SUZANNE BLANC – The Green Stone. Carroll & Graf, reprint paperback, 1984. Previous editions: Harper & Brothers, hc, 1961. Detective Book Club, hc, 3-in-1 edition, February 1962. Lancer, pb, 1966.

    “Perhaps it is not prophecy at all but the belief in prophecy that fulfills it…” and destiny that brings certain people together in a given place, at a given time. For Mr. and Mrs. Randall, their destiny is to be murdered on a Mexican highway by bandits. And for Mrs. Randall’s emerald ring to be responsible for the danger and near death of Jessie Prewitt and ruin for Luis Pérez.

    Jessie Prewitt comes to Mexico to flee the painful memories of her broken marriage. Luis Pérez, a tourist guide, hankers after a life of ease and wealth — and feels the possibility brush his fingertips when the beautiful emerald comes into his possession.

    As quickly, police suspicion also brushes against Pérez, and he passes the gem onto Jessie (without her knowledge) when the police come to question him. Pérez intends to reclaim the jewel later — no matter what danger or force results.

    As pressure builds for the police to find the emerald and solve the Randalls’ murder, so does the tension and suspense surrounding Pérez’ determination to regain the gem, and Jessie’s unwitting thwarting of his aim.

    Told from the omniscient viewpoint, Suzanne Blanc creates very human characters, and allows the reader to understand their frustrations, anxieties and pleasures. Like a finely tuned piece of machinery, all the parts of this book work together in unison. The result is an exquisite “gem” of a story — seemingly plain and simple, but full of depth and color when held to the light.

    Don’t neglect this one!

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

        BLANC, SUZANNE. Ca. 1915-1999

    The Green Stone (n.) Harper 1961 [Insp. Miguel Menendes]   Edgar winner: Best First Mystery, 1962.
    The Yellow Villa (n.) Doubleday 1964 [Insp. Miguel Menendes]
    The Rose Window (n.) Doubleday 1967 [Insp. Miguel Menendes]

    The Sea Troll (n.) Doubleday 1969

    Mixing genres is a risky enterprise, and the works I’ll be reviewing in this series blend mystery and science fiction/fantasy with mixed results.

1.)   RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

Ace, paperback original; 1st printing, September 1981.

   Randall Garrett has been writing about Lord Darcy, Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, since 1964. Lord Darcy investigates impossible crimes but the twist is the setting of the stories: an alternate world where magic works while science is looked upon with suspicion.

   The “magic” is actually psi powers developed by the Laws of Magic. The semi-medieval, twentieth-century civilization Garrett develops is convincing both for the primitive science the aristocratic society scorns and for the sophisticated magic most characters possess.

   The interesting point here is that Lord Darcy possesses no psi powers — for that he relies on his sorcerous assistant, Sean O’Lochlainn. Instead, Lord Darcy uses induction and deduction to pull off amazing Sherlockian solutions to the incredible puzzles Garrett presents him with.

   Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of four novelettes: “A Matter of Gravity,” “The Ipswich Phial,” “The Sixteen Keys,” and “The Napoli Express.”

   In “A Matter of Gravity,” Lord Darcy solves a locked-room murder with a double twist ending. In “The Ipswich Phial,” Lord Darcy becomes involved in an espionage mission featuring a beautiful Polish spy, a murdered British agent, and a missing secret weapon. This is the best story in the volume.

    “The Sixteen Keys” presents the puzzle of a dead man in a house with sixteen locked doors. And “The Napoli Express” has more deception than Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

   I highly recommend Lord Darcy Investigates and the other Lord Darcy volumes, Too Many Magicians (Doubleday, 1967; Ace 1981), a novel, and Murder and Magic (Ace, 1979, 1981), a collection of four more novelettes.

      The Lord Darcy series —

* Randall Garrett:

     Too Many Magicians (n.) Doubleday, hc, 1967.
     Murder and Magic (co) Ace, pbo, 1979.

