● JOE GORES – Dead Skip. Random House, hardcover, 1972. Reprint paperbacks include: Ballantine, 1974; Mysterious Press, 1992.

   While holding down a variety of jobs, one of them a stint as a San Francisco private investigator, Joe Gores published numerous (and generally hard-boiled) short stories in the 1950s and 1960s. One of these, “Sweet Vengeance” (Manhunt, July 1964) became the basis for his first novel, the violent suspense thriller A Time of Predators (1969).

   Dead Skip is the first of three novels in the DKA File series (which also includes a dozen or so short stories) — a series Ellery Queen called “authentic as a fist in your face.”

   DKA stands for Daniel Kearny Associates, a San Francisco investigative firm modeled on the real agency for which Gores once worked. (It was Anthony Boucher who first suggested Gores utilize his PI background as the basis for a fictional series.)

   DKA operates out of an old Victorian that used to be a specialty whorehouse, and specializes in the repossessing of cars whose owners have defaulted on loans from banks and automobile dealers.

   Kearny, the boss, is tough, uncompromising, but fair; his operatives, each of whom plays an important role in some if not all of the novels and stories, include Larry Ballard (the nominal lead protagonist), Bart Heslip, Patrick Michael O’Bannon, Giselle Marc, and office manager Kathy Onoda.

   Dead Skip begins quietly enough, with Bart Heslip (who happens to be black) repossessing a car in San Francisco’s Richmond district and returning it to the DKA offices, where he files his report. But when he leaves he is struck down by an unknown assailant — and the following morning the other members of DKA are confronted with the news that Bart is in a coma in a hospital intensive-care unit, the apparent victim of an accident in a repo’d Jaguar.

   Bart’s girlfriend, Corinne Jones, refuses to believe in the “accident” and convinces Ballard that Bart was the victim of violence. In spite of Kearny, who seems more concerned about the cost of the wrecked Jag than about Bart’s welfare (thus causing tension in the ranks), Ballard embarks on a search for Bart’s assailant and an explanation for the attack.

   Starting with the files on Bart’s recent repo jobs, he follows a twisting trail that takes him all over San Francisco and to the East Bay; involves him with a number of unusual characters, one of them a rock musician with a group calling itself Assault and Battery; and ends in a macabre confrontation that endangers not only Ballard’s life but that of Giselle Marc, in a house high above the former haven of the flower children, the Haight-Ashbury.

   The motivation for the attack on Bart is hardly new to crime fiction, and some of the villain’s other actions are likewise questionably motivated, but these minor flaws shouldn’t spoil anyone’s enjoyment of what is otherwise an excellent private-eye procedural. It is, in fact, strong stuff — realistic, powerful, “a traditional American crime novel, out of Black Mask, Hammett and Chandler” (New York Times).

   Even better are the other two novels in the series — Final Notice (1973) and Gone, No Forwarding (1978).

● JOE GORES – Hammett. Putnam’s, hardcover, 1975. Reprint paperbacks include: Ballantine, 1976; Perennial Library, 1982.

   Gores is a lifelong aficionado and student of the works of Dashiell Hammett, and Hammett’s influence is clearly evident in Gores’s own fiction. Hammett is his personal monument to the man he believes was the greatest of all crime writers — part thriller, part fictionalized history, part biography set in the San Francisco of 1928, “a corrupt city, owned by its politicians, its cops, its district attorney. A city where anything is for sale.”

   When an old friend from his Pinkerton days, Vic Atkinson, is murdered after Hammett refuses to help him, the former op-turned-Black Mask writer once again finds himself in the role of detective and man hunter.

   But as the dust-jacket blurb says, “During his search through the teeming alleys of Chinatown, through the cathouses and speakeasies and gambling hells of the city, Hammett discovers that the years of writing have dulled his hunter’s instincts, have made him fear death — and that failure to resharpen his long-unused skills as a private detective could end… his life.”

   The blurb goes on to say, “[Gores’] dialogue crackles and sparks with the wry, tough humor of the twenties. His characters are thinly disguised portraits of the men and women who shook and shaped this most fascinating of American cities. His plot, drawn from actual events in San Francisco’s corrupt political past, casts harsh light on a stark and bloody era.”

All of which is true enough, at least up to a point. Hammett is considered by some to be Gores’ best book, and in many ways it is. But it also has its share of flaws, among them some overly melodramatic scenes and a disinclination on Gores’ part to even mention Hammett’s left-wing politics.

   All things considered, it is certainly a good novel — one that should be read by anyone interested in Hammett, San Francisco circa 1928, and/or fast-action mysteries of the Black Mask school — but it is not the great novel it has occasionally been called.

   The 1982 film version produced by Francis Ford Coppola, on the other hand, is pure claptrap. Frederick Forrest is fine as Hammett, and the script by Ross Thomas is faithful to the novel, but the direction (Wim Wenders) is so arty and stylized that all the grittiness and power is lost. Some of the scenes, in fact, are so bad they’re almost painful to watch.

   Gores’ other non-series novels, A Time of Predators (which received an Edgar for Best First Novel of 1969) and Interface (1974), are also excellent.

