» Obituaries / Deaths Noted

Obituaries / Deaths Noted

Archived Posts from this Category

Sat 27 Jan 2007

Obituary: DANIEL STERN (1928-2007).

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
No Comments

Here are the first few lines of the obituary article in yesterday’s New York Times for Daniel Stern:

Daniel Stern, who sifted through his careers in jazz and symphonic music, advertising, movies and academia for psychic grist for the bittersweet, tightly crafted novels and short stories that were his crowning achievement, died Wednesday in Houston. He was 79.

I’ll get back to the coverage of Mr. Stern’s overall career in a minute, but among his other accomplishments, there’s one that makes him stand out from every other cellist who played with Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, and that’s the fact that he also has an entry [one book] in Allen J. Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV:

STERN, DANIEL (1928- )

* * *The Suicide Academy (McGraw, 1968, hc) Allen, 1969.

A blurb from the book itself says: “In The Suicide Academy Daniel Stern has taken a communal dream of our increasingly ordered times and turned it into a nightmare. Part spy story, part existential parable, this coldly brilliant novel makes for an unforgettable reading experience.”

About the book, the New York Times also goes on to say, and I quote:

The Suicide Academy (1968) imagines a world flecked with institutions where people can commit suicide. An administrator of one of them grapples with the morality of the government’s offer of more funds if suicides increase. Reviewing the book in The Village Voice, Anaïs Nin cited Mr. Stern’s ability to “toss all the facts into space, to reverse their chronological monotony, upset established curriculums.”

From the descriptions so far – I haven’t read it, or I’d tell you more from a personal point of view – it appears to be a step beyond your usual book of crime and detection, if not two or three. To confirm this, here are some excerpts from a longer review, this one from Time magazine for September 20, 1968. It begins this way:

THE SUICIDE ACADEMY by Daniel Stern. 173 pages. McGraw-Hill. $5.95.

Outrageous subjects that were once shocking sources of satanic laughter now seem hardly ticklish at all. Black Comedians today tend to be admired like TV gagmen and nightclub acrobats – less for jolt than for sheer agility.

In that class, Daniel Stern, a critic-novelist (After the War, Miss America) long preoccupied with the dusty corners of the modern soul, proves a deft performer. His literary colleague Kurt Vonnegut recently toyed with industrialized suicide (Welcome to the Monkey House), but only as an example of the dehumanized modern world efficiently eliminating Malthusian excess. Stern’s Suicide Academy, by contrast, has a more promising metaphoric reach.

In Stern’s establishment, the clients come for one day only. With the aid of a scrupulously neutral staff, they are measured and examined. Between bouts of play and sleep, they study their own lives and the world, life wish and death wish together. Then comes calm choice — a return to the world or death, an end reached through a wide range of means provided by the management. Suicides, Stern observes, are the graduate students of the academy.

and it concludes:

The Suicide Academy is left as a palatial metaphor hardly explored and barely furnished. It is largely unpeopled, too, except for Wolf’s [the head of the Academy’s] assistant, a splendidly grotesque, wasp-tongued Negro named Gilliatt. Archly antiSemitic, he quotes upbeat Talmudic texts to needle Wolf, and continually accuses him of secretly sabotaging the academy’s sacred neutrality in favor of life. Gilliatt reasons that the Jews invented resurrection and so are rotten with humanitarian sympathy. Gilliatt may be the best bit-part player of the literary year.

Other accomplishments of Mr. Stern deserve a mention. Even though they’re outside the realm of crime fiction, they include:

● He was born on Jan. 18, 1928, and grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in the Bronx.

● He played the cello with Charlie Parker and the Indianapolis Symphony.

● He was a vice president at Warner Brothers Studios, CBS and the McCann-Erickson advertising firm.

● After nine novels, many of them well reviewed, Mr. Stern found his métier in the short story.

● At the time of his death, he was Cullen Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Houston.

● For Warner, he promoted the movie “Woodstock” with the line, “Nobody who was there will ever be the same. Be there.”

Wed 24 Jan 2007

Obituary: E. HOWARD HUNT (1918-2007)

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
[11] Comments

Most of the online sites that will be running obituaries of E(verette) HOWARD HUNT (Jr.) this week will concentrate on one thing and one thing only, and that is his involvement in the Watergate matter, a true focal point in this nation’s history. You say Watergate, and to everyone in the US who was more than eight years old at the time, what memories it brings.

It was from Bill Crider’s blog that I learned the news of Mr. Hunt’s death (and Bill learned it from someone else), and the link he provides from Yahoo! News begins this way:

MIAMI – E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon’s presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Hunt died at a Miami hospital after a lengthy bout with pneumonia, according to his son Austin Hunt.

The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier,CIA officer, organizer of both a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many from the spy-tale genre.

I’ll leave it to others to talk about the real life stuff. What I’ll do is see how many of the 80 books I can list, but counting only those from the spy-tale genre. Which, I hasten to add, were made all the more real by Mr. Hunt’s real-life background in matters of spying and inside-the-Beltway intrigue and adventure.

