The death of Denny Martin Flinn, a rather unique contributor to the realm of detective fiction, does not seem to have been widely noted in the world of mystery fandom. The fact appears in Part 19 of the Addenda of the Revised Crime Fiction IV, which I’m working on now. Otherwise only Jiro Kimura’s Gumshoe Site seems to have mentioned it.

   Obituaries have appeared in several entertainment-oriented news sources, however, including Variety and Broadway World. A man of talent in many fields, Mr. Flynn died of complications of cancer on August 24th of this year. He was 59.

   Here are his credits in CFIV, by Allen J. Hubin, slightly updated and amended. I’ll get back to the books in a minute.

      FLINN, DENNY MARTIN (1947- 2007)
           San Francisco Kills (Bantam, 1991, pb)  [Spencer Holmes; San Francisco, CA]
           Killer Finish (Bantam, 1991, pb)  [Spencer Holmes; San Francisco, CA]

   But first, here are some of Mr. Flinn’s non-mystery writing accomplishments. For more information on any of these, you may follow the links above.

      THE MYSTERY NOVELS:

San Francisco Kills. Bantam, pb, January 1991.

      From the front cover:    “He bears the family name and has a talent for detection. Just call him Holmes … Spencer Holmes.”

      From the back cover:   … If there be any here present who knows just cause why they may not be lawfully be joined in marriage, I require him now make it known …

   Following the priest’s request, a shot rang out and the groom fell dead.

   What kind of killer was clever enough to get away with murder in front of hundreds of witnesses? That is just the sort of question that appeals to Spencer Holmes, a San Francisco detective who has inherited a fascination for foul play, a talent for deduction, good looks, and hoards of money from his illustrious grandfather, the immortal super sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

   In a case as complicated as they come, Spencer Holmes, assisted by his inscrutable companion, Sowhat Dihje, must use his formidable intelligence to follow a faint trail that leads from the mansions of the well-to-do into the not-so-distant past – to ferret out a remakable affair of friendship, love … and murder.

Killer Finish. Bantam, pb, August 1991.

   From the front cover:   “When it comes to solving crimes, he was born to it. … He’s Spencer Holmes, San Francisco sleuth.”

   From the back cover:    “It does appear that the Great Gandolfo has suffered an irreversible mistake in an otherwise well-conducted act!”

   And in this case, appearances were not deceiving. The Great Gandolfo was run through with his own sword, and it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to see that the erstwhile magician had died on stage – literally.

   What it did take was Spencer Holmes, Sherlock’s equally talented grandson, who happened to be attending Gandolfo’s final performance. And what the master sleuth, along with his sidekick, Sowhat Dihje, finds upon investigation, is a twisted trail of colorful suspects, grand illusions, missing persons, and voices from the dead. And that is only the beginning. For in the city by the bay, the mixture of magic and murder is potent – so potent that even the most pedigreed of detectives will be astounded by a … KILLER FINISH.

   In a short author’s biography on the final page of Killer Finish, it was announced that Mr. Flinn was working on a third novel, one called Lady Killer. For whatever reason, it was never published.

   Searching the Internet, it appears that Irene Adler is the lady in question, if you are asking the one I think you are, and on another site it is stated that “Spencer’s mansion in Frisco has a Nero Wolfe Room, which perhaps hints at his parentage, since it has already been well-established that Wolfe is Sherlock Holmes’ son.”

   On page 14 of San Francisco Kills, the plaque attached to the door of Holmes’ mansion door reads:

which I believe entitles him to be called a Private Detective. One who does not do divorce or “keyhole” work, but one who takes only the cases that intrigue him the most.

   One other site briefly describes the books are humorous pastiches. Here, for example, from page 194 of the same book cited above, is the following passage. Spencer Holmes is speaking to a fellow who has just finished a game of tennis:

   Over the past six weeks or so I’ve been working with John Pugmire, a long-time “locked room” aficionado, and the English translator of Paul Halter, the French writer who specializes in the genre, on an article about guess what? Locked room mysteries, of course.

   To tell you the truth, John’s article has been done for most, if not all, of these same past six weeks. What’s been holding up the works has been me. The major part of the piece is a list of well over 100 locked room mysteries. What I’ve been doing in my spare time in the evening is adding cover images to something like 90% of them.

   For more on what this is all about and where the list of books and authors came from, here’s John:

   One small but perhaps not so incidental nugget of information that came from the research into the books is that Repos de Bacchus, by French author Pierre Boileau, was used as the basis for a book in English, The Sleeping Bacchus, as by Hilary St.George Saunders. (This was only book under Saunders’ own name. He may be more familiar to mystery fans as Francis Beeding, one of several pen names that he used.)

   Not all of the entries have covers to go with them, but John and I are proud to have come up with as many as we did. Here’s the link to the page:

          https://mysteryfile.com/Locked_Rooms/Library.html

   If you’re a fan of classical mystery fiction, harking back to the Golden Age of Detection, I think you’ll like what you see. In fact, I guarantee it.

   It was well over a year ago that Victor Berch, Bill Pronzini and I put together our annotated bibliography of Dutton’s line of Guilt Edged hardcover mysteries, and luckily we haven’t had to make very many corrections.

