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.

DOUGLAS PRESTON & LINCOLN CHILD – The Cabinet of Curiosities. Grand Central Publishing, hardcover, June 2002; paperback: June 2003.

   One in a series of novels by the co-authors, this features Pendergast, an enigmatic FBI agent, who is investigating old crimes that are suddenly made current by a series of murders in NYC that are either copycat killings or improbable crimes by the still surviving killer.

   A newspaper reporter plays the role of the HIBK heroine (although he’s male), walking into situations that any sensible character would stay away from.

   The bizarre nature of the crimes and the gradual unfolding of the killer’s identity and his rationale kept me reading but I ended the read with a feeling of dissatisfaction about the length of the book (629 pages) and lapses in narrative interest.

From Wikipedia: “Aloysius X. L. Pendergast, PhD is a fictional character appearing in novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. He first appeared as a supporting character in their first novel, Relic, and in its sequel Reliquary, before assuming the protagonist role in The Cabinet of Curiosities.”

Later novels:

      Still Life with Crows (2003)

     “The Diogenes Trilogy” —

           Brimstone (2004) (Book One)

           Dance of Death (2005) (Book Two)

          The Book of the Dead (2006) (Book Three)

      The Wheel of Darkness (2007)

      Cemetery Dance (May 2009)

CLIFFORD KNIGHT – The Affair of the Fainting Butler.

Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1943. Hardcover reprint, Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1943.

   There are those, and I am among them, who read mysteries primarily to find out if the butler did indeed do it. Unfortunately, these days there are few novels in which you can suspect the butler, a breed that has been an endangered and even vanishing species for years.

   This is one of the old-fashioned novels that still affords us that pleasure. And, yes, the butler does faint. In fact, he faints three times. Did he do it? That would be telling.

   Larry Weeks, agent — or flesh peddler, if you prefer — for Jenifer Janeway, who wrote magazine serials “that made worrying wives, whose husbands had young sophisticated secretaries, think of Reno,” goes to Janeway’s home to try to keep her from carrying out her threat to commit suicide. She is about to start writing screenplays, and she is his meal ticket.

   While Janeway and Weeks are in her garden, Sloan Hinckley, Shakespearean actor and Weeks’s other but lesser client, appears on the wall. He is Janeway’s neighbor — ah, coincidence, where would mystery writers be without you? — and has come to report that he has discovered a corpse on her grounds.

   No corpse, however, is to be found. When Janeway is visited shortly thereafter by an old friend, Hinckley claims that the old friend was the corpse.

   There are several murders of varying unlikelihood for equally unlikely reasons. The amateur detective, Prof. Huntoon Rogers, is a veritable nonentity. Though he is present throughout the novel and solves the crimes, if his name isn’t before you at all times, you tend to forget his existence.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.] You can google Huntoon Rogers, Clifford Knight’s detective character, all you want, but you won’t find much out about him. He’s about as anonymous as Bill Deeck suggests, especially considering he was the leading character in 18 of Knight’s detective novels in an 11-year period between 1937 and 1947, all of which began with The Affair of …

   But think about it. Eighteen books in eleven years. That’s a pretty good track record for an author and a series character both of whom are all but forgotten now. (I read one once, and I can’t even tell you now which one of them it was.)

        Bibliographic data:

   Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

ROGERS, PROF. HUNTOON.    Series character created by Clifford Knight, 1886-1963.
      The Affair of the Heavenly Voice (n.) Dodd 1937 [California]
      The Affair of the Scarlet Crab (n.) Dodd 1937 [Ship]

      The Affair at Palm Springs (n.) Dodd 1938 [California]

      The Affair of the Ginger Lei (n.) Dodd 1938 [Hawaii]
      The Affair of the Black Sombrero (n.) Dodd 1939 [Mexico]
      The Affair on the Painted Desert (n.) Dodd 1939 [Arizona]
      The Affair in Death Valley (n.) Dodd 1940 [California]
      The Affair of the Circus Queen (n.) Dodd 1940 [Manila]
      The Affair of the Crimson Gull (n.) Dodd 1941 [California]
      The Affair of the Skiing Clown (n.) Dodd 1941 [California]

      The Affair of the Limping Sailor (n.) Dodd 1942 [California]

      The Affair of the Splintered Heart (n.) Dodd 1942 [Hawaii]
      The Affair of the Fainting Butler (n.) Dodd 1943 [Los Angeles, CA]
      The Affair of the Jade Monkey (n.) Dodd 1943 [California]

      The Affair of the Dead Stranger (n.) Dodd 1944 [California]
      The Affair of the Corpse Escort (n.) McKay 1946 [Los Angeles, CA]
      The Affair of the Golden Buzzard (n.) McKay 1946 [California]
      The Affair of the Sixth Button (n.) McKay 1947 [California]

PostScript: You probably do not want to know how much those books in dust jacket would set you back, but I’ll tell you anyway. Excluding the Dell mapback (approximately $15) perhaps mid-three figures each, on the average.