Source: Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

As by E. HOWARD HUNT. Many of these are reprints of books published first under one of his several pseudonyms:

# On Hazardous Duty. Signet 1972; See: Signet, 1965 as by David St. John.
# Festival for Spies. Signet 1973; See: Signet, 1966 as by David St. John.
# My Body. Lancer 1973; See: Lancer, 1962 as by Robert Dietrich.
# One of Our Agents Is Missing. Signet 1973; See: Signet, 1967 as by David St. John.
# Where Murder Waits. Gold Medal 1973; See: Gold Medal, 1965 as by Gordon Davis.
# From Cuba with Love. Pinnacle 1974; See: Ring Around Rosy (Gold Medal 1964), as by Gordon Davis.
# Return from Vorkuta. Signet 1974; See: Signet, 1965 as by David St. John.
# The Towers of Silence. Signet 1974; See: Signet, 1966 as by David St. John.
# The Venus Probe. Signet 1974; See: Signet, 1966 as by David St. John.
# Counterfeit Kill. Pinnacle 1975; See: Gold Medal, 1963 as by Gordon Davis.
# Washington Payoff. Pinnacle 1975; See: House Dick (Gold Medal 1961), as by Gordon Davis.
# Izmir. Fine 1996 [Jack Novak; Miami, FL]
# Dragon Teeth. Dutton 1997 [Jack Novak; China]
# Guilty Knowledge. Forge 1999 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
# Sonora. Dutton 2000 [Jack Novak; Mexico]

I have been meaning to track down a copy of that last appearance (in 1999) of swinging CPA-sleuth Steve Bentley, but so far I haven’t. I’ve often wondered how the gap of 37 years in Bentley’s life was filled in. Most of the Steve Bentley adventures were written as by Robert Dietrich. See below. Jack Novak is described in at least one book as a “rogue DEA agent.”

As by HOWARD HUNT:

* Maelstrom (n.) Farrar 1948 [Mexico]
* -Bimini Run (n.) Farrar 1949 [Ship]
* Dark Encounter (n.) Signet 1950; See: Maelstrom (Farrar 1948).
* The Violent Ones (n.) Gold Medal 1950 [Paris]
* The Judas Hour (n.) Gold Medal 1951 [Prague]
* Whisper Her Name (n.) Gold Medal 1952 [Cuba]
* Lovers Are Losers (n.) Gold Medal 1953 [Los Angeles, CA]
* Cruel Is the Night (n.) Berkley 1955; See: Maelstrom (Farrar 1948).
* Little Miss Murder (n.) Phantom 1956
* The Berlin Ending (n.) Putnam 1973 [Neil Thorpe]
* The Hargrave Deception (n.) Stein 1980
* The Gaza Intercept (n.) Stein 1981 [Middle East]
* Cozumel (n.) Stein 1985 [Jack Novak; Caribbean]
* The Kremlin Conspiracy (n.) Stein 1985 [Neil Thorpe; Moscow]
* Guadalajara (n.) Scarborough 1986 [Jack Novak; Mexico]
* Mazatlan (n.) Stein 1986 [Jack Novak; Mexico]
* Murder in State (n.) St. Martin’s 1990 [Washington, D.C.]
* Body Count (n.) St. Martin’s 1992
* Chinese Red (n.) St. Martin’s 1992
* Ixtapa (n.) Fine 1994 [Jack Novak; Mexico]
* Islamorada (n.) Fine 1995 [Jack Novak; Florida]
* The Paris Edge (n.) St. Martin’s 1995 [Paris]

The hyphen before a title means that it contains only marginal crime content. The first Jack Novak books appeared in hardcover in this slight variation in the byline.

As by GORDON DAVIS:

* I Came to Kill. Gold Medal 1953 [Havana, Cuba]
* House Dick. Gold Medal 1961 [Washington, D.C.]
* Counterfeit Kill. Gold Medal 1963 [Washington, D.C.]
* Ring Around Rosy. Gold Medal 1964 [Florida]
* Where Murder Waits. Gold Medal 1965 [Panama]

No series characters as by Davis, but from the locales, matched up with the titles, along with the fact that they were all published by Gold Medal, paperback home of the tough noirish crime novel, you can make a pretty good guess as to what kind of stories were going on.

As by ROBERT DIETRICH:

* The Cheat. Pyramid 1954
* One for the Road. Pyramid 1954 [Florida]
* Be My Victim. Dell 1956 [Florida]
* Murder on the Rocks. Dell 1957 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* The House on Q Street. Dell 1959 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* End of a Stripper. Dell 1960 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* Mistress to Murder. Dell 1960 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* Murder on Her Mind. Dell 1960 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* Angel Eyes. Dell 1961 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* Steve Bentley’s Calypso Caper. Dell 1961 [Steve Bentley; Virgin Islands]
* Curtains for a Lover. Lancer 1962 [Steve Bentley; Washington, D.C.]
* My Body. Lancer 1962 [Steve Bentley; Nassau]

More about Steve Bentley in a minute.

As by JOHN BAXTER:

* -A Gift for Gomala (n.) Lippincott 1962 [Washington, D.C.]

A book I have not seen. Note the hyphen (see above).

As by P. S. DONOGHUE:

* The Dublin Affair. Fine 1988
* The Sankov Confession. Fine 1989

I’ve not seen copies of these books, published in hardcover, but spy thrillers both, I am sure it is safe to say.