   The Guilt Edged line lasted from 1947 to 1956, with the two most highly collectible authors in the group arguably being Mickey Spillane and Fredric Brown. There were lots of unknowns as well, but William Campbell Gault was a Guilt Edged author, and so were Lionel White, Stewart Sterling and Sam S. Taylor.

   If you know all of those names, congratulate yourself. If you know all but the last one, give yourself only half a pat on the back. It was in Sam S. Taylor’s entry in which we recently discovered that we were in error. According to all of the sources we consulted at the time, Taylor was supposed have died in 1958, soon after his last book. Not so, and I’ll get to the correct date in a minute.

   First, though, is Taylor’s complete entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, as it stood until a few weeks ago, slightly edited and expanded.

   TAYLOR, SAM(UEL) S. (1895-1958); see pseudonym Lehi Zane; Radio and film scriptwriter, short story writer. Series Character: Neal Cotten, in all titles.

       * Sleep No More. Dutton, hc, 1949. Signet 821, pb, 1950. Boardman, UK, 1951.
       * No Head for Her Pillow. Dutton, hc, 1952. Signet 1057, pb, 1953. Foulsham, UK, 1954.
       * So Cold, My Bed. Dutton, hc,1953. Signet 1247, pb, 1955. Foulsham, UK, 1955.

   ZANE, LEHI; pseudonym of Sam(uel) S. Taylor

       * Brenda. Gold Medal 264, pbo, 1952. Red Seal, UK, 1957.

   It turns out that both dates for Mr. Taylor were wrong. After reading our first efforts, one of his sons emailed me, stating that his father died in 1994, not 1958. This was enough to go on. Victor then did a search in Social Security records and came up with a Samuel S. Taylor who was born October 11, 1903 and died February 1994 in California.

   Having a ready-made excuse for compiling a compleat profile, we did, and here is the result. Jackets of the hardcovers in the Bill Pronzini collection provided the blurbs and other information. The paperback covers came from various other sources. I still can’t get to my own accumulation of books.

   First a photograph of Mr. Taylor, found on the back cover of his second book, along with a short biography underneath it:

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

   Sam S. Taylor, author of No Head for Her Pillow, is the author of one other mystery story, Sleep No More, published by E. P. Dutton & Company in 1949. Innumerable radio scripts, and a good many magazine stories round out a full writing career.

   Upon receiving a medical discharge from the U. S. Coast Guard in 1943, Mr. Taylor affiliated himself with the Army Signal Corps as expert consultant on training films, where he also wrote many scripts for Army posts.

   His personal interest in crime (from the observer’s seat) stems from that time when, as a member of the New York City special panel of jurors, he was called to serve on the famous Jimmy Hines case, prosecuted by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey.

   When Mr. Taylor first married his beautiful French Canadian bride, she spoke no English; Mr. Taylor now has a French accent after three years of marriage.

   Mr. Taylor makes his home in Tarzana, California, with his wife and baby.

      SLEEP NO MORE.

   From the hardcover front dust jacket flap:

   Delving into the private life of a luscious copper heiress, especially one with a tangle of soft red hair and a roving eye, was going to be a pleasure

   Or so thought Neal Cotten, head of the brand-new Cotten Bureau of Investigation. That was before a simple case of blackmail developed into a hunt for a desperate killer … a grim hunt that led from a luxurious mansion in Pacific Crest to a shoddy flop-house on Skid Row; from a remote ranch in Nevada to a crooked gambling house in Angel Gardens.

   The chase uncovered a secret rendezvous high up in Clearwater Canyon, a will with some startling changes, a fat bankbook hidden under a filmy negligee, a muscle-bound extra who didn’t go to Reno — and a handsome movie idol who played with fire once too often

   But none of it made sense. Not until Neal took Jennie, the Polish waitress, to see Madame Butterfly … and Jennie innocently gave him the lead that cracked the case wide open.

   A swift-paced tale of homicide and passion, of violence and corruption, set against the vivid background of Los Angeles, Sleep No More will be devoured by mystery fans in one breathless sitting.

      NO HEAD FOR HER PILLOW.

    From the hardcover front jacket flap:

   It may be an everyday occurrence among artists and art dealers to mutter vindictively, “Oh, I could kill him!” as it is among the brotherhood of almost any other business.

   No Head for Her Pillow has a couple of artists, an art dealer, some racketeers, some newspaper people, and Neal Cotten, director of the Cotten Bureau of Investigation and his own chief operative. It was a good thing for California art circles that Neal was hired by Colonel Millard Baldwin, publisher of the San Vincente Sun, to aid in the Sun‘s campaign against the slot-machine racket in the city.

   It happens that Col. Baldwin’s two daughters, Sharon and Diana, were on intimate terms with the others of the San Vicente art world, one being a painter, the other a sculptress. Diana, the sculptress, appeals mightily to Neal Cotten who sees her as a “king-size dame with a mass of sunset hair.”