   The latter is one of the toughest, most brutal novels published since the days of Black Mask — so hard boiled that some readers, women especially, find it upsetting. But its power is undeniable; and its surprise ending is both plausible and certain to come as a shock to most readers.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

JOE GORES, R.I.P.   Posted earlier today on Yahoo’s Rara-Avis group was an announcement by publisher Vince Emery of Joe Gores’ death. Quoting briefly:

    “Sad news: Joe Gores, one of my favorite authors — and favorite people — passed away Monday, in a hospital in Marin County.

    “Joe was a three-time Edgar Award winner, past president of the Mystery Writers of America, and author of my favorite hard-boiled mystery series set in San Francisco, the Daniel Kearny & Associates series, which was based on Joe’s own experiences as a detective and repo man. He was working on a new DKA novel when he died.”

    Mr. Gores’ most recent novel was, of course, Spade & Archer (Knopf, 2009), a prequel to The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. Quite coincidentally (this is Steve talking) I am halfway through it now, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

PETER O’DONNELL – Pieces of Modesty. Pan, UK, paperback, 1972. Mysterious Press, US, hc, 1987; Tor, US, pb, 1990.

   Modesty Blaise first appeared as a comic-strip character in 1962, and the first novelization of her exploits was published in 1965. She is often thought of as a female James Bond, but her wildly entertaining adventures certainly entitle her to stand alone as a fascinating fictional character.

    A good way to make Modesty’s acquaintance is to read the stories collected in Pieces of Modesty, each of which reveals something of her background and philosophy.

    At the age of eighteen, Modesty commanded the Network, the most successful crime organization outside the United States. After dismantling the Network, she occasionally found herself working for the intelligence section of the British Foreign Office, as she does in “The Gigglewrecker,” in which a very reluctant defector is transferred from East to West Berlin.

    A better story is “I Had a Date with Lady Janet,” narrated in the first person by Modesty’s formidable associate Willie Garvin, who comes to Modesty’s rescue when she is held captive by an old enemy ensconced in a Scottish castle.

    “A Better Day to Die” and “Salamander Four” might be read as companion pieces. In the former, Modesty finds herself captured by guerrillas, along with the other passengers on a bus. One of the passengers, a minister who believes strongly in nonviolence, sees the results of brutality and is changed by them.

    In “Salamander Four,” a sculptor given to non-involvement finds himself involved against his will when Modesty helps a wounded man, but the ending is is predictable. “The Soo Girl Charity” features Modesty and Willie in a robbery for charity and has an amusing twist at the end.

    For colorful writing and nonstop action, the books about Modesty Blaise are hard to beat, especially such titles as Modesty Blaise (1965), Sabre-Tooth (1966), I, Lucifer (1967), and two titles published for the first time in the United States in 1984: The Silver Mistress (1973) and The Xanadu Talisman (1981).

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright � 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

PETER O’DONNELL, R. I. P. (1920-2010). He was in ill health — he had had Parkinson’s disease for several years — so the reporting of Peter O’Donnell’s death on Monday, May 3rd, at the age of 90, was not surprising news, but it was still difficult to accept.

   It is remarkable (or perhaps not) that the opening paragraph of his obituary in The Times begins with a description of Modesty Blaise’s most famous tactic in distracting the enemy, the so-called “Nailer,” described here on one of the earliest posts on this blog, as well as much more (as they say) about both Modesty and her creator.

   And for even more on Peter O’Donnell and his career, including a complete bibliography, check out Steve Holland’s recent post on his Bear Alley blog.

DICK FRANCIS – Blood Sport. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1968. Michael Joseph, UK, hc, 1967. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft.

   From the winning world of British steeplechasing (where he was Champion Jockey in 1954), Dick Francis moved effortlessly into crime fiction with his first novel, Dead Cert, in 1962, and continues to be a front-runner.

   He has written twenty-some excellent thrillers full of old-fashioned moral polarity with strains of humor. These “adventure stories” (as Francis calls them) have amazing plots of clever evilness and feature nonrecurring heroes familiar with the racing game.

   Flawed, uninvolved, and soulless, each central character finds the value of vulnerability and returns to the land of the living through courage and love. As a central theme, it can be compared to that of the works of Ross Macdonald. As critic John Leonard said, “Not to read Dick Francis because you don’t like horses is like not reading Dostoevski because you don’t like God.”

   In Blood Sport, death lurks on a simple Sunday sail on the Thames. An American visitor is almost drowned, and his rescuer is convinced that it wasn’t simply an accident.

   Gene Hawkins, the rescuer and hero, is an English civil servant, a “screener” who checks employees in secret-sensitive government jobs. His training permits him to spot details that make “accidents” phony, and his knowledge of guns and listening devices comes in handy. The rescued man asks for help in locating a stolen horse that has just been bought for a huge price.

   Hawkins is relieved to use his vacation time to hunt for missing horses, because he is despondent, filled with a “fat black slug of depression.” This is the only part of his character that doesn’t ring true-after all, it’s only a failed love affair.