As by DAVID ST. JOHN:

* On Hazardous Duty. Signet 1965 [Peter Ward; France]
* Return from Vorkuta. Signet 1965 [Peter Ward; Spain]
* Festival for Spies. Signet 1966 [Peter Ward; Cambodia]
* The Towers of Silence. Signet 1966 [Peter Ward; India]
* The Venus Probe. Signet 1966 [Peter Ward]
* One of Our Agents Is Missing. Signet 1967 [Peter Ward; Tokyo]
* The Mongol Mask. Weybright 1968 [Peter Ward; China]
* The Sorcerers. Weybright 1969 [Peter Ward]
* The Coven. Weybright 1971 [Peter Ward; Washington, D.C.]
* Diabolus. Weybright 1971 [Peter Ward; France]

From Time magazine, June 11, 1973

The agent who had planted the mike in the target office had tested the key, so the first barrier would yield. But the lock on the office door was a later model —pin and tumbler—and they would have to make its key on the spot … “All right,” Peter said curtly, “I don’t want heroes, just the contents of the safe.”

At first glance, this description of the espionage burglary of a government office building, contained in a yellowing 1965 paperback called On Hazardous Duty, might seem to be a rather ordinary experience in the life of ace CIA Agent Peter Ward. As the star of a series of fictional thrillers by David St. John, Ward has had far more exciting adventures. There was the time, for instance, when he was assigned to verify the identity of the man with the scarred face who was returning from 20 years in Soviet slave labor camps to claim the throne of Spain. Or the time he went to Japan on his own and wound up in “a wild round of I Spy, featuring Koto-playing geishas, Chi-Com masters, and a beautiful Nipponese belle who’s simply murder in the bath.” Hazardous Duty‘s burglary scene is of special interest, however, to readers who know that author David St. John is really E. Howard Hunt, the convicted Watergate conspirator.

During the past 30 years, 20 of them spent working for the CIA, Hunt has managed to write no fewer than 47 novels under a string of pen names: John Baxter, Gordon Davis and Robert Dietrich, as well as David St. John. His chief characters are Agent Ward, a younger version of Hunt himself (they both went to Brown University), and a casual, thrill-hunting Washington C.P.A., Steve Bentley, who describes the nation’s capital as “a great town if you’ve got the stamina of a Cape buffalo and the wealth of a Punjab prince.” Most of the books are predictable concoctions of espionage and sex in exotic settings. Hunt is said to earn $20,000 a year from his writing.

I promised to say more about Steve Bentley, and I’ll close with this. Here’s my review of End of a Stripper, written sometime in the fall of 2004:

ROBERT DIETRICH – End of a Stripper.

Dell First Edition #A197; paperback original, June 1960.

As all longtime fans who lived through the Watergate era know full well, Robert Dietrich was in reality burglar/criminal mastermind E. Howard Hunt, a gentleman who would probably have been far better off had he remained only a paperback writer. But even without knowing his full biography, I assume that Mr. Hunt always considered writing mysteries to be only a sideline – always preferring to live them instead, when he could, I’m sure.

NOTE: For what it’s worth, from the rear jacket flap of Stranger in Town, his second [non-mystery] novel, we learn that HH earlier had several contributions published in The New Yorker and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Writing.

As “Robert Dietrich,” Hunt’s primary character was his two-fisted, hard-drinking CPA detective, Steve Bentley, a former agent for the Treasury, but whose nose for trouble led him into the exact same situations as any two-fisted, hard-drinking private eye would find himself in.

For the record, here’s a list of all of the Steve Bentley books … [list omitted, as I’ve already just covered the same ground]

In any case, that makes a gap of 37 years between appearances of a series character, which if it isn’t a record, it puts Steve Bentley right up there in the top five, I’m sure. (I have some notes on this, somewhere, if only I could find them.)

But back to End of a Stripper, the third in the series, and the first of a subset of three that appeared in three successive months. (The old pulp authors used to do that, but a streak like this is relatively uncommon among the ranks of paperback writers. Can you come up with any others?)

Relying on the old maxim that “sex sells,” the books starts out in a distinctive manner in, you guessed it, a Washington DC strip club, where Steve Bentley is treating an old out-of-town CPA buddy to a night on the town. As they are about to leave (a) Bentley leaves a tenner on the table without waiting for the change, and (b) the lovely Haitian dancer Linda Lee takes her turn at the stage. They stay.

After the performance, which Bentley duly appreciates, but before the lights go back on, he spies a man being hustled out of the night club, but not before the gentleman drops something into Bentley’s pocket. Thus begins the adventure, an event that could happen only to the hero of a paperback novel, and never to someone such as you or I.

The object in Bentley’s pocket is a camera, and the gentleman being hustled out, later found dead is a sleazy private detective named Mousey Morris. After being bumped around by two thugs desiring the camera, Bentley is in the case for good, as if Linda Lee’s charms were not enough.

Steve Bentley, of course, is a private eye in all but name only, paperback style, with just a couple of differences. His client is himself, for one thing, and secondly, he has a good relationship with a friend on the police force, Detective Lieutenant Kellaway of the Homicide Division.

He also has a close lady friend, Mary Beth Stuart, to whom he acts as an utter cad in this book, although he does not even seem to realize it, so struck by the charms of the aforesaid Linda Lee is he. One wonders if the relationship with Mary Beth carries over to future books in the series. For her sake, I hope not.

