By profession a dedicated newspaperman and sportswriter, Charles Einstein also dabbled in writing mystery and crime fiction. He died last week, and a more fitting and heartfelt tribute to him could not be found anywhere than this one by crime writer Wallace Stroby, who was also his editor at The Newark Star-Ledger for several years, not to mention a very close friend.

   You should read the entire piece yourself, of course, and I hope you will, but to illustrate what kind of interesting family Mr. Einstein came from, here are couple of paragraphs I’ve taken the liberty of excerpting from it:

   As a sportswriter, Charles Einstein was, among other honors, a lifetime member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. His works include four Fireside Books of Baseball, The New Baseball Reader, and (with Willie Mays) Born to Play Ball and My Life In and Out of Baseball.

   As a mystery writer, his resume, while significant, is not nearly as extensive. Here’s a slightly expanded version of Mr. Einstein’s entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

EINSTEIN, CHARLES (1926-2007)

   I called his resume “significant,” and here are some details to back up that statement. First the movies, then the books the films were based on:

      THE MOVIES:

   The Bloody Spur was made into the RKO movie While the City Sleeps, 1956, directed by Fritz Lang. A top-notch film noir / social criticism film about the role of the media (newspapers vs. TV) while a serial killer is on the loose, it sounds as though it should be on DVD but for some reason, it does not seem to be. The movie stars Dana Andrews, George Sanders, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, Rhonda Fleming, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell and Sally Forrest.

   No Time at All was filmed as an episode on Playhouse 90 in 1958. [See the cover of the paperback edition.] Available on video, an online description calls it: “A sort-of Airport of its time, this production tells of a stricken airliner that must make its way through the heaviest air traffic in the world without lights and radio. Among the cast members are William Lundigan, Jane Greer, Betsy Palmer, Keenan Wynn, Charles Bronson, Jack Haley, Buster Keaton, Chico Marx and Sylvia Sidney.”

   The Blackjack Hijack was the basis for the TV movie Nowhere to Run, 1978, starring David Janssen, Stefanie Powers and Allen Garfield. Synopsis of the movie, paraphrased from IMDB: “To get out of his marriage with Marian, world-weary Harry plans to fake his death and assume a new identity. His wife gets suspicious and hires a private eye, but when Harry discovers this, he hires the PI to work for him instead.”

      THE BOOKS:

   The Bloody Spur. “‘Help me for gods sake.’ Later the doctors would use these words to decipher the riddle of a perverted killer. Right now, the lipstick scrawl signaled the start of New York’s greatest manhunt.
   “And in the city room of the fabulous Kyne News empire, four big-time newsmen went into action. All four knew that an exclusive beat on the killings would mean the top job at Kyne – and they were all hungry for the job. Hungry enough to buck the police, sell out their mistresses, and commit blackmail. Four decent men – corrupted by the blood spur of ambition.”

   Wiretap! “Men with a golden ear. In the city of Aimerly they were the cops, the city prosecutor, the rackets boss. Their electronic spies recorded the intimacies of boudoir and office – intimacies later priced, and paid for.in cash or blood. Then a judge who knew where all the bodies were buried got himself murdered. And Sam Murray, State Crime Commission, walked into a maze of tapped phones, secret cameras, hidden mikes. Various people tried to sidetrack Sam, with the help of two ladies who were specialists at their work. But when Sam kept pushing, they gave him a choice – rot in jail, or send the last honest man in town to do it for him.”

   The Last Laugh. “Sam Prior was an off-stage straight man for Carl Anda and Jay-Jay Bailey, whom readers should be careful not to confuse with real-life entertainers, living or dead. And he was a straight man for his wife Rachel, whom he should have left where he found her, singing with her hips at a Borscht Circuit hotel. He tells his own story in his own words, warm and wry and funny. He’s a nice guy, and in the dog-eat-dog world of professional comics, they eat nice guys for breakfast.”

   The Blackjack Hijack. About the author, taken from the dust jacket flap: “In a career that has included years as a wire-service newsman and feature writer in New York and Chicago, and as columnist and editor for two San Francisco dailies, Charles Einstein also has authored several hundred other works — books, screenplays, short stories, magazine articles. The Blackjack Hijack is his ninth novel and, he notes, the first in which he appears as a character in his own book, playing the part of an expert on the game of blackjack. Here art imitates life: in 1968 author Einstein published another book – now in its fourth printing and hailed by ranking computer programmers and other mathematicians as the best and simplest in the field — called How to Win at Blackjack. Both born in New England in the late 1920’s, the author and his wife first met as undergraduates at the University of Chicago, and with their four children, now all in their twenties, migrated subsequently from New York to Arizona to California.”