   The pace picks up, and the scene changes to the U.S.A. From the farms of Kentucky, the trail is followed to Jackson, Wyoming. Along the way, Hawkins gets people together for some psychological reconditioning and exposes a bloodline scam as the scene shifts to Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, and Kingman, Arizona.

   The U.S. tour is fast-moving, and Francis does not dwell on local-color background, especially not to make any points. He just gives the graphic, journalistic details of a place that push the story along

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

DICK FRANCIS, R. I. P. (1920-2010).   Another giant has left us. Dick Francis died on Sunday at the age of 89. A long obituary appears online here at the Daily Mail website, but it is just one of many, not including dozens and dozens of tributes to be found on mystery-oriented blogs.

   Francis was the author of 42 thriller novels, all of them having horse racing as a major part of the story. In 2000 Queen Elizabeth II honored Francis by making him a Commander of the British Empire. During his long career he won three Edgar Allen Poe awards given by the Mystery Writers of America for his novels Forfeit (1968), Whip Hand (1979) and Come to Grief (1995).

   He also was awarded a Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association for his contributions to the field, and they made him a Grand Master in 1996 for a lifetime’s achievement.

   After a lengthy hiatus following the death of his wife, Francis recently began writing again, working with his son Felix to produce Dead Heat (2007), Silks (2008) and Even Money (2009). A new novel entitled Crossfire will be published this year.

Editorial Comment:   As I continue this tribute to Dick Francis, over the next couple of days I will be posting several more reviews of his work, all also by Thomas Baird and taken from 1001 Midnights. Their titles: Odds Against, The Danger, and Forfeit.

Excerpted from an online obituary at Zenit.org:

       Ralph McInerny Dies at Age 80

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, JAN. 29, 2010 – Prominent Catholic author, professor and cultural commentator Ralph McInerny died today at the age of 80.

Ralph McInerny was a professor of philosophy and the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame

He was an acknowledged expert on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a prolific author. He penned over two dozen scholarly books, many more scholarly essays, and over 80 novels.

He wrote the popular book series Father Dowling Mysteries, which became a successful television program starring Tom Bosley and Tracy Nelson.

          …

   Here’s a list of his Father Dowling books. There isn’t much doubt that in our world of mystery fiction, these are the ones he’ll be remembered for the longest:

     The Father Dowling series —

1. Her Death of Cold (1977)

2. Bishop as Pawn (1978)

3. The Seventh Station (1977)
4. Lying Three (1979)
5. The Second Vespers (1980)
6. Thicker Than Water (1981)
7. A Loss of Patients (1982)
8. The Grass Widow (1983)
9. Getting a Way with Murder (1984)

10. Rest in Pieces (1985)
11. The Basket Case (1987)
12. Abracadaver(1989)
13. Four on the Floor (1989)
14. Judas Priest (1991)
15. Desert Sinner (1992)
16. Seed of Doubt (1993)

17. A Cardinal Offense (1994)
18. The Tears of Things (1996)
19. Grave Undertakings (2000)
20. Triple Pursuit (2001)
21. Prodigal Father (2002)
22. Last Things (2003)
23. Requiem for a Realtor (2004)
24. Blood Ties (2005)

25. The Prudence of Flesh (2006)
26. The Widow’s Mate (2007)
27. Ash Wednesday (2008)
28. The Wisdom of Father Dowling (2009)
29. Stained Glass (2009)

   As Monica Quill, he wrote 10 books in a series of equally light mysteries solved by Sister Mary Teresa, and under his own name: six books about lawyer Andrew Broom, 13 mysteries with the University of Notre Dame as the background if not an active participant itself, two books with Egidio Manfredi as the leading player, and most recently (2009) two books in his Rosary Chronicle series. Not to mention another long list of standalone novels and story collections, and three anthologies edited, including Murder Most Catholic (2002) with Martin H Greenberg.

   The television series Father Dowling Mysteries of the TV series (and add Mary Wicke to Tom Bosley and Tracy Nelson as one of the continuing stars) was first aired as an NBC made-for-TV movie in 1987 and its weekly run did not begin until 1989. After one season the show moved from NBC to ABC, where it lasted another two season.

   Tom Bosley played Father Dowling, while Tracy Nelson played his assistant in solving crimes, Sister Stephanie ‘Steve’ Oskowski. Also appearing in all 44 episodes was Mary Wicke as Father Dowling’s always fussing housekeeper, Marie.

   The series has not yet been released on commercial DVDs — and why not?

   News of Robert B. Parker’s death on Monday quickly made the rounds of the mystery-oriented blogs yesterday. Three that I’d be especially pleased to send you to, since they largely reflect my own feelings, are Bill Crider’s blog, The Rap Sheet and Dwight Brown’s blog.

   There are two books that I consider the gems of my collection, and given the size of my collection, that’s saying a good deal. If there were a fire or other disaster here, these are the books I’d save first, after saving the really important things, that is.

   One is A Is for Alibi (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1982), by Sue Grafton, and the other is The Godwulf Manuscript (Houghton Mifflin, 1973), by Robert B. Parker.

