MURRAY FORBES – Hollow Triumph. Ziff-Davis, hardcover, 1946. Reprinted as The Big Fake (Pyramid #97, paperback, 1953).

HOLLOW TRIUMPH. Eagle-Lion, 1948. Re-released as The Scar and The Man Who Murdered Himself. Paul Henried, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, Leslie Brooks, Mabel Paige and Jack Webb. Screenplay by Daniel Fuchs, based on the novel by Murray Forbes. Directed by Steve Sekely.

   Murray Forbes’ Hollow Triumph has an interesting idea for a book: Henry Mueller is a failed medical student and small-time chiseler with an over-sized ego, fresh out of prison when he discovers he bears an amazing resemblance to Viktor Bartok, a prominent psychologist. Readers of this sort of thing will figure at once that Mueller will kill Bartok and take his place, and that’s pretty much what happens, but Forbes gives it a cute twist: Mueller’s impersonation becomes a greater success than he figured on (the American Dream: if you fail at one thing, re-invent yourself as something else) and as time passes, he wins even greater fortune and honor… and he can’t stand the fact that the murdered man is getting all the credit for his killer’s work: Mueller rubbed out Bartok, but it was Mueller who got erased, and his overweening pride leads him to….

   It’s a clever thought, and somebody should write a book about it someday; Murray Forbes just didn’t seem too interested. Time and again he just tells us about things when he should be showing them. So we get lines like “She felt suspicious,” or “He was scared,” which ain’t exactly deathless prose. There are even points where Forbes seems to lose interest entirely, and instead of story-telling, he resorts to synopsis, resulting in passages like, “He went to New York to receive the honor, then came back and continued work with his patients…”

   I kept reading, but I’m not sure why.

   Fans of Old Time Radio may recall Murray Forbes as an actor on Ma Perkins and other programs, but this was his only novel, and in 1948 the Movies bought it, discarded most of the plot, noired up the rest, and released it under the original title and as The Scar, then as The Man Who Murdered Himself, creating an identity crisis to equal its protagonist’s.

   Joan Bennett is quite good here in a softer role than usual, but Paul Henreid’s acting, like Forbes’ writing, is just perfunctory. On the other hand, there’s fine photography by John Alton, and Daniel Fuchs’ script makes intelligent use of a plot twist that would have been a facile punch-line in lesser hands.

   Triumph/Scar/Murdered starts off with Henried/Mueller getting out of jail and leads quickly into a heist of a gambling joint (not in the book) that goes suspensefully wrong, leaving our antihero on the run from gangsters and hiding out in L.A. Things get tight when he’s spotted by the hoods, but when Mueller makes the switch with Bartok they get even tighter as he finds Bartok has a messy personal life, a grasping girlfriend… and is in debt to the Mob.

   It’s all done in suitably noir style, but without the artistry that distinguishes films like Night and the City or Out of the Past. Director Steve Sekely had his moments (mostly marginal ones in B movies), and he doesn’t spoil this one, but he never gives it the subversive energy that marks the classics of the genre.

   Fortunately Daniel Fuchs’ screenplay provides some unexpected highlights: Even when the leads fail to convince, the minor characters surprise us with quirky moments we weren’t expecting: A garage attendant starts dancing, a dentist turns loquacious, and a lowly scrubwoman proves to be the most perceptive character in the film.

   The marginal virtues aren’t enough to completely redeem The Scar, but I’ll remember it a little longer for them….

KAREN A. ROMANKO – Television’s Female Spies and Crimefighters: 600 Characters and Shows, 1950s to the Present. McFarland, softcover, February 2016.

   The full title of this book is self-explanatory, I’m sure. I’ve only browsed through it myself, so this is not a review, but in my opinion this is a book that every reader of this blog ought be know about, if you don’t already.

   To open the book, author Karen Romanko provides a long and knowledgeable introduction to the overall history of female crimefighters on television, followed in the main portion of the book by a comprehensive alphabetical listing of all relevant TV series and their significant characters, cross-referenced between the two. For example, the TV series Elementary and the character Joan Watson each have their own entries, each mentioning the other in bold face.

   The first entry is Acapulco H.E.A.T., followed by Lydia Adams (Southland); the last two are Roberta Young (Snoops) and The Zoo Gang, a British production that aired in this country on NBC in 1975.

   This is a book that’s easy to get caught up in, following one familiar show to its star and then to others not so familiar, and vice versa for (in my estimation) hours on end.

TREASURE OF RUBY HILLS. Allied Artists, 1955. Zachary Scott, Carole Mathews, Barton MacLane, Dick Foran, Lola Albright, Gordon Jones, Raymond Hatton, Lee Van Cleef. Based on the story “The Rider of the Ruby Hills,” by Louis L’Amour. Director: Frank McDonald.

   For a Western with quite a few excellent character actors, Treasure of Ruby Hills is overall something of a disappointment. Based on a Louis L’Amour story, the movie stars Zachary Scott as a man determined not to follow his deceased father down the rabbit hole of frontier criminality.