   Investigations, of whatever kind, often lead to murder, as well as vice versa, and slot machines sometimes turn up more than merely lemons. The proof of these adages is offered, with dividends, in No Head for Her Pillow, a fast exciting mystery that is almost as tough as a forty-cent steak.

      SO COLD, MY BED.

    From the hardcover front jacket flap:

   Private eye Neal Cotten has a visit from a beautiful doll who commissions him to trace her aunt, an oldtime actress. Her story sounds phony but she pays cash so he takes the job. His first link to her whereabouts is a thug who offers to sell him information, but the deal is never closed. The thug is murdered.

   Neal stays with it and finds the old actress who spends most of her time in a specially made coffin. Then Neal gets a new client — the governor’s wife, no less, who thinks her stepdaughter is running in bad company. There is a link between the murdered thug and his pals, the beautiful client, the lady in the coffin and the governor’s family, but it is one murder and many near misses later that Neal gets the pitch and solves the case, with a night club singer in distress slowing up the process considerably.

   Sam Taylor is already known for his original and fast-paced mysteries through his earlier books Sleep No More and No Head For Her Pillow. His new one, So Cold, My Bed spells top entertainment for the mystery fan as it again features Neal Cotten, the hard-boiled but likeable private eye who has a way with the ladies and an affinity for easy money and screwy cases.

           BRENDA.

      From the front cover:

      Three wise men met Brenda — and joined the fools’ parade

      From the back cover:

                BRENDA

   There was the simple, pious valley town.

   And there was luscious, lustful Brenda.

   The hard-handed farmers knew work — and prayer.

   Brenda knew pleasure — and conquest.

   Tragedy rode on the wings of passion when good and evil clashed.

   Sam S. Taylor also published five criminous short stories in the early 50s:

       “Summer is a Bad Time” — Manhunt, October 1953.
       “A Clear Picture” — Manhunt, May 1954.
       “State Line” — Manhunt, September 1954.
       “The General Slept Here” — Manhunt, April 1955 (with Neal Cotten).
       “Dig It, Brother” — The Saint, May 1956.

   This profile came as the result of an inquiry from Donna Frey, who asked —

   Some questions are more easily answered than others. Not only does Contemporary Authors (CA) have an entry on her, but their essay quotes liberally from yet another source. It’s highly unlikely that I should not do the same.

   According to CA, Janet Louise Roberts was born January 20, 1925, in New Britain CT, the town next to the one where I live, and died June 11, 1982, in Dayton Ohio, where she was a reference librarian for the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library between 1966 and 1978.

   Quoting CA here and there, not only did she write contemporary, historical,and gothic romances, but “she even ventured into occult territory with The Devil’s Own, Isle of the Dolphins, Lord Satan, and Her Demon Lover — stories in which the devil or other demon fills in for the traditional romantic hero.”

   In an interview with Publishers Weekly, again according to CA, she explained “that she began using pseudonyms to avoid embarrassing her father, a missionary in a rather conservative church.”

   In Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers, essayist Barbara E. Kemp is quoted as saying: “One of the most prominent features of her novels is the portrayal of women as ineffectual beings, subject to much degradation. Men, on the other hand, are “rough and overbearing. […] It is not uncommon for the heroine to be raped by the hero at least once in the story. Sexual details are not very explicit, but the lack of tenderness and the idea of sex as punishment are apparent.”

   In spite of Roberts’ failings, Kemp goes on to conclude that she “remains one of the most popular of the romance novelists. Her view of women as pretty dolls to be used and manipulated by men certainly must cause feminists to gnash their teeth, but she obviously strikes a responsive chord among her readers.”

   The following list of her crime-related fiction is taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. It may not include all of her romance fiction that may qualify, and some of the books listed perhaps should not be there. We’ll save these two obviously related problems and solve them another day.

ROBERTS, JANET LOUISE (1925-1984). See pseudonyms Louisa Bronte, Rebecca Danton & Janette Radcliffe. Some of the listed titles are more straight romance than romantic suspense. ** = reprints not previously known to Al.

* The Jewels of Terror (n.) Lancer 1970
* Dark Rose (n.) Lancer 1971 [U.S. South; 1860s]
* Love Song (n.) Pinnacle 1971
* Ravenswood (n.) Avon 1971 [England; 1800s]

* The Weeping Lady (n.) Lancer 1971
* The Curse of Kenton (n.) Avon 1972 [England]
* The Devil’s Own (n.) Avon 1972
* A Marriage of Inconvenience (n.) Dell 1972 [England; 1800s]
* Rivertown (n.) Avon 1972
* La Casa Dorada (n.) Dell 1973

* The Dancing Doll (n.) Dell 1973 [England; 1800s]
* The Dornstein Ikon (n.) Avon 1973 [Austria]
* The Golden Thistle (n.) Dell 1973 [Rome; 1800s]

* Isle of the Dolphins (n.) Avon 1973 [Greece]
* My Lady Mischief (n.) Dell 1973 [England; 1800s]
* The Cardross Luck (n.) Dell 1974 [England; 1800s]
* The First Waltz (n.) Dell 1974 [Vienna; 1814]
* Castlereagh (n.) Pocket Books 1975 [England; 1819]
* Jade Vendetta (n.) Pocket Books 1976 [England; 1894]

