BAYNARD KENDRICK – The Last Express. Captain Duncan Maclain #1. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1937. Dell #95, mapback edition, 1945. Lancer, paperback, 1970.

   Although not Kendrick’s first book, this is the first adventure of Duncan Maclain. who is probably his most famous detective. and that largely because he is blind. What I’d never realized before is that Maclain is a private detective, not a policeman.

   There is also a germ of a decent story here, what with a dying message and a subterranean tour of New York City’s subway system, but it is so clumsily told it defies belief. What is obvious takes 50 pages to tell; inconsistencies are mostly ignored. Ptooie.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “Second Story Law.” Bob Crowder #1. First published in All Detective Magazine, September 1933. Collected in Behind the Mask (Pulpville Press, softcover, 2013).

   The story begins with a masked intruder making his way up a ladder and into the window of a room on the second floor of a large fancy manor house. Asleep in the room is a girl who does not immediately awaken, but soon enough she does – but her reaction is not what the masked intruder had obviously expected. She is cool and collected, asking him quietly what he is doing in her bedroom.

   Frustrated, he puts all but one object back – that being a silver-backed mirror, – and calls the police himself. He is a fellow by the name of Bob Crowder, and he has a plan. In the same house, a couple of nights before, the theft of much more valuable jewelry had taken place. The question is then, what is the connection and what is Crowder’s plan?

   In the early days of his writing career author Erle Stanley Gardner honed his writing craft by creating all kinds of heroes in hundreds of stories. A common theme is the kind of chap who solves a case by reading about it in the newspaper and figures out a way to cut himself in, and always in the most mysterious way possible.

   This is, of course, a prime example. We don’t learn a lot about out hero’s background – nothing, in fact – but then again what have we ever learned about the private life of Perry Mason? Not a lot, that’s for sure.

   No, throughout his writing career, Gardner never took his readers into details of his characters’ lives, even at the start. The story was the thing, and I can only imagine how much better this one probably was, compared to the other tales of the same issue it first appeared in.

   On the other hand, the skill set owned by Bob Crowder was admittedly rather limited, and Mr. Gardner had plenty of other characters to write about. The young adventurous Mr. Crowder appeared in only three other tales. You can find all four in the Behind the Mask collection.

   If you’re a fan of Richard Matheson’s vast volume of work, you may be interested in a special event being held later this year celebrating his 100th birthday. It’s called the Mathesontennial and will occur at this year’s Monsterama convention, marking its 13th year this August 7-9 at the Atlanta Marriott Northeast/Emory Area.

   Here below a link to regular contributor Matthew Bradley’s blog, where he’ll tell you all aboit it, as well as lots more information about all kinds of related things:

Mathesontennial

DAVID GOODIS – Street of No Return. Gold Medal #428, paperback original; 1st printing, 1954. Cover art: Barye Phillips.

   Street of No Return has strong similarities of plot to Down There (reviewed here), but is a much stronger book.

   Whitey, an alky once known as Edward Linden, the best singer of his generation, got involved with the wrong woman. The woman’s hoodlum friends try to persuade Whitey to forget her by smashing his vocal cords, and Whitey winds up with the rest of the winos on the street of no return.

   One day, with a race riot in progress in the Hellhole a few blocks away from skid row, Whitey sees some familiar faces and follows them into the Hellhole, where he tries to help a dying cop. As a result, he is accused of murder, and much of the first part of the book deals with his attempts to evade the police. just as much of the first part of Down There deals with Eddie’s attempts to evade the gangsters.

   Eventually the book comes to a predictable end: Whitey finds the killer and brings the riots to a stop. But as one would expect in a Goodis book, Whitey does not find the girl and live with her happily ever after. Instead, he goes back to his bottle and his friends on the street.

   What sets this book apart from Down There, as well as a number of other Goodis novels, is the writing. The writing is not slowed down. as it often is in Goodis’s works, by lengthy passages of introspection; thus the story moves along with the reader being shown. not told. and the narration is more effective than usual. One wonders why this book has never been filmed in place of other, lesser Goodis novels.

   Those with a taste for Goodis’s philosophy should try Street of the Lost (1953) and The Moon in the Gutter (1954). The titles tell the story. A recent movie version of the latter was a conspicuous flop.

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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.