Some sad news was awaiting me yesterday when I returned from Columbus and PulpFest 2009. Author William Tapply, author of two dozen mysteries tackled by Boston-based lawyer Brady Coyne plus three about New England fishing guide Stoney Calhoun, died last Tuesday of leukemia at the age of 69.

   Previously reviewed on this blog are the following, all Brady Coyne books (follow the links):

      The Vulgar Boatman
      The Dutch Blue Errror
      Cutter’s Run

   Taken from Mr. Tapply’s first novel, Death at Charity’s Point, is the following blurb, provided by fellow writer Ted Wood:

    “William Tapply does for the private eye what Len Deighton did for the secret agent. His Brady Coyne is quiet and wry and vulnerable and given to asides that make you chuckle out loud… The characters are all real people, the locale is so vivid you can smell the sea.”

      Bibliography:

   Brady Coyne

1. Death at Charity’s Point (1984)
2. The Dutch Blue Error (1985)

3. Follow The Sharks (1985)
4. The Marine Corpse (1986)
5. Dead Meat (1987)
6. The Vulgar Boatman (1988)

7. A Void In Hearts (1988)
8. Dead Winter (1989)
9. Client Privilege (1989)

10. The Spotted Cats (1991)
11. Tight Lines (1992)
12. The Snake Eater (1993)
13. The Seventh Enemy (1995)
14. Close To The Bone (1996)
15. Cutter’s Run (1998)

16. Muscle Memory (1999)

17. Scar Tissue (2000)
18. Past Tense (2001)
19. A Fine Line (2002)
20. Shadow of Death (2003)
21. Nervous Water (2005)

22. Out Cold (2006)
23. One-Way Ticket (2007)
24. Hell Bent (2008)

   Brady Coyne / J.W. Jackson (with Philip R Craig)

1. First Light (2001)

2. Second Sight (2005)
3. Third Strike (2007)

   Stoney Calhoun

1. Bitch Creek (2004)
2. Gray Ghost (2007)

3. Dark Tiger (2009, forthcoming)

   With Linda Barlow:

Thicker Than Water (1995)

   Among his several works of non-fiction, most of them dealing with fly fishing and other outdoor pursuits, is the following:

The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing a Modern Whodunit. (1995)

DICEY DEERE – The Irish Cairn Murder.

St. Martin’s; reprint paperback, March 2003; hardcover St. Martin’s edition, 2002.

   Dicey Deere is a new name to me, and likewise her mystery-solving character, Torrey Tunet, a professional translator by trade, living in Ireland, and by all accounts, a continual thorn in the side of Inspector Egan O’Hare. This is her third case, and the first I’ve had occasion to read.

   It also occurred to me that whenever you pick up a new author, one so new that there’s no word of mouth out on him or her yet, there’s always some mental evaluation going on in your mind as you read the first few pages, trying to stay flexible, but weighing one aspect of the story versus another — yes, this is good — no, that wasn’t very well done.

   And then there comes a point when suddenly you realize that, yes! this is maybe going to be OK, that the author knows what he or she is doing, and you can sit back and enjoy the rest of the read.

   In this book it comes very early on, on page four as a matter of fact, where it’s learned that to keep her linguistic skills in cutting-edge form, Torrey reads a stack of Maigret paperbacks in whatever language she’s going to need to be fluent in next. In this case, it’s Hungarian.

   (Note to self: It’s been a long time since I’ve read one of Inspector Maigret’s adventures. It’s time to remedy that.)

   As for the mystery itself, the dead man seems to have been a blackmailer, and of course it’s the victim (the blackmailee) who’s the obvious suspect. Torrey is not so sure.

   Dicey Deere’s manner of telling the story takes a little time to totally get used to. It’s told in fits and starts, with numerous hints and nuances, jumping sometimes abruptly from one scene to another. Mysterious events are followed by mysterious conversations, with mysterious trips ensuing. John Dickson Carr would have been very proud.

   The overall atmosphere is much cheerier and lighter than in any of Carr’s works, I hasten to add. It’s the idea that the reader doesn’t have to be told everything right away that’s the key in this comparison.

   (Note to self: It’s been a long time since I’ve read one of Dr. Gideon Fell’s adventures. It’s time to remedy that, too.)

   Another stylistic feature I liked is a form of emphasis new to me, though maybe not to you, if you’re been reading different books than I have. I’ll illustrate with a random quote, this one from page 180.