Back in 1960, one’s manhood was also highly correlated with the amount of hi-fi stereo equipment one had back in one’s bachelor pad. More than several times Bentley whips out his trusty Ampex and puts on the latest Percy Faith and/or Ray Anthony recordings, either to relax by, or to induce a corresponding sense of relaxation within the current lady friend he is entertaining.

This, you understand, is part of the charm of old paperback novels. A time-machine into the past, history à la Playboy magazine and never in schoolbooks, then or now. The mystery is suitably complicated and certainly succeeds on its own merits. It’s the surrounding – let’s say ambiance – that’s also very revealing. A couple of quotes, the first from page 57, as Bentley describes the area around the Chanteclair club:

It was a part of town, once new, now shabby and decaying, where every drugstore and pool parlor fronts for the policy racket. Where Cocaine and Horse are peddled in the shadows; where muggers lurk in dark alleys. Where Negro families live and breed six to a room. A part of town that white men visit after dark to prospect for little sable-skinned girls; where even the corner grocer is a part-time pimp. Where the average man carries a straight razor or a Gillette blade inside a deck of matches. Bloodfield. And against all that one lone colored policeman for every five city blocks. One reason why Washington has, per capita, more rape, more crimes of violence, more liquor, more perversion and more crooked politicians than any other city in the country. Our fair city, I thought, and grimaced.

Later on, on page 135, Bentley has just confronted a clerk behind the counter at a liquor store, where he’d stopped to make a phone call. The clerk had made a leering comment about a teen-aged girl who’d tried to pick Steve up:

The bony Adam’s-apple bobbled. His thin lips opened and closed. His eyes darted unhappily at the phone booth. I turned and went out to the parking lot. A lovely town to raise a daughter in, I thought as I started the engine. Send her to public school and she gets started with the janitor or a football hero. Put her in private school and she learns perversion from a female gym teacher. Keep her out of school and the corner grocer knocks her off in the back room on a pile of potato sacks. The most you hope for is that she knows about contraceptives and doesn’t grow up a doper. The whole world’s gone crazy.

No, sir. You don’t find this stuff in textbooks. That’s for sure.

UPDATE [01-24-07] Bill Crider has done yeoman’s work in putting together a slideshow of even more of the covers of Howard Hunt’s paperbacks. Not unexpectedly, most of them feature women, in various stages of dress or (mostly) undress. Don’t miss the chance to see as many of the covers as you will here, all in one spot!

UPDATE [01-25-07] Mystery writer Mark Coggins, author of a series of novels featuring jazz bass-playing private eye August Riordan, mentions this post on his blog, for which I thank him. He also goes on to quote an interesting letter from Raymond Chandler to Mr. Hunt, responding to the latter’s complaint that Chandler was plagiarizing himself in using his early pulp stories as construction material for his later novels. Fascinating stuff, and you should go read it.

Mon 22 Jan 2007

Obituary: BARBARA SERANELLA (1956-2007)

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
[4] Comments

In memoriam

BARBARA SERANELLA

Born: April 30, 1956
Died: January 21, 2007

From Barbara Seranella’s webpage today comes some very sad news:

Barbara Seranella, 50, bestselling mystery author and resident of Laguna Beach and PGA West in La Quinta, died peacefully on January 21, 2007, at 4:15 p.m. EST (1:15 p.m. PST) at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband Ron Seranella and her brother Dr. Larry Shore at her side. Barbara, who died of end-stage liver disease while awaiting a liver transplant, leaves behind her husband Ron, brothers Larry Shore of San Francisco and David Shore of Woodacre, parents Nate and Margie Shore of La Quinta, and stepdaughters Carrie Seranella and Shannon Howard.

Private funeral arrangements are being made by the family. A celebration of Barbara’s life is being planned for February; details will be announced later.

From the “About Barbara” page of the same website:

   Seranella was born in Santa Monica, California and grew up in Pacific Palisades. After a restless childhood that included running away from home at 14, joining a hippie commune in the Haight, and riding with outlaw motorcycle clubs, she decided to settle down and do something normal so she became an auto mechanic.
   She worked at an Arco station in Sherman Oaks for five years and then a Texaco station in Brentwood for another twelve. At the Texaco station, she rose to the rank of service manager and then married her boss. Figuring she had taken her automotive career as far as it was going to carry her, she retired in 1993 to pursue the writing life.
   Seranella’s books have been hailed for their “gritty realism, smart plotting, taut suspense, and [their] highly original heroine.”

Her first novel.

Bibliography:

* No Human Involved. St. Martin’s, 1997 [Miranda “Munch” Mancini; Los Angeles, CA; 1970s]
* No Offense Intended. Harper, 1999 [Munch Mancini; Los Angeles, CA; 1977]
* Unwanted Company. Harper, 2000 [Munch Mancini; California; 1984]
* Unfinished Business. Scribner, 2001 [Munch Mancini; California; mid-1980s]
* No Man Standing. Scribner, 2002 [Munch Mancini; California; 1980s]
* Unpaid Dues. Scribner, 2003 [Munch Mancini; California; 1980s]
* Unwilling Accomplice. Scribner, 2004 [Munch Mancini; California; 1985]
* An Acceptable Death. St. Martin’s, 2005 [Munch Mancini; Calfornia; 198–]
* Deadman’s Switch. St. Martin’s, 2007 [Charlotte Lyons]

“Misdirection,” which appears in the anthology, Greatest Hits: Original Stories of Hitmen, Hired Guns, and Private Eyes, edited by Robert Randisi, won the 2006 Anthony Award for Best Short Story.