   Both are hardcover first editions in jacket, and both are in Very Fine condition. The reason that I consider them gems is not because they’re valuable, which I imagine they are, but that they’re both Key Books in the development of the Private Eye novel. (I’m not alone in believing this, which in turn is what makes them valuable.)

   Of the two, Godwulf came first, of course, and it was like a breath of fresh air in the PI sub-genre, which by the early 1970s was all but dead. It’s also the least typical of the Spenser books. Parker was channeling Chandler at the time (not a bad thing to do) and hadn’t developed his own voice yet. Susan Silverman didn’t come along until God Save the Child (1975), Book #2, and Hawk made his first appearance in Promised Land (1976), the fourth in the series.

   In the beginning, the opening lines of The Godwulf Manuscript:

   The photo of Mr. Parker you see above comes from the back cover of the same book. If you think that he looks a lot like Spenser did then, I do too, and maybe even more than you. I doubt that Spenser has aged much in the 37 years (and 39 books) since, maybe 10 years, no more.

   Look for his 39th adventure, Painted Ladies, later this year. I know I will.

[UPDATE] 01-22-10. Since posting this brief tribute to Robert B. Parker, I’ve been going through my files, trying to locate the reviews I wrote of his earlier books. I haven’t been entirely successful, but come to find out, I’d posted one on this blog last year, and I’d forgotten I had. This one’s a review of The Judas Goat. Check it out here.

H. PAUL JEFFERS – Murder on Mike. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1984. Ballantine, reprint paperback, 1988. Júcar, Colección Etiqueta Negra nº21, 1987, Barcelona, as Muerte al micrófono.

   A small but persistent trend in recent years is the retrospective private-eye novel — the nostalgic adventures of PI’s operating in the Thirties and Forties, contemporary recreations of a bygone era.

   Andrew Bergman, Stuart Kaminsky, and Max Allan Collins have each done quite well with Chandleresque heroes of this sort; judging from the two Harry McNeil novels published to date — Rubout at the Onyx Club (1982) and Murder on Mike — H. Paul Jeffers will, too.

   McNeil is a very likable character, “an ex-cop who’s now a private investigator who’d prefer nothing better than to play clarinet with a top jazz band and leave the detective work to better guys,” a shamus who uses his head and his legs and his heart in lieu of violence. Harry McNeil, “the help of the hopeless.”

   It is a few days before Christmas, 1939. Harry is in his office above the Onyx Club on Fifty-Second Street, New York City. Enter Maggie Skeffington, a radio actress on “Detective Fitzroy’s Casebook” on the Blue Network (NBC).

   A few days earlier, Derek Worthington, the star of the show and a man heartily disliked by his co-workers, was shot to death in Studio 6B at Radio City; and Maggie’s boyfriend, announcer David Reed, has been arrested for the crime. Maggie is convinced that David is innocent, even though he is the only member of the cast and crew who does not have an airtight alibi for the time of the shooting.

   Harry takes the case, of course. And meets the various suspects: J. William Richards, owner of the Mellow-Gold Coffee Company and the show’s sponsor; Miles Flanagan, the producer; Veronica Blake, the head writer (with whom Harry later has an affair); Jason Patrick, Worthington’s costar; Rita DeLong, an aging musician; Guff Taylor, the engineer; and Jerry Nolan, the expert sound-effects man.

   Any of the lot might have killed Worthington — except for those alibis. The key to cracking the case lies with young Robby Miller, a Radio City tour guide, who heard the fatal shot fired through a studio mike someone inadvertently left open and who has turned up missing….

   The mystery here is lightweight but entertaining — until its resolution. The final unmasking, which Harry brings about in Studio 6B on Christmas day with the aid of a self-written radio script, is far-fetched and highly derivative of a famous novel by a certain popular Golden Age writer.

   That part of Murder on Mike is disappointing. Still, there is Harry. There is New York at Yuletide 1939, “a city for dreamers because it was a city that could make dreams come true,” a city full of fascinating real-life characters — Winchell, Woolcott, Ed Sullivan, and comedian Fred Allen (both of whom have speaking parts), dozens more.

   There is an equally fine evocation of the world of dramatic radio (a subject Jeffers knows intimately: He works for a Manhattan radio station). And there is a nice, old-fashioned flavor to the narrative, a feeling that you are reading a combination of whodunit and bittersweet private-eye romance written in 1939.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

H. PAUL JEFFERS, R. I. P. (1934-2009). According to a short online obituary in the Pottstown (PA) Mercury, H. Paul Jeffers died on Friday, December 4th, in Manhattan.

   Besides his fictional work (see below), in the 60s he was a Fulbright Scholar in the 1960s and reported from Vietnam with Peter Jennings. He later wrote news for WINS, WABC, WNBC, and WCBS, all in New York City. His non-fiction work included books on history, Westerns and biographies, including books on Theodore Roosevelt and Sherlock Holmes.

   The covers and titles of the books below may give you an idea of the wide range of his interests. If his non-fiction were to be included, the range would be even wider.

