R. L. GOLDMAN – Death Plays Solitaire. Coward-McCann, hardcover, 1939. Green Dragon #10, digest-sized paperback, no date stated [1944], condensed.

   While it will not endear me to the doubtless many fans of Asaph Clume and Rufus Reed, “impulsive redheaded reporter,” I must confess I am glad I read the “condensed” version of this novel since its tediousness is staggering even in the abbreviated version.

   For example: “I’m supposed to be a political commentator, and I do a daily column, ‘Round-Up,’ which I sign ‘Rufus Reed’ because that’s my name.”

   A former police reporter, Reed has been assigned by Clume, his boss, to cover the execution of Dan Hillyard for murder during a bank robbery from which the money has never been recovered. On his last night Hillyard gives the deck of cards with which he has been playing solitaire to his wife.

   In turn, she gives the cards to Hillyard’s lawyer, who is murdered shortly afterwards. He, too, had been playing solitaire, something he had never done before, and the deck of cards has been taken by the murderer. Other deaths follow, and Reed himself faces torture and death. As Reed does the leg work, Clume does the thinking, such as it is.

   Not well written even for the times, a very thin plot, an evident but clueless murderer. Still, one waits, not breathlessly, to read The Snatch, in which, according to Green Dragon, “A slipping male movie idol is the victim-and there are more than enough suspects with motives. Irrepressible Rufus Reed, red-haired reporter figures out whodunit just in time for a smashing, surprise ending that’ll leave you worrying about ethics for quite a while.”

       The Asaph Clume & Rufus Reed series —

The Murder of Harvey Blake. Skeffington, 1931.
Murder Without Motive. Coward, 1938.

Death Plays Solitaire. Coward, 1939.
The Snatch. Coward, 1940.
Murder Behind the Mike. Coward, 1942.

The Purple Shells. Ziff-Davis, 1947.

Editorial Comment:   R. L. Goldman also wrote three non-series mysteries not included in the list above. Some biographical information about him can be found in the Ziff-Davis “Fingerprint Mystery” checklist compiled by Victor Berch, Bill Pronzini and myself.

FREDRICK D. HUEBNER – Judgment by Fire. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original, 1988.

   I was not surprised after reading Fredrick D. Huebner’s Judgment by Fire, a paperback original from Gold Medal, to learn that the author is an attorney.

   Even if my son weren’t a lawyer, I would disagree with the character in Shakespeare who said, “First, kill all the lawyers.” Writers in that profession, e.g., Huebner, Healey, Nevins, and Hensley are too good at integrating the law into their mystery plots.

   At times, Huebner’s well-described courtroom scenes (even the motions made are suspenseful) threaten to overwhelm his rather meager plot. The book reaches its peak midway with a murder-arson trial and then is anticlimactic.

   Still, on balance, this is a worthwhile mystery with a good description of the Seattle area, especially its perennial rain.

       The Matt Riordan mystery series —

1. The Joshua Sequence (1986)
2. The Black Rose (1987)
3. Judgement By Fire (1988)
4. Picture Postcard (1990)
5. Methods of Execution (1994)

REX BURNS – The Killing Zone. Viking, hardcover, 1988. Penguin, paperback, 1989.

   Rex Burns’ latest about Denver homicide detective Gabe Wager is The Killing Zone. I’ve muttered before about Wager, a gloomy, morose, irascible chap with a recently acquired payload of guilt to boot.

   But this one has a strong contemporary plot, with good suspense and character dynamics, and I was well swept along with the flow. A kid finds the city’s latest corpse in a vacant lot. It’s Horace Green, city councilman, black, hero and defender of the black community. Now wearing a bullet hole in the back of his head.

   Racial motives spring to mind, and the city gathers itself for explosion. Wager’s boss wants him to look only in one white place for a killer, for a tension-defusing solution. Wager, who rarely takes orders from anyone and routinely works sixteen-hour days, will look everywhere.