     Lord Darcy Investigates (co) Ace, pbo, 1981.
     Lord Darcy (co) SFBC, 1983. [A omnibus edition containing all of the above plus additional short stories.]

* Michael J. Kurland:

     Ten Little Wizards (n.) Ace, pbo, 1988.

     A Study in Sorcery (n.) Ace, pbo, 1989.

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Kill Zone. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Fawcett, 1986.

   In Kill Zone, Loren Estleman, who is best known for his rough-and-tumble, Chandleresque private-eye novels, introduces Peter Macklin, “efficiency expert” — a euphemism for hit man.

   Macklin is the toughest character — hero or antihero — to arrive in crime fiction since Richard Stark’s Parker; and Estleman’ s prose the hardest-boiled since the days of Paul Cain and Cap Shaw’s Black Mask. Macklin and Estleman, in fact, would probably have been too grimly realistic even for the pioneering Shaw and his magazine.

   A terrorist group takes control of a Lake Erie excursion boat with 800 passengers, rigging it as a floating bomb. They demand the release of three prisoners within ten days. Michael Boniface, the head of the Detroit mob, offers his assistance from his prison cell in return for parole, but it is not until the FBI discovers that one of the passengers on the boat is a cabinet member’s daughter that they take him up on it.

   Boniface’s assistance is in the form of his top “efficiency expert,” Peter Macklin. Macklin tries to concentrate on the business at hand while dealing with an alcoholic wife, the knowledge that someone close to him has betrayed him, and the fact that he is being stalked by a killer working for Charles Maggiore, acting head of the mob, who does not want Boniface to get out of prison.

   Estleman takes an expertise previously displayed in PI and western novels (one of his westerns, Aces and Eights, won the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award for Best Novel of 1982) and in applying it to a different type of novel has once again scored high marks.

   Fans of hard-boiled fiction won’t want to miss it — or subsequent Peter Macklin titles: Kill Zone is the first of at least three.

         ———
   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.

    Bibliographic Data: There was a long delay between the first three and the fourth and fifth:

       The Peter Macklin series:

Kill Zone (1984)
Roses Are Dead (1985)
Any Man’s Death (1986)

Something Borrowed, Something Black (2002)
Little Black Dress (2005)

LOREN D. ESTLEMAN – Angel Eyes. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1981. Paperback reprints: Pinnacle, 1984; Fawcett Crest, 1987; Ibooks, 2000.

   As is the case with all good private eyes, Amos Walker is a man with an unswerving code of honor. When his client, a girl singer with unforgettable eyes, disappears, as she had predicted she would, shaking him from the case is as easy as sneaking a steak from a hungry dog.

   The scene is Detroit, and union politics combine with and merge inevitably into the background of a city in slow decay. To perk things up and to keep the case moving, Estleman is a current master of the well-tuned metaphor. He is also better at mood than he is at plot, and there is enough plot in the second half of the story to choke a full-grown horse.

   The longer the trail becomes, the more it insists on turning incestuously back upon itself. Not surprisingly, there are also plenty of guns to go around.

Editorial Comment: This is the second book in Loren Estleman’s “Amos Walker” series. How many of the PI series being written when he began are still being written today? That’s “enough said” to say it all.

   The Amos Walker series:

Motor City Blue (1980)

Angel Eyes (1981)
The Midnight Man (1982)
The Glass Highway (1983)

Sugartown (1984)
Every Brilliant Eye (1985)
Lady Yesterday (1987)

Downriver (1988)
General Murders: Ten Amos Walker Mysteries (1988)
Silent Thunder (1989)

Sweet Women Lie (1990)
Never Street (1996)
The Witchfinder (1998)
The Hours of the Virgin (1999)

A Smile on the Face of the Tiger (2000)
Sinister Heights (2002)
Poison Blonde (2003)
Retro (2004)
Nicotine Kiss (2006)

American Detective (2007)
The Left-Handed Dollar (2010)

GREGORY DEAN – Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, 1939; Detective Novel Classic No. 17, no date stated [1943].