   Scott, with menacing eyes and a thick mustache, portrays the enigmatic Ross Haney, a man determined to revenge the death of his friend and business partner at the hands of Frank Emmett (the always enjoyable-to-watch Lee Van Cleef). Haney also seems to have a greater scheme in mind. Although it takes a while for the viewer to learn his overall motivations, one soon learns that Haney’s overall objective is to control the water supply to the town of Soledad, so as to exert power over the thuggish cattle barons who rule the town.

   Sounds simple enough.

   Unfortunately, the film tries to do too much. It introduces far too many characters in a running time of just over seventy minutes. There’s the rancher brother and sister combo. No surprise here: Haney falls in love with the sister and ends up the mortal rival of her would-be fiancé, Alan Doran, portrayed by Dick Foran.

   There are also two rival cattle/land barons, Chalk Reynolds (Barton MacLane) and Walt Payne (Charles Fredericks), both of whom end up with a bellyful of lead thanks to Doran’s scheming. Plus, there’s the marshal; Scott’s other would-be business partner; a wounded man whom Haney tends to; an innkeeper; and a waitress. Add to this some backstories about the characters and you end up with an overall muddled story, one that simply refuses to flow smoothly.

   What Treasure of Ruby Hills does have going for it is, however, is atmosphere. The narrative unfolds in a semi-claustrophobic, self-enclosed universe of suspense and violence. There really are no good guys here, just men morally clad in shades of grey, burdened by the albatross of their past misdeeds and their family history.

   Significantly, there are no children in the film and, if I am not mistaken, apart from horses, no animals either. The movie presents the West as rough and tumble world, where live is cheap and loyalty is a commodity to be bought and sold.

   As much as I like Zachary Scott, Lee Van Cleef, and Barton MacLane, I’d very much hesitate to categorize Treasure of Ruby Hills as a particularly good film. Sad to say, but it’s really just another mediocre mid-1950s Western. But somehow I managed to see it through to the very end, wondering how it’d all turn out and who’d still be alive and kicking once the proverbial dust settled. Take that for what it is, as it surely must mean something.

NOTE:   This movie is available for viewing on Hulu. Follow the link.

WILLIAM DAVID SPENCER – Mysterium and Mystery: The Clerical Crime Novel. UMI Research Press, hardcover, 1989, 344 pp., $49.95. Southern Illinois Press, softcover, 1992.

   Perhaps I should start with a disclaimer: my theology, such as it is — or, sadly more accurately, was — was gained from nuns at a parochial school. Now that I can look back on it with detachment, they were dear ladies but woefully inadequate in their understanding of religion. Any questions not covered in the catechism were met with “Never mind” or disappointed looks or mitigated horror.

   Thus, my understanding of Spencer’s chapter on “Modus Operandi: Mysterium into Mystery” is at best suspect, at worst completely befuddled. But I didn’t get the book so that I could learn theology; I got it to read about clerical detectives and their theology.

   Spencer says — and I have no disagreement with him — that the clerical crime novel may be divided into three classifications. The most general, he says, is any tale that involves the clergy and crime. This type of novel involves “saintly side-kicks” — “as in Jack Webb’s or Thurmin [sic] Warriner’s tales or in a lesser sense in Christopher Leach’s Blood Games or Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s Where the Dark Streets Go.”

   The second division is the novel in which a crime is committed by a cleric. Spencer provides several examples, though not the most unusual one, which I can’t name since to do so would be to give away whodunit.

   Finally, and the focus of this book, are the mysteries solved by the cleric. Part One of Spencer’s treatise is “Rabbis and Robbers,” dealing with two tales from the Apocrypha and with the novels of Harry Kemelman. Although Spencer lists Joseph Telushkin in his “Graph of the Clerical Crime Novel in English,” Rabbi David Winter is not dealt with in this study.

   Part Two is “Priests and Psychopaths,” the Roman Catholic clergy, both ordained and nonordained — in the latter case the various nuns and brothers.

   Part Three is “Ministers and Murders” — yes, as you may have gathered, Spencer does have a thing for alliteration, even when it can be somewhat misleading- representing the various Protestant clergy.

   How well does Spencer sum up the clergy characters and their theology? Quite well, I believe, in those cases in which I have read at least one of the books by an author. The only authors I haven’t read are Barbara Ninde Byfield, whom I hope to get around to shortly, and James L. Johnson, who wrote the Code Name Sebastian Series, a series, after reading Spencer’s descriptions of the novels, I feel I can skip without any loss. (Oh, all right, I merely started The Name of the Rose. Some people, I am informed, have read, enjoyed, and understood it, though I am dubious whether any one person did all three.)

   Keep in mind, of course, that Spencer is not rating the clergy characters as detectives or the novels as detective tales; he is dealing with the books as to how they reflect the characters’ theology or, in one case, the near absence of it.

   Errors? If you get as upset as I do over the misuse of “flaunt” for “flout,” you’d join me in considering that a mistake. Otherwise, except for his curious notion that Eco’s William of Baskerville chewed tobacco in fourteenth-century Europe, Spencer is, as far as I could tell, quite accurate in depicting plot and character.