   Elliott Baker, a screenwriter and novelist with one book listed in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, died on February 9th. He was perhaps best known for his first book, A Fine Madness, which was made into a movie starring Sean Connery, Joanne Woodward and Jean Seberg.

   Described elsewhere as a “dark, picaresque” tale, A Fine Madness told the story of Samson Shillitoe, a poet forced to work as a carpet cleaner. Mr. Baker also wrote the screenplay for the fillm.

   Born Elliot Joseph Cohen, December 15, 1922, he changed his name when he began his writing career.

   His entry in CFIV is scant, as previously mentioned:

   The dash indicates a title of marginal crime content. The cover shown is that of the British edition. Some online reviews praise Pocock & Pitt but do not elucidate:

   Adderly, a series created for Canadian television by Mr. Baker, was based on a character from Pocock and Pitt, described by one source as being in the “humorous adventure” category.

   Excerpting from a synopsis from IMDB:

   Adderly aired in the US from September 1986 through March 1988 by CBS at 11:30 pm, opposite Johnny Carson and Dave Letterman, but it made little ratings headway against the two late night hosts.

   Excerpting from a NY Times review:

   I don’t know. I wish I’d seen it when it was on. I liked The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I even liked Get Smart. From the rest of the review, however, which is rather unfavorable, the chances of seeing the series on DVD are fairly slim.

   On the other hand, actors and other people responsible for putting the show on the air either won or were nominated for a number of Canadian Gemini awards, including Winston Rekert for best actor. Blame it on provincialism here in the US?

   Announced today was the death of Carolyn Hougan, 63, on February 25th. She was a highly praised thriller writer under her own name as well as “John Case,” a pen name she and her husband Jim shared together.

   The books she and/or her husband wrote were filled to the brim with contemporary terrorists, rogue CIA agents, high-tech science, voodoo magic, deadly viruses and secret conspiracies – the entire gamut of huge-stakes danger and the possible ways in which the world could be destroyed in a moment, or at least be brought to its knees.

    Of special note, Ghost Dancer, the couple’s most recent novel, has been nominated for this year’s Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Literary Crime Novel by the International Association of Crime Writers. (For the complete list of nominees, go here.)

  BIBLIOGRAPHY: [Based in part on her entry in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.]

   Best known in combo with her husband as –

   On her own –

   And on her own under yet another pen name –

   Thanks to J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet for the link to her obituary on the Washington Post website.

   You won’t find Jerome Whelan’s name in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, at least not under that name. You will find him, however, in the online Addenda that preceded the Revised CFIV, which has not yet published. The entry appeared then as follows:

      BRIEN, R. N. Pseudonym of Jerome Bernard Whelan.
         The Missing Solicitor. Skeffington, 1952 [Eng.]

   Four or five copies of the book are currently being offered for sale on the Internet, so it is not especially uncommon. Nonetheless, not only was Mr. Whelan an author new to CFIV, but so was the title itself, even under the pen name, having escaped notice for one reason or another through four editions of the Hubin bibliography.

   At the moment I cannot tell you exactly what the mystery in The Missing Solicitor is about, but I have a pretty good guess. In a recent email to Al Hubin, Edward Whelan, a barrister in England, said “Jerome (my father) was a solicitor himself, and obviously did not want any of his clients to know that he had a secret fantasy world of arsenic poisoning and stolen bearer bonds.”

   According to Edward, as he mentions in the same email, the name R. N. Brien came from a variation on his mother’s maiden name. There was also only the one novel, which his father always spoke about in a deprecating fashion.

   Jerome Whelan went on to become a noted tax advisor and a director of the Ionian Bank in London. He was born in Cork in 1911 and died on 14 Feb 2007.

   It didn’t take long for the news to get around. James Reasoner, Ed Gorman and Bill Crider were among the first to have gotten the news of Mr. Prather’s death online, but I’d heard it from Al Hubin by way of John Herrington (in England) just minutes before I saw it on Bill’s blog. It must be true, and yet it’s still hard to believe.