* Wilderness Inn (n.) Pocket Books 1976 [U.S. West; 1795]
* Island of Desire (n.) Ballantine 1977
* Her Demon Lover (n.) Pocket Books 1978; See: Avon 1973, as by Louisa Bronte.
* Black Pearls (n.) Ballantine 1979 [Hawaii; 1880s]
* Golden Lotus (n.) Warner 1979
** Lord Satan (n.) Pocket Books, 1979. See: Avon 1972, as by Louisa Bronte.
** Black Horse Tavern (n.) Pocket Books, 1980. See: Popular Library 1972, as by Rebecca Danton.
* The Sign of the Golden Goose (n.) Pocket Books 1980; See: Popular Library 1972, as by Rebecca Danton.

BRONTE, LOUISA; pseudonym of Janet Louise Roberts

* Lord Satan (n.) Avon 1972 [England; 1815] [Reprinted as by JLR, Pocket, 1979]

* Her Demon Lover (n.) Avon 1973 [Balkans] [Reprinted as by JLR, Pocket, 1978]
* Greystone Tavern (n.) Ballantine 1975 [Connecticut; 1776]
* Casino Greystone (n.) Ballantine 1976 [Connecticut; 1896]
* Freedom Trail to Greystone (n.) Ballantine 1976 [Connecticut; 1860]
* Gathering at Greystone (n.) Ballantine 1976 [Connecticut; 1812]
* Greystone Heritage (n.) Ballantine 1976 [Connecticut; 1948]
* Moonlight at Greystone (n.) Ballantine 1976 [Connecticut; 1924]

* The Vallette Heritage (n.) Jove 1978
* The Van Rhyne Heritage (n.) Jove 1979
* -The Gunther Heritage (n.) Jove 1981

DANTON, REBECCA; pseudonym of Janet Louise Roberts

RADCLIFFE, JANETTE; pseudonym of Janet Louise Roberts

   This post has been prompted by an entry on another blog by Jess Nevins, author of the soon-to-be forthcoming The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes (MonkeyBrain Books, November 2008).

   The subject of Jess’s posting is the fleeting and inevitable passing of literary fame, although we don’t have to like it, and his prime example is mystery writer T. Arthur Plummer. You should probably go read it. If you’re like me, you will read and agree with everything he has to say.

   You may be saying, who’s T. Arthur Plummer? And that’s precisely the point. Let me quote Jess:

   Me again. I was thinking about this very same thing this afternoon while browsing through the mystery section of Borders. John Gardner, author of a long list of spy and espionage thrillers, including more James Bond novels than Ian Fleming wrote, died earlier this month. Not a single book of his was there to be found.

   Ed McBain died last year. The famous, extremely popular author of the 87th Precinct books? If you’re reading this, you have to know who he is. He’s represented by six books at Borders. Not six different titles. Six books. By this time next year, there probably won’t be any.

   The number of Plummer’s books on ABE has gone up since Jess looked. I found 130. It’s still a mere handful for an author who wrote seventy of them.

   I also found more covers than Jess did, though, and assuming that you’d like to see them, here they are, mixed in with a list of all of Plummer’s detective and mystery fiction, adapted from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

  PLUMMER, T(homas) ARTHUR. 1883-1961.

* The Broken Trust (n.) Thomson 1929 [England]
* The Ace of Death (n.) Paul 1930 [England]
* The Murder House (n.) Paul 1930 [England]
* Death on Danger Hill (n.) Paul 1931 [England]
* The House in Sinister Lane (n.) Paul 1931 [England]
* -The Girl in a Hurry (n.) Thomson 1932 [England]
* Haunting Lights (n.) Paul 1932 [England]
* Shadowed by the C.I.D. (n.) Paul 1932 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Alias-The Crimson Snake (n.) Paul 1933 [England]
* Lonely Hollow Mystery (n.) Paul 1933 [England]
* Creaking Gallows (n.) Paul 1934 [England]
* Death Takes a Hand (n.) Paul 1934 [England]
* -Margaret Benson’s View (n.) Leng 1934 [England]
* Shot at Night (n.) Paul 1934 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Frampton—of the “Yard”! (n.) Paul 1935 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]

* Staring Eyes! (n.) Paul 1935 [England]
* The Dumb Witness (n.) Paul 1936 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]

* Was the Mayor Murdered? (n.) Paul 1936 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Bonfire Murder (n.) Macaulay 1937; See: Was the Mayor Murdered? (Paul, 1936).

