JAMES MELVILLE – The Wages of Zen. Martin Secker & Warburg, Ltd., UK. hardcover, 1979. Methuen, US, hc, 1981. Reprint paperback: Ballantine/Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1985.

   In this first novel, Melville gives us a very human and very Japanese superintendent of police, Tetsuo Otani, in a case involving foreign students at a small Zen temple. Its priest, Okamoto, is a mysterious person who leads his students in za-zen by day and entertains prostitutes by night.

   The students are a mixed bag: male, female, old, young, Irish, English, American, Danish, hippie, conservative. Otani is called in first when it seems that drugs are being used or sold; next there is a murder.

   In the course of the investigation we are introduced to Otani’s wife, Hanae, and their happy home life, and to his associates in the police and even an Ambassador. The depiction of everyday Japanese life is interesting, and Otani’s thought processes as he attempts to deal with these foreigners and their strange ways are enlightening. Seeing our Western ways through Eastern eyes is quite an experience.

   An enjoyable book.

The Superintendent Tetsuo Otani series  [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

       The Wages of Zen (n.) Secker 1979
       The Chrysanthemum Chain (n.) Secker 1980
       A Sort of Samurai (n.) Secker 1981

       The Ninth Netsuke (n.) Secker 1982

       Sayonara, Sweet Amaryllis (n.) Secker 1983
       Death of a Daimyo (n.) Secker 1984
       The Death Ceremony (n.) Secker 1985
       Go Gently, Gaijin (n.) Secker 1986
       Kimono for a Corpse (n.) Secker 1987
       The Reluctant Ronin (n.) Headline 1988
       A Haiku for Hanae (n.) Headline 1989

       The Bogus Buddha (n.) Headline 1990
       The Body Wore Brocade (n.) Little Brown 1992

Excerpted from an online obituary at Zenit.org:

       Ralph McInerny Dies at Age 80

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, JAN. 29, 2010 – Prominent Catholic author, professor and cultural commentator Ralph McInerny died today at the age of 80.

Ralph McInerny was a professor of philosophy and the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame

He was an acknowledged expert on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a prolific author. He penned over two dozen scholarly books, many more scholarly essays, and over 80 novels.

He wrote the popular book series Father Dowling Mysteries, which became a successful television program starring Tom Bosley and Tracy Nelson.

          …

   Here’s a list of his Father Dowling books. There isn’t much doubt that in our world of mystery fiction, these are the ones he’ll be remembered for the longest:

     The Father Dowling series —

1. Her Death of Cold (1977)

2. Bishop as Pawn (1978)

3. The Seventh Station (1977)
4. Lying Three (1979)
5. The Second Vespers (1980)
6. Thicker Than Water (1981)
7. A Loss of Patients (1982)
8. The Grass Widow (1983)
9. Getting a Way with Murder (1984)

10. Rest in Pieces (1985)
11. The Basket Case (1987)
12. Abracadaver(1989)
13. Four on the Floor (1989)
14. Judas Priest (1991)
15. Desert Sinner (1992)
16. Seed of Doubt (1993)

17. A Cardinal Offense (1994)
18. The Tears of Things (1996)
19. Grave Undertakings (2000)
20. Triple Pursuit (2001)
21. Prodigal Father (2002)
22. Last Things (2003)
23. Requiem for a Realtor (2004)
24. Blood Ties (2005)

25. The Prudence of Flesh (2006)
26. The Widow’s Mate (2007)
27. Ash Wednesday (2008)
28. The Wisdom of Father Dowling (2009)
29. Stained Glass (2009)

   As Monica Quill, he wrote 10 books in a series of equally light mysteries solved by Sister Mary Teresa, and under his own name: six books about lawyer Andrew Broom, 13 mysteries with the University of Notre Dame as the background if not an active participant itself, two books with Egidio Manfredi as the leading player, and most recently (2009) two books in his Rosary Chronicle series. Not to mention another long list of standalone novels and story collections, and three anthologies edited, including Murder Most Catholic (2002) with Martin H Greenberg.

   The television series Father Dowling Mysteries of the TV series (and add Mary Wicke to Tom Bosley and Tracy Nelson as one of the continuing stars) was first aired as an NBC made-for-TV movie in 1987 and its weekly run did not begin until 1989. After one season the show moved from NBC to ABC, where it lasted another two season.

   Tom Bosley played Father Dowling, while Tracy Nelson played his assistant in solving crimes, Sister Stephanie ‘Steve’ Oskowski. Also appearing in all 44 episodes was Mary Wicke as Father Dowling’s always fussing housekeeper, Marie.

   The series has not yet been released on commercial DVDs — and why not?