COLIN WATSON – Just What the Doctor Ordered.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1969. Paperback reprint: Dell, US, 1982 [Murder Ink #37]. Published earlier in the UK as The Flaxborough Crab; Eyre, hc, 1969.

   One measure of accomplishment for any writer of fiction is how successfully he or she transports us to his/her own individual world of imagination. Certainly one of the more successful in this regard is Colin Watson and his fictional town of Flaxborough.

   Much to our delight, and to the chagrin of Inspector Purbright of the Flaxborough Police Department, an amazing amount of crime seems to occur in this English village.

   Just What the Doctor Ordered begins with a number of sexual assaults on the women of the town. Miss Butters is accosted in Gorry Wood; Miss Sweeting on Heston Lane; Miss Pollock by the reservoir; and at St. Hilda’s a man threatens to “pollinate” Mrs. Pasquith.

   The fact that the attacks are perpetrated by elderly gentlemen, who make their escape by running sideways, only adds to the puzzlement. Inspector Purbright at first suspects an herbal concoction that promises amazing renewed virility. But few cases are quite so simple, as any Colin Watson fan will tell you, and this one takes several additional turns, including murder, before a solution is found.

   Inspector Purbright –flanked by his superior, Chief Constable Chubb; his subordinate, Sergeant Love; and his perpetual thorn-in-the-side, Miss Lucilla Teatime — is at the center of the Flaxborough novels, but the real stars are the amusing and eccentric townspeople themselves.

   This and the other novels in the series are recommended without reservation. Those other novels include Hopjoy Was Here (1963), Charity Ends at Home (1968), Six Nuns and a Shotgun (1975), Plaster Sinners (1981), and Whatever Happened at Mumbleshy? (1983).

   Colin Watson is also the author of an excellent sociological study of the British crime novel between the two world wars, Snobbery with Violence (1971; revised edition, 1979).

         ———
   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.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   Flaxborough fans — and I’m sure you already know who you are — will have already recognized this particular adventure — under its British title, of course — as the third of four Inspector Purbright cases that were adapted for TV by the BBC in 1977. The first two in the recently released box set were reviewed here not so very long ago.

[UPDATE] 06-17-09.   Check the comments for a complete list of all of the Inspector Purbright novels, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

THOMAS GIFFORD – The Glendower Legacy.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1978. Paperback reprint: Pocket, 1979.

   The world of academia scores a couple of telling blows to the ungodly in this, the latest thriller to come from the typewriter of the author of the highly acclaimed The Wind Chill Factor, but otherwise not all is well.

   To borrow a term from the incomparable Mr. Hitchcock of movie fame, the MacGuffin, the object that all parties devoutly desire but which in fact may be all that keeps the plot moving, is a document dating from the days of the American Revolution — from Valley Forge, to be precise, at a time when morale was low and the ravages of dysentery were visibly high.

   Betrayal at any moment, even by the commander-in-chief himself, given the right conditions and frame of mind, was a distinct possibility.

   If this document could be authenticated, the resulting scandal would rock the nation, and a director of the Russian KGB with a sense of humor takes a serious interest as well. The scene shifts dramatically to Harvard Square and then to the remotest crannies of Maine before heading even further north, to a massive house located high up on the rocks of the Nova Scotia coast.

   The hero, taking the role that Cary Grant would play, is a naive, middle-aged professor of American history, and in spite of their initial mutual antagonisms, when he takes refuge in the home of the fiercely liberated TV newsperson (Audrey Hepburn), you know that everything is just going to work out all right.

   Harvard, however, will hardly be the same. Bodies pile up, torture scenes (with pliers) abound — and, you might ask — for what?

   Successful combinations of comedy, blood and suspense can be done. They are a specialty of the Mr. Hitchcock previously referred to. Gifford can weave a nasty spell with words, but the enormous improbability of such a sequence of events, given the timetable suggested, drags the early part of the story into a morass of page-flipping, and the jagged abruptness with which it’s all wrapped up only points out the lack of solid substance throughout.

   Nothing is gained. Pessimistically a number of lives are lost, and the pretense that it’s all in good fun can’t be maintained forever.

   Definitely written with the movies in mind, and it could very well make a good one. It’s flashy and glib, and the weaknesses in the foundation can be easily overlooked. After the end of the book is reached — and believe me, once started, you most definitely will — that’s when the sugar-coating will be recognized, alas, for what it is.