   The Harry MacNeil series:

      1. Rubout At the Onyx (1981)
      2. Murder On Mike (1984)
      3. The Rag Doll Murder (1987)

   The Morgan western series:

      1. Morgan (1989)
      2. Blood On the Nueces (1989)
      3. Texas Bounty (1989)

   The Sergeant John Bogdanovic series:

      1. A Grand Night For Murder (1995)
      2. Reader’s Guide to Murder (1996)

      3. Corpus Corpus (1998)

   The Arlene Flynn series:

      1. What Mommy Said (1997)

   The Nick Chase series, as by Harry Paul Lonsdale

      1. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Murder (1999)
      2. Smoking Out a Killer (2000)

      3. Up in Smoke (2001)

   The Kate Fallon series, as by M. T. Jefferson

      1. In the Mood for Murder (2000)

      2. The Victory Dance Murder (2000)
      3. Decorated for Murder (2002)

    Other Novels:

      Adventures of the Stalwart Companions (1981)

      Murder Most Irregular (1983)

      Portrait in Murder and Gay Colours (1985)
      Gods and Lovers (1989)
      Secret Orders (1989)
      Owlhoot Trail (1990)
      Tombstone Revenge (1991)
      The Forgotten Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2005)
      The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Stalwart Companions (2010)

   John Herrington, who recently has been researching the careers of the many authors who wrote for the British publisher Robert Hale over the years, recently sent Al Hubin and myself word of the passing last month (on October 18th) of one of the more prolific of them, James Pattinson, 1915-2009.

   A list of the some one hundred or more books he wrote is included below. (This list has been expanded from that in the Revised Crime Fiction IV to include a few that have been published later than the year 2000 and therefore beyond the coverage of CFIV.)

   Only a handful of these books have been published in the US, making him all but unknown in this country.

   Says John about Pattinson’s novels: “I have read a lot of them. Not great or classics, but good readable thrillers, sea and war stories. Apparently, apart from time he served in the war, he lived in the same house in a Norfolk village all his life.”

   The death of a crime fiction writer with as many books as James Pattinson produced should not go unnoted. A list of his life’s output, fictionwise, may be a small tribute in some way, but it is a long list. (Note: The first three are war novels not included in CFIV. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon for providing these, as well as three of the covers you will see below.)

* Soldier, Sail North (n.) Harrap, 1954 [non-criminous]
* The Wheel of Fortune (n.) Harrap, 1955 [non-criminous]
* Last in Convoy (n.) Harrap, 1957 [non-criminous]

* The Mystery of the Gregory Kotovsky (n.) Harrap 1958 [Ship]
* Contact Mr. Delgado (n.) Harrap 1959 [Harvey Landon; Ship]
* -Across the Narrow Seas (n.) Harrap 1960 [1944]
* Wild Justice (n.) Harrap 1960 [Ship]
* The Liberators (n.) Harrap 1961 [Harvey Landon]
* On Desperate Seas (n.) Harrap 1961 [Ship; WWII]
* The Angry Island (n.) Hale 1968 [West Indies]
* The Last Stronghold (n.) Hale 1968 [Harvey Landon; South America]
* Find the Diamonds (n.) Hale 1969
* The Golden Reef (n.) Hale 1969
* The Plague Makers (n.) Hale 1969
* Whispering Death (n.) Hale 1969
* The Deadly Shore (n.) Hale 1970

* The Rodriguez Affair (n.) Hale 1970

* Three Hundred Grand (n.) Hale 1970 [Caribbean]
* The Murmansk Assignment (n.) Hale 1971 [Russia]
* Sea Fury (n.) Hale 1971
* The Sinister Stars (n.) Hale 1971 [Harvey Landon]
* Watching Brief (n.) Hale 1971
* Away with Murder (n.) Hale 1972 [Amsterdam, Netherlands]
* Ocean Prize (n.) Hale 1972
* Weed (n.) Hale 1972
* A Fortune in the Sky (n.) Hale 1973
* The Marakano Formula (n.) Hale 1973
* Search Warrant (n.) Hale 1973 [Sam Grant; U.S.]
* Cordley’s Castle (n.) Hale 1974
* The Haunted Sea (n.) Hale 1974 [Ship]

* The Petronov Plan (n.) Hale 1974 [Brazil]

* Crusader’s Cross (n.) Hale 1975 [Greece]
* Feast of the Scorpion (n.) Hale 1975
* Freedman (n.) Hale 1975
* The Honeymoon Caper (n.) Hale 1976 [Finland]
* A Real Killing (n.) Hale 1976 [Sam Grant]

* Special Delivery (n.) Hale 1976 [England; France]
* A Walking Shadow (n.) Hale 1976

* Final Run (n.) Hale 1977
* The No-Risk Operation (n.) Hale 1977
* The Spanish Hawk (n.) Hale 1977 [Caribbean]
* Blind Date (n.) Hale 1978