Quoting from the Booklist [starred] review of An Acceptable Death:

“Mancini herself has crawled up from the streets. As an ex-abuse victim, ex-prostitute, ex-biker old lady, ex-drug addict, she is both forever conscious of how lucky she is to be one of the few to escape and how unlucky the many others are who never do; this perspective, plus street smarts, enables her to go undercover convincingly. At this novel’s start, Mancini works as an auto mechanic in Santa Monica, has a nine-year-old daughter, and is involved in a relationship with an undercover narcotics detective.”

The book description for Deadman’s Switch, as taken from the Amazon website:

“Charlotte Lyon can handle a crisis and has made that talent into a lucrative business. She describes it as crisis management, in which she supplies excellent and often unusual advice to suddenly troubled company heads about how to handle the press and the shareholders. And she goes beyond that, whenever she finds it necessary, to get to the bottom of the crisis itself. The job she has now is one of the latter; the derailment of a companys train that has killed both the engineer and a motion picture celebrity. Charlotte refuses to let her own demons — the recent death of her husband and a constantly nagging mother — keep her from going after who caused the accident.”

Sat 20 Jan 2007

Obituary: ART BUCHWALD, 1925-2007.

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
No Comments

I didn’t realize that Art Buchwald, the world-famous humorist who died three days ago, was among his other accomplishments, a crime fiction writer. I haven’t asked Al Hubin, author of Crime Fiction IV, for his opinion yet, but as of this evening, Mr. Buchwald has not been honored with an entry in his massive, all-inclusive bibliography of our field.

Let me make a case for his inclusion, if I may, based on the following paragraph which I read in yesterday or today’s issue of the New York Times:

“A guy showed up in my office covered with bandages and blood and told me he was a recent graduate of Sing Sing,” Mr. [Ben] Bradlee [former editor of the Washington Post] said. “He had done time for murder and was broke. He became a thorn in my side, and I got sick of him, so I sent him to Buchwald, just to get him out of my office. Art locked him up in a room and wrote a book about him, A Gift From the Boys. The guy had been deported and his mob friends gave him a girl as a goodbye present.”

The novel, by the way, published in 1958, became the basis of the 1960 movie Surprise Package with Yul Brynner and Mitzi Gaynor (as the Gift).

[The illustration on the jacket is by Dedini,
a cartoonist often spotted in New Yorker magazine.]

The paragraph in the Times was interesting but hardly conclusive. I searched online for more evidence to back my case. From Bloomberg.com:

The story centered on mobsters who were deported from the U.S. to Italy, where Buchwald traveled to interview organized crime figure Charles “Lucky” Luciano in Naples.

Well, Mr. Buchwald was talking to the right people to help write a crime novel, all right, but I couldn’t come up with a more useful description of the book than what I have so far. Maybe I’d have better luck finding a plot outline of the movie, I thought.

From Time magazine [Nov. 14, 1960]:

Surprise Package (Columbia) is stuffed with expensive ingredients: Yul Brynner, Mitzi Gaynor, Noel Coward in front of the camera, Director Stanley (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) Donen behind it plus a script by Harry (Reclining Figure) Kurnitz based on a novel (A Gift from the Boys) by Columnist Art Buchwald. But as far as entertainment is concerned, Package contains only what is known in show business as a bomb. Director Donen clearly intended to tell a shaggy-dog story the way John Huston did in his hilarious Beat the Devil but unfortunately, Donen’s dog turns out to be all bark and no bite. The hero (Brynner) is a big-time hood deported from the U.S. to his native Greece and confined by the Greek government to a small Aegean island. The story evolves around his attempt to get back in the money by relieving an exiled king (Noel Coward) of his million-dollar crown. Revolving ever more tediously, it goes down the drain in a clutter of words. Package is perhaps the year’s talkiest talkie. Coward: “It’s amazing how a girl so dumb that if you say hello she’s stuck for an answer can reel off a three-hour lecture on why wild mink is better.” Brynner, contemplating a statue of a discus thrower: “What sort of a country is dis? Puttin’ up a monument of a guy stealin’ hubcaps!”

So OK, Time didn’t like the movie, but there are points of the plot that are crime-related, wouldn’t you agree? Moving on, here is something extremely interesting I found on TVHeads.com.

It was also during this period (sometime between 1948 and 1951) Buchwald was rumored and reported to have a very short lived affair with American actress Marilyn Monroe. The affair is said to have only lasted a few weeks, and it was said that Buchwald introduced Marilyn to Judaism (to which she later converted). Marilyn is said to be the basis in part for a character in Buchwald’s novel A Gift From The Boys published in 1958.

Now I agree that this has nothing to do with my conjecture that Mr. Buchwald’s novel is a work of crime fiction, but if the TVHeads rumor is true, why all I can do is nod my head in agreement.

Perhaps we should get serious for a moment. Here is my final piece of evidence, a comment from a semi-anonymous poster on IMDB.com:

“This is a caper film involving a deported U.S. gangster played by Yul Brynner now living on a Greek island trying to steal the crown of the exiled King of Anatolia played by Coward. Along for the ride is Mitzi Gaynor as Brynner’s moll and the baddie played by George Coulouris from the People’s Republic of Anatolia, the gang that overthrew the king. The director is Stanley Donen from a novel by humorist Art Buchwald.