     Bibliography: [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

LA BARRE, HARRIET (ca. 1916- ). Pseudonym: Dicey Deere. Travel writer living in New York City.
      Stranger in Vienna. Popular Library pbo, 1986.
      The Florentine Win. Walker, hc, 1988; Ivy, pb, 1989.

      Blackwood’s Daughter. St. Martin’s, hc, 1990; Ivy, pb, 1992.

DEERE, DICEY. Pseudonym of Harriet La Barre. Series character: Torrey Tunet, in all titles.
      The Irish Cottage Murder. St.Martin’s, hc, 1999; pb, June 2000.

      The Irish Manor House Murder. St. Martin’s, hc, 2000; pb, August 2001.
      The Irish Cairn Murder. St. Martin’s, hc, 2002; pb, March 2003.
      The Irish Village Murder. St. Martin’s, hc, 2004; pb, March 2005.

ERIC C. EVANS – Misconstrued.

Worldwide; paperback reprint, Feb 2003. Hardcover edition, 2001, Avalon Books.

   I was talking about coincidences a while back, and (such is the way of the world) here’s a book that’s built on — well, if not a story-making coincidence of title-making proportions, a killer who’s awfully serendipitous in his choice of victims.

   Without letting the plot completely out of the bag, let me show you what I mean by quoting from page 217:

   Sam McKall, whose second recorded adventure this is, is the political aide to the governor of Utah, who (as the story begins) is trying to stop a nuclear waste dump being built on a Pishute reservation in the state. Pushed into investigating a series of deaths the police believe are only accidents, Sam and a reporter friend soon find themselves in what may be a huge conspiracy of corporate-based murder.

   What puzzled me almost as much as the case they’re working on, which is smoothly told, in a totally workmanlike manner, is why the capital of Utah is referred to as Wasatch City. A minor matter. I’ve only been there once, and maybe it is.

   What disappointed me was how the mix of cerebral detection with a modicum of action suddenly — with just over 20 pages to go — became an over-the-top (but non-pyrotechnic) thriller of Bruce Willis proportions.

   And surely we didn’t need most of Chapter 23, which recaps the entire scenario, filling in details we already knew. Better than average, then, but not by much.

      Bibliographic data:

   ERIC C(HARLES) EVANS

Endangered. Avalon, hc, 1999. Worldwide, pb, Jan 2001. Sam McKall.

The Key. Avalon, hc, 2000.

Misconstrued. Avon, hc, 2001. Worldwide, pb, Feb 2003. Sam McKall.

PHILIP KERR – A German Requiem. Viking, UK/US, hardcover, 1991. Paperback edition: Penguin, 1993 (shown), with many later printings.

    I’ve already read the fourth and fifth books in Kerr’s series about German investigator Bernie Gunther. When I started to read the fourth I had thought that I had read the first three in the series but came to realise that I hadn’t read the third. I’ve now rectified this and I’m glad in did.

    It’s set in 1947 and Bernie, struggling with a rather bleak existence in Berlin, is hired by a Russian Colonel to go to Vienna to help one of his, Gunther’s, old police colleagues who is to be tried on charges of murdering an American officer.

    Bernie takes the case and finds a world of subterfuge where everyone has things to hide and where the Russians and Americans are vying for control and each are anxious to harness the abilities of ex-German military leaders, even if they are wanted for war crimes.

    The situation is bleak and the overwhelming emotion of many is despair, and the cynical, but moral, Gunther tries to work his way to a just conclusion to the case. This is an excellent series and I’m glad I took the time to fill in this gap in my reading of it.

The Bernard Gunther novels:

      1. March Violets (1989)

      2. The Pale Criminal (1990)
      3. A German Requiem (1991)
      4. The One from the Other (2006)

      5. A Quiet Flame (2008)
      6. If the Dead Rise Not (2009)

LOUISE PENNY – Still Life. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, July 2006; paperback reprint, May 2007. First published in Canada & the UK: Headline, hc & pb, 2005.

   A Canadian rural mystery, with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec Sûreté and his team called in to investigate the suspicious death of Jane Neal, a reclusive resident of Three Pines, felled by an arrow.

   The strength of the novel is in its portrait of the town and its colorful inhabitants, but Gamache and his team are also nicely portrayed, with Gamache’s sharply observant eye seldom missing a significant detail in the convoluted relationships that make the investigation difficult to pursue. A promising debut for the series.