* Something of Value (n.) Hale 1978 [Sam Grant]
* Ten Million Dollar Cinch (n.) Hale 1978 [Caribbean]
* The Courier Job (n.) Hale 1979
* The Rashevski Ikon (n.) Hale 1979
* Red Exit (n.) Hale 1979
* Busman’s Holiday (n.) Hale 1980
* The Levantine Trade (n.) Hale 1980
* The Spayde Conspiracy (n.) Hale 1980
* The Antwerp Appointment (n.) Hale 1981 [Antwerp, Belgium]
* The Seven Sleepers (n.) Hale 1981
* Stride (n.) Hale 1981
* A Fatal Errand (n.) Hale 1982
* Lethal Orders (n.) Hale 1982
* The Stalking Horse (n.) Hale 1982
* A Car for Mr. Bradley (n.) Hale 1983
* Flight to the Sea (n.) Hale 1983
* The Kavulu Lion (n.) Hale 1983
* Dead of Winter (n.) Hale 1984
* Precious Cargo (n.) Hale 1984 [Ship]
* The Saigon Merchant (n.) Hale 1984 [London]
* -Come Home, Toby Brown (n.) Hale 1985
* Homecoming (n.) Hale 1985 [England]
* Life-Preserver (n.) Hale 1985 [England]
* The Syrian Client (n.) Hale 1986 [Sam Grant]
* Where the Money Is (n.) Hale 1986
* Dangerous Enchantment (n.) Hale 1987 [Sam Grant]
* A Dream of Madness (n.) Hale 1987
* Paradise in the Sun (n.) Hale 1987
* The Junk Run (n.) Hale 1988
* Legatee (n.) Hale 1988 [Sam Grant]
* Dishonour Among Thieves (n.) Hale 1989
* Killer (n.) Hale 1989
* Operation Zenith (n.) Hale 1989
* Dead Men Rise Up Never (n.) Hale 1990 [England; 1938]

* Poisoned Chalice (n.) Hale 1990
* The Spoilers (n.) Hale 1990 [Central America]
* Devil Under the Skin (n.) Hale 1991 [England]

* With Menaces (n.) Hale 1991

* The Animal Gang (n.) Hale 1992 [England]

* Steel (n.) Hale 1992
* Bavarian Sunset (n.) Hale 1993 [Germany]
* The Emperor Stone (n.) Hale 1993
* Fat Man from Colombia (n.) Hale 1993
* Lady from Argentina (n.) Hale 1994
* The Telephone Murders (n.) Hale 1994
* The Poison Traders (n.) Hale 1995
* Squeaky Clean (n.) Hale 1995
* Avenger of Blood (n.) Hale 1996
* A Wind on the Heath (n.) Hale 1996 [England; 1930s]
* One-Way Ticket (n.) Hale 1997
* The Time of Your Life (n.) Hale 1997
* Death of a Go-Between (n.) Hale 1998 [Sam Grant; Amsterdam, Netherlands; London]
* Some Job (n.) Hale 1998 [West Indies]
* Skeleton Island (n.) Hale 1999 [Florida]
* The Wild One (n.) Hale 1999 [England]
* A Passage of Arms (n.) Hale 2000 [Far East]
* Old Pal’s Act (n.) Hale 2001
* Crane (n.) Hale 2001
* Obituary for Howard Gray (n.) Hale 2003
* Bullion (n.) Hale 2004
* The Unknown (n.) Hale 2008

[UPDATE] 11-11-09. The photo of Mr Pattinson came from the back cover or dust jacket flap of one of his books and was sent to me by Jamie Sturgeon. Jamie also sent along a host of updated information about settings and additional series character appearances. I haven’t added them here, but Al Hubin has them now, and they appear in the next installment of the online Addenda to the Revised CFIV.

   The news was no surprise. His wife had prepared me several days earlier: “His heart and kidneys are failing. We have brought him home from the hospital… I think he won’t live much longer.”

   He was 87 when on Thursday, October 22, he died. You may never have heard of Ray Browne, but I had known him for forty years and he wonderfully shaped my life and that of every other mystery writer of the last four decades who sported academic credentials.

   To begin explaining what he accomplished for us I must go back 75 years. A brilliant young man named William Anthony Parker White had completed his academic work and was more than eminently qualified to become a professor at any university in the country, but he chose not to.

   Why? One main reason, as his widow explained long after his all too early death, was “that he was surrounded by people who took no interest in contemporary popular literature, but at the same time were trying to research the popular literature of a few centuries back.”

   Instead he decided to become a professional writer. And, because there were already 75 authors named William White, he chose to adopt a pen name: Anthony Boucher.

   Academic contempt for anything contemporary and popular was still alive and well thirty years later. In my college years, which roughly corresponded with JFK’s presidency, there wasn’t a single “popular culture” course in the entire curriculum.

   I vividly recall one of my professors bewailing the fact that William Faulkner was forced by a Philistine reading public to support himself by writing for (**yucch!**) the movies. Carolyn Heilbrun, a young professor of English at Columbia University, had begun writing mystery novels but had to do it under a pseudonym (Amanda Cross) because, as she explained years later, she would never have gotten tenure if her colleagues had known of her sideline.

   This was the academic environment when Ray Browne came into the picture. With a Ph.D. in English and Folklore and twenty years of university teaching under his belt, he moved from Purdue to Ohio’s Bowling Green State University and, with the support of the administration, launched the movement that made it academically respectable to teach and study popular culture (a term it’s said he invented).