   There are several things to be sought in a mystery novel. Style, to this reader, is foremost. When the author on page one writes, “He trajected his mind back,” it is a pointer that style will not be found.

   Characterization comes next, and the author fails here, too.

   Finally — though to many readers the most important aspect of a book — comes plot. In this area Dean gives good value for the money, particularly if you actually paid a Quarter for the reprint.

   A good, kindly, thoughtful rich man — most unusual in mystery novels — is murdered in a locked room. Although the murderer’s intent was to have the man’s death appear to be suicide, the murderer botched this aspect rather badly. The rich man was supposed to appear to have shot himself through his blanket while in bed, but there are no powder marks on the blanket.

   The window locks have been wiped clean of fingerprints, as has the safe in the room. Dirty work has obviously been afoot.

   Fourth Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon is the investigator here. It is he who deduces murder rather than suicide. He also figures out early on how and who. He doesn’t reveal it, thus being responsible for another murder. At the end of the novel when he finds out why, all is belatedly revealed.

   Unfortunately, the explanation for the murder in the locked room, and a later appearance of the murderer there — while the room again is locked and a policemen is in it — is rather lame.

   This novel will be of interest only to those who collect locked-room puzzles. It also may be of interest to another type of collector, but reviewers’ rules do not allow that information to be divulged.

   (If anyone is curious about the title, which is the only reason I bought the book, the murdered man lived in what was called “the house on stilts,” a dwelling apparently constructed on a concrete arch. I say “apparently” because this is not mentioned in the novel; it is information provided by the paperback publisher.)

Bibliographic Data: From Bill’s review, it is difficult to imagine that there were additional cases in Commissioner Simon’s career, but it is true. There were two others, as a quick reference to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, will immediately show:

DEAN, GREGORY. Pseudonym of Jacob D. Posner, 1883-?
      The Case of Marie Corwin. Covici Friede, hc, 1933. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      The Case of the Fifth Key. Covici Friede, hc, 1934. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, hc, 1939. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]

E. X. FERRARS – Murder of a Suicide. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1941. Paperback reprint: Curtis Books, no date. British edition: Hodder & Stoughton, 1941, as Death in Botanist’s Bay, as by Elizabeth Ferrars (her standard byline in the UK).

   Edgar Prees, director of the Botanical Gardens In Asslington, is a man of such regular habits that when he is two hours late coming home one evening his daughter becomes quite alarmed. And rightly so, for Prees has, or so It seems, tried to commit suicide by trying to throw himself off a cliff.

   He is stopped, but the next morning, even as he still seems to be thinking about killing himself, he is murdered. Or does he kill himself?

   Officially, Inspector Tingey investigates. Tingey “liked simple virtues and was sympathetic to a few simple vices. He liked to be thought a simple man who believed what people told him.”

   Unofficially, Toby Dyke and his rather odd companion George, of apparently fixed abode but no last name, both of whom had aided in keeping Prees from hurling himself off the cliff, try to help Prees’s daughter, who is a possible suspect.

   Most of the characters, with the possible exception of Prees’s neurotic former secretary, are believable, including Gerald Hyland, an author who achieves a reasonable Income by writing about “sex and religion in the desert” and who is the complete faddist.

   There are wheels within wheels here. A plausible solution is offered at the end, and then it is overridden by an even more plausible solution.

   For reasons that I cannot recall, I had thought that Ferrars was essentially a suspense writer. This, however, is a fair-play mystery.

Bibliographic Data: I believe Bill Deeck’s assertion to be correct. Between 1940 and 1995 E. X. Ferrars wrote over 70 detective and mystery novels or story collections, and my impression is also that those written toward the end of her career were more inclined to be romantic suspense in nature than they were “traditional” detective fiction.

   But in each of the first five books she wrote, her leading character was the same Toby Dyke as in Murder of a Suicide; and I have a strong feeling that in these books, as was common for most detective fiction in the early 1940s, “fair play” deduction was the order of the day.