Bibliographic data:   The Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries.

1. Still Life.

2. Dead Cold (UK/Canada), A Fatal Grace (US).

3. The Cruelest Month.

4. The Murder Stone (UK/Canada), A Rule Against Murder (US).

5. The Brutal Telling.

JACK S. SCOTT – The Poor Old Lady’s Dead.

Harper & Row, US, hardcover, 1976. Reprint paperback: Popular Library, 1980. First published in the UK: Robert Hale, hc. 1976.

   The Chief Inspector had come down with a bug and the Superintendent was not aware of it until Detective Inspector Rosher had taken over the investigation. So the tumble down the stairs by a little old lady at the Haven, an old folks’ home, remains in the ham-fisted hands of Old Blubbergut, as he is unaffectionately known to his colleagues and his underlings.

   Rosher has to deal with an alderman who is the dead lady’s nephew and quite influential in the town, and finesse and subtlety are not Rosher’s strong points, if they are points of his at all.

   A subplot involves Rosher’s unhappy and hapless assistant, who has to suffer not only from his superior’s taunts but from the demands of a pregnant mistress who, quite reasonably, wants him to leave his wife and marry her.

   Rosher can be compared with [Joyce Porter’s] Chief Inspector Wilfrid Dover in some ways, only Dover is a caricature, a grotesque, and funny. Rosher is unfunny and very close to real.

   He toadies to his superiors. As for his underlings, “Strangely, he was not unpopular with the rank and file, provided they were on a lowly rung and unlikely to rise far above it.” Like Dover, he cadges meals and drinks from the unfortunate juniors who have to work with him. His personal habits aren’t very pleasant, either.

   As some other authors before him have discovered when they made their main character unpleasant, a continuing character must receive some empathy from the reader or be a burlesque like Dover. Otherwise, the normal reader will not buy further books in the series.

   Scott made Rosher more appealing and more human, though still not particularly pleasant, as the series advanced. Read this first recorded case of Rosher for a good investigation, some rather bitter humor, and to discover what he was like in the beginning.

   Then read the rest of Scott’s novels featuring Rosher. They become even more enjoyable as Rosher mellows somewhat.

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

ROSHER, INSP. (Sgt.) ALFRED STANLEY “ALF”.   Series character created by Jack S. Scott.

      The Poor Old Lady’s Dead (n.) Hale 1976; Harper, 1976.
      The Shallow Grave (n.) Hale 1977; Harper, 1978.

      A Clutch of Vipers (n.) Collins 1979; Harper, 1979.

      The Gospel Lamb (n.) Collins 1980; Harper, 1980.

      A Distant View of Death (n.) Collins 1981; Ticknor, 1981, as The View from Deacon Hill.
      The Local Lads (n.) Collins 1982; Dutton, 1983.
      An Uprush of Mayhem (n.) Collins 1982; Ticknor, 1982.
      All the Pretty People (n.) Collins 1983; St. Martin’s, 1984.

      A Death in Irish Town (n.) Collins 1984; St. Martin’s, 1985.
      A Knife Between the Ribs (n.) Collins 1986; St. Martin’s, 1987.

Editorial Comment:

   I may be wrong, but I don’t have any strong feeling that either Inspector Rosher or his creator Jack S. Scott are remembered by more than a handful of mystery readers today, some 20 or 30 years later. Back in the 1970s and early 80s, I’m fairly sure that Joyce Porter’s Inspector Dover’s books were more popular than Rosher’s, and I’m sure that even the obnoxious Dover is now little more than a fading memory, alas.

FERGUSON FINDLEY – Counterfeit Corpse.

Ace Double D-187, paperback original; 1st printing, 1956.

   Findley wrote a small handful of crime novels back in the 1950s, and I’ll add a list of them at the end of my comments on this one, which I enjoyed, but which I’d be hard pressed to recommend to anyone else without waving a lot of warning flags first. (Read on.)

   A fellow named Don Ivy is the featured player in Counterfeit Corpse, and he tells the story himself. After being bounced out of England, after years of knocking around Europe and northern Africa during and after the war, and now that his mother’s dead, he’s settled down in the small town in New England and living in the very same house he grew up in.

   It’s not clear whether the town of Tombury is supposed to be in Vermont or New Hampshire, but since later on in the story he and his niece Judy have to cross the Massachusetts line while making a quick trip to Boston, my vote’s for the latter.