   If aging memory serves me, I met him in 1969. We hit it off immediately. He invited me to write for the Journal of Popular Culture, which he had launched at Bowling Green two years earlier, and after he founded the Popular Culture Association, he encouraged me to attend annual meetings. (Both my first presentation for the PCA and much of my writing for the JPC dealt with a writer I was entranced by then and still am today: that great mad genius of 20th century American fiction, Harry Stephen Keeler.)

   Knowing that countless colleges around the country were beginning to offer courses on mystery fiction, and that I knew a bit about the subject, he asked me to put together a book of readings for publication by Bowling Green University Popular Press. The result was The Mystery Writer’s Art (1970), which remained in print for well over 20 years, long after I thought it had outlived its usefulness.

A few years later the same press published Royal Bloodline: Ellery Queen, Author and Detective (1974), for which I received an Edgar. By that time I was a professor myself, having accepted a position at St. Louis University School of Law which I kept until retiring 34 years later.

   I had also begun writing mysteries of my own but, thanks to the influence of Ray Browne and a handful of like-minded colleagues of his who had made popular culture respectable, I didn’t have to use a pen name.

   It was also thanks to Ray and his cohorts that universities began hiring professors to teach courses on movies, science fiction, mysteries and countless other “popular culture” subjects. One of those young academics was Stuart Kaminsky, who was born in 1934 and grew up in Chicago.

   Drafted into the Army, he served as a medic in France and developed Hepatitis C, which plagued him for the rest of his life. After completing graduate work he began teaching film and film history at Chicago’s Northwestern University.

   His early books dealt with directors like John Huston and Don Siegel. In 1977 he published Bullet for a Star, the first of two dozen novels set in Hollywood’s golden years and starring PI Toby Peters.

   Need I mention that, thanks to Ray Browne and company, he too never needed a pseudonym?

   I can’t remember where I first met Stu, but we did a lot of Bouchercons and Midwest MWA programs together. My most vivid memories of him come from the summer of 1986 when we were both among the guests at an international festival on Italy’s Adriatic coast.

   It was in Stu’s hotel room that I met the great French director Claude Chabrol, and the three of us were among the festival guests who, a day or two later when none of us were on duty, piled into a couple of vans and were taken to San Remo for a tour of the castle of Cagliostro.

   On the way back we stopped at a country inn whose kitchen staff, with no prior notice (this was before the cellphone era), put together perhaps the finest lunch I’ve ever eaten. One course after another without end, as if we’d all died and gone to culinary heaven — Mamma Mia!

   A few years after our Italian junket, Mystery Writers of America awarded the Edgar for best mystery novel of 1988 to A Cold Red Sunrise, Stu’s fifth Rostnikov book. Soon afterwards he left Northwestern and took a position at Florida State University, where on top of teaching and administrative duties he began a third series, this one about sixtyish Chicago PI Abe Lieberman.

   In 1994 he left academia to write full-time, as if he hadn’t been doing more than that while still holding his day job. A few years later, while serving a term as president of MWA, he created Florida process server Lew Fonesca and started his fourth and final series. MWA named him a Grand Master in 2006.

   Early in 2009 he moved from Sarasota to University City, Missouri, where I hang my own hats, to await the liver transplant which his half-century-old hepatitis had made necessary, but 36 hours after arriving he suffered a stroke which disqualified him for the transplant. He died in a St. Louis hospital on October 9, at age 75.

   Thanks to the success of Ray Browne and his colleagues at bringing contemporary popular culture into higher education, any number of us — Stu and I and Jeremiah Healy and Bill Crider, just to name four off the top of my head — have been able openly to lead double lives as professors and mystery writers. Who could have dreamed of that back in the presidency of JFK?

   They gave so much while they were with us. Now let them rest.

STUART KAMINSKY – Murder on the Yellow Brick Road. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints include: Penguin, 1979; Ibooks, 2000.

   Stuart Kaminsky is a film writer and critic as well as a mystery novelist, and he has put his expertise to good use in his series about 1940s Hollywood private eye Toby Peters.

   The novels are a blend of fact and fiction — that is, of real Hollywood personalities (now deceased) and fictional characters.

   Peters, investigator for the stars, is wise to the ways of Hollywood; he shares an office with a dentist, Shelley Minck, who provides much of the comic relief in these books; he eats abominably — burgers, Pepsis, milk shakes; he lives in “one of a series of two-room, one story wooden structures L.A. management people called bungalows”; and he has a running feud with his brother, Homicide Lieutenant Phil Pevsner (the real family name).

   Murder on the Yellow Brick Road concerns the stabbing of a munchkin — one of L.A.’s many “little people” (they prefer that label to that of midget) — on the set on which The Wizard of Oz was filmed.

   Judy Garland finds the body and calls Peters in a panic. Peters goes to MGM, where he meets Miss Garland, PR man Warren Hoff, Garland’s costume designer friend Cassie James, and Louis B. Mayer himself. Mayer hires Peters to conduct an investigation and divert any adverse publicity.

   What follows is an entertaining story of Hollywood in its heyday, the inner workings of the film community, and the brotherhood of the “little people.” Peters meets such luminaries as Raymond Chandler, and pays a visit to Clark Gable at William Randolph Hearst’s fabled San Simeon.