   I’m not positive, but I’m all but convinced that it was one of Shell Scott’s crazy capers in the mid-1950s that introduced me to Gold Medal paperback fiction. I’d been reading the Hardy Boys before that, as I’ve related before, and while the details of what happened when are not exactly clear, I know it wasn’t much earlier that I’d started in on the shelf of Erle Stanley Gardner hardcovers I’d discovered in the Cadillac (MI) public library.

   Perry Mason was nothing like Shell Scott, a private eye with a leer and not much savoir faire, and there was no going back. My innocence was gone. No, I didn’t abandon Perry. I read those, too, the entire shelf. But I also read all of those paperbacks with the yellow spines in the supermarket spinner rack, with new books in every Wednesday, or was it Tuesday, on my way home from high school, some of them while standing right there at the rack, as who had 75 cents to spend whenever another three of them came out?

   Mr. Prather came up for discussion on this blog not too long ago, when I mentioned the interview that Linda Pendleton did with him late last year, and I suggest that you go read it again. You did read it the first time, didn’t you?

   Here’s his entry in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, in chronological order. I won’t list all of the reprints, of which there were many: n = novel, co = collection, ss = short story, nv = novelette, na = novella; SS = Shell Scott.

PRATHER, RICHARD S(cott) (1921- )

* Case of the Vanishing Beauty (n.) Gold Medal 1950 [SS]
* Bodies in Bedlam (n.) Gold Medal 1951 [SS]
* Everybody Had a Gun (n.) Gold Medal 1951 [SS]
* Find This Woman (n.) Gold Medal 1951 [SS]

* Dagger of Flesh (n.) Falcon 1952
* Darling, It’s Death (n.) Gold Medal 1952 [SS]
* Lie Down, Killer (n.) Lion 1952 [SS]
* Way of a Wanton (n.) Gold Medal 1952 [SS]
* Ride a High Horse (n.) Gold Medal 1953. Also published as: Too Many Crooks. Gold Medal, 1956. [SS]
* Always Leave ’Em Dying (n.) Gold Medal 1954 [SS]
* Pattern for Panic (n.) Abelard-Schuman 1954. Revised version, with SS: Gold Medal, 1961.
* Strip for Murder (n.) Gold Medal 1956 [SS]
* Too Many Crooks (n.) Gold Medal 1956; See: Ride a High Horse (Gold Medal, 1953).
* The Wailing Frail (n.) Gold Medal 1956 [SS]
* Have Gat – Will Travel (co) Gold Medal 1957 [SS]
   # • The Build-Up • ss Suspect Feb ’56
   # • Code 197 • ss Manhunt Jun ’55
   # • Murder’s Strip Tease • ss
   # • Sinner’s Alley • ss
   # • The Sleeper Caper • ss Manhunt Mar ’53
   # • Trouble Shooter • ss Accused Jan ’56
* Three’s a Shroud (co) Gold Medal 1957 [SS]
   # • Blood Ballot • nv Menace Nov ’54
   # • Dead Give-Away • na
   # • Hot-Rock Rumble • nv Manhunt Jun ’53
* The Scrambled Yeggs (n.) Gold Medal 1958; See: Pattern for Murder (Graphic 1952), as by David Knight. [SS]
* Slab Happy (n.) Gold Medal 1958 [SS]
* Take a Murder, Darling (n.) Gold Medal 1958 [SS]
* Double in Trouble [with Stephen Marlowe] (n.) Gold Medal 1959 [SS with Chester Drum]
* Over Her Dear Body (n.) Gold Medal 1959 [SS]
* Dance with the Dead (n.) Gold Medal 1960 [SS].
* Dig That Crazy Grave (n.) Gold Medal 1961 [SS]
* Shell Scott’s Seven Slaughters (co) Gold Medal 1961 [SS]
   # • Babes, Bodies and Bullets • ss
   # • The Best Motive • ss Manhunt Jan ’53
   # • Butcher • ss Manhunt Jun ’54
   # • Crime of Passion • ss
   # • The Double Take • nv Manhunt Jul ’53
   # • Film Strip • nv Ed McBains Mystery Book #1 ’60
   # • Squeeze Play • ss Manhunt Oct ’53
* Kill the Clown (n.) Gold Medal 1962 [SS]
* Dead Heat (n.) Pocket Books 1963 [SS]
* The Peddler (n.) Gold Medal 1963; See: Lion, 1952 as by Douglas Ring.
* The Cockeyed Corpse (n.) Gold Medal 1964 [SS]
* Joker in the Deck (n.) Gold Medal 1964 [SS]
* The Trojan Hearse (n.) Pocket Books 1964 [SS]
* Dead Man’s Walk (n.) Pocket Books 1965 [SS]
* Kill Him Twice (n.) Pocket Books 1965 [SS]
* The Meandering Corpse (n.) Trident 1965 [SS]
* The Kubla Khan Caper (n.) Trident 1966 [SS]
* Gat Heat (n.) Trident 1967 [SS]
* The Cheim Manuscript (n.) Pocket Books 1969 [SS]
* Kill Me Tomorrow (n.) Pocket Books 1969 [SS]
* The Shell Scott Sampler (co) Pocket Books 1969 [SS]
   # • The Bawdy Beautiful • ss
   # • The Cautious Killers • ss Shell Scott Mystery Magazine Nov ’66
   # • The Da Vinci Affair • ss Shell Scott Mystery Magazine Feb ’66
   # • The Guilty Party • ss Come Seven/Come Death, ed. Henry Morrison, Pocket, 1965
   # • The Live Ones • ss, 1956
* Dead-Bang (n.) Pocket Books 1971 [SS]
* The Sweet Ride (n.) Pocket Books 1972 [SS]
* The Sure Thing (n.) Pocket Books 1975 [SS]
* The Amber Effect (n.) Tor 1986 [SS]
* Shellshock (n.) Tor 1987 [SS]
* Hot-Rock Rumble and The Double Take (co) Gryphon Books 1995
   # • The Double Take [Shell Scott] • nv Manhunt Jul ’53
   # • Hot-Rock Rumble [Shell Scott] • nv Manhunt Jun ’53