TOBY DYKE. [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

       Give a Corpse a Bad Name (n.) Hodder 1940. [No US edition.]
       Remove the Bodies (n.) Hodder 1940. [US title: Rehearsals for Murder, Doubleday, 1941.
       Death in Botanist’s Bay (n.) Hodder 1941. [US title: Murder of a Suicide, Doubleday, 1941]
       Don’t Monkey with Murder (n.) Hodder 1942 [US title: The Shape of a Stain, Doubleday, 1942]

       Your Neck in a Noose (n.) Hodder 1942. [US title: Neck in a Noose, Doubleday, 1943]

PETE HAMILL – Dirty Laundry. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1978.

   The first in a planned series of at least three Sam Briscoe adventures, and if this one is any example of the books to follow, it is indeed a welcome addition to the roster of private eye like novels.

   Technically, Briscoe is not a private eye, but instead a freelance journalist. No matter. His actions are very private eye like. He’s a Charlie Parker fan, an ex-art student and a damn mean customer. Dirty Laundry shows its linen right from the start, gets it out quick and the action rolls.

   Briscoe’s ex-girlfriend, Anne Fletcher, calls him greatly in need of his help, but refuses to explain over the telephone for fear of bugs. He agrees to meet her and talk, but his feelings are mixed. He still carries a torch for her but feels like the whole thing should stay finished.

   He need not have worried. She’s killed in a car accident Or is it an accident? .

   Briscoe’s investigation of her death leads him to a very Chandler-like woman named Moya Vargas. (Compare Dolores Gonzales right down to the wide, white part in the middle of her scalp.) From there, it’s involvement with the now classical, fumbling F.B.I. man.

   Of course, Briscoe outwits him at every turn. But what’s the stake so important that the F.B.I. is interested? Could it be Anne’s past interest in Cuban affairs, her involvement in the revolution?

   So Briscoe is off and running, or rather flying, to Mexico. His descriptions of Mexico are so full of vivid detail you can almost smell the city streets. Having never been to Mexico City, I can only guess at how accurate Briscoe (Hamill) is, but it certainly has a realistic feel.

   Actually, at this point there is little detection left. The novel falls more correctly into the suspense category, but there are still very obvious “Chandler” highlights. There’s the body in the bath tub; Briscoe is as given corpses to the descriptions of corpses and the finding of corpses, as Chandler.

   Briscoe immediately surmises, and correctly, that he has been set up to take a murder rap, if for no other reason than to get him off the case. Like any good private eye or private eye type, that’s merely incentive to lock in with the jaws and bulldog it out to the end.

   And what an end! Full of surprises — Hamill twists the tail of the genre a bit. Not so much as to upset a staunch traditionalist, but enough to keep from making it all seem old hat.

   Nice climax. Nice atmosphere. Nice debut.

   Looking forward to more Briscoe adventures. According to the little note in the back of the book, the next Sam Briscoe adventure is scheduled for early in ’79.

Bibliographic Update:   There were two additional Sam Briscoe novels by real-life journalist Pete Hamill, The Dirty Piece (Bantam, pbo, 1979), and The Guns of Heaven (Bantam, pbo, 1983, recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime in August 2006). Alas, there were no others.

MARGARET MILES –

   A Wicked Way to Burn. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1998.
         [plus]
   Too Soon for Flowers. Bantam, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1999.

    You’re probably like me and when a new author starts a new series with a new character, you miss the first two or three and pick up the fourth one as the first one to read. Not this time. Here are the first two in a sequence of mysteries taking place in colonial Massachusetts, and both are well worth reading. The town is Bracebridge, halfway between Boston and Worcester. Time: the fall of 1763 and the spring of 1764.

    Reading two in succession, rare for me, only builds to the sense of community the author definitely has in mind. Young widow Charlotte Willett does most of the detective work, plain in looks, but her inquisitive mind is far from simple.