* The Death Symbol (n.) Paul 1937 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Man They Feared (n.) Paul 1937 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Cornered (n.) Leng 1938 [England]
* Five Were Murdered (n.) Paul 1938 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* -Lying Lips (n.) Leng 1938 [England]
* The Man They Put Away (n.) Paul 1938 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* -Her Own Affair (n.) Leng 1939 [England]
* The Muse Theatre Murder (n.) Paul 1939 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England; Theatre]
* Two Men from the East (n.) Paul 1939 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Black Ribbon Murders (n.) Paul 1940 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Melody of Death (n.) Paul 1940 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Crime at Crooked Gables (n.) Paul 1941 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Devil’s Tea-Party (n.) Paul 1942 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Fool of the “Yard” (n.) Paul 1942 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Man Who Changed His Face (n.) Paul 1943 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder Limps By (n.) Paul 1943 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder-by an Idiot (n.) Paul 1944 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Simon Takes “the Rap” (n.) Paul 1944 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The “J for Jennie” Murders (n.) Paul 1945 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Man with the Crooked Arm (n.) Paul 1945 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder in the Village (n.) Paul 1945 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Strangler (n.) Paul 1945 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Barush Mystery (n.) Paul 1946 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]

* The Pierced Ear Murders (n.) Paul 1947 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]

* The Silent Four (n.) Paul 1947 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Who Fired the Factory? (n.) Paul 1947 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* “Brent”-of Bleak House (n.) Paul 1948 [England]
* Hunted! (n.) Paul 1948 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Strychnine for One (n.) Paul 1949 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Death Haunts the Repertory (n.) Paul 1950 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; Theatre; England]

* The Murder of Doctor Grey (n.) Paul 1950 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Yellow Disc Murders (n.) Paul 1950 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Death Letter (n.) Paul 1951 [England]
* Murder at Marlington (n.) Paul 1951 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder Through Room 45 (n.) Paul 1952 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Starry Eyed Murder (n.) Paul 1952 [England]
* Frampton Sees Red (n.) Paul 1953 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Westlade Murders (n.) Paul 1953 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder in Windy Coppice (n.) Paul 1954 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* A Scream at Midnight (n.) Paul 1954 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]

* The Black Rat (n.) Paul 1955 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder in the Surgery (n.) Paul 1955 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Pagan Joe (n.) Paul 1956 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Where Was Trail Murdered? (n.) Paul 1956 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Condemned to Live (n.) Paul 1957 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder at Lantern Corner (n.) Long 1957 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Elusive Killer (n.) Long 1958 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Hospital Thief (n.) Long 1959 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* The Vestry Murder (n.) Long 1959 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]

* The Spider Man (n.) Long 1961 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* Murder at Brownhill (n.) Long 1962 [Det. Insp. Andrew Frampton; England]
* -The Judas Girl (n.) Leng n.d.
* -A Woman’s Weapon (n.) Newnes n.d.

[UPDATE] 08-30-07. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon, who supplied it, one additional cover image is now included. He also pointed out one important typographical error, which was immediately repaired. Some other minor formatting changes have taken place, but more than that, you need not know.

[UPDATE] 09-06-07. Jamie is continuing to investigate the life of T. Arthur Plummer, and one interesting piece of information has already turned up. Its turns out that both Plummer’s wife and daughter were also writers. Steve Holland has the details over on his research-intensive Bear Alley blog.

   Both women wrote British romantic fiction, a subject matter which has not come up before on this blog, except for gothic suspense novels, with dozens of books between them. His wife, Coralie Marie Plummer, wrote under the name of Cora Linda; his daughter, Clare Emsley Plummer, used as bylines both Clare Plummer and Clare Emsley. For a remarkably complete list of titles, follow the link above.

   Morton Wolson, 1913-2003, or Peter Paige, as he was known when he was writing for the detective pulps, has come up for discussion several times in these pages. The first time was a review I did of his only full-length novel, Nightmare Blonde (Pocket, 1988). In the course of the review I included everything I knew about the author at the time.

   The second time came soon thereafter, when Morton’s son Peter spotted the review and sent me an email that provided quite a bit more information about him.

   After reading both of these entries on the blog, pulp enthusiast and collector Walker Martin emailed me to tell the story of how he tracked down Morton Wolson in the 1980s and had a long afternoon’s conversation with him about his days in the pulps.

   Peter has kept in touch with me in the weeks since, and he recently sent me a couple of photos of his father, which of course I’m very pleased to be able to show you here.

   This first one was taken when he was a bouncer at the Cuban Village in the New York 1939 World’s Fair, as he looked when he wrote his first piece for Black Mask, “I Guard Nudes.”

   Peter adds that this occurred shortly after he returned from fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil war, in which he was a member of the Lincoln Brigade, had been appointed Chief Cadre officer, and then was a partisan fighter in the Basque country, blowing bridges and trains, as depicted in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

   This next one is the one used at his memorial services at the time of his death.

   If you follow the links back to the previous entries, you’ll find that Morton’s stories under his own name have been discussed previously. This time around you’ll find a complete list of all of the pulp fiction that he wrote as Peter Paige, beginning with the previously mentioned “I Guard Nudes,” (Black Mask, Sept 1939) a story about security measures at a NY World’s Fair sideshow featuring scantily clad exotic dancers.

   Paige’s primary series character was Cash Wale, a hardboiled New York City private eye in the Race Williams vein. His sidekick, Sailor Duffy, is an ex-pug with “scrambled brains” whom Wale watches out for. Lots of violent action, tough talk, and wisecracks, says Bill Pronzini, when I asked him what he recalled about the pair. Dime Detective was the primary venue for the Cash Wale series, but Wale’s very first appearance was in the January 1940 issue of Black Mask, the only time he showed up in that magazine.