BRAD LATHEM – The Hook #1: The Gilded Canary. Warner, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1981.

   Warner has been publishing books in several of its various new “Men of Action” series for some time now, and for mystery fans, here is the first appearance of the one that might seem the most promising. “The Hook” is Bill Lockwood, a 1930’s private eye who is as tough with his fists as he is energetic in bed.

   There seems to be little else to say. Lockwood’s case, as he investigates the theft of some jewelry from a rich girl singer named Muffy Dearborn, is nothing less than a flimsy excuse for him to jump in and out of a bed or two and beat up a few hoodlums in between with his patented left hook.

   There are a few good moments — once in a while I got a fleeting impression that there was some intelligent thought put into the writing of this mediocre excuse for a book — but they quickly pass.

   On the other hand, the result is probably exactly what Warner had in mind when they commissioned it.

[UPDATE] 01-28-10.   Whew. I seldom put down a book as solidly as this, and this review took me a bit by surprise when it turned up next to be put online. I thought of tempering the tone down a notch or two, but this is what my reaction was some 28 years ago, and (without re-reading the book) I decided at length that I ought to stand by it.

   There were, in all, five in the series. Here, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is a complete list:

          LATHAM, BRAD. Pseudonym of David J. Schow.

    1. The Gilded Canary (n.) Warner, pbo, Sept 1981.
    2. Sight Unseen (n.) Warner, pbo, Sept 1981.
    3. Hate Is Thicker Than Blood (n.) Warner, pbo, Dec 1981.
    4. The Death of Lorenzo Jones (n.) Warner, pbo, 1982.
    5. Corpses in the Cellar (n.) Warner, pbo, June 1982.

MEDORA FIELD – Blood on Her Shoe. The Macmillan Co., hardcover, 1942. Paperback reprint: Popular Library #201, no date stated [1949].

   Despite the fact that her cousin, assumedly a levelheaded chap, calls to tell her not to come to St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, though with no explanation, Ann Carroll goes anyhow.

   Despite the fact she would rather not be there, she attends a ghost-seeking session at a graveyard, where murder occurs.

   Despite the murderer being still at large and she possessing, or so it is presumed, information that might identify the murderer, she visits a lonely farm house alone at dead of night.

   Despite nearly dying from that dunderheadedness, she goes later to the graveyard by herself to gather evidence.

   At the end of the novel, the young man she is in love with has been arrested for being AWOL and has assaulted the M.P.’s. This novel isn’t a matter of had-I-but-known. She does know, and she deserves all she gets, including her future husband.

       Bibliographic Data:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

FIELD, MEDORA. Working byline of Medora Field Perkerson, 1892-1960. Born in Georgia; newspaper columnist in Atlanta as “Marie Rose.”

    Who Killed Aunt Maggie? Macmillan, hc, 1939. Film: Republic, 1940.
    Blood on Her Shoe. Macmillan, hc, 1942. Film: Republic, 1944, as The Girl Who Dared (with Lorna Gray, Peter Cookson).

MICHAEL GRUBER – Night of the Jaguar. Harper, paperback reprint, March 2007. Originally published in hardcover by William Morrow, March 2006. Trade paperback: Harper, November 2009.

   Jimmy Paz, formerly a crackerjack Miami homicide detective, works in his mother’s restaurant, but still consults, on occasion, for the police.

   Now, as a series of horrific murders begin to eliminate the shady members of a cartel that is planning to level a Colombian forest for the highly desirable lumber it contains, he’s drawn into the investigation, which seems to target an improbable giant jaguar as the killer.

   Jimmy’s mother is considered by the native community to have special powers that her son has inherited, a sensitivity to psychic forces that invade his dreams and those of his young daughter, a development that makes the case a very personal one for Jimmy Paz.

   There’s an environmental group with connections to the Colombian timber region, a Colombian shaman, and some very scary drug lords, with even scarier associates they bring in to settle with whoever or whatever is reducing their number very quickly.

   Gruber tends to overwrite, but, just when you think one of his too bright and too articulate characters is never going to shut up, the plot lunges ahead again with some slambang action that almost makes you forget the oases of boredom that crop up from time to time.

   This is the third in a series. I may read the first one, but if it’s as wordy as this one, I’ll probably close the book on the series.

    The Jimmy Paz Series —

        1. Tropic of Night (2003)

        2. Valley of Bones (2005)
        3. Night of the Jaguar (2006)

    Note: Subsequent books by Michael Gruber have not involved Jimmy Paz.

JEREMIAH HEALY – Yesterday’s News. Harper, hardcover, July 1989. Reprint paperback: Pocket; 1st printing, September 1990.

