As prolific as Edward D. Hoch was — with over 900 short stories to his credit — the movie and TV media have made virtually no use of his output. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) lists just 9 films derived from his works (9/900 = 1 percent). No more eloquent testimony against the obtuseness of Hollywood can be adduced.

1. “Off Season.” The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, May 10, 1965. With John Gavin, Richard Jaeckel, and Tom Drake. Based on Hoch’s story “Winter Run,” this is a nice little crime drama with a nasty twist. This show was the final one of the Hitchcock series.

2. It Takes All Kinds. Film, 1969, based on the story “A Girl Like Cathy.” With Robert Lansing, Vera Miles, and Barry Sullivan. Film critic Leonard Maltin describes it this way: “Fair double cross drama about Miles’ shielding of Lansing when he accidentally kills sailor in a brawl in Australia. Nothing special.”

3. “The Ring with the Red Velvet Ropes.” Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, November 5, 1972. With Gary Lockwood, Joan Van Ark, and Chuck Connors. I’m sure I saw this one but don’t remember a thing about it.

    The TV series McMillan & Wife (1971-77) made good use of Hoch’s stories:

4. “Cop of the Year.” November 19, 1972. With Rock Hudson, Susan Saint James, John Schuck, Nancy Walker, and Edmond O’Brien. Based on “The Leopold Locked Room,” with John Schuck’s character doubling for Captain Leopold. Neat little impossible crime plot, with Schuck accused of murdering his ex-wife.

5. “Free Fall to Terror.” November 11, 1973. Guest stars: Edward Andrews, Tom Bosley, Barbara Feldon, John Fiedler, Dick Haymes, James Olson, and Barbara Rhoades. Based on one of Hoch’s best stories (“The Long Way Down”), a businessman evidently crashes through a plate glass window, disappears in mid-air, and hits the ground — three hours later.

6. “The Man without a Face.” January 6, 1974. Guest stars: Dana Wynter, Nehemiah Persoff, Stephen McNally, Donna Douglas, and Steve Forrest. Cold War espionage with a mystery slant.

    The French produced a mini-series in the mid-’70s:

7. Nick Verlaine ou Comment voler la Tour Eiffel. Five episodes, France, July-August 1976. If anybody knows anything about this production, please inform us.

   The British horror/fantasy series Tales of the Unexpected used a couple of Hoch’s stories as inspiration:

8. “The Man at the Top.” June 14, 1980. Introducer: Roald Dahl. With Peter Firth, Rachel Davies, and Dallas Cavell.

9. “The Vorpal Blade.” May 28, 1983. With Peter Cushing, Anthony Higgins, John Bailey, and Andrew Bicknell.

    — and, unless the IMDb list is woefully incomplete, that’s the extent of the film industry’s use of Edward D. Hoch’s stories.

PATRICK BUCHANAN – A Murder of Crows. Stein & Day, hardcover, 1970; reprint paperback, 1985. Also: Pyramid N2743, paperback, 1972.

   An intriguing title and a riveting first chapter entice the reader who stands hesitating at the paperback book rack. Unfortunately for the buyer, the rest of the book does not live up to the beginning.

   Ben Shock and Charity Tucker, private investigators without credentials, are asked by an old friend of Charity’s, Subrinea Brown, to look into the sudden local hostility to her father’s small racetrack in the making. The antagonism has gone so far as to frighten Colonel Brown into a heart attack.

   Subrinea’s fiance, Loyal Boone, is also trying to find out what changed public support into active hostility. Could it be the Unknown Tongues, a mountain sect with a spellbinding blind preacher? Might the crooked local politicians have a more profitable scheme in mind? Do Loyal’s father and his Mexican wife, with their money-making snake farm, have any connection with the continuing and determined efforts to get Subrinea and her father out?