as by KNIGHT, DAVID

as by RING, DOUGLAS

   I’ve omitted some of Mr. Prather’s stories that haven’t appeared in any of the various collections. I’ll have to add those later. It’s quite a list of fiction even without them. Many of these books I have not read in over 50 years, and the plots are mostly gone from memory – not all: no one who’s read Strip for Murder will ever forget what went on in that one – but not the days at the paperback rack at the local supermarket.

   I’ll close up this tribute for tonight with a review of the Scott Scott mini-epic which I read most recently. It’s from November 2002:

RICHARD S. PRATHER – Way of a Wanton

Gold Medal 497; c.1952; 4th GM printing, July 1957

   Prather was not one of the Gold Medal authors Gorman mentioned in the book before this one [a book entitled Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?] — Sam McCain seems to have been primarily a Harry Whittington fan — but the Shell Scott books are very much a part of my high school memories. Not that I remember actually reading one, straight through, from beginning to end, but — ah — the good parts, those I remember.

   This particular one, the inimitable private eye’s sixth, gets Shell involved with the movie business. There is a small but not insignificant body of work that mixes gumshoes with starlets, and this one’s a good addition to the group. Invited to a rather raucous Hollywood party — you might even call it wanton — Prather does — Shell breaks up the gathering when he retrieves a dead female body from the pool.

   Those at the party — all of whom are suspects — are working on a Grade B jungle epic, which means lots of good-looking women in skimpy costumes, and Shell outdoes himself in leering and ogling and all-around having a good time.

   And so does the reader. Back in the 1950s, this was hot stuff. According the cover, over 10 million Prather books had been sold. Much to my surprise, however, I have to tell you that Mr. Scott is a fraud. Given two skinny-dipping opportunities, confronted with ladies already disrobed or on their way so, Shell Scott hems and haws and gulps and swallows, and man — he stalls. Just like all of the adolescent kids reading the books. A lot of talk and imagination, and not nearly as much action as they’d like to let on.

   Prather has a nice way with words, though, in a purely soft-boiled vein, and the detective work is at least adequate, even though Shell has to admit, with 14 pages to go, that he’d “narrowed it down to the world.” Back in the 50s, however, to repeat a phrase, nobody read these books for the feats of detection they contained, and they still don’t today.

