Personal Notes


   This post began as an UPDATE to be found at the end of the previous one, but as I kept writing, it became long enough, I thought, and substantiative enough, to survive on its own. And so, on its own two feet, here it is:

   Taken from an email message from Al Hubin this morning: “Looks good. The only connection you haven’t made is that Murder in Mayfair was reportedly the basis for the movie “Hour of Decision” (Tempean, 1957).”

   >> No, I didn’t catch that, and I’m certainly happy to know about it. When I checked how many copies of Murder in Mayfair were offered for sale yesterday on the Internet, the answer was none. Zippo. If someone were interested in knowing what the book’s story line was, all I could offer right now in reply are the comments of a single viewer on IMDB, which I’ll add below. And, yes, I know that the movie may be NOTHING like the book, but here goes something better than nothing, at least:

    “This is a fairly routine though watchable whodunit that is notable mainly for the nearly salacious-for-the-time talk about the womanizing habits of a gossip columnist who gets murdered. Oh yes, the ever enticing Hazel Court is present as a past amour of the now-dead rakish fellow who tries to avoid suspicion for his murder. Her husband [Jeff Morrow] investigates so as not to have his honey nabbed by the coppers. London locations make it watchable.”

    To which I add, ah yes, Hazel Court. I remember her from a short-lived TV series called Dick and the Duchess (CBS, 1957-58). It was an American series filmed in England and was mostly a comedy, but with criminous overtones.

   Hazel Court’s co-star was Patrick O’Neal, who played Dick Starrett, an American insurance claims investigator based in London and married to an Englishwoman, the “duchess” of the title. That is to say, his wife Jane, whose efforts to help her husband invariably ended in disaster.

   I may be the only person I know who remembers this series, but even though I was only 15 or 16 years old at the time, I think that I was slightly in love with Hazel Court. Yes, she was too old for me, but at that age what possible difference could a few years make, and a distance of only a few thousand miles away … ?

    Thus began a lifelong love of British crime fiction. And yes, I do digress.

Shakedown

Today was the last day of GoodisCon 2007, and no, I wasn’t able to go, and whether there will be another, I have no idea. But here’s a question that occurs to me. What other mystery writer has had a convention dedicated to him and him alone?

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I’ll qualify that by saying that Anthony Boucher is not an acceptable answer, as Bouchercons were always about more than Mr. Boucher. And as a brief aside, I suspect that many attendees of Bouchercons in recent years do not even know who Mr. Boucher was.

Searching on the Internet just now, I came across several sites relating to David Goodis that may be of interest, the first one of which may contain cover images of every edition of every book that Goodis wrote. (It does say “a selection,” so it’s more than likely that I’m exaggerating, but there are certainly quite a few for you to look at here, many of which I’ve never seen before. Not the one below, but many of the later editions and almost all of the foreign editions.)

Chase

You may have to follow the link at the bottom of the page that the link above leads you to. The first page that comes up contains a short biography of Goodis by Dave Moore. There are many other sites that I might send you to, but back in Crimesquad‘s archives I found another short biography and a review of Black Friday and Selected Stories (Serpent’s Tail, trade pb, July 2006).

It’s a book I missed when it came out. I’d put it on my birthday list, but then I’d have to wait another whole year. I’d rather not wait that long.

   Contents:

Black Friday. Novel. Lion 224, pbo, 1954.
“The Dead Laugh Last.” Goodis writing as David Crewe. 10 Story Mystery Magazine, October 1942.
“Come to My Dying!” Goodis writing as Logan C. Claybourne. 10 Story Mystery Magazine, October 1942.
“The Case of the Laughing Ghost.” Goodis writing as Lance Kermit. 10 Story Mystery Magazine, October 1942.
“Caravan to Tarim.” Collier’s, October 26, 1943.
“It’s a Wise Cadaver.” New Detective, July 1946.
“The Time of Your Kill.” Goodis writing as David Crewe. New Detective, November 1948.

I wonder what a copy of 10 Story Mystery Magazine for October 1942 goes for these days.

   
   —

UPDATE: It didn’t take long for a report to appear online from someone who was there. Who better to give with some details than crime novelist Duane Swierczynski (pronounced “sweer-ZIN-ski”) on his blog, which you should be reading as a matter of course anyway…

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