    Her next-door neighbor, Richard Longfellow, is the village selectman and of a scientific bent. His sister Diana, whose visits from Boston are not uncommon, is a flirtful sort. Rounding out the list of major players is the enigmatic Captain Montagu, whose “duties and obligations [to the Crown were] not commonly understood.” He also seems to favor Diana.

    The incident that’s at the center of the first book is, by eyewitness account, that of spontaneous human combustion. Mrs. Willett is not so sure, and her instincts are quite correct. In the second novel, a young girl dies while being quarantined after being inoculated for smallpox, a deadly scourge at that time of the nation’s history.

    Oddly, the mystery is better handled in the first book, and matters of historical interest more capably in the second — even at times to making certainly sections too ‘talky’ in regard to current events, and waxing philosophical on matters of relationships between the sexes and the nature of death.

    While the first mystery is an excellent model of fair play detection, Miles allows the dead girl’s secret to be suspected by the reader far too early in the second, and too much coincidence is allowed to stick its nasty nose in.

    But by that time, we’ve also had a long opportunity to grow even more comfortable and at home with the various and sundry folks in colonial Bracebridge, and both books are very nearly equally enjoyable.

   Bibliographic data:

      The Bracebridge series:

    1. A Wicked Way to Burn (1998)
    2. Too Soon For Flowers (1999)
    3. No Rest For the Dove (2000)

    4. A Mischief in the Snow (2001)

    As for the author herself, “Margaret Miles” is too common a name to do much research on. Al Hubin has no information about her, and neither do I. As for the series of four novels, I have not read the 3rd nor the 4th, so I also cannot tell you whether all of the loose ends were tied up before the series ended, presumably caused by the usual insufficient (and falling) sales.

ALFRED EICHLER – Alfred Eichler. Death of an Ad Man. Abelard-Schuman, hardcover, 1954; paperback reprint: Berkley #105, 1955. British edition: Hammond, hc, 1956, as A Hearse for the Boss.

   It is a rather frantic time at the Malcolm and Reynolds Advertising Agency. Reynolds has retired, and Malcolm has just had what appears to be a heart attack.

   While various officials of the agency are struggling for power in an attempt to replace Malcolm as the agency’s head, someone makes sure that Malcolm won’t be around to protest. A pair of scissors is shoved into his chest while he is in the hospital.

   Kindergarten was never like this advertising agency. Children do have some sense, but precious few employees of this agency have any. The only sensible person is Martin Ames — who appears in several of Eichler’s novels — head of the radio department, which also includes television.

   Even he is erratic. He is at one point firmly convinced that an agency employee is Malcolm’s murderer and a few moments later is brooding because he didn’t stop the murderer from killing the employee.

   Ames has inherited the agency from Malcolm, and he had an opportunity to commit both murders. For this reason, and in a hope to keep the agency from disintegrating, Ames investigates. He spots the killer by discovering a new motive for murder, or what would have been a new motive if it had had anything to do with the murder.

   He also says things like “Holy hatpin!” which I guess is typical advertising talk. And he is one of the few people who have visited a psychiatrist with a “crowded anteroom.” Does this mean a ten-minute hour?

   The novel isn’t well written and the plot isn’t that great, but the insights into advertising agencies may appeal to some.

Bio-Bibliographic data: According to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, Alfred Eichler, 1908-1995, was a advertising copywriter based (it is to be presumed) in New York City, an easy inference, since that’s where he was born.

    He was the author of nine detective novels, many of which seem to reflect the author’s own occupation in the advertising and radio business, especially the first two, Murder in the Radio Department and Death at the Mike.

    Each of these also have as their leading characters Martin Ames and Inspector Carl Knickman, the latter of whom Bill didn’t happen to mention as being the detective of record in Death of an Ad Man, as well as several other cases told to us by Eichler. See below:

EICHLER, ALFRED. 1908-1995.