   The primary source of the data below is the two volume index Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction, by Michael L. Cook and Stephen T. Miller. (Garland, 1988). Additional input came from Bill Pronzini, who provided much of the story information above and assistance when Cook-Miller produced questions I could not answer.

      THE PETER PAIGE STORIES —

“I Guard Nudes,” Black Mask, September 1939.
     Reprinted in Big Double Feature Magazine, 1#1, circa 1940 as “I Guard Dudes”
         FOOTNOTE #1.
“Swastika Scorge,” Black Mask, December 1939.
“Voodoo Frame,” Black Mask, January 1940. CW = Cash Wale.
“The Fatherland of Otto Bloch,” Detective Fiction Weekly, Jan 27 1940.
“Blackout!” Black Mask, February 1940.
“Counterfeit Citizen,” Black Mask, March 1940.
“The Friends of Papa Valdes,” Black Mask, April 1940.
“The Corpse Promoter,” Detective Tales, April 1940.
“My Pop, the Cop,” Detective Fiction Weekly, Apr 27 1940.
“And God Won’t Tell,” Black Mask, July 1940.
“Pick’s Last Crime,” Detective Fiction Weekly, Aug 10 1940.
“Lotta Had a Husband,” Dime Detective, September 1940. CW.

“Pick’s Last Crime,” Detective Fiction Weekly, Oct 26 1940.    FOOTNOTE #2.
“Blitzkrieg Bankroll,” Fifth Column Stories, November, 1940.
“They Refuse to Understand,” Detective Fiction Weekly, Dec 7 1940.
“Dopey and theDevil,” Detective Fiction Weekley, Dec 21 1940.
“Treachery Goes to School,” Fifth Column Stories, January, 1941.
“Bomb Heat,” Black Mask, January 1941.

“Wanted: Dead and Alive” Dime Detective, February 1941. CW.

“The Bullet from Nowhere,” Dime Detective, April 1941. CW.
“Lady, Can You Spare a Corpse?” Dime Detective, June 1941. CW.
“Picture Me Dead!” Black Mask, November 1941.
“Local Corpse Makes Good,” Dime Detective, November 1941. CW.
“The Night You Shot Hitler,” Black Mask, February 1942.
“Death Is from Hunger,” Dime Detective, April 1942. CW.
“A Corpse for Cinderella,” Dime Detective, June, 1942. CW.

“Death Is a Souvenir,” Black Mask, August 1942.
“Berlin Papers, Please Copy,” Black Mask, September 1942.
“Joe Is Dead,” New Detective, January 1943.
“Death Stands By,” Dime Detective, February 1943. CW.
“Just a Sample,” Short Stories, May 1943.
“I Give You – Murder!” New Detective, November 1943.

“The Riddle of Papa Rio,” Dime Detective, August 1945. CW.
“Twelve Dead Mice,” Dime Detective, January 1946.
“Guilt-Edged Frame,” Dime Detective, September 1946.
“A Little Corpse Who Wasn’t There,” Dime Detective, December 1946. CW
“Cash in the Chips,” Dime Detective, January 1947. CW
“When a Man Murders,” Dime Detective, March 1947. CW
“Meet Me in Death Alley,” Detective Tales, May 1947. CW
“Death – on the House,” Dime Detective, June 1947. CW
“Softly Creep and Softly Kill!” Detective Tales, August 1947.
    Reprinted in Triple Detective, Summer 1953
“The Cash Wale Massacre,” Dime Detective, November, 1947. CW

“The Merry Wives of Murder,” Detective Tales, February 1948.
“Cash Wale’s Brazen Ghost,” Dime Detective, February 1948. CW

“Die, Little Lady,” Detective Tales, March 1948.
“The Sweetest Corpse in Town!” Detective Tales, April 1948
    Reprinted in Triple Detective, Fall 1953.
“House in Silence,” Dime Detective, June 1948.
“Too Beautiful to Burn,” Detective Tales, September 1948.

“Cash Wale’s Lethal Lulu,” Dime Detective, October 1948. CW
“The Corpse and I,” Dime Detective, January 1949.
“That Mad, Mean Murder Man,” Detective Tales, March 1949.
“Cash Wale’s Carnival Kill,” Dime Detective, May 1949. CW
“Coffin Cure,” Dime Detective, July 1949.
“Cash Wale’s Second Massacre!” Dime Detective, June 1953. CW

“Adam and Evil!” Detective Tales, August 1953.
“The Watcher” Manhunt, November 1953.

   Stories as by MORTON WOLSON:     [FOOTNOTE #3]

“The Attacker” Ellery Queen’s MM, January 1954.
“The Glass Room” Ellery Queen’s MM, September 1957.
Nightmare Blonde, novel, Pocket, 1988.

FOOTNOTE #1. Bill Pronzini and I suspect that the altered title is a slip of the finger on the part of Cook-Miller. The single issue of Big Double Feature Magazine consisted of nothing but reprint stories, the westerns from Ranch Romances, the mysteries from Black Mask.