   Which of course doesn’t matter to you. What does matter, I think, is that the reason he was quietly kicked out of England was his expertise in making counterfeit plates (for ten pound notes) so well that the bills they were capable of printing could not be distinguished from real ones, save for one small deliberate flaw that only Ivy knows.

   He has no record in England, though — it’s been erased, thanks to services to the Crown. Which is all prelude to the story, though, which begins with Ivy finding a body in his yard while doing a spring cleanup. Then another – a roadside accident — then his niece Judy, whom he hasn’t seen in maybe 15 years, shows up; and then another body is found face down in a pond behind his house.

   Coincidence? Not on your life. It certainly gets the local authorities into an uproar, though. First the local cop, then a state policeman, then a guy from the FBI. It’s up to Ivy and the surprisingly capable assistance of his niece Judy to get him out of trouble before he’s up to and over his neck in it.

   Breezily told, in good old-fashioned pulp magazine style, the tale has some flaws I ought to tell you about, too. The pile up of bodies is no coincidence, but heading to Boston to look for clues, it strikes me as next to impossible that he find the correct cheap night spot where all of the players in the plot struck out from, in only one try — and how did they all come to be there in one spot to begin with? That’s neatly not mentioned or alluded to either.

   There is not a lot of detective work going on in this book, not the real deductive kind, that is, until the end, in which (unless I’ve read it wrong) Ivy doesn’t recognize a certain telephone number, one that he should know, until several hours later, when it is almost too late.

   What is amusing, I think, is how Ivy manages to steal the local cop’s girl friend away from him, after the local cop, trying to be friendly, uses the girl friend as part of his cover in the aforesaid enterprise.

   And if you’ve read this far, you might as well read the book and see how he does it, whether it ‘s a good move or not; or on the other hand, you might decide that I’ve told you enough of the story already, and that anything more would be superfluous.

Bibliographic data:   [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin; US editions only.]

FINDLEY, FERGUSON. Pseudonym of Charles Weiser Frey, 1910-1963.

       My Old Man’s Badge. Duell, 1950 [Johnny Malone]. Popular Library #324, pb, 1951. Also reprinted as Killer Cop (Monarch #114, pb, 1959).

      

      Waterfront. Duell, 1951 [Johnny Malone]. Serialized in Collier’s Magazine, August 1950. Popular Library #408, pb, 1952.

      The Man in the Middle. Duell, 1952. Reprinted as Dead Ringer (Bestseller B160, 1953).

      Counterfeit Corpse. Ace Double D-197, 1956.
      Murder Makes Me Mad. Popular Library #780, 1956.

ERICA QUEST – The Silver Castle. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978. Reprint hardcover: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, Sept-Oct 1978.

   The discovery that Gail Sherbrooke’s father, who she’d thought dead for over twenty years, had just committed suicide in Switzerland sends the aspiring young artist off on a search to learn the truth about a man she had never known.

   Lying just beyond her reach she finds both mystery and romance — the type of story most readers surely find done far too often, and rather badly, too.

   That’s not at all the case here. With much of the charm and intricacy of a hand-made Swiss clock, this is indeed an uncluttered detective story that’s both haunting and wholly enchanting.

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

QUEST, ERICA. Pseudonym of John Sawyer & Nancy Buckingham Sawyer; other pseudonym: Nancy Buckingham

      The Silver Castle (n.) Doubleday 1978
      The October Cabaret (n.) Doubleday 1979
      Design for Murder (n.) Doubleday 1981
      Death Walk (n.) Doubleday 1988 [Kate Maddox]

      Cold Coffin (n.) Doubleday 1990 [Kate Maddox]
      Model Murder (n.) Doubleday 1991 [Kate Maddox]
      Deadly Deceit (n.) Piatkus 1992 [Kate Maddox]

   I believe the Sawyers were British, but their books as Erica Quest were published only in the US. I seem to have avoided the issue somewhat in my review, but if The Silver Dagger were to be assigned to a genre, I don’t believe it could be called a Gothic. “Romantic suspense,” perhaps, but with a solid core of detection involved, if I can rely on the statement made above by my younger self.

   (Bolstering the detective content of the Quest books is a discovery, made only this evening, that the series character who appeared in their last four books is actually Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox.)