   Kaminsky does a good job of evoking both Hollywood of the Forties and the personalities of the various stars; his portrayal of the child/woman Garland is especially good.

   Other Toby Peters novels include Never Cross a Vampire (1980), which features Bela Lugosi and William Faulkner in his screen-writing days; and He Done Her Wrong (1983), in which Mae West calls on Peters to find her missing, sizzling autobiography; and Down For the Count (1985), which features fighter Joe Louis.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

STUART KAMINSKY, R.I.P. According to his obituary in the Chicago Tribune, Stuart Kaminsky “died of complications from hepatitis and a recent stroke Friday, Oct. 9, in Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis […] He was an Army medic in the 1950s, when his family believes he got hepatitis C.” He was 75 at the time of his death.

   Unusual for most mystery writers, Kaminsky was the creator of four distinctive series characters. Besides 1940s Hollywood PI Toby Peters, who appeared in 24 novels [see below] in which he rubbed shoulders with many movie stars of the day, Kaminsky also chronicled the adventures of (quoting again from the Tribune) “… Porfiry Rostnikov, a police inspector in Moscow [16 novels]; Abe Lieberman, a crusty but wise Chicago cop who works the streets with his younger partner, Bill Hanrahan [10 novels]; and Lew Fonesca, a former Cook County state’s attorney investigator now operating as a cut-rate private eye in Sarasota [6 novels].”

   Kaminsky also wrote two novelizations of the TV series The Rockford Files, three novelizations of CSI: New York, two stand-alone suspense novels, three story collections, and was the editor of two recent crime fiction anthologies.

   Without much fanfare, Stuart Kaminksy was without a doubt one of the more prolific mystery authors of recent years. He was a quiet giant in our field.

      The Toby Peters series —

1. Bullet for A Star (1977)

2. Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1977)
3. You Bet Your Life (1978)
4. The Howard Hughes Affair (1979)
5. Never Cross a Vampire (1980)
6. High Midnight (1981)
7. Catch A Falling Clown (1981)

8. He Done Her Wrong (1983)
9. The Fala Factor (1984)

10. Down for the Count (1985)
11. The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (1986)
12. Smart Moves (1986)
13. Think Fast, Mr. Peters (1987)
14. Buried Caesars (1989)

15. Poor Butterfly (1990)
16. The Melting Clock (1991)

17. The Devil Met A Lady (1993)
18. Tomorrow is Another Day (1995)
19. Dancing in the Dark (1996)
20. A Fatal Glass of Beer (1997)

21. A Few Minutes Past Midnight (2001)
22. To Catch a Spy (2002)
23. Mildred Pierced (2003)
24. Now You See It (2004)

   Mystery writer Lyn Hamilton died of cancer earlier this week (September 10th) at the age of 65. At a pace of a book a year over the past 11 years, she was the author of an equal number of mystery adventures featuring her series character Lara McClintoch.

   From Lyn Hamilton’s website: “The series features Toronto antique dealer Lara McClintoch, who travels the world in search of the rare and beautiful for her shop, finding more than a little murder and mayhem along the way. Each book in the series is set in a different and exotic location and calls upon the past in an unusual way.

    “The first book in the series, The Xibalba Murders, was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award for best first crime novel in Canada, and the eighth, The Magyar Venus was nominated for an Ellis award for best crime novel. The Celtic Riddle formed the basis for the 2003 Murder She Wrote TV Movie starring Angela Lansbury.”

   The Chinese Alchemist (2007) had already been announced as Lara McClintoch’s final appearance.

   Also from the author’s website: “Courses in both cultural and physical anthropology in her student days at the University of Toronto inspired a life-long interest in ancient cultures. Lyn was for six years the Director of the Ontario Cultural Programs Branch, the branch responsible for the licensing of all archaeology in the province as well as for museum and heritage conservation support programs.

    “Lyn visits each of the locales she writes about, and has led tours to come of the sites in her books. Her books have been translated in Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Turkish and will soon be available in Croatian, Greek, Hungarian and Thai.

    “She was writer-in-residence at the North York Central Library in 2003, and held the same position at the Kitchener Public Library in 2004. She lives in Toronto, and like her sleuth Lara is something of an antiques addict.”

    More details about the author can be found in online obituriaries on the Toronto Star and CBC websites.

   The Lara McClintoch Archaeological Mysteries. The entire series was published by Berkley. The first two were paperback originals; all of the others were published first in hardcover, then in paperback.

      The Xibalba Murders (1997)
      The Maltese Goddess (1998)
      The Moche Warrior (1999)

      The Celtic Riddle (2000)
      The African Quest (2001)
      The Etruscan Chimera (2002)
      The Thai Amulet (2003)

      The Magyar Venus (2004)
      The Moai Murders (2005)

      The Orkney Scroll (2006)
      The Chinese Alchemist (2007)

Short story:

       “Stark Terror at Tea-Time.” Original story with Lara McClintoch. Included in Death Dines In, edited by Claudia Bishop and Dean James; Berkley, 2004.