FOOTNOTE #2. The title of this story is the same as that for the August 10, 1940, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly. Neither Bill nor I have either magazine, but one possibility that he suggests is that Paige’s “You’re the Jury” in the November 16, 1940 issue of DFW is listed as #3 in a series of true stories. It could be that “Pick’s Last Crime” was both #1 and #2, a two-parter despite the two-month gap or maybe a followup piece.

   [UPDATE] 08-27-08. In the comment he left early this morning after checking his set of DFW, Walker Martin reports that, surprisingly enough, what the magazine did was to publish two separate stories by Paige having the very same title.

FOOTNOTE #3. The first version of this list included only the stories written by Morton Wolson as Peter Paige for the pulp magazines, and somehow the story he did for Manhunt, a digest, was missed. Thanks to Jiro Kimura for catching this. See his comment that follows. Having added the one missing story, I decided to include the three other stories he did under his own name. Compleatness is the goal, after all!

   I’m still on vacation mode, but as I promised I might, I’m posting a short piece on a book that I just discovered that I have but didn’t know anything about until just now. And I can’t wait until September to tell you about it.

   It’s a private eye novel, one by John P. Browner, who is in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, but about whom he also knows nothing more. The complete entry for the author reads like this:

      BROWNER, JOHN P.
         * -Who Killed the Snowman? (n.) Pocket Books 1979
         * Death of a Punk (n.) Pocket Books 1980 [New York City, NY]

   It’s the second book of the pair which I’ve just discovered that I own. I found it in a box in my garage that I opened this afternoon to see what was in it (the box, that is). At the moment there’s not a single copy of Who Killed the Snowman? up for sale on the Internet, and Google brings up not a single mention of it, so I have no idea what it’s about. There is one copy of Death of a Punk on Amazon.com with an asking price of $75.00, but unless you’re more resourceful than I am, all of the other copies you’ll find there or anywhere else will set you back $300 or more. And, yes, you read that right.

   A word to the early bird. If the $75 one is gone by the time you read this, you weren’t early enough.

   The blurb on the front cover reads as follows: “Beyond the Law, Behind the Eight-Ball, Trapped in a Drug War … and Framed for Murder!”

   From the back cover:

   About the “ZZZ.” That’s the first word in the ad that Hornblower puts in the Village Voice every week. Rather than having it show up at the top of the list in the classified section, he makes sure that it appears at the bottom.

   There is a French version of this book, or at least I assume that it’s the same book, my French having disappeared on me about the same time I passed my last French exam, which would have been in 1964 or 1965. Here’s the bibliographic information from Amazon’s French website, along with a cover scan:

   Description du livre: Gallimard, 1981. État : Bon état. NRF 248p. N̊1824, première édition. N̊ de réf. du libraire 1928.

   Just as the word “noir” means many things to many people, it is not easy to define exactly was is meant by a “cozy” mystery. It’s usually a matter of saying “I can’t define it, but I certainly know one when I see one.” But pointing out examples is always good; also worth doing is a list of the common characteristics that cozies almost always seem to have.

   Danna Beckett does a super job of both on her Cozy Mystery website, which she’s just told me about and which I recommend to you highly. You’ll find a long detailed alphabetical list of authors there, from Jeff Abbott and Alina Adams (*) to Cornell Woolrich and Eric Wright, as well as a smaller section of TV and movie cozies.

   (*) Skipping over Pearl Abraham (not a mystery writer) and Peter Abrahams (not a cozy writer), but there are very good reasons why they’re included. Why make a list of mystery writers and not include your favorites? It works for me.

   I’m always on the lookout for previously unknown and/or unidentified private eyes, the fictional variety. Kevin Burton Smith keeps a pretty good list on his Thrilling Detective website, but he doesn’t have them all. I’ve helped in adding a few, and I thought I had another one when I came across the books of Bernard Bannerman, who chronicled the adventures of one Dave Woolf, a London-based PI about whom I’ll tell you more in a minute.

   It turns out, however, that Kevin has heard of Dave Woolf. He’s listed as a PI on his website, but only by name. There’s no page there for him, yet.

   Here’s what Bannerman’s entry looks like in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

   BANNERMAN, BERNARD; pseudonym of Andrew Arden (1948- )

      * Controlling Interest (n.) Sphere 1989 [Dave Woolf; London]
      * The Last Wednesday (n.) Sphere 1989 [Dave Woolf; London]
      * The Judge’s Song (n.) Sphere 1991 [Dave Woolf; London]
      * Orbach’s Judgment (n.) Sphere 1991 [Dave Woolf; London]

   Under his own name, Andrew Arden has one mystery novel to his credit:

   ARDEN, ANDREW (1948- ); see pseudonym Bernard Bannerman

      * The Motive Not the Deed (n.) Talmy Franklin 1975 [London]

   I don’t know anything about this book, but from the Internet, I have learned more about the author himself. Taken from his website:

   Fiction — the novels which appeared under his own name:

      * The Motive Not The Deed, 1974
      * No Certain Roof, 1984 [Landlord of working-class family wants to turn their house into flats.]
      * The Object Man, 1987
      * The Programme, 2001 [A law firm gets mixed up with a quasi-religious cult.]