   Artificial, that is, and not altogether satisfying.

Bibliography —     

      The Wind Chill Factor, Putnam, 1975.
      The Cavanaugh Quest, Putnam, 1976. (Nominated for the Edgar Award, Best Novel, 1977.)

      The Man from Lisbon, McGraw, 1977.
      The Glendower Legacy, Putnam, 1978.
      Hollywood Gothic, Putnam, 1979.
      The Assassini, Bantam, 1990.
      Praetorian, Bantam, 1993.
      The First Sacrifice, Bantam, 1994.
      Saint’s Rest, Bantam, 1996.

as Thomas Maxwell —

      Kiss Me Once, Mysterious Press, 1986.

      The Saberdene Variations, Mysterious Press, 1987.
      Kiss Me Twice, Mysterious Press, 1998.
      The Suspense Is Killing Me, Mysterious Press, 1990.

as Dana Clarins —

      Woman in the Window, Bantam, pbo, 1984.

      Guilty Parties, Bantam, pbo, 1985.
      The Woman Who Knew Too Much, Bantam, pbo, 1986.

[UPDATE] 06-14-09.   I mentioned The Wind Chill Factor in the opening paragraph, a reference that was more useful when this review first appeared, as the book is all but forgotten now.

   In fact August West reviewed it as just that not so long ago on his blog, as one of Patti Abbott’s “Friday Forgotten Books” project. It’s a spy thriller that starts out in Minnesota, but it quickly goes international with a stirred-up nest of neo-Nazis.

   I reviewed it myself back when it first came out, and one of these days I’ll come across it again, so maybe my review (also positive) will show up here some day as well.

   I wrote this review a few years before the movie I predicted did come out, and of course I was right about that, but I was wrong about who the stars were going to be.

   The movie was called Dirty Tricks — and are you ready for this? — the stars were Elliott Gould and Kate Jackson. Passable choices, perhaps, but they were never to be confused with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and the inclusion of Rich Little as one of the players shows what the primary thrust of the movie was.

   I’ve not seen it myself, but its rating on IMDB is 4.4 out of 10, which is Not Very Good.

   The passing of author Tedd Thomey was not known to the crime fiction community until quite recently, when Al Hubin came across the news as he was recently putting data together for the online Addenda to his Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   (Note that Part 33 has just been uploaded. This installment is much shorter and earlier than usual, but in time, Al hopes, for the information to be included in the 2009 edition of the Revised CFIV on CD-Rom.)

   Mr. Thomey died on December 1st of last year. A tribute to him by Tom Hennessy, a longtime friend, can be found online here, along with several photographs.

      Some excerpts:

    “Harold John Thomey was born July 19, 1920, in Butte, Mont. His father, who admired Theodore Roosevelt, called him Teddy. The second ‘d’ in Tedd was an affectation, added by a young man hoping to be noticed.”

    Storming Iwo Jima: “Tedd landed with the Fifth Marine Division in the Third Wave . He hunkered down in a shell crater. That’s where he was when a bullet pierced his heel and his boot filled with blood. Removed to a hospital ship, he was eating ice cream that night while his buddies tried to establish a foothold on the beach.

    “He cried the first time he told me of eating ice cream while his buddies fought for a toehold on the beach. He cried the second time, too.”

    After the war: “Tedd became a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, whose photo staff included [Iwo Jima photographer Joe] Rosenthal. They remained friends until Rosenthal’s death two years ago.

    “Tedd also began writing pulp fiction articles, then turned to books, 18 in all, including The Big Love. It was about actor Erroll Flynn’s love affair with 15-year-old Beverly Aadland. Told to Tedd by her mother, Florence, it became a Broadway play starring Tracey Ullman.

    “He also did profiles of celebrities, most assigned to him by his New York agent, Scott Meredith. Among his subjects: Humphrey Bogart, Peter Sellers, Judy Garland and Peter O’Toole.”

      Bibliographic data.   [Crime fiction only, expanded from the Revised CFIV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

THOMEY, TEDD. Full name: Harold John Thomey, 1920-2008.

      And Dream of Evil (n.) Abelard-Schuman, hc, 1954; Avon 614, pb, 1956. [Los Angeles, CA]

      Killer in White (n.) Gold Medal 546, pbo, 1956 [Los Angeles, CA]

      I Want Out (n.) Ace Double D-401, pbo, 1959

      The Sadist (n.) Berkley G-568, pbo, 1960 [Oregon]
       -When the Lusting Began (n.) Monarch 178, pbo, 1960

      Flight to Takla-Ma (n.) Monarch 216, pbo, 1962 [China]

      The Prodigy Plot (n.) Warner, pbo, 1987

[UPDATE] Later the same day. Thanks to Juri Nummelin who points out on his Pulpetti blog another website dedicated to Tedd Thomey’s books, including his non-criminous ones.