      Murder in the Radio Department (n.) Gold Label 1943 [Insp. Carl Knickman; Martin Ames]
      Death at the Mike (n.) Lantern Press 1946 [Insp. Carl Knickman; Martin Ames]
      Election by Murder (n.) Lantern Press 1946 [Martin Ames]

      Death of an Ad Man (n.) Abelard-Schuman 1954 [Insp. Carl Knickman; Martin Ames]
      Death of an Artist (n.) Arcadia 1955 [Insp. Carl Knickman; Martin Ames]
      Moment for Murder (n.) Arcadia 1956 [Insp. Carl Knickman]
      Bury in Haste (n.) Arcadia 1957 [Insp. Carl Knickman]
      Pipeline to Death (n.) Hammond 1962 [Martin Ames]

      Murder Off Stage (n.) Hammond 1963.

   John Herrington, who recently has been researching the careers of the many authors who wrote for the British publisher Robert Hale over the years, recently sent Al Hubin and myself word of the passing last month (on October 18th) of one of the more prolific of them, James Pattinson, 1915-2009.

   A list of the some one hundred or more books he wrote is included below. (This list has been expanded from that in the Revised Crime Fiction IV to include a few that have been published later than the year 2000 and therefore beyond the coverage of CFIV.)

   Only a handful of these books have been published in the US, making him all but unknown in this country.

   Says John about Pattinson’s novels: “I have read a lot of them. Not great or classics, but good readable thrillers, sea and war stories. Apparently, apart from time he served in the war, he lived in the same house in a Norfolk village all his life.”

   The death of a crime fiction writer with as many books as James Pattinson produced should not go unnoted. A list of his life’s output, fictionwise, may be a small tribute in some way, but it is a long list. (Note: The first three are war novels not included in CFIV. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon for providing these, as well as three of the covers you will see below.)

* Soldier, Sail North (n.) Harrap, 1954 [non-criminous]
* The Wheel of Fortune (n.) Harrap, 1955 [non-criminous]
* Last in Convoy (n.) Harrap, 1957 [non-criminous]

* The Mystery of the Gregory Kotovsky (n.) Harrap 1958 [Ship]
* Contact Mr. Delgado (n.) Harrap 1959 [Harvey Landon; Ship]
* -Across the Narrow Seas (n.) Harrap 1960 [1944]
* Wild Justice (n.) Harrap 1960 [Ship]
* The Liberators (n.) Harrap 1961 [Harvey Landon]
* On Desperate Seas (n.) Harrap 1961 [Ship; WWII]
* The Angry Island (n.) Hale 1968 [West Indies]
* The Last Stronghold (n.) Hale 1968 [Harvey Landon; South America]
* Find the Diamonds (n.) Hale 1969
* The Golden Reef (n.) Hale 1969
* The Plague Makers (n.) Hale 1969
* Whispering Death (n.) Hale 1969
* The Deadly Shore (n.) Hale 1970

* The Rodriguez Affair (n.) Hale 1970

* Three Hundred Grand (n.) Hale 1970 [Caribbean]
* The Murmansk Assignment (n.) Hale 1971 [Russia]
* Sea Fury (n.) Hale 1971
* The Sinister Stars (n.) Hale 1971 [Harvey Landon]
* Watching Brief (n.) Hale 1971
* Away with Murder (n.) Hale 1972 [Amsterdam, Netherlands]
* Ocean Prize (n.) Hale 1972
* Weed (n.) Hale 1972
* A Fortune in the Sky (n.) Hale 1973
* The Marakano Formula (n.) Hale 1973
* Search Warrant (n.) Hale 1973 [Sam Grant; U.S.]
* Cordley’s Castle (n.) Hale 1974
* The Haunted Sea (n.) Hale 1974 [Ship]

* The Petronov Plan (n.) Hale 1974 [Brazil]

* Crusader’s Cross (n.) Hale 1975 [Greece]
* Feast of the Scorpion (n.) Hale 1975
* Freedman (n.) Hale 1975
* The Honeymoon Caper (n.) Hale 1976 [Finland]
* A Real Killing (n.) Hale 1976 [Sam Grant]

* Special Delivery (n.) Hale 1976 [England; France]
* A Walking Shadow (n.) Hale 1976