   Many of the books the Sawyers wrote as Nancy Buckingham were published only in England; most of the ones that appeared in the US were published in paperback as Gothics by either Ace or Lancer. A typical title might be The Legend of Baverstock Manor (Ace, 1968), which was originally published in the UK as the noticeably less striking Romantic Journey (Hale, 1968).

   The Sawyers also wrote many straight romances, using the additional pen names Christina Abbey, Nancy John, and Hillary London for many of these. A list of these, along with some covers, can be found on the Fantastic Fiction website.

DAVID DODGE – Shear the Black Sheep.   Popular Library 202, paperback reprint; no date stated, but circa 1949. Hardcover edition: The Macmillan Co., 1942. Magazine appearance: Cosmopolitan, July 1942.

   After I finished reading this, the second murder mystery adventure of accountant detective Jim “Whit” Whitney, I went researching as I usually do, and it didn’t come as any surprise to learn (from a website devoted to David Dodge) that Dodge was also a CPA by profession, and that he started writing mystery fiction only on a dare from his wife.

   Although Dodge went on to another series (one with private eye Al Colby) and after that several standalones, there were only four books in the Whit Whitney series, to wit:

Death and Taxes. Macmilllan, hc, 1941. Popular Library 168, pb, 1949.

   
Shear the Black Sheep. Macmillan, hc, 1942. Popular Library 202, pb, 1949.

Bullets for the Bridegroom. Macmillan, hc, 1944. Popular Library 252, pb, 1950.

   
It Ain’t Hay. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1946. Dell 270, pb, mapback edition, 1949.

   
   You can find much more detailed entries for each of these books at the David Dodge website, which includes a complete bibliography of all of his other books, both fiction and non-fiction. Not to mention his plays, his magazine stories, the articles he wrote and all of the radio, TV and movie adaptations of his work, the most well-known of which is To Catch a Thief, the Cary Grant and Grace Kelly film from 1955. Comprehensive is an understatement, and it’s definitely worth looking into, just to see a bibliography done right.

   As for Whit Whitney, his home base is San Francisco, but in Shear the Black Sheep he is talked into taking a case in Los Angeles over the New Year’s Eve holiday weekend. Against his better judgment, he agrees to check into the activities of a client’s son, who seems to be spending too much of his father’s money in the business they’re in. They’re a wool brokerage firm — hence the title. The son has also left his wife and new-born baby. Is there another woman?

   Assisting Whitney — or making her way down to LA on her own to spend the holiday with him, or as much of it as there is left after Whit’s investigative duties are over– is Kitty MacLeod, “the best-looking girl in San Francisco, and pretty clever as well,” as she’s described on page 12.

   I’ve not read the first book in the series, and make no doubt about it, I will, but in that book (according the short recap on just about the same page) Whit’s former partner was murdered and at the time, Kitty was his wife.

   It’s now six months later, and Whit and Kitty have become very close. Whit is beginning to worry that some of his colleagues are starting to talk. There had even been some talk at the time that Whit had had something to do with Kitty’s ex’s departure from life, and getting out of the jam at the time seems to be the gist of the story in Death and Taxes.

   But that was then, and this is now. There is indeed a woman involved, as suspected — getting back to the case that Whit was hired to do — and the woman leads to a hotel room, and in the hotel room are … gamblers. A crooked card game, and the black sheep is getting sheared.

   It is all sort of a light-hearted tale, in a way, but then a murder occurs, and a screwy case gets even screwier — in a hard-boiled kind of fashion. Let me quote from page 160. Whit is talking to his client, who speaks first:

   Here are a few lines from page 170, at which point things are not going so well:

   
   Those were the days when mystery thrillers were also detective novels. After a long paragraph in which Whit tries out his best logic on the tangled threads of the plot, and who was where and when and why:

   
   What’s interesting is that Kitty has more to do with solving the case than Whit does. Things happen rather quickly at the end, and if all of the loose ends are (or are not) all tied up, no one other than I seems to think it matters, as long as the killer is caught — who was not someone I suspected, or did I? I probably suspected everyone at one point or another.

   I also wonder if what happens on the last page has anything to do with the title of Whit Whitney’s next adventure in crime-solving. Read it, I must. And I will.

   
[UPDATE] 06-24-09.   That’s a promise to myself that I haven’t kept yet, alas, and re-reading this review (and looking at those paperback covers) gives me all the resolve I need to follow through. You can count on that and take it to the bank. Non-negotiable.