   People die, their bodies burned, their clothes not even singed. Are the Unknown Tongues invoking back-country magic? Does Uncle Uglybird, the “yarb doctor” know any of the answers? Uncle Uglybird is a 14-carat-gold character, but he’s not worth the price of admission.

   The book is stiff, the people don’t come alive, mayhem accumulates, and at the end the two detectives ride off to the next case scarcely touched emotionally by the devastation they left behind.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   “Patrick Buchanan” was the joint pen name of Edwin Corley & Jack Murphy. Corley’s Wikipedia page describes Charity Tucker as “a tall, blonde, intelligent television reporter, who teamed with private investigator Ben Shock to investigate various murders.”

       The Ben Shock & Charity Tucker series —

A Murder of Crows. Stein & Day, 1970.
A Parliament of Owls. Stein & Day, 1971.

A Requiem of Sharks. Dodd Mead, 1973.
A Sounder of Swine. Dodd Mead, 1974.

EDWARD WRIGHT – Clea’s Moon. G. P. Putnam’s Sons; hardcover, April 2003. Berkley, paperback, 2004. Orion, UK, hardcover, 2003.

   This retro-mystery set in late-1940s Los Angeles, a first novel by California-based writer, seems to have been published first in Great Britain, since it’s already won a Silver Dagger award given by that country’s Crime Writers’ Association.

   It has a lot of the right ingredients going for it — starting with its former B-western movie star leading character, John Ray Horn — but as I’m sure I needn’t remind you, sometimes the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

   The beginning is solid enough. Recently released from prison for a crime he did commit, no matter how justified, John Ray has been banned from the studios and has been forced to go to work as an enforcer for his former co-star, Joseph Mad Crow, an Indian who’s now the owner of a thriving casino.

   The roles have been switched — a nice touch. John Ray is no longer the hero he once was, either on the screen as “Sierra Lane,” or in real life.

   In fact, until he learns that his former stepdaughter has run away and disappeared, and he’s the one person who has the best chance of finding her, his life, in all likelihood, would have continued to slip away. Clea and her best friend Addie are girls on the verge of becoming women, and here lies a principal part of the puzzle that John Ray finds himself putting back together.

   There is an analogy to be found here. The general Los Angeles area is a city on the verge of becoming a metropolis, a change that John Ray sees coming and finds lacking. Open space is disappearing, and housing projects are moving in.

   All well and good. What’s more, some of the dialogue is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, whose name you might be thinking right about now, a comparison not to be made lightly, and on occasion the resemblance is remarkable. The nightclub scenes are excellent, bringing pictures to mind some of the best of the film fare of the forties.

   So what’s the problem? This is indeed Chandler country, strongly revisited, or at least it’s tiptoeing around it. But while John Ray is stalwart and strong, hard-boiled he’s not, and some of the decisions he makes are — well, let’s say they’re his own.

   I also found the underlying theme of child pornography something less than savory. That’s primarily a personal reaction, I should add, but in terms of entertainment value, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a large empty hole I found hard to overcome.

   The biggest disappointment, though, was, overall, the story’s amiable but eventual predictability, a trait in which Mr. Chandler, even without having the advantage of going first, never indulged. It’s a workmanlike effort, but when you read it — and if you’ve read this far, you definitely should — you’ll see what I mean.

PostScript:   And in closing, let me ask you this. In almost every novel like this, why is it that everyone who smokes, lights up a Lucky?

       The John Ray Horn series —

1. Clea’s Moon (2003)
2. While I Disappear (2004)    [Shamus Award, Best Novel winner, 2005]

3. Red Sky Lament (2006)     [Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award, UK, 2006]

[UPDATE] 11-28-11.   A number of people I know, including Jeff Meyerson, who stops by here every so often, liked this book a lot more than I did. Even more telling, perhaps, Wright has won several awards for this series. Maybe I’m wrong — or I was, eight years ago. I dunno. Maybe I should put this at the top of my To Be Read Again list.

        #8. CANDID JONES, by Richard Sale.