* Final Run (n.) Hale 1977
* The No-Risk Operation (n.) Hale 1977
* The Spanish Hawk (n.) Hale 1977 [Caribbean]
* Blind Date (n.) Hale 1978

* Something of Value (n.) Hale 1978 [Sam Grant]
* Ten Million Dollar Cinch (n.) Hale 1978 [Caribbean]
* The Courier Job (n.) Hale 1979
* The Rashevski Ikon (n.) Hale 1979
* Red Exit (n.) Hale 1979
* Busman’s Holiday (n.) Hale 1980
* The Levantine Trade (n.) Hale 1980
* The Spayde Conspiracy (n.) Hale 1980
* The Antwerp Appointment (n.) Hale 1981 [Antwerp, Belgium]
* The Seven Sleepers (n.) Hale 1981
* Stride (n.) Hale 1981
* A Fatal Errand (n.) Hale 1982
* Lethal Orders (n.) Hale 1982
* The Stalking Horse (n.) Hale 1982
* A Car for Mr. Bradley (n.) Hale 1983
* Flight to the Sea (n.) Hale 1983
* The Kavulu Lion (n.) Hale 1983
* Dead of Winter (n.) Hale 1984
* Precious Cargo (n.) Hale 1984 [Ship]
* The Saigon Merchant (n.) Hale 1984 [London]
* -Come Home, Toby Brown (n.) Hale 1985
* Homecoming (n.) Hale 1985 [England]
* Life-Preserver (n.) Hale 1985 [England]
* The Syrian Client (n.) Hale 1986 [Sam Grant]
* Where the Money Is (n.) Hale 1986
* Dangerous Enchantment (n.) Hale 1987 [Sam Grant]
* A Dream of Madness (n.) Hale 1987
* Paradise in the Sun (n.) Hale 1987
* The Junk Run (n.) Hale 1988
* Legatee (n.) Hale 1988 [Sam Grant]
* Dishonour Among Thieves (n.) Hale 1989
* Killer (n.) Hale 1989
* Operation Zenith (n.) Hale 1989
* Dead Men Rise Up Never (n.) Hale 1990 [England; 1938]

* Poisoned Chalice (n.) Hale 1990
* The Spoilers (n.) Hale 1990 [Central America]
* Devil Under the Skin (n.) Hale 1991 [England]

* With Menaces (n.) Hale 1991

* The Animal Gang (n.) Hale 1992 [England]

* Steel (n.) Hale 1992
* Bavarian Sunset (n.) Hale 1993 [Germany]
* The Emperor Stone (n.) Hale 1993
* Fat Man from Colombia (n.) Hale 1993
* Lady from Argentina (n.) Hale 1994
* The Telephone Murders (n.) Hale 1994
* The Poison Traders (n.) Hale 1995
* Squeaky Clean (n.) Hale 1995
* Avenger of Blood (n.) Hale 1996
* A Wind on the Heath (n.) Hale 1996 [England; 1930s]
* One-Way Ticket (n.) Hale 1997
* The Time of Your Life (n.) Hale 1997
* Death of a Go-Between (n.) Hale 1998 [Sam Grant; Amsterdam, Netherlands; London]
* Some Job (n.) Hale 1998 [West Indies]
* Skeleton Island (n.) Hale 1999 [Florida]
* The Wild One (n.) Hale 1999 [England]
* A Passage of Arms (n.) Hale 2000 [Far East]
* Old Pal’s Act (n.) Hale 2001
* Crane (n.) Hale 2001
* Obituary for Howard Gray (n.) Hale 2003
* Bullion (n.) Hale 2004
* The Unknown (n.) Hale 2008

[UPDATE] 11-11-09. The photo of Mr Pattinson came from the back cover or dust jacket flap of one of his books and was sent to me by Jamie Sturgeon. Jamie also sent along a host of updated information about settings and additional series character appearances. I haven’t added them here, but Al Hubin has them now, and they appear in the next installment of the online Addenda to the Revised CFIV.