      The Gabe Wager series —

1. The Alvarez Journal (1975)

2. The Farnsworth Score (1977)

3. Speak for the Dead (1978)

4. Angle of Attack (1979)
5. The Avenging Angel (1983)
6. Strip Search (1984)
7. Ground Money (1986)
8. The Killing Zone (1988)
9. Endangered Species (1993)
10. Blood Line (1995)

11. The Leaning Land (1997)

   Rex Burns also wrote four books with PI Devlin Kirk as the lead detective. All 15 books have recently been published as ebooks by Mysterious Press.

GAYLORD DOLD – Bonepile. Ivy, paperback original, 1988.

   Bonepile by Gaylord Dold, the third Mitch Roberts novel, is more ambitious than the Rafferty book by W. Glenn Duncan (reviewed here ) but ultimately less satisfying.

   Dold is another writer to be commended for moving the private eyes’ mean streets from New York and Los Angeles to more unusual locales. In this case it is a rural farming community in Kansas where Roberts, on vacation from Wichita (“…the world’s largest small town”), has gone to recuperate. One can feel the heat and wind blowing off the plains, imagine walking through the park in the middle of town, and understand the people, including their worship of the St. Louis Cardinals.

   The book is set in 1956, but Roberts in true Lew Archer fashion permits guilt to cause him to try to solve a 1940’s murder. Unfortunately, Dold, like Archer’s creator, suffers from a severe case of a disease I believe I was first to diagnose and name: “metaphoritis.”

   Its primary symptom is overwriting, with swelling of metaphors, those necessary usages which transform ordinary into very good writing. When poorly used, as in Bonepile, we get such lines as “Night grew in me like a tumor” and “The tree itself creaked as if its heart were broken.”

   Sometimes, in an effort to be imaginative, Dold is merely anatomically unsound as he writes, “Sweat filled my mind and overflowed.” I suspect that the reason for all the overwriting and padding is that this time around he had too slim a plot and, based on the unsatisfactory ending, didn’t know how to conclude his book.

   Yet I perceive real writing talent here, and Dr. Lachman suspects this case of metaphoritis will not be fatal.

      The Mitch Roberts series —

Hot Summer, Cold Murder. Avon, pb, 1987.

Snake Eyes. Ivy, pb, 1987.
Bonepile. Ivy, pb, 1988.
Cold Cash. Ivy, pb, 1988.
Muscle and Blood. Ivy, pb, 1989.

Disheveled City. Ivy, pb, 1990.
A Penny for the Old Guy. St. Martin’s, hc, 1991.

Rude Boys. St. Martin’s, hc, 1992.
The World Beat. St. Martin’s, hc, 1993.
Samedi’s Knapsack. St. Martin’s, hc, 2001.

CORTLAND FITZSIMMONS – The Evil Men Do. Stokes, hardcover, 1941.

   Having turned down several lucrative offers to go to Hollywood and do screen writing, mystery writer Ethel Thomas finally accepts as a ploy to help out her niece, an aspiring movie actress.

   The niece’s fiance, fighting for her honor, has apparently killed a man. It’s obvious that the “killing” is but a variation of the old badger game, but these two youngsters get themselves involved with a blackmailer who runs a gambling club. Naturally, he is soon bumped off. The niece, the fiance, the niece’s mother, and Thomas are unlikely suspects.

   Since the idea should be a winner from the start, there ought to be a law that authors writing about septuagenarian lady mystery writers who also detect produce at least a halfway decent novel. If there were such a law, Fitzsimmons would be given twenty years without the option.

      The Ethel Thomas series —

The Whispering Window. Stokes, 1936.
The Moving Finger. Stokes, 1937.

Mystery at Hidden Harbor. Stokes, 1938.
The Evil Men Do. Stokes, 1941.

Editorial Comment:   In a crime fiction writing career that extended from 1930 to 1943, Cortland Fitzsimmons wrote or co-authored another thirteen novels, two of which featured Arthur Martinson as the leading character, and two with Percy Peacock. I know nothing about either of the two, but Bill Deeck’s review of the author’s book The Girl in the Cage, displays an equal lack of enthusiasm for his work:   “…reading Fitzsimmons is like watching grease congeal.”

SUSAN MOODY – Penny Dreadful. Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback; 1st US printing, August 1986. First published in the UK: Macmillan, hardcover, 1984.

