THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. RKO Radio Pictures, 1944. Edward 6. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Dan Duryea. Based on a novel by J. H. Wallis. Director: Fritz Lang

   What could possibly happen to a middle-aged professor left alone for the summer when his wife and family go on vacation without him? Would you believe a chance meeting with a beautiful woman, a few drinks, an enraged lover, then murder — strictly self-defense?

   Moving the body is not a great idea. As the noose slowly tightens, Robinson does a stellar Job of portraying an utterly defeated man, especially when the blackmailer comes along — and he does. The ending is a whiz. Make it a double whiz. First rate.

I won’t bore you with more tales of woe, but I’m raring to get back in the saddle again. And it’s about time!

CERI JORDAN “Rough Justice.” First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2001. Reprinted in The Shamus Winners: America’s Best Private Eye Stories, Volume II: 1992-2009, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime Books, 2010).

   Here’s am award winning PI story which I’m willing to wager (but not too much)  which you’ve never heard of, neither the author nor the story itself. I’m also will to shake your hand if you have. I came across it Robert Randisi’s collection of PWA award-winning short stories, which I highly recommend in case you don’t already own a copy.

   Authors include the likes of Jeremiah Healy, Loren Estlemnan and Warren Murphy, all of whom I know you know; but also writers such as Mitch Alderson, Pearl Abraham and Michel Wiecek, whom you probably as much in the dark about as I am.

   Also in the latter group is Ceri Jordam, whose only story to have been published in a major crime fiction magazine is this one. Most of her work, which includes dozens of short stories, has bern published in small press literary magazines and the like, most of which I’m not familiar with either. Its leading protagonist is a PI only by common consent. What he really has been doing, when this story starts, is a UN training instructor in the Balkans after all the hostilities there a quarter century or so ago.

   He was the closest (and most reliable) man they could find to investigate the death of a sergeant for the UN Forces whose body has been found off base and whose death needs to be looked into. It seems as though he had been making a habit of such extracurricular activities. It is not expected to be a major case. Most likely, a jealous hatband was responsible.

   And that’s about all of the clues they have, but Nick, while not enthused, does take his job seriously. I did refer to the time period as “post war,” long before any reconstruction has begun, and I have to tell you that this is the grimmest PI story I have ever read.

   And that’s about all I am going to tell you about this one. Is it well written? Yes/ Am I happy I read it?  Yes, I think so, but I also should add that I’m not as sure about that. Do I recommend you find a copy? Well, of course, or I wouldn’t have brought it up

ADAM HALL – The Quiller Memorandum. Simon & Schuster, US, hardcover, 1965. Reprinted many times.

   Originally titled The Berlin Memorandum in the British first edition, The Quiller Memorandum [Collins, 1965] introduces “shadow executive” Quiller, who works for an agency known only as “the Bureau,” an organization which handles such super-sensitive espionage tasks that officially it does not exist and takes action only when authorized by the prime minister. Quiller’s own expertise is in the area of escapes: He worked as a spy in Nazi Germany, arranging escapes from the concentration camps.

   Now it is twenty years later. Quiller has finished an assignment in Berlin and is due to return to London for a well-deserved leave. Hours before departure, however. he realizes he is being followed. A man contacts him in a theater and reveals the existence of a large Berlin-based neo-Nazi organization that plans to take over Germany. One of the names the man mentions is that of a senior SS officer whom Quiller remembers from his World War II days. Slowly, Quiller is drawn into a secret and dangerous world where politics and murder come together in a sinister conspiracy.

   In this and his other novels, Hall exhibits great expertise at creating and sustaining edge-of-the-chair suspense; even those who are not particularly fond of tales of international conspiracy will have difficulty putting his work down.

   The main problem with the Quiller books, however, is with the character of the hero himself. Quiller is a technician, expert at all the disciplines of the spy’s trade and possessing a considerable knowledge of neurophysiology and psychology; his cool. detachment and ability to perform well under stress are what make him so valuable to the Bureau.

   As a man, Quiller lacks a great deal: He has no private life, no inner torments (that we are allowed to see, at any rate), none of the faults and conflicts that make a truly interesting character. It is evidence of Hall’s abilities that he is able to sustain the reader’s attention in his hero’s exploits.

   The Quiller Memorandum was awarded the MWA Edgar for Best Novel of 1965. A film version, starring George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max Von Sydow, and Senta Berger, was made in 1966, with playwright Harold Pinter authoring the screenplay.