BRADSHAW JONES – Death on a Pale Horse.

John Long, UK, hardcover, 1964. Paperback reprint: Bridbooks, Israel, no date.

   Malcolm Bradshaw Jones was an oil executive who retired to the Channel Islands off of Great Britain, and wrote eleven mysteries featuring tough special agent Claude Ravel and his wife Monique, an Anglo-French couple who first work for Cabinet Security under that “terrible old man James Keen” and later work for Interpol and their Home Office liaison, Peter Calvert.

   Ravel is something of a rogue agent with a nose for trouble: “He’s about the most ruthless hell-bender I’ve ever met. And he’s got a wife, Monique, who works with him, who is almost as bad. She looks like something out of the fashion magazines and fights like a tiger. She’s French and Ravel is half French and completely bilingual. Between them they used to break just about every law we’ve got, all in the name of justice.”

   Of course in real life Interpol (*) never had agents, and was in fact a front organization for Nazi sympathizers well into the 1960’s, but here we are dealing with the Interpol of fiction not fact, and anyway Ravel and his wide Monique behave like no police you have ever encountered.

   Ruthless, blood thirsty, and deadly are the kindest thing you can say about them. That said, Jones writes this stuff with some small flare and obviously knows his locales. The scenes in Paris may not be Simenon, but they are authentic and redolent of the real place and not just the tourist trap version most fiction gives us.

   In Death on a Pale Horse a naked man is found off the southwest coast of England, a small time thief, who died of some mysterious intestinal disorder. Interpol, and through them the Ravels are called in.

   Soon they are on the trail of a defecting British chemist who has left behind a nasty bug that starts killing people, all leading to a remote private lab in San Stefano, and a trail of bodies and violence. The idealistic Dr. Porter’s trail takes them to Italy and into the hands of the ruthless drug smuggler Pavesi as the epidemic in England spreads. Now all they have to do is find Porter alive and “unseat death from his pale horse.”

   There is nothing special here, but the writing is good, the plot moves well, and Ravel and Monique are an engaging pair of homicidal heroes, believably tough and ruthless. You could do a lot worse than Jones books about the Ravels and in some cases not a lot better.

   I’ll be keeping an eye out for more books about them. It’s not often you encounter a husband and wife team who both carry concealed switchblades and have few compunctions about using them. It’s a bit as if James Bond had married Modesty Blaise, or a continental John Steed and Mrs. Peel after a session of SAS training.

   Death On a Pale Horse is a short book, around 60,000 words, and a well done thriller with some interests and attractive, if ruthless, protagonists in the Ravels.

CLAUDE RAVEL. Series character created by (Malcolm Henry) BRADSHAW JONES, 1904- .   Data taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      The Hamlet Problem (n.) Long 1962.
      The Crooked Phoenix (n.) Long 1963.
      Tiger from the Shadows (n.) Long 1963.

      Death on a Pale Horse (n.) Long 1964.
      Private Vendetta (n.) Long 1964.
      The Embers of Hate (n.) Long 1966.
      Testament of Evil (n.) Long 1966.
      The Deadly Trade (n.) Long 1967.

      A Den of Savage Men (n.) Long 1967.

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   (*) Interpol is a private organization founded in the mid 1930’s to gather information on criminal activities and provide it to subscribing police agencies around the world (for instance the FBI has never subscribed and does not receive Interpol bulletins despite what you see in movies and books).

   It was infiltrated by the Nazis from the first and their influence continued into the 1960’s when it was finally purged. (Interpol refused to help in the hunt for Nazi war criminals on the grounds they were “political” crimes.)

   Interpol is primarily a counting house for information and sends out bulletins on persons of interest; yellow sheets for those who do not have an active criminal record and are not wanted for a crime, and red sheets for wanted felons.

   In the 1990’s Interpol began to employ investigators for the first time in its history. It has no enforcement duties, and the liaison to Interpol at most police departments are just some unlucky communications officer who receives no extra pay for his service. The Interpol agent of countless novels, movies, and television series is a myth that never existed, but has taken on a life of its own.

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[UPDATE] 06-14-09.   A tip of the hat to British mystery bookseller Jamie Sturgeon, who provided the cover images for both Death on a Pale Horse and Tiger from the Shadows. He also sent Al Hubin and I a long list of additional information about the settings and additional series characters in Jones’ books, all of which will appear in the next installment of the online Addenda for the Revised Crime Fiction IV.