COMMENT [02-18-07]: From an email from Bill Pronzini:

   I hadn’t heard about Prather until your e-mail. Not unexpected, at his age, but sad news nonetheless. Shell Scott was my favorite character is an impressionable kid, and like you, Prather was the writer who turned me on to the pleasures of other Gold Medal original writers — John D., Charles Williams, Peter Rabe, etc. I must have reread WAY OF WANTON and my all-time favorite Shell Scott, STRIP FOR MURDER, half a dozen times as a teenager. The novels don’t quite hold up for me now, but I can still derive a chuckle and considerable enjoyment from some scenes and such passages as “You’re won’t believe this, boss, but that rock just shot me in the ass!” (THE COCKEYED CORPSE).

   Unlikely to be recognized as a crime fiction novelist by many, even perhaps by himself, author Fred Mustard Stewart died last Wednesday at his home in Manhattan.

   His entry in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV is admittedly meager, but it’s certainly enough to warrant a tribute here. (Thanks to the comment left by his nephew Brough Stewart, his year of birth has been corrected to 1932 from 1936, as was originally given.)

   Regarding that one definite entry (the dashes indicating that the other two are only marginally crime-related), his obituary in the New York Times goes on to say:

   The last line gives it all away. The tale should be be categorized more precisely as a horror novel, more related to Rosemary’s Baby than to Sherlock Holmes — and to be sure both the book and the film based upon it were marketed that way.

   From the archives of the New York Times, here are the opening sentences of a review written by Howard Thompson, published April 10, 1971:

    A complete bibliography for Mr. Stewart can be found online here. He will perhaps be best remembered for what the Times calls his “multi-strand family narratives,” of which one entitled Ellis Island (Morrow, 1983) may be as representative as any. The novel follows the lives of “five young penniless people who came to America at the turn of the century — a land of shining hope and breathtaking challenge. They came to fulfill a glowing promise and take the fearful gamble of a new life in a land where anything was possible.”

   Ellis Island was made into a television mini-series on CBS in 1984, a Golden Globe winner for Faye Dunaway (Best Supporting Actress) and recipient of several Emmy nominations.

   From the L.A. Times comes word of the death of Tige Andrews:

   Mr. Andrews was born Tiger Androwaous on March 19, 1920 in Brooklyn, N.Y. His parents, immigrants from Syria, reportedly named him after a strong animal to guarantee good health.

   From VARIETY, some more about his career:

   Of the most interest to crime fiction fans, other series on which Mr. Andrews appeared are the ones below, beginning with his earliest. These are all guest appearances, although some may also have been short recurring roles:

   Kraft Mystery Theater, Inner Sanctum, U. S. Marshal, Playhouse 90 (as Frank Nitti), The Grand Jury, The Lawless Years, The Fugitive, The FBI, Police Story, Police Woman, Kojak, Vega$, CHiPs, Quincy M.E., Hawaiian Heat, Street Hawk, and Sledge Hammer!

               “One white…one black…one blonde.”

   Aimed at the youth market, The Mod Squad, in which three troubled youngsters fight crime as undercover agents for the police, was one of the those TV programs that was on the air at exactly the right time and struck precisely the right chord for its viewers. As a precursor to several such series that followed, such as 21 Jump Street, The Mod Squad was on for five seasons between 1968 and 1973.

    From the Mod Squad “unofficial” home page:

   More from the same source. I should apologize for quoting as much as I am here, perhaps, but why not, when someone else has said it this well:

   It was Tige Andrews as the straighter and narrower Captain Greer that pulled the show together, however. As the man in charge, he acted as both a mentor and father figure to the threesome. Gruff but caring, he added the essential balance which helped make the series a success.

   Mr. Andrews’ last appearance on television was on Murder, She Wrote, January 6, 1991, in an episode entitled “Family Doctor.” IMDB states that he played the role of Carmine Abruzzi, but that seems to be in error.

   From the online All Movie Guide comes both a synopsis and a revisionist approach to the credits:

   Personally, I like the All Movie Guide’s version better. I’d greatly prefer that the last time Mr. Andrews’ appeared in a movie or on television, it was as a cop, rather than as a villain. Not that he didn’t play villains during his career, I understand that, but it’s as a policeman that he’ll always be remembered.