   Some other titles in the Quiller series are The 9th Directive (1966 ), which deals with the kidnapping of a member of the British royal family in Bangkok; The Striker Portfolio (1969), in which Quiller returns to Germany to investigate a series of sabotages on military aircraft; The Warsaw Document (1970), in which he foils a Russian plot to invade Warsaw; and The Tango Briefing (1973), which takes place in Libya.

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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.

BLACK MASK – June 1940. Editor: K. S. White. Cover artist: Rafael DeSoto. Overall rating: **½.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Tong Trouble” Ed Jenkins. Novelette. Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, applies his talents on behalf of Chinese friends, and a tong war, threatened by an unsolved murder, is averted, Told in the obvious Gardner style, as we learn as a bonus how to panhandle on the street and some information about the Chinese people. (3)

ROGER TORREY “Too Many Angles.” Donovan. Novelette. A private detective by the name of Donovan takes on a case for a patent attorney and gets involved with several murders before he proves his client guilty of government sabotage. Violent. (2)

JOHN LAWRENCE “Body of Evidence.” Broadway Squad. Hackett of the Broadway Squad unwillingly provides an alibi for a released prisoner who threatens the life of everyone who helped send him up. (3)

PAUL ALEXANDER “Overseer of the Poor.” Short story (three pages long) based on an obscure law in upstate New York. (2)

DONALD S. AITKEN “The Same Old Oil.” Peanut oil on a billfold traps a killer. Obvious from title, otherwise the clues are hidden. (2)

H. H. STINSON “Clamp Down.” Novelette. Ken O’Hara. O’Hara of the L.A. Tribune is assigned to hush up political blackmail for an endorsed candidate, White slave trade and a rival San Francisco reporter also develop. (3)

BILL PRONZINI “Hooch,” First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 2014. Quite possibly collected but the whereabouts at present are not known.

   Time: Prohibition Era in the US. Place: Somewhere along the Northern California coastline. Players: Three hoodlums in one truck are helping bring in a shipment of fine liquor from Canada. Two are old pros at the job. The third, by the name of Bennie. is a young fellow whose first job this is. He doesn’t seem nervous. Antsy, maybe. There is a small chance the delivery will be interrupted by a rival gang, but that hasn’t happened in a long time, and it isn’t likely to happen this particular early morning either.

   All the rest of the time Bennie is chirping away at the books and magazines he’s been reading: Black Mask, The Maltese Falcon, you know, the good stuff. He also tells the other two guys in the truck all about the book he’s writing. He doesn’t shut up about it. A book that covers the adventures of a young mobster, stories like the very adventure he’s on that very same night.

   He’s going change the names of all the characters in the book. He tells them that, over and over as the night goes on. They other two men don’t say anything about that, but you can hear them thinking.

   And does the story end the way both you and I are thinking? (I think you ans I are thinking the same way, aren’t we?) Well of course it does, and with an extra kick in the pants (plot twist) to boot. The story is short, only seven pages long, and if you’re thinking the way was when you read this one, you’ll remember it for a quite a while, I think.

DESTINATION BIG HOUSE. Republic Pictures, 1950. Dorothy Patrick, Robert Rockwell, Jimmy Lydon, Robert Armstrong. Director: George Blair.

   A schoolteacher alone in a mountain cottage helps a wounded man, not knowing he’s a racketeer on the run from the gang he’s double-crossed. When he dies, he leaves her his fortune of $80,000, much to her bewilderment and dismay.

   There is a bit of cynicism involved here, concerning the way small towns can turn on people, with just a hint of gossip. Other than that, a straightforward action thriller, with clear-cut motivation and nobody left guessing at the end who was doing what to who.

ADAM HALL – Knight Sinister. Pyramid, US, paperback, 1971. Harper, US, paperback, 1990. First published in the UK in 1951, written by Elleston Trevor under the pseudonym Simon Rattray.

   Before he became famous as Adam Hall with the publication of The Quiller Memorandum, Elleston Trevor produced five chess-oriented mystery/suspense novels; these were published in England under the pseudonym Simon Rattray, and reprinted here under the Hall name after the success of Quiller. They concern the adventures of wealthy Hugo Bishop, who, as a writer of books about personality under stress, investigates odd or unusual events around the world. He is assisted in this occupation by Miss Vera Gorringe, M.A., who searches out situations and people out of the ordinary.

