLDEN MONKEY.

   YouTube continues to be a great place to find failed pilots, so coming soon I will look at four more failed pilots from the past.

DÉJÀ VU. Touchstone Pictures, 2006. Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, Jim Caviezel, Adam Goldberg, Elden Henson, Erika Alexander, Bruce Greenwood. Director: Tony Scott.

   This is a movie that begins with a bang, no doubt about it, with a ferry filled with enlisted naval men and their families being blown up and destroyed by a terrorist in New Orleans. Asked by the FBI for his assistance on the case is a crack ATF agent named Doug Carlin (Denzell Washington). What strikes him as strange is that when he finds the partially burned body of a young woman who has floated ashore is that she died before the explosion.

   Intrigued, he also learns that the team he is working with has access to a new satellite surveillance capability of tracking anyone almost anywhere. The catch is that what can be seen is limited to viewing events that have already taken place, an always consistent four days ago. Carlin suggests that they not spend their time looking at the ferry in the past, but focus instead on the young woman’s life.

   What he does not known, and as it turns out [SEMI-SPOILER ALERT] that what they are viewing is the actual past (abruptly switching gears and making this a science fiction movie rather than the run-of-he-mill action thriller it has been up to this point) and soon enough all kinds of time-travel paradoxes come into play, enough, I would imagine, to make an ordinary viewer’s head spin.

   I’ve been reading this kind of stuff for over 60 years, and while some of what happens goes down very, very well, there are two gaps in the continuity of things that — and I hate to say it — pretty much spoiled the final thirty minutes or so for me. As I understand it, and this may be entirely hearsay, the screenwriters spent several years making sure that all of the bugs were out, and the director decided to skip some of their work in favor of a large car chase somewhere close to the end of the movie instead.

   If so, it’s too bad. Denzell Washington is as good as he always is, but if this movie isn’t as good as it could have been, and it isn’t, it’s not through any fault of his.

JOE GORES – 32 Cadillacs. DKA File #4. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1992; paperback, 1993.

   It’s been fourteen years since the last DKA from Gores, so long that I’d despaired of another, but here it is, and it’s up for (though in my opinioni doesn’t merit) an Edgar.

   Daniel Kearney Associates is a private detective agency operating out of San Francisco. DKA doesn’t do murders as their main source of revenue (though there have been some in previous books), they repossess cars, and do collections and skip traces. In 32 Cadillacs they have the repo case of a lifetime, as no less than 31 new Cadillacs have been purchased by fraudulent means and absconded with, all financed by the same bank. The 32nd is a finny pink ’58.

   The scam is being run by Gypsies, who are involved in a plan dealing with the Imminent death of their King (who lies in a hospital in Steubenville, Iowa) and the potential selection of his successor. The story details DKA’s frantic efforts to find the cars, and the machinations of the opposing Gypsy factions as well.

   All the old gang is here: Dan Kearney, Giselle Marc, Bart Heslip, and Ballard and O’Bannion. Gores writes bare-bones prose, and manages to keep the story moving forward in a straight line — no mean feat with the viewpoints shifting rapidly among the DKA bunch and various members of the Gypsy gang of miscreants. There is enough characterization that the players seem real, though they will be more so to past readers of the series. Gores did a lot of research into the Gypsy way of life, and the plot is entertaining.

   I didn’t like this as much as earlier tales in the series. It lacked their hard edge, and in fact was more of a caper novel, even including a cameo by Westlake’s Dortmunder. The DKA stories are pretty much sui generis, but this wasn’t the best one. Lesser Gores is still worth reading, though.

      The DKA File series —

1. Dead Skip (1972)
2. Final Notice (1973)
3. Gone, No Forwarding (1978)

4. 32 Cadillacs (1992)
5. Contract Null and Void (1996)
6. Stakeout on Page Street (2000)

7. Cons, Scams, and Grifts (2001)