   The series discussed this time is the Candid Jones series, created by Richard B. Sale and running from 1937-41. Sale had five other series running in Detective Fiction Weekly at one time or another: Daffy Dill, Captain McGrail, Casey Mason, John the Cobra, and Owl-Eye Venner. So Sale’s stories, from this evidence, seem to have been popular with the readers.

   The Daffy Dill and Candid Jones stories often were given covers for their issues. The very first Candid Jones story rated a special cover featuring Jones himself with his camera and gun. Daffy Dill describes Candid Jones in a later story: “He was a pretty big fellow, kind of homely, his face filled with freckles, his hair shiny as bright copper. … He had a strong jaw and clean eyes. … There was an air about him that meant Business with a capital B.” (Flash!)

   The stories give a little background about Candid Jones and how he wound up as a photographer. His real first name is Terrence, and the Candid nickname was given to him because of his candid personality. He is a hardboiled character, and had quite a fearsome reputation as an investigator.

   Jones started out being an investigator for an unnamed private detective firm, then after a year of learning the ropes, got a job with the Apex Insurance Company, on “the gumshoe trail of stolen gems and insurance chiselers.” (Make Way for a Dagger)

   Photography was his hobby at that time, and he began selling some of his pictures. He eventually decided to make a business of his hobby and went into business for himself, after resigning in 1932 from his insurance job of thirteen years. His background as an investigator helps him when he gets involved in mysteries, and his success brings more cases.

   His beginnings as a private investigator are seen in a flashback in the story “One Herring — Very Red”, in which he investigates the murder of a friend and mentor of his from that time period. At the end of this story he agrees to work for Apex Insurance Company on special assignments, otherwise he works on his photography jobs. And in another story, we learn of a previous marriage when he investigates a homicide and clears his ex-wife.

   Regarding his hardboiled reputation, Jones admits that maybe he was: “I was never afraid of any man, and I always figured that if a guy was going to get rough with you, the best thing to do was to get rough with him first.” (Long Shot) He also notes that “Bluff is great stuff and so is a front. It goes a long way.” (Murder on the Film)

   However, he noted, eventually you have to use your fists or bullets if it becomes necessary. Another of Sales’ characters, on the other hand, Daffy Dill, is not really a hardboiled character but always carries a gun because he deals with criminals and crimes regularly. Dill is a much easier going person.

   Many series have a policeman as friend or antagonist to the main character, and this series has one. Inspector Harry Rentano is a friend of Candid Jones, and sometimes invites him along on his official investigations. Rentano is also available for any assistance Candid Jones may need on investigations he starts.

   Rentano first met Candid Jones during the time Jones worked as an insurance investigator. He used to be on the police Bomb Squad, and worked on some Mafia cases. He is currently head of the Homicide bureau, and was known as a policeman more interested in knowing the truth about a case than in making an important arrest to impress people. He is married with four children.

   The third member of the cast in the stories is Jones’ girlfriend, Claire Crossman. She is a model from the Frazier Agency, “and outside of being my favorite model, she’s about my favorite girl-friend too.” (Banshee) She often does not appear in a very prominent role in the stories, unlike Dinah Mason in the Daffy Dill series.

   Candid Jones has two items he seems to carry with him everywhere. One is a camera, often a Leica, Model G. The other is his gun, a German 9mm Luger. He does not say where he picked up this weapon, but it is possible he is a war veteran.

   One occasion where Jones used a different camera is in the story “You Can’t Print That!” where he takes an entire strip of twenty-four exposures with a robot camera that automatically takes the photographs and advances the film for the next exposure. It came in handy for the murder he witnessed, and left his other hand free to use his gun on the murderer.