“Brynner is terribly miscast in his part. A gangster I can believe him as, but he just has no flair for comedy. There were some comic moments in the King and I, but that’s overall, a serious part. Coward looks bored by the whole thing, I wish he had scripted and directed it also and he probably wished he did too. George Coulouris was his usual menacing self.”

Well, what do you think? Is Mr. Buchwald in, or is he out?

[UPDATE: 01-21-07] An email reponse from Al Hubin, excerpted to refer only to my presentation above:

Steve,

I’m convinced, though at this stage I’m inclined (for my next Addenda installment, Part 10) to use a dash [to indicate marginal crime content]. Good work on your part!

Best,

>> My reply? I agree 100 percent. I couldn’t convince even myself that the book’s more than a marginal entry, but I’m still glad to know that Mr. Buchwald is in.

Fri 12 Jan 2007

Death Noted: ELINORE COWAN STONE (1885-1974)

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
[2] Comments

Here’s the entry for her as it presently appears in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

STONE, ELINORE COWAN (1884-?) Born in Michigan, raised in Pittsburgh and Boston; newspaperwoman, teacher, magazine short story writer; living in Pittsburgh in 1930s.

* * *Fear Rides the Fog (Appleton, 1937, hc) [Pittsburgh, PA]

The entry is not impressive in itself, but the biographical notes added by Al suggest that there was more to her life than the one mystery novel. What’s nice to be able to do, when it can be done, is to discover the story behind the story, as it were. To that end, the following, which was sent to me by Al a day or so ago, does exactly that.

Article from unnamed newspaper, dated Thursday, March 22, 1973:

90-Year-Old Couple Enjoys Life By Jan Rider

Today is the 90th birthday of Mrs. Elinore Cowan Stone, Morehead City [North Carolina]. Mrs. Stone has been upset since she lost her wedding ring several months ago. She cannot figure out when, where or how she could have lost it. It is a ring she has worn since June 7, 1915. Today her husband, C.A. Stone, who was 90 years old last month, gave her a new ring. Of course it cannot replace the old one completely, but it is the thought that counts.

Mr. and Mrs. Stone have been married almost 58 years. They have been residents of Morehead City for 19 years. The Stones have a long and happy history. Mrs. Stone does point out, however, that they have not been totally happy. “Nobody can be totally happy. We have been mad as hell at one another at certain times.”

The Stones have enjoyed life. They have traveled and they have both been blessed with good health. Mr. and Mrs. Stone met at the University of California, Sacramento, when they were doing graduate work. “I really can’t remember exactly where we met,” Mrs. Stone said. “It was in an English class. The professor was a real wit,” interjected Mr. Stone. “Don’t you remember? His name was Smith, I think.” “I don’t remember him,” Mrs. Stone said, “But I remember you, so what is fame?”

The Stones came to Morehead City from Pittsburgh, Pa. They had lived there longer than anywhere else, 30 years. They came to Morehead City because of the Chamber of Commerce. When Mr. Stone was planning his retirement, Mrs. Stone wrote to the Chambers of Commerce in numerous towns asking for information concerning the cost of living and facilities in the town. “Morehead City was one of the few towns that sent us any information,” said Mr. Stone, “We liked it the best and moved here in 1954.”

Prior to their marriage, Mrs. Stone taught school in Honolulu. There she developed her interests in drama. She coached several plays during her stay, one of which was “As You Like It.” After their marriage, the Stones lived in California for awhile. They enjoyed the mountains and spent many days camping and scouting the wilds of California.

Later the Stones moved to the Midwest. While there Mrs. Stone continued her teaching. She first taught in a small one-room school on an Indian reservation in New Mexico. Her experiences there are recorded in her first novel, “The Laughingest Lady,” which was published in 1927. The book’s title, Mrs. Stone says, was the name many of her Indian pupils called her. “I don’t think they had ever met anyone like me before. I was always joking and enjoying myself.”

In a faded picture album, Mrs. Stone pointed out pictures of herself and several of her students standing in front of their mud dwellings. Later in the Midwest, Mrs. Stone taught in a one-room school on a large ranch. In 1934 the Stones moved to Pittsburgh when Mr. Stone, an employee of the Navy’s Quality Control department, was transferred. In Pittsburgh Mrs. Stone wrote a column for a local newspaper and continued her writing. While in Pittsburgh, Mrs. Stone published her second book. The book, entitled, “Binks, His Dog and His Heart,” was a children’s story. It was published in 1937. In that same year she also published a mystery novel entitled “Fear Rides the Fog.”

Also published during this same time period were numerous short stories, two of which are included in the “O. Henry Memorial Award” volumes. As Mrs. Stone became more involved in her teaching and her column, written for a Pittsburgh newspaper, her books and short stories became fewer.

Mr. and Mrs. Stone agree that life in Morehead City has been good for them. They have grown to love the area, the people and especially the sea and the salt breezes. Occasionally they will drive over to the beach and walk along the oceanfront. Since Mrs. Stone fell and broke her hip about 10 years ago, their walks have been limited to the board walk area. She is unable to walk safely on the loose sand. On most evenings the Stones can been seen walking around the Camp Glenn school grounds. They enjoy the exercise and fresh evening air.