   Since his books bring him into the public eye, it isn’t unusual that a married woman in love with a man who seems to have disappeared should ask Bishop for help. Although this isn’t the sort of case he normally cares for, Hugo is intrigued when the missing man keeps sending the woman notes requesting assignations, which he then doesn’t keep. The woman’s husband. who is directing a play in which the missing man had a part, seems unaware of the triangular situation.

   With time out for trips in his venerable Rolls-Royce, manipulation of pieces in his everlasting chess games, intermittent consultations with Inspector Freddy Frenay (an old school friend now at Scotland Yard), and muted advice from “Gorry,” Hugo engineers a confrontation scene that concludes the case but doesn’t quite solve the problem.

   Bishop is a combination of Peter Wimsey and Ellery Queen, with the finer points of both. The chess motif plays a definite part in the logical progression and conflict in this and the other books in the series, as indicated by the American titles: Queen in Danger, Bishop in Check, and Pawn in Jeopardy, ail reprinted here in paperback by Pyramid in 1971, and Rook’s Gambit, which appeared the following year.

   Another unusual early novel by Trevor is Heat Wave (1958), first published under the pseudonym Caesar Smith — a harrowing psychological suspense story about a man who falls deeply in love a few short hours after murdering his wife.

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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.

JOHN T. SLADEK – Mechasm. Ace SF Special 71435, paperback, July 1969. Cover art: Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon. Pocket, paperback, July 1980. Published originally in the UK as The Reproductive System (Gollancz, hardcover, May 1968).

   A satirical review of Life in the US in the guise of a standard SF story, and the humor is much too obvious to be mistaken about it. This, plus an uncanny use of coincidence, as characters and their relatives appear and reappear continually, helps to keep enjoyment from overflowing.

   The story; A doll factory in Utah, in a last ditch effort to keep from gong bankrupt, files for a government grant for research into the development of a self-reproducing robot. They pick the right man as the leader of the project in Dr. Smilax, for he has his own purposes in finding success: world control and Weltscherz. He has this think about pain. Can Potter, fresh from MIT (Miami Institute of Technocracy), finds that he is the only one who can stop the rapidly growing robot population. He finds love, too.

   Lots of paranoia, CIA agents, mentally defective military people, hippies protesting the end of the world, astronauts, all combine to form o one happy mess,

NOTE: Check into the Professor’s betting system, page 82.

Rating: ****½

MELODIE JOHNSON HOWE – The Mother Shadow. Claire Conrad & Maggie Hill #1. Viking, hardcover 1878. Penguin, paperback, 1990.

   I was looking forward to reading this one, mostly because of the Nero Wolfe-Archie Goodwin connection made on the back cover. I can see the connection, but sorry to say this is a book I’m going to have to think about twice before I can even tell you if I’n going to keep it or not.

   Maggie Hill plays Archie. She’s a secretary whose employer makes out a new will, gives her the only copy of the codicil, then goes upstairs to blow his brains out. Claire Conrad is the Pl who must be moved to start a case, and in this case what gets her going is the fact that she’s supposed to inherit the dead man’s four million dollar coin collection, but  the copy of the will that was given to Maggie has somehow disappeared.

   Blackmail is also involved, as well as the many disgruntled members of the dead man’s family, none of whom are likeable in the least. I couldn’t much follow the plot, to tell you the truth, but for the most part, that’s not really the point.

   What”s meant to happen, I think, is that you’re supposed to be instantly enthralled at the sight of sassy, impudent detectives at work, but I’m just guessing  — and obviously I wasn’t. (That they are both female has nothing to do with it. At least I can’t imagine that it does.) .

   Maggie is the kind of person who worries and frets and keeps asking herself questions, at least until she finds herself working for Claire Conrad, who quickly takes charge of her life, and in the process, yes,  does a almost perfect female impersonation of Nero Wolfe. This is obviously a tricky maneuver, and she overdoes it. She makes Wolfe’9 eccentricities seem like minor peculiarities, which is fine for a while, but be warned: a whole book that sparkles as loudly as this one does is also awfully hard on the eyes.

   If you were to pin me down, I’d have to admit there were places that were moderately amusing. The problem is, I’m convinced they were meant to be immensely amusing. Read this one at your own risk.

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FOOTNOTE: Have I kept the book? In this case, so far, the answer ;s yes,  but it was close.(You’d know better than to ask, though, if you’d ever seen some of the other books I’ve ended up keeping, and this one’s a long way from the level of a good deal  of them.)