   Between 1959 and 1966 Black Mask veteran Willis Todhunter Ballard penned seven books as Neil McNeil for the Gold Medal line of paperback originals about a pair of private eyes named Tony Costaine and Bert McCall:

Death Takes an Option. Gold Medal 807, pbo, September 1958.
Third on a Seesaw. Gold Medal s844, pbo, January 1959.

2 Guns for Hire. Gold Medal s898, pbo, July 1959.

Hot Dam. Gold Medal 964, pbo, January 1960.
The Death Ride. Gold Medal 1055, pbo, November 1960.

Mexican Slayride. Gold Medal s1182, pbo, January 1962.
The Spy Catchers. Gold Medal d1658; pbo, 1966.

   Though the series was never a major hit, they are highly entertaining superior light private eye fiction much in the mood and style of such popular series as 77 Sunset Strip and Peter Gunn on television. Costaine and McCall are the epitome of the cool, hip, buttoned-down PI’s of the period, distilled through the Rat Pack school of middle aged hipster, a group of slick eyes that rode the wave between Mike Hammer and James Bond.

   Anthony “Tony” Costaine is the brains of the outfit, slick, smart and tough, the button-down collar Brooks Brothers suit half of the team, who first teamed up with McCall back in their FBI and OSS days, six lean feet of muscle and brains.

   Bert McCall, a giant handsome Scot (born in Scotland) and topping six feet six in his stocking feet is the other half of the team, a born hedonist with an eye for the ladies, and a penchant for finding trouble and playing the bagpipes. Between the two of them they are the highest paid eyes of their day — so as you can imagine their clients tend to be rich, powerful, and in big trouble.

   In Death Takes an Option Marcus Cadby has hired them to find out why the auditor of MidContinental Mine and Machine commited suicide, but not before his younger and very sexy wife has tried to pry information out of Costaine.

   Then no sooner than their plane touches down in Los Angeles someone takes a pot shot at them, and before long they are involved with murder, a trip to Vegas, and a slick plot twist you will have to read for yourself.

   The trip to Vegas is important, because Costaine and McCall are, as I suggested above, Frank and Dino in not very subtle guise. McCall even calls Costaine “Dad.”

   Third on a Seesaw takes them to Reesedale PA, home of Reese Steel and Tube Company where they clean up the town and a murder — once McCall can be pried away from his bagpipes.

   2 Guns for Hire involves the boys with the car industry and a beautiful woman who paints nudes, and in Hot Dam they encounter a whole community of distant relatives of McCall who are sabotaging a power company by trying to build a dam that will flood their homes in upper New York state.

   The Death Ride takes them into the business of amusement parks, and in Mexican Slay Ride McCall ends up in jail south of the border as the boys take on a job involving fraud and the Mexican government. The Spy Catchers mixes them in with the government and treason in the aerospace industry and secret weapons.

   To be fair, Ballard could do this kind of book in his sleep, but thankfully he doesn’t. The boys are cool and smart, McCall just dumb enough to get them in trouble and Costaine just smart enough to get them out.

   There is a parade of attractive women varying from willing to murderous (and sometimes both), and a wide variety of action. The books aren’t major works or anything, but they are good and well worth discovering. Plotting is better than it had to be, and Costaine and McCall are always fun to be around.

   Ballard was one of the original Black Mask Boys with his tales of movie studio troubleshooter Bill Lennox (who also featured in three novels published as by Ballard and John Shepard), and a frequent collaborator with Robert Leslie Bellem and Cleve Adams.

   He wrote for early television (Dick Tracy) and even wrote a non genre novel about his experiences. Under his own name and as P.D. Ballard and Todhunter Ballard, among others, he wrote well-received westerns, and under the W.T. Ballard name, three books about Lt. Max Hunter of the Las Vegas police.

   His last novel, Murder in Las Vegas, about private eye Mark Foran, is one of the better hardboiled paperback originals of its period.

   That Todhunter is a family name. He was a cousin of Rex Todhunter Stout.

   Costaine and McCall may not be in the top tier of private eyes, but they are well worth discovering. The writing is lean and slick, and the action comes fast and furious. A little action, a soupcon of sex, and a twist or two in the tale are more than enough to recommend these.

   They make good company, and fit right in with Shell Scott and Chet Drum. Make the effort to meet them, but first lock up the Scotch and the women. You just can’t trust that McCall with either.