What do two people 90 years old do all day? “Well, to be honest, we sleep much of the time,” said Mr. Stone. “He watches that thing,” said Mrs. Stone, pointing to the television set. “I can’t stand the cackling voices.” “She doesn’t hear too well any more,” said Mr. Stone. “I hear too well,” said Mrs. Stone.

It is obvious to anyone visiting their home that the Stones do more than sleep or watch television. Two walls in the living room are lined with books. On the shelves are the complete works of Dickens, Kipling, Shakespeare, and Buck. On the side table on top of a recent news magazine is a large magnifying glass used for reading. Numerous volumes of Reader’s Digest Condensed books are noticed and to complete the room are several reading lamps. This world, sometimes referred to as “cold and cruel,” has been warm and gentle for Mr. and Mrs. Stone, probably because they are warm and gentle people.

Here’s Al’s followup note:

It appears CFIV is one year off on her birth year (should be 3/22/1883, if the article is correct). I’ll now see if I can track down a death date, now that I have that date and know that they were last living in Morehead City, North Carolina.

[Later] I’ve found her record in the social security death benefits. And this gives her birth as 3/22/1885 (and death in November 1974). Looks like the article was premature in calling her a 90-year-old … and she didn’t quite make it to that milestone, as it turns out, though her husband did.

Obituary from The News-Times, Morehead City, Beaufort, NC, Thursday, Feb. 1. 6, 1975, pg. 9-A:

Clarence A. Stone. A memorial service for Clarence Stone, 91, Morehead City, was conducted at 4 p.m., Wednesday in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. He died Tuesday in Carteret General Hospital. The Rev. King Cole, rector, officiated. Mr. Stone has no immediate survivors.

>> As of 11:30 this morning, no copies were found of Mrs. Stone’s mystery novel offered for sale on the Internet. About five copies of The Laughingest Lady were found. About one the seller adds: The name “Irene L. Cowan” is on the flyleaf (possibly related to the author?).

The short story “The Devil-Fish, by Elinore Cowan Stone, appears in A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine, October 1950. Probably a reprint. [See UPDATE 01-25-07]

From The FictionMags Index, here is a partial list of her other stories:

* * All in the Day’s Work, (ss) The Century Sep 1927
* * Be My Valentine, (ss) Woman’s Home Companion Feb 1927
* * The Gritty Little Devil, (ss) The American Magazine Jul 1930
* * Hands Off, (ss) McCall’s Nov 1931
* * Leetla Dog, (ss) Woman’s Home Companion Jul 1925

Also, from Good Housekeeping, February 1926:

“Lonch [sic] for Two” by Elinore Cowan Stone is a short story dealing with the “Americanization” of Hispanic children.

O. Henry prize-winning stories:

1925. Elinore Cowan Stone: “One Uses the Handkerchief” Women’s Home Companion, November 1924.

[UPDATE 01-25-07] Victor Berch did some further investigating into the life of Mrs. Stone, and the results have been posted as a separate entry. Besides uncovering evidence that she was born in 1883 and not 1885, as the Social Security records show, Victor has also added a large number of stories to her bibliography. These should be added to the ones above.

In terms of the story “The Devil-Fish,” a cry for assistance from the members of the Yahoo FictionMags group produced the following response from Ned Brooks:

“I have a copy of that — it’s an seven and a half page story with a full-page Finlay illo. The ToC blurb is mysterious and seems too complex to be covered in 7.5 pages: “Could Salisbury’s medico-science-filled world find a way to bring him back from the embrace of a civilized savagery?” It has to do — from a quick scan — with a not altogether successful attempt to remove a whole-body tattoo.

“There is indeed prior copyright information. On both the ToC (under the blurb) and on the bottom of the title page of the story itself (p.92) there is the line —
“Copyright 1926 by Popular Publications, Inc.” The editorial, which runs about a page, discusses George Allan England and Jack Williamson (who have the novel and novelette in the issue) and the contents for the next issue — which never appeared, as this is the last of the five existing issues. No mention of Elinore Cowan Stone there. The Miller/Contento CD-Rom I have knows no more, listing the A. MERRITT printing and the earlier one but with no magazine title given. The attribution to “Popular Publications” is probably incorrect — according to PulpWiki anyway, Steeger founded Popular Publications in 1930.”

Thanks, Ned. My instinct was correct. It’s highly unlikely that Mrs. Stone would have stopped writing in the 1920s only to write a single fantasy story 20 or more years later. I’m not too concerned about the copyright date, assuming that when Popular bought out a magazine that had folded, they transferred all of the copyrights along with it. The question remains, however, which presumably non-genre magazine in 1926 was it that the story first appeared?

[UPDATE 01-27-07] From a posting by Mike Ashley on the Yahoo FictionMags Group, the answer is now known. He said, and I quote:

“The Devil-Fish” by Elinor Cowan Stone first appeared in Argosy [All-Story Weekly] for 6 March 1926.

And from Ned Brooks again, a description of the story itself —

No particular reason the story had to be in an SF pulp, it isn’t that skiffy and the borders were a lot fuzzier then anyway. The only skiffy element is that a way to remove a tattoo had been discovered. I think they use lasers now, but removing a full-body tattoo would still be arduous and expensive. The system failed in that when the fellow blushed, the “devil-fish” (a squid or octopus) reappeared in red on his forehead.”