   Jones uses his gun frequently in the stories, and in his own words, “I’ve got to admit I never had any scruples about killing a man. … I don’t like to kill … But when it’s my life against a rat’s.” (Murder on the Film) His camera saved his life on one occasion, when a bullet struck it rather than him. (The Big Top Murders)

   To get an idea of the sort of crimes that Candid Jones becomes involved in investigating, a short survey of some of the stories is in order. “Long Shot”, the first story, involves an attempt to fix a horse race. It is a very violent story, and probably the most hardboiled of the series.

   In “You Can’t Print That!” Jones witnesses a murder that is connected to the trial of a racketeer, and takes some photographs for his first newspaper job. In “Backstage” Jones makes a bet with Inspector Rentano that he can catch a double murderer by the next day. This one takes place at the local zoological park.

   In “Banshee” Inspector Rentano asks Jones for help on the question of a banshee at the city aquarium, and gets involved with some criminals. In “Make Way for a Dagger” Inspector Rentano asks Jones along on a murder investigation aboard a yacht in the Hudson River, where the weapon is a harpoon.

   In two of the stories Daffy Dill costars with Candid Jones: “Flash!” and “Death of a Glamor Girl.” Both characters appeared on the cover of “Flash!”, thus promoting both series. Daffy Dill also makes a brief appearance in “You Can’t Print That!”

   At the time of the story “You Can’t Print That!” Jones had acquired a staff photographer position on the Chronicle newspaper at the salary of a thousand dollars a month, but he stated in “Banshee” that he had given up that position because there was “Too much of a sameness. I was getting rich without working. I’m on my own again.”

   Photographs play an important part in the stories in the series, often revealing clues and serving as evidence of crimes. Jones’ photograph studio is on Fifth near Forty-Fifth Street. The studio is evidently well-equipped, having been set up for modeling sessions that Jones photographs, plus an excellent darkroom for developing film.

   Jones works not only in black-and-white film but also does color prints, which is “a technical sort of job, involving separation of color values in the negatives and then dyes.” (Backstage)

   There was an extended gap between the last two stories. The last story, “Delayed Action” in 1941, explained that some changes had taken place since the previous group of stories. Jones noted that it had been almost a year since he had been involved in any crime cases, and he intended to continue that way.

   However, in this story he becomes involved in a crime case, and willingly so. He also notes that Claire Crossman has married someone else, so that romance is off. Candid Jones’ ex-wife plays a part in the story, and he protects her from the criminals. Inspector Rentano is mentioned in this story, but does not appear in it.

   The series is worthy of being reprinted. Although not quite as numerous and popular as the Daffy Dill series, it is a good hardboiled detective series worth reading. One advantage to writing these series overviews is being able to reread the stories, especially the better ones like Candid Jones.

      The Candid Jones series by Richard Sale:

Long Shot     January 9, 1937
Neat But Not Gaudy     January 30, 1937
Murder on the Film     April 3, 1937
One Herring — Very Red     May 1, 1937
Flash!     May 29, 1937
The Camera Kills     July 31, 1937
You Can’t Print That!     August 21, 1937
Gaff!     October 30, 1937
The Big Top Murders     November 13, 1937
Back Stage     January 15, 1938
Banshee     April 9, 1938
Make Way for a Dagger     August 27, 1938
Pictures in the Dark     December 10, 1938
Torio Had a Friend     March 25, 1939
Death of a Glamor Girl     April 8, 1939
The Mother Goose Murders     May 27, 1939

Tip Your Hat     August 26, 1939
Someday I’ll Get You     November 18, 1939
Delayed Action     June 14, 1941

    Previously in this series:

1. SHAMUS MAGUIRE, by Stanley Day.
2. HAPPY McGONIGLE, by Paul Allenby.
3. ARTY BEELE, by Ruth & Alexander Wilson.
4. COLIN HAIG, by H. Bedford-Jones.
5. SECRET AGENT GEORGE DEVRITE, by Tom Curry.
6. BATTLE McKIM, by Edward Parrish Ware.
7. TUG NORTON by Edward Parrish Ware.