   The Penny in the title refers to Penny Wanawake, girl photographer, whose sleuthing activities place her as as nearly the perfect opposite of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple as can be imagined. While she is British, Penny is tall, young, black (corn-row braided hairdo), a sophisticated world traveler, and while a possessor of one live-in lover at home, she is not adverse to having others when she’s not.

   But returning to the title of this one, it’s at least a double, if not triple, play on words. The dead man in the affair is a writer of cheap blood-and-thunder pulp fiction, supplementing his day job as a schoolmaster at an exclusive boys’ school in Canterbury. Penny dreadfuls, in other words. He’s a dreadful man, too, since his books incorporate much of the scandalous activities his roving eyes have uncovered.

   And so no one really minds when he’s found dead. The police think the cause of death was a heart attack. Snooping in the kitchen, Penny finds the smell of gin in the sink, and she wonders if somebody had added something to it before disposing of it. Her interest in the case is not that of bringing a killer to justice, but more of an intellectual exercise in discovering the truth.

   There are any number of suspects. Adding to the thrill of the chase is the competition Penny is provided by the visiting policeman from Detroit she is currently sharing living quarters with. On the other hand, though, what Penny Wanawake doesn’t have is a “Watson” to bounce theories off of, and to be bedazzled by her investigative techniques and abilities and so on.

   We (the reader) follow her activities through the story from nearly beginning to end, and are usually given access to her thoughts, except (of course) when it really matters. Thus when it comes time for revealing the killer, we find that she had eliminated many possibilities lone before, although there was little in what she said or did that would have allowed us to come to the same conclusions.

   Nonetheless, while the story might have moved a bit too slowly for me, I did enjoy Penny Dreadful as a detective puzzle, one populated by people I could see as individuals. Susan Moody has wicked sense of humor, too, maybe even a bit sharper than mine. I could probably quote you parts I liked all day long, but here’s a paragraph I thought you might like. It’ll tell you, at least, what I’m talking about. From pages 141-142:

      The Penny Wanawake series —

Penny Black. Macmillan, 1984.
Penny Dreadful. Macmillan, 1984.
Penny Post. Macmillan, 1985.
Penny Royal. Macmillan, 1986.
Penny Wise. Joseph, 1988.

Penny Pinching. Joseph, 1989.
Penny Saving, Joseph, 1990.    No US edition.

   All but the last were published by Gold Medal in the US as paperback originals.

   After ending the Penny Wanawake series, author Susan Moody began another, this one featuring professional bridge player, Cassandra Swann. Six of the latter’s adventures were recorded between 1993 and 1999, four of them appearing here in the US.

RICK BOYER – The Whale’s Footprints. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1988. Ivy Books, paperback, 1989.

   The Whale’s Footprints, the latest of the Doc Adams stories by Rick Boyer, has a well-developed plot and effective misdirection, but the characters seem to emote rather than feel and communicate.

   Doc and Mary’s son Jack, studying whales at Wood’s Hole on Cape Cod, brings a friend, Andy, home for the weekend. But Andy dies in the night — someone has fiddled with his epilepsy medication. And the police rather think Jack might have been the fiddler.

   Doc and Mary, enraged and horrified, begin exploring on their own. Andy, it develops, wasn’t quite the blameless young man he might have appeared. Not that this clears Jack. Oh, no….

      The Doc Adams series —

Billingsgate Shoal (1982)     [Edgar Winner, Best Novel, 1983]
The Penny Ferry (1984)

The Daisy Ducks (1986)
Moscow Metal (1987)

The Whale’s Footprints (1988)
Gone to Earth (1990)

Yellow Bird (1991)
Pirate Trade (1994)
The Man Who Whispered (1998)

W. GLENN DUNCAN – Rafferty: Poor Dead Cricket. Gold Medal, paperback original, 1988.

   Poor Dead Cricket is the third in a series about Rafferty, a Dallas private eye. Having propounded many of Lachman’s Laws myself, including the first, “Never read a book with a Swastika on the cover,” which Jon Breen once quoted in EQMM, I was glad to see that Duncan thinks similarly, and he gives many of Rafferty’s Rules, such as (#39) “Smiting the wicked sounds biblical, but mostly it’s just good clean fun.”