Mon 8 Jan 2007

Death Noted: PAT STADLEY (1917-2003).

Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
[7] Comments

At present the entry for mystery writer Pat Stadley in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, looks like this:

STADLEY, PAT (Anna May Gough) (1918- ); Reference: CA (Contemporary Authors)

* * * Autumn of a Hunter (Random, 1970, hc) [California] Collins, 1971. Also published as: The Murder Hunt. Major, 1977.
* * * The Black Leather Barbarians (Bobbs, 1960, hc) [Los Angeles, CA]
* * * -Daddy-O (Signet, 1960, pb)
* * _The Murder Hunt (Major, 1977, pb) See: Autumn of a Hunter (Random 1970).

Recently discovered is that Autumn of a Hunter was the basis for the TV movie The Deadly Hunt ( Four Star, 1971; scw: Eric Bercovici, Jerry Ludwig; dir: John Newland).

Searches and double-checking into birth and death dates never end as well. Taken from a recent email, Al reveals what he has learned most lately about Ms. Stadley:

This one is a bit confused, but here’s what I’ve found and what I’ve concluded. Stadley has a CA entry, which gives her birth as 8/31/1918 and her residence as Citrus Heights, California. On the other hand, the social security death benefits record has a Patricia A. Stadley, born 9/1/1917, died 2/27/2003 in Citrus Heights, California. I conclude that this is the author in question and I’m going to adopt the social security dates for CFIV.

A plot description for Autumn of a Hunter might read thusly: “A wealthy woman trying to outrun three hired killers in the woods of the high Sierras is trapped by a forest fire.”

… while the cover blurb on the Signet reprint of The Black Leather Barbarians certainly tells the would-be reader what’s in store:

“A rough, revealing novel about youthful California motorcyclists and what makes them roar.” — San Francisco Chronicle.

Sun 7 Jan 2007

Obituary: A. I. BEZZERIDES (1908-2007).

Posted by Steve under Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
No Comments

Quoting from the online edition of the Fresno Bee:

Albert Isaac “Buzz” Bezzerides, born in Ottoman Turkey to an Armenian mother and Greek father, grew up in Fresno in the same era as author William Saroyan. […] Mr. Bezzerides, who moved to Southern California as an adult, fell and suffered a broken hip late last year. He died New Year’s Day in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 98.

Here is his entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

BEZZERIDES, A(lbert) I(saac) (1908- )

* * *Long Haul (Carrick, 1938, hc) Cape, 1938. Also published as: They Drive by Night. Dell, 1950 and Tough Guy. Lion, 1953. Film: Warner Bros., 1940, as They Drive by Night; released in Britain as The Road to Frisco (scw: Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay; dir: Raoul Walsh).
* * _They Drive by Night (Dell, 1950, pb) See: Long Haul (Carrick 1938).
* * *Thieves Market (Scribner, 1949, hc) [San Francisco, CA] University of California (U.K.) pb, 1997. Film: TCF, 1949, as Thieves’ Highway (scw: A. I. Bezzerides; dir: Jules Dassin).
* * _Tough Guy (Lion, 1953, pb) See: Long Haul (Carrick 1938).

Only two books, but influential ones. “Like Saroyan,” the obituary in the Bee goes on to say, “Mr. Bezzerides wrote novels influenced by his life in the San Joaquin Valley during the early part of the last century.” Due to what novelist Anthony Neil Smith on his blog Crimedog One calls their inherent “trucker noir” quality, their impact on the world of cinema has been even greater.

Among the other credits you can find for him at www.imdb.com is
Kiss Me Deadly , a 1955 masterpiece of film noir starring Ralph Meeker as Mickey Spillane’s favorite PI, Mike Hammer, filmed in (as they say) glorious black-and-white. Mr. Bezzerides wrote the screenplay.

First line: Mike Hammer: You almost wrecked my car! Well? Get in!

In another genre, Mr. Bezzerides was also the creator of The Big Valley, the Barbara Stanwyck TV western series that ran for 112 episodes between 1965 and 1969. His roots in the San Joaquin Valley, where the Barkley ranch was located, had a good deal to do with that success of that series as well.

[Thanks to Vince Keenan on his blog for the original tip on Mr. Bezzerides’ passing.]

Mon 1 Jan 2007

Obituary: John Bishop

Posted by Steve under Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths Noted
No Comments

John Bishop, a noted playwright and screenwriter, died December 20 at the age of 77. His entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is as follows:

BISHOP, JOHN (D.) (1929-2006)

* The Harvesting (Dramatists Play Service, 1984, pb) 2-act play.
* The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940 (Dramatists Play Service, 1987, pb) Chappell, 1989. 2-act play.

— Screenwriter
* Drop Zone, Paramount 1994; with Peter Barsocchini.

“The Musical Comedy Murders of 1940,” a sendup of vintage murder-mystery comedies which Mr. Bishop both wrote and directed, appeared on Broadway in 1987.

Besides Drop Zone, an action-thriller which starred Wesley Snipes, Mr. Bishop also wrote the screenplay for The Package, a 1989 crime-drama with Gene Hackman. He later did rewrites on several other films, including Sliver, Beverly Hills Cop III, and Clear and Present Danger.

« Previous Page