ELIZABETH LEMARCHAND – Who Goes Home? Walker, US, hardcover, 1987. No US paperback edition. UK edition: Piatkus, hardcover, 1986.

   Vacationing Chief Superintendent Tom Pollard and his wife go hiking through the Crownmoor District and, while resting near a dilapidated farmhouse, see it visited by a young man who, finding no one home, soon leaves.

   The next night, the house is heavily damaged by a fire of suspicious origin. Shortly afterward, someone is killed in a hit-and-run accident, carrying drugs and a map to the farmhouse. Police, digging through the rubble for more information, discover a twenty-year-dead skeleton, and Scotland Yard — meaning Pollard and his assistant Inspector Toye — is called in.

   The trouble with this one, besides the fact that none of the characters show any sign of life, is that I guessed the identity of the skeleton’s original owner almost as soon as it was dug up. Add to this massive doses of coincidence used to help Pollard solve the case, and you have what Mystery Aficionados refer to as a Real Clunkeroo.

   ELIZABETH LEMARCHAND.   1906-2000.   Series Character: Insp./Supt. Tom Pollard in all.

* Death of an Old Girl, 1967.
* The Affacombe Affair, 1968.

* Alibi for a Corpse, 1969.
* Death on Doomsday, 1971.
* Cyanide with Compliments, 1972.
* Let or Hindrance, 1973.
* Buried in the Past, 1974.

* Step in the Dark, 1976.
* Unhappy Returns , 1977.
* Suddenly While Gardening, 1978.
* Change for the Worse, 1980.

* Nothing to Do with the Case, 1981.
* Troubled Waters, 1982.
* The Wheel Turns, 1983.
* Light Through Glass, 1984.
* Who Goes Home?, 1986.
* The Glade Manor Murder, 1988.

Previously on this blog:   Suddenly While Gardening (reviewed by Steve Lewis)

CHARLES FINCH – A Stranger in Mayfair. St. Martin’s/Minotaur Press, hardcover, November 2010; trade paperback, July 2011.

Genre:   Historical mystery. Leading character:  Charles Lenox; 4th in series. Setting:   London, England-Victorian era.

First Sentence:   “Clara, who is that gentleman?”

   Charles Lenox has, at forty, entered a new phase in his life. He is newly married to Lady Jane, for years his best friend and neighbor, and he is newly elected to Parliament’s House of Commons.

   The second of these events necessitates spending less time doing detective work — but not yet. A colleague in Parliament, Ludovic Starling, has asked Lenox to investigate the murder of one of his footman.

   As Lenox, and his protégée Dallington, move forward in the investigation, they are met with resistance not only from Scotland Yard but from Starling, who asks them to give up the case. An attack on Lenox stiffens his resolve to find the killer.

   Finch has become a favorite of mine and this book, once again, demonstrates why as there were so many levels on which I enjoyed this book.

   We are introduced to Lenox and Lady Jane through a conversation held by others, via a prologue which actually works as it allows their back story to be told without it seeming forced or cumbersome. Each of the characters are fully drawn with very brief exposition that brings them to life.

   One thing by which I am very impressed is how, with each book in the series, the characters lives individually grow and develop. This impacts not only each character but the relationships amongst them. Relationships are something Finch does extremely well, including the awkwardness of a newly married couple and a man making a major change in his career.

   Mr. Finch’s knowledge of Victorian England is evident in every page and yet, again, so seamlessly incorporated into the plot that it is informative rather than intrusive. Through Lenox’s work in Parliament, we learn the concerns of the period and meet historical figures in their proper settings and appropriate roles. Through the birth of a child, we observe the customs and etiquette of the time.

   Although Finch is American, he studied at Oxford, now lives in the UK and delightfully conveys British humor and understatement, “For an Englishman is was a strange time to be in France….first because of Napoleon’s rather uncouth attempt to conquer Europe…” The dialogue has a natural flow but also reflects the speech of the time.