   If you may have gotten the feeling that legal matters have something to do with the cases that Dave Woolf works on, you’d be right. I hasten to add that I’ve not read any of them yet, but I’ve recently put together a complete set of his adventures, as told by Bernard Bannerman.

   Each of the first two books mentions the other as a selling point, so perhaps they came out at the same time. But one has a lower publisher’s number than the other, so I’ll go with that one as the first of the two. (The same is true for the second pair of books.)

   Quoting from the back cover of each of the books:

THE LAST WEDNESDAY. Sphere 0382, pbo, 1989.

   No one falls out as viciously, as painfully or as messily as lawyers. Jack Nicholas, left-wing barrister, was supposed to have died in an accident. Drunk, said the coroner. Murdered, said his mother. Enter Dave Woolf, ex-solicitor, boozer and down-at-heel private eye.

   Even before Woolf starts asking questions, he finds that he is investigating not one death, but the wholesale despatch of Jack Nicolas’ erstwhile colleagues. There is very little for Woolf to go on – as he treks through the glitz and sleaze of London, through France and Norway in search of an elusive German – other than the apparent coincidence that all the deaths had occurred on the last Wednesday of every month.

CONTROLLING INTEREST. Sphere 0383, pbo, 1989.

   “The body of a woman solicitor was discovered by staff arriving yesterday morning at the Holborn offices of the prestigious London solicitors, Mather’s. Katrina Parkhurst, 32, has been shot. Police are investigating.”

   A murder on the premises is bad news for a law firm. It discourages clients. It also discourages recruits which is damaging to a firm like Mather’s with a reputation, a lot of clients, but very few partners. But, as Dave Woolf, one-time lawyer, part-time boozer and (almost) full-time private eye realizes, a thorough professional would prefer a murder to a leak any day of the week. Dead men can’t leak information on gambling debts, treachery, the darker side of freemasonry, and a dodgy business dating back forty years …

THE JUDGE’S SONG. Sphere 0520, pbo, 1991.

   It was, as Dave Woolf said, “the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in England.” High-count corruption, gangsters, fire-bombs and a bit of murder on the side – all of it against the backdrop of a family drama raging through London, the West Country and the South of France.

   It’s not the sort of thing that solicitors ought to be investigating. But Woolf is not ordinary solicitor. Back in the legal fold after a spell as a private eye, he’s roped into a spot of detection for the usual reason – an irresistible fee. Sustained by hefty slugs of Southern Comfort, Camels and his new Aussie sidekick, he’s ready to haul a few skeletons out of family cupboards. The trouble is, they’re still alive …

ORBACH’S JUDGEMENT. Sphere 0521, pbo, 1991.

   Dave Woolf, solicitor and private eye, has had respectability thrust upon him. He’s also been saddled with the most sensational case of his career.

   High Court Judge Sir Russell Orbach is a pillar of the establishment and a doting guardian to the orphaned Frankie. In public, that is. In private, according to Frankie’s famous half-sister, he’s a murderer. What’s more, she’s going to say so n her forthcoming autobiography. Would Woolf, asked the petrified publisher, check up on this bizarre accusation?

   It’s just up Woolf’s street; he specialises in investigating the misconduct of members of the legal profession. It’s sometimes like biting the hand that feeds you; but when that hand is adept at bullying, blackmail and bundling bodies into the ocean, it’s Woolf who’s in danger of being bitten … and badly.

Comments: First of all, I do like that last line. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve not read these, but I have skimmed through them. Not well enough, I admit, to identify Woolf’s new Aussie sidekick in The Judge’s Song, but enough to know that these are books that are not likely ever to be published in the US, a country whose inhabitants have no idea what a solicitor is, nor how he or she is different from a barrister.

   My impression is, and I could be wrong, is that these books are like the rough-and-tumble adventures of Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy capers, only with a backdrop of courtroom drama and stodgy legal wrangling rather than the much more dodgy antiques business. More reliable input would be welcome.

   Following up on the entry posted earlier here on Olive Harper, a lady who specialized in novelizing mystery plays around the beginning of last century, Victor Berch has made some revisions, corrections and additions to the previous list of books she wrote. None of these changes are major, but all of them are essential.

   Many of these novelizations are, of course, included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, but the true origins of these stories were not known for most of them when CFIV came out. This new entry for Olive Harper will show up shortly in the ongoing Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   The changes have been made in the previous blog entry, which you can see by following the link above. Victor also sent along another ten or twelve more cover images, some of which you see here, but there are simply too many of them for small blog entries like this one. So what I’ve done is to create a new separate page on the original Mystery*File website page, one that’s large enough to hold them all, along with the newly revisions.

   Take a look now, if you would, at www.mysteryfile.com/Harper/Compleat.html. It’s as complete now as we can get it. So far.

[UPDATE] 06-28-07. This didn’t take long, did it? Victor’s found two more cover images, and I’ve just uploaded them both to The Compleat OLIVE HARPER webpage. (See the link in the last paragraph above.)