   A lot of people think highly of Boston-based PI John Francis Cuddy, and I wish I were one of them. I find both him and his cases rather bland, although I’m always hopeful whenever I decide to try another of them.

   This one falls into the same category, unfortunately, and it’s difficult to say exactly why. He’s hired by a female newspaper reporter to help her uncover a leak that led to the death of one of her sources — she’s working on a story involving corruption in the small seaport town of Nasharbor.

   She’s dead before he can get there. Suicide, the local police say. Cuddy knows better.

   Thus, a good beginning, a good picturesque locale, and the story seems only to inch on from there. Cuddy goes through the usual motions, gets a break on page 219, follows it up, and solves the case. And once he makes a deal — which he doesn’t call a deal– the whole affair is over, to everybody’s satisfaction, but mine.

   And there in a nutshell, I think maybe I answered my own question.

[UPDATE.] 01-19-10.   I wish I could tell you that I read another one in the series and really enjoyed it, but I can’t. It’s my fault, though, since (as far as I can recall) I haven’t read another in the series, and I ought to.

       The John Francis Cuddy Series:

1. Blunt Darts (1984)

2. The Staked Goat (1986)
3. So Like Sleep (1987)
4. Swan Dive (1988)
5. Yesterday’s News (1989)
6. Right To Die (1991)
7. Shallow Graves (1992)
8. Foursome (1993)

9. Act Of God (1994)
10. Rescue (1995)

11. Invasion Of Privacy (1996)
12. The Only Good Lawyer (1998)
13. Spiral (1999)
14. The Concise Cuddy [Collection] (1998)
15. Cuddy Plus One [Collection] (2003)

FREDERICK C. DAVIS – Another Morgue Heard From. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, 1954. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, Jan 1955. Digest-sized paperback reprint: Bestseller Mystery B192 (abridged), no date stated [1956]. Published in the UK by Victor Gollancz, 1955, hc, as Deadly Bedfellows as by Stephen Ransome.

   In response to an appeal from a boyhood friend, Luke Speare, of the Cole Detective Agency, goes to Lake Haven in an unknown state to investigate he knows not what. Under protest, his boss, Schyler Cole, always uncomfortable outside of New York City and demanding the noisiest hotel room in the small town so he will be able to get to sleep, accompanies him.

   Speare’s friend is running a political campaign and has been receiving anonymous phone calls about some major problem. But is the problem political or personal? The friend won’t say, the friend’s estranged wife lies and tries to get Speare and Cole to return to New York, and then murder occurs.

   At one point Cole says: “Every woman is a special case, all right, and that’s for sure. Everyone of them thinks of herself as an exception, and what’s more she is.” The politician’s wife fits this description, and without her silence two murders and an attempted murder would not have taken place.

   A good investigation here, though not strictly fair play. Most enjoyable is Cole, who heads the two-man agency of which Speare is the brains. Cole would have pulled out of this investigation early on if he hadn’t been afraid he’d lose Spear and have to start doing some work himself.

Bibliographic Data:     [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

         SCHYLER COLE and LUKE SPEARE:

       o The Deadly Miss Ashley (n.) Doubleday 1950.

       o Lilies in Her Garden Grew (n.) Doubleday 1951.

       o Tread Lightly, Angel (n.) Doubleday 1952.
       o Drag the Dark (n.) Doubleday 1953.

       o Another Morgue Heard From (n.) Doubleday 1954.
       o Night Drop (n.) Doubleday 1955.

PAULINE GLEN WINSLOW – The Witch Hill Murder. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1977. UK edition: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1977 (shown). Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, March-April 1978. Trade paperback reprint: St. Martin’s, 1983.

   Winslow has created a religious community, Siderea, complete with charismatic founder, Noah Hightower, and his Army of the Stars, mostly populated by young people. It has taken over Witch Hill Manor on the edge of the little town of Daines Barington, and threatens to overrun the village.

   The youthful leaders, angry because the town counsellors have refused them permission to erect another building on the manor site, see Town Clerk Richard Brewster as their preeminent enemy and send him threatening letters.

   Superintendent Merle Capricorn is called in privately by his old friend, widowed Rose Lavendar, who is engaged to marry Brewster. While he is downplaying her concern, a murder does take place and the Sidereans are the first suspects.

   But nothing is as simple as it seems. A number of people, both from the manor and from the town, are involved in some way. So is Brewster’s dead stepmother, Lucrezia, who has left her mark on his stepsister as well as on their home.

   This is a satisfying book, with considerable depth in its characters and an interesting display of contrasting environments. My only caveat is that Siderea seems all too obviously a takeoff on Scientology, and the sympathetic treatment of Siderea may or may not sit well with readers.