   Neither of the above is meant to devalue the plot. The mystery is intriguing, and full of effective twists. I like that solution is no more obvious to Lenox than to us, the reader. We are presented with numerous possibilities, each dismissed, until the final resolution.

   Might I have figured it out? Perhaps; but the story involved me to the point where I wasn’t deliberately trying.

   The only reason I did not rate the book as “excellent” was the use of portents which were completely unnecessary. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it with the proviso suggestion of starting the series at the beginning.

Rating:   VG Plus.

      The Charles Lenox Mysteries —

1. A Beautiful Blue Death (2007)
2. The September Society (2008)

3. The Fleet Street Murders (2009)
4. A Stranger in Mayfair (2010)
5. A Burial at Sea (2011)

L. L. ENGER – Swing. Pocket; paperback original; 1st printing, August 1991.

   This is the second adventure of Gun Pedersen, a former baseball slugger who’s now a righter of wrongs, a Travis McGee type of non-PI, the kind of guy who you’d want on your side, one who sticks up for his friends. I haven’t read the first one, Comeback, but I have a copy, and I’m sure I’ll dig it out and read it one of these days.

   Pedersen’s home is Minnesota now, and the scene makes several dramatic changes back and forth between the cold, ice-covered lakes of the North Country and the sunny climes of Florida, where a former teammate is trying to hang on in the Senior League.

   Moses Gates is his name, and there’s always been a connection in his past with another ballplayer who once committed suicide (by hanging) during spring training. Now a reporter looking into the story is also dead, again by hanging, and Moses’ alibi looks awfully shaky.

   This is a story far larger than life, and heads off in directions Gun hardly expects when he begins his crusade. (I didn’t expect them either, and I’m still a little amazed by it all.) There is far more action (of an extremely violent sort) than there is detection, but if that’s what you’re looking for, this is a story that will certainly get your blood flowing just that much more quickly.

   For what it’s worth, though, I also found it a little depressing, in tone, in substance, and in style. (That’s a personal reaction, I hope you realize, and not necessarily a critical comment.)

       Bibliographic Data:

L. L. ENGER. Pseudonym of Leif & Lin Enger [brothers]. Series character: Gun Pedersen in all.

    1. Comeback. Pocket Books, pb, 1990. [Nominated for an Edgar.]

    2. Swing. Pocket Books, pb, 1991.
    3. Strike. Pocket Books, pb, 1992.
    4. Sacrifice. Pocket Books, pb, 1993.

    5. The Sinner’s League. Penzler Books, hc, 1994.

   I am reprinting this from Fatal Kiss #13 (May 1980), the same issue in which I reported the results of the first annual Top Ten Tec Poll.

   The poll consisted of my listing ten authors whose last names began with either the letter A or B, then requesting respondees to rate them on a scale from 1 to 10. If you were not familiar with an author, then one of three categories were to have applied:

       A = I never intend to read this author
       B = I’d like to read this author but I haven’t yet
       C = I’ve never heard of this author [or no vote]

   There were 42 responses, including my own, from mystery readers scattered all over the world. Here are the results:

Author // Numerical Responses // Average // A — B — C

    Eric Ambler     35     6.83     2 — 3 — 2

    Nicholas Blake     26     6.65     3 — 7 — 6

    Margery Allingham     32     6.00     2 — 6 — 2

    Lawrence Block     23     5.89     1 — 11 — 7

    Earl Derr Biggers     30     5.67     6 — 3 — 3

    Charlotte Armstrong     28     5.29     5 — 6 — 3

    Edgar Box     22     5.28     4 — 11 — 5

    George Bagby     24     4.44     6 — 9 — 3

    Edward S. Aarons     23     4.23     11 — 5 — 3

    Carter Brown     24     3.79     10 — 5 — 3

   One small surprise was the healthy showing of Lawrence Block, obviously not familiar to many people in 1980, but those who’d read him liked what they’d seen. [In 1980, Block had written a sizable list of paperback originals, the first three Matt Scudder books, and the first two “Burglar” novels.]