          —

      MOD SQUAD – The Books

* Richard Deming:
      o The Greek God Affair (n.) Pyramid 1968
      o A Groovy Way to Die (n.) Pyramid 1968
      o The Sock-It-to-Em Murders (n.) Pyramid 1968
      o Assignment: The Arranger (n.) Whitman 1969
      o Spy-In (n.) Pyramid 1969
      o Assignment: The Hideout (n.) Whitman 1970
      o The Hit (n.) Pyramid 1970

* William Johnston:
      o Home Is Where the Quick Is (n.) Pinnacle 1971

                  Data from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

   As you will have read in every newspaper in the country today, author, screenwriter and playwright Sidney Sheldon died yesterday at the age of 89.

   In all likelihood, the average person (not you), having glanced at the headlines and the first few paragraphs without reading further, will think of Mr. Sheldon as an author of powerful blockbuster bestsellers a lot more than they’ll remember him as a writer of crime fiction.

      If that is the case — and who knows, I may be wrong — I suspect it’s because that same hypothetical average person, when confronted with the phrase “crime fiction,” thinks primarily of “detective fiction,” and of Agatha Christie, Perry Mason and Spenser: For Hire, for example, but none of which (or whom) were Mr. Sheldon’s model, style or forte.

    No matter. Sidney Sheldon was a crime fiction writer. Most of his novels were strongly based on criminous activities of all sorts, including (and especially) murder and its aftermath, often dealing with the rich and famous, beginning with his very first novel, The Naked Face, which earned him the Edgar for that year’s Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.

   From the wikipedia website is a synopsis of the story line:

   From Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV is a list of Mr. Sheldon’s work that correctly belongs to our field, ignoring all of the work he did as a screenwriter. (The hyphen before two titles indicates marginal crime content.)

   To which I can add the following books published after the year 2000:

   Two books, Catoplus Terror (a novel about a former spy attempting to apprehend Carlos the Jackal) and The Pavid Pavillion, are not written by Sidney Sheldon but are said to have been done by someone else who published them under his name. (Someone will have to enlighten me on these two books, as I cannot find copies of either of them offered for sale on the Internet.)

   From today’s obituary for Mr. Sheldon in the New York Times, I offer this excerpt about his writing:

   For Mr. Sheldon’s credits in the world of TV and movie entertainment, I will send you to IMDB. Of the various series and films he worked on, the one for which I’d remember him most is Hart to Hart (1979-1984)the TV series he created starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, with made-for-TV movies continuing on through 1996. Fluff, perhaps, but high-powered (and highly enjoyable) fluff, and they did solve crimes.

   For even more on Mr. Sheldon’s long career, you could not do better than to start with his own website, then head to a February 2006 interview with him by Kacey Kowars from which the following excerpts are taken:

   but later:

UPDATE [02-01-07] On his blog, which you should visit every day, Ed Gorman gives a blunt but hugely accurate assessment of Mr. Sheldon’s career, then compares the comments he’s received on his death with those given Harold Robbins. Two writers whose fictional work took place in the same strata of society, two wholly different reactions to their passing.

From a notice in the New York Times —

   With all of these years in the world of publishing, Mr. Barnard could very easily have had many connections to the world of crime fiction, but the only one that appeared under his own name is –

   Data taken from a listing on ABE and Index to Crime and Mystery Anthologies, Contento & Greenberg.

   A earlier anthology, Cleopatra’s Nights (Dell #414, pb original, 1950) contains 13 stories and articles about the famous Egyptian queen. None seem to be crime-related, except possibly “A Toast to Murder” (from Queen Cleopatra) by Talbot Mundy.

   Born Pearl Elizabeth Dobbins on May 14, 1926, Liz Renay died January 22, 2007, at the age of 80 in Las Vegas, Nevada, of cardiopulmonary arrest.

   Quoting liberally from her biography at www.imdb.com, it is clear that there is no immediate connection between Ms. Renay and crime fiction:

   However, and a big one at that, Ms. Renay did appear in a few films that do warrant mention here, the first being an obscure classic of late 1950s film noir, Date with Death, 1959, starring Gerald Mohr.

   A semi-anonymous reviewer on IMDB says great things about the movie, from which I have excerpted the following:

   Go here for the rest of Mr. Renay’s onscreen credits, which appear largely to be schlocky B-movies or (far) less, but which also include a part on the television series Adam-12, and a role as a stripper in Peeper (1975), based on Keith Laumer’s novel Deadfall, later titled Fat Chance, in which Michael Caine plays a London PI in LA by the name of Leslie C. Tucker. Natalie Wood plays the femme fatale.