   So is this book, about a decent, albeit wise-cracking detective who gets involved in an environmental case similar to the one involving Karen Silkwood. Rafferty does an excellent job in reconstructing the character of Cricket Dawes, who is killed before the book begins, and he sorts out the good and bad people while nicely imparting the flavor of Texas and its speech.

       The Rafferty series —

Rafferty’s Rules (1987)    Film: Cinepix, 1992, as Snake Eater III: His Law.
Last Seen Alive (1987)
Poor Dead Cricket (1988)
Wrong Place, Wrong Time (1989)
Cannon’s Mouth (1990)

Fatal Sisters (1990)    [Winner, Shamus award, Best Paperback Original, 1991]

   Some of Rafferty’s Rules are listed here on the Thrilling Detective website. Here are a couple of good ones:

11. To feel really dumb, be a smart ass once too often.

16. When you can’t tell the bad guys from the good guys, it’s time to get the hell out.

   This is a list of the female licensed PI’s featured in American TV series only. We will save the amateurs such as Murder She Wrote ’s Jessica Fletcher, female spies such as Mrs. Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and female cops such as Samantha Spade in Without a Trace for other lists.

       THE LIST:

HONEY WEST (ABC 1965-1966). Based on a series of books by G.G. Fickling (Gloria and Forrest Fickling), the series starred Anne Francis as licensed PI Honey West. Honey West’s first television appearance was in Burke’s Law episode “Who Killed the Jackpot” (April 21, 1965).

MOST DEADLY GAME (ABC, 1970-1971) Yvette Mimieux played Vanessa Smith, one of three criminologists who worked together solving unusual murders.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 1976-1981) Charlie’s “angels” were female PIs Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson), Jill Munroe (Farah Fawcett), Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack), and Julie Rogers (Tanya Roberts).

REMINGTON STEELE (NBC, 1982-1987) PI Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) created a fictional male boss for her agency to attract clients who thought the idea of a female PI was too feminine. Then one day he walked in…

TUCKER’S WITCH (CBS, 1982-1983) Catherine Hicks as Mrs. Amanda Turker. PI and witch. See: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=6805

PARTNERS IN CRIME (NBC, 1984) PI Raymond Caulfield left his agency to his ex-wives, proper brunette Carole Stanwyck (Lynda Carter) and fun loving blonde Sydney Kovak (Loni Anderson).

ME AND MOM (ABC, 1985) PI Kate Morgan (Lisa Eilbacher) solved crimes with her mom’s (Holland Taylor) help.

LEG WORK (CBS, 1987) Margaret Colin as former assistant district attorney turned PI Claire McCarron, who liked to live beyond her means in New York.

DIAMONDS (CBS Lste Night, 1987-1988) Married couple Christina Towne (Peggy Smithhart) and Mike Devitt (Nicholas Campbell) played PIs on a TV series. The series got cancelled and they got divorced. Later they decided to start their own PI agency.

SYDNEY (CBS, 1990) Sitcom starring Valerie Bertinelli as PI Sydney Kells.

BAYWATCH NIGHTS (Syndicated, 1995-1997) Ryan McBride (Angie Harmon) and Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff) leave the beach to become PIs.

SNOOPS (ABC, 1999) PI agency owned by PI Glenn Hall (Gina Gershon). The staff featured Dana Plant (Paula Marshall), Roberta Young (Paula Jai Parker) and token guy Manny (Danny Nucci).

WILD CARD (Lifetime, 2003-2005) Zoe Busiek (Joey Fisher) teamed up with Dan Lennox (Chris Potter) as PIs for an insurance company. Rae Dawn Chong played PI Sophia Mason in the first season.

VERONICA MARS (UPN 2004-2006) (CW, 2006-2007) Veronica (Kristen Bell) was a student and part time PI in her father’s PI agency.

SEX DECOY (Fox Reality, 2009) Reality series with PI Sandra Hope. She and her operatives entrap cheating husbands for our viewing pleasure.