   As I said at the time, I expected Ambler and Blake to do well, and they did. Aarons and Carter Brown did not do well with female voters, while Allingham and Charlotte Armstrong did not do as well with most male readers. And yes, I knew that Edgar Box was really Gore Vidal.

   Since response was so high, I thought at the time that it was worth doing again. I’ll list the authors I suggested for the next poll, all of whose last names began with “C.” I don’t know if I have the issue in which the results were tabulated, or even if they ever were. I’ll have to do some searching in the garage where most of my back issues are stored.

   If you’d care to record your opinions on the following authors, either in the Comments or by emailing me directly, feel free to do so:

Victor Canning, John Dickson Carr, M. E. Chaber, Raymond Chandler, Leslie Charteris, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Manning Coles, James Hadley Chase, Tucker Coe, George Harmon Coxe, Frances Crane, John Creasey, Edmund Crispin, Freeman Wills Croft, Ursula Curtiss.

PAUL KEMPRECOS – Neptune’s Eye. Bantam, paperback original, September 1991.

   This is a long book, over 300 pages of small print, and so even at a $4.50 cover price, you’re getting your money’s worth. It’s also a private eye novel, and while I like PI novels almost more than any other kind of detective story, I think that 300 pages of small print is too long. While PI stories might not need to be short, they do need to be snappy, and after 300 pages I found that this one had long since lost its snap.

   It is the second adventure for Aristotle “Soc” Socarides, the first being Cool Blue Tomb, published a few months before, also by Bantam. It begins as a missing daughter caper, but quickly heads off in several directions: first, as a murder mystery; then as an industrial espionage story involving a notorious arms dealer and a large Cape Cod scientific community; as a World War II Nazi novel; and as a deep-sea diving adventure.

   While all this is going on, Socarides must also locate his sister, who has run away from home. In a certain sense, I disapprove of this trend. Hercule Poirot never had to work on a case for his mother. Sam Spade never had to work on a case for his mother. Perry Mason never had to work on a case for his mother. (The list goes on.)

   Or in other words, everything is in here except for the stopper for the kitchen sink. Socarides is also a wise mouth when it comes to cops who have an attitude toward PI’s who have wise mouths and seem to barge in on murder cases where they’re not wanted. I’ve read this before, and so have you.

   There are also times in the tale when Socarides’ actions are also very dumb, and that he is alive to tell the story when it’s over came as quite a surprise to me. The murder mystery has been solved at a point when there are still fifty pages to go, which are then used to clear up all the other loose ends. Neatly enough, I should add, but by that time I’m afraid I just didn’t care enough.

Rating:   C.

       The Aristotle “Soc” Socarides series —

1. Cool Blue Tomb (1991)     [Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel]

2. Neptune’s Eye (1991)
3. Death in Deep Water (1992)

4. Feeding Frenzy (1993)
5. Bluefin Blues (1997)

   Since 1999 Paul Kemprecos has been the co-author of several novels in Clive Cussler’s “NUMA Files” series. At least the first two books of his own series are hard to find, and in nice condition have become rather pricey (in the $20 to $30 range).

   From the introduction:

    “Davis Dresser (1904-1977) was an American writer best known for the Michael Shayne mystery series, written under the pseudonym of Brett Halliday. […]

    “Besides writing the Michael Shayne series, Dresser was also prolific as a western writer [including many of the “Powder Valley” series as Peter Field] and had cut his teeth writing ‘love novels’ for the lending library publishers of the 1930s. […]

    “[This] is an attempt to draw together, in one place, all of Davis Dresser’s books and pseudonyms, in as many editions as possible, and to explicate the attributions of the more obscure pseudonyms.”

   Check it out here:

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/KRJ/Davis_Dresser_Bibliography.pdf