Bibliographic Data: Ms. Winslow has 15 novels listed in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Of these, six are cases solved by her one series detective, Supt. Capricorn, whom I suspect has been forgotten by all by the most dedicated of detective mystery fans:

CAPRICORN, SGT. (Supt.) MERLIN

       o Death of an Angel (n.) Macmillan 1975
       o The Brandenburg Hotel (n.) Macmillan 1976

       o The Witch Hill Murder (n.) Collins 1977
       o Coppergold (n.) Collins 1978
       o The Counsellor Heart (n.) Collins 1980
       o The Rockefeller Gift (n.) Collins 1982

JEREMY LANE – Death to Drumbeat. Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1944. Paperback reprint: Black Knight #17, no date stated [1946].

    Whitney Wheat, Lane’s series character, is a psychiatrist who also detects. In this novel his patient, a publisher and we know what they are like, hears drums, apparently portending his own death. Attempting a cure through a means that I didn’t quite understand when it was originally proposed and still don’t when all has ostensibly been cleared up, Wheat takes his patient to the estate of Humber Jacks.

    An authority on Indian Drums, Jacks is a wealthy man with an income of $25,000 a month but who rents out rooms at $1 a night to tourists and makes sure he gets the takings. He also has an ill-assorted household. After Wheat’s and the publisher’s arrival, murder occurs.

    Since my consciousness was recently raised, I make it a point to avoid novels in which the county attorney is gormless or corrupt, and sometimes both. But it was awhile before the county attorney appeared in Lane’s novel, and I continued reading, though I ignored the politician’s failings — alas, such are the absurdities one encounters in fiction — to find out if Lane was going to make sense of anything in the book.

    He doesn’t. Oh, he explains things; of course, that is not the same thing as making sense.

    For those who are interested in such matters, the narrator of the novel, on an intellectual level with the county attorney, has the same name as the author.

Bibliographic Data: The following checklist is taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

LANE, JEREMY. 1893-1963. Note: Dr. Whitney Wheat appears in those titles indicated with an asterisk (*).

    Like a Man (n.) Washburn 1928.
    The Left Hand of God (n.) Washburn 1929.
    * Death to Drumbeat (n.) Phoenix 1944.
    * Kill Him Tonight (n.) Phoenix 1946.

    * Murder Menagerie (n.) Phoenix 1946.

    * Murder Spoils Everything (n.) Phoenix 1949.

STEVE BERRY – The Charlemagne Pursuit.   Ballantine; paperback reprint, November 2009. Hardcover edition: Ballantine Books, December 2008.

    I don’t think I could make you believe how much in awe I am of authors who can write mystery thrillers that are over 530 pages long, and in one of those new oversized paperback formats to boot.

    I enjoy reading them too – all those characters, both major and minor; plots and subplots – even though they take me almost two weeks of semi-steady reading to get through them.

    Definition: semi-steady. Fifty to sixty pages a night, sometimes nearly a hundred, especially when the end is in sight.

    I did not know that The Charlemagne Pursuit is the fourth of Steve Berry’s books that a fellow named Cotton Malone, a former Justice Department agent, is in, nor did I need to, but it was at least somewhat clear that he had been through the mill like this before. By the mill, I mean finding himself in next to non-stop adventure, although not all of the action involves him. At a full 500 pages’ worth, if it did, he’d be huffing and puffing like all get out when this one ends, and lo and behold, The Charlemagne Pursuit ends exactly where The Paris Vendetta (2009, with a brief preview provided) begins.

    This one involves some history (Charlemagne’s court and some historical documents found relating thereto); some leftover business left over from the World War II and the Cold War (a Nazi submarine landing in Antarctica, a US submarine trapped under the Antarctic ice in 1971); and some current day ideas about the possibility of a master race and civilization that lived in early historic times – before the Romans, before the Greeks, before the Phoenicians, before everybody.

    And the spark that kindles the whole affair: Cotton Malone’s father was one of the men aboard the experimental sub who died in it when it sank, and whose death has been covered up ever since – by whom, and why?

    There are a lot of deaths that occur along the way (but none terribly gory), many of them orchestrated by someone still in power in the US, and the others by a pair of maniac-obsessive sisters whose father and grandfather (a former Nazi) left them an heritage of secrets, but about what they do not know.

    There is also plenty of action, as if I hadn’t said (or hinted at) before. I kind of wish it hadn’t all ended quite so abruptly, but even the longest of 530 page thrillers have to end sometime. If I haven’t made myself clear until now, I wouldn’t have minded if it had been longer.

       The Cotton Malone series —

1. The Templar Legacy (2006)

2. The Alexandria Link (2007)
3. The Venetian Betrayal (2007)
4. The Charlemagne Pursuit (2008)
5. The Paris Vendetta (2009)