THE GOOD WIFE (CBS, 2009–present). Law drama. PI Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjab) works for the law firm Lockhart Gardner.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 2011) Remake with new “angels,” Kate Prince (Annie Ilonzeh), Eve French (Minka Kelly), and Abby Sampson (Rachael Taylor).

       PI or Not PI:

KHAN (CBS, 1975) PI Khan (Khigh Dhiegh) was helped by his two college aged children, a son, and his criminologist student daughter Anna (Irene Yah-Ling Sun).

MOONLIGHTING (ABC, 1985-1989) Model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) was horrified to discover she owned the Blue Moon detective agency. The agency employed one PI, David Addison (Bruce Willis). David and Maddie solved crimes and found ways to drive up each other’s blood pressure.

EYE TO EYE (ABC, 1985) PI Oscar Poole (Charles Durning) teams up with ex-partner’s young sexy daughter, Tracy Doyle (Stephanie Faracy).

TOTAL SECURITY (ABC, 1997) High-tech security firm with large staff including Jody Kiplinger (Debrah Farentino) and Ellie Jones (Tracey Needham).

V.I.P. (Syndicated, 1998-2002) Pamela Anderson plays Vallery Irons, the “Remington Steele” of bodyguards. While the public believes Vallery is the world’s greatest bodyguard, it is her staff that does all the work. The staff included ex-spy Tasha Dexter (Molly Culver), Nikki (Natalie Raitano) weapons expert, Kay (Leah Lail) computer expert, and Quick (Shaun Baker) marksman and ex-boxer.

THE HUNTRESS (USA, 2000-2001) Dorothy “Dottie” Thorson (Annette O’Toole) and her daughter, Brandi (Jordana Spiro) ran a bounty hunting business.

EYES (ABC, 2005) Harlan Judd (Tim Daly) ran a high-tech investigation firm. The female members of the staff included Nora Gage (Garcelle Beauvais), Meg Bardo (A.J. Langer), Leslie Town (Laura Leighton), and Trish Agermeyer (Natalie Zea).

   Did I miss anyone?

   I recommend the Thrilling Detective website as a good place to look, especially this page: https://www.thrillingdetective.com/tveyes.html

   Other sources include the usual “suspects”: IMDB.com, TV.com, and Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine, Ninth edition).

MARCIA BIEDERMAN – Post No Bonds. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1988. Penguin, paperback, 1989.

   Marcia Biederman makes her second excursion into our precincts with Post No Bonds. Phil Stark is a bail bondsman in Massachusetts. His wife Grace wants to redo the house, but Phil’s business is not flourishing. Grace’s attempts to improve Phil’s competitive position bring the law down around his neck, so he transfers the business and assets to Grace and tries selling insurance.

   Grace is a no-nonsense, middle-aged type, fully capable of larceny and pulling triggers in a good cause. The good cause shortly presents itself: she bails a drug dealer, who skips, leaving Grace holding a $30,000 bag. Attaching herself to Darcy, the dealer’s market analyst cum bedmate, Grace sets out to get her investment back. An amusing and inventive tale.

Bibliographic Data:   For some reason I thought Grace Stark was a recurring character, but not so.   [Footnote.]   Marcia Biederman wrote only three novels before leaving the field of crime fiction:

       The Makeover. Academy Chicago, 1984.
       Post No Bonds. Scribner, 1988.
       Sismo. Walker, 1993.

   One other online review of Post No Bonds is very positive, saying in part: “Pledging her condominium as collateral for Heywood’s bond is his girlfriend Darcy, who also teams with Grace to bring in Heywood. They make an effective, unorthodox pair of amateur sleuths. […] The incongruity of finding a housewife such as Grace Stark in such places gives the book much of its humor. Armed with a pistol and a bulletproof raincoat, Grace proves to be surprisingly resourceful and tough enough to hold her own. Added fun comes from the interplay between the incompatible Grace and Darcy.”

   Makes one wish that there was another book telling of their adventures.

[Footnote.]   Now I remember. The cover of the hardcover edition states:   “A Mystery Introducing Grace Stark.”