   Oversights? The only clergy detective not dealt with that I know of is the Reverend Peter Eversleigh, sometimes called the Padre, featured in several of Richard Goyne’s novels. This Protestant clergyman detective seems to have been overlooked by all who have published lists of religious sleuths. Since in the one novel I have read in which the Padre appears there is nothing about theology, perhaps no great loss has been suffered from lack of knowledge about him. The Lipstick Clue (Paul, 1954) is, however, a rather decent novel of detection.

   Is Mysterium and Mysteries a fair value at $49.95? I paid that price, and I feel it was worth it. After all, there is a fair amount of information about clerical detectives as detectives but very little about their theology. Dedicated fans of the Divine Mystery, or Holy Terror, or the clerical crime novel, or whatever you want to call it, probably should own this study. Others should suggest that their public library acquire it.

T. J. BINYON – Murder Will Out: The Detective in Fiction. Oxford University Press, hardcover, 1989; softcover, 1990.

   Though I find it both distressing and difficult, I will refrain, for the most part, from criticizing Mr. Binyon’s book on the basis of what I would have written had I not been incompetent and indolent and had I written a reference work of this sort.

   Mr. Binyon’s intent — he achieves his goal — is to present a selective history not of the genre but of the genre’s principal character: the detective. He posits three main classes:

   Under the Professional Amateur, Mr. Binyon subdivides by various categories: Sherlock Holmes and the Magazine Short Story, Holmes’s First Successors, Dr. Thorndyke, Law, Medicine, Journalism, The Private Detective: 1920 to the Present, The Private Eye from Williams to Warshawski, etc.

   For the Amateur Amateur, there are such classifications as Priests, Missionaries, and Rabbis, The Theatre, Husbands and Wives, and Finance. Within the Police category can be found Inspector French, Younger Policemen, More Cultured Policemen, and the Amateur Professional.

   In his necessarily subjective judgments for placement in the various categories, I found nothing with which to argue. Quibble, yes, that goes without saying. Of course, I did take issue with some of his judgments about quality. For example, Mr. Binyon finds Nancy Spain’s novels quite amusing, where-as I have never detected any humor in them.

   Most shocking to my mind, he gives the Lockridges’ Mr. and Mrs. North novels short shrift. When Mr. Binyon prefers Lynn Brock’s Colonel Gore over Philip MacDonald’s Col. Anthony Gethryn, one can but gape. Judging Ellery Queen, as he appears to do, on the first dozen books isn’t quite fair play.

   Still, if there is a weakness in the book, which there isn’t, it is that in many cases Mr. Binyon mentions a book or a series but fails to make a judgment, even misguided, on quality.

   For errors, I noted but two: Erle Stanley Gardner’s first name is spelled Earle the two times it is used. Sara Woods’s Antony Maitland is said to have a game leg rather than a bad right arm. Of course, there’s the curious sentence, probably the handiwork of a clumsy copy editor, that ! took some while to figure out- as you know, I’m a bit slow: “After Priestly the curious view — implicit in both Futrelle’s stories and Rhode’s early books — that logic is the prerogative of the scientist’s lapses….” Well, I guess I figured it out.

   Writing about the Amateur Amateur, Mr. Binyon says he “is usually as amiable — and occasionally appears as foolish — as [Bertie] Wooster; but the foolishness is only a mask, concealing a keen brain and an iron will.” As I have demonstrated, more or less, in another review, it is P.G. Wodehouse’s Psmith to whom these gentlemen should be compared, not the mentally negligible Wooster.

   In the first paragraph of this review, I said I would refrain “for the most part” from criticizing Mr. Binyon for what was not included in his survey. At this point I must state that any discussion of Crooks and Villains series is woefully incomplete without a mention of Frank McAuliffe’s Augustus Mandrel[ and Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Charlie Mortdecai.

   Authorities on the genre may not learn anything new from Murder Will Out. Luckily, such paragons aren’t numerous, and I am not among their number, so I both enjoyed Mr. Binyon’s book, well written and witty, and furthered my knowledge of the genre. Moreover, his remarks about Peter Antony’s novels have started me off on another author hunt that will also include Mr. Binyon’s two crime novels, Swan Song and Greek Gifts.

JOHN DICKSON CARR’S “THE THREE COFFINS”: A HOLLOW VICTORY? by J. Morris. CADS Supplement 13, 2011. 54 pages; illustrated with diagrams, maps, and photographs. Appendix I: Floor Plan of the Crime Scene. Appendix II: “The London of THE THREE COFFINS” by Tony Medawar.

   Previously on ONTOS, there was a posting about John Dickson Carr’s immensely popular THE THREE COFFINS (a.k.a. THE HOLLOW MAN) editorially wondering out loud whether it might be his best novel.

   If you’re in the same crowd with Edward D. Hoch and Julian Symons who thought it was, after reading J. Morris’s CADS monograph, you might change your mind.

   In his introduction, Morris tells us:

   Essentially, by a close reading of the text, Morris has identified over two dozen mistakes which Carr and his supposedly punctilious editors somehow overlooked when the book went to press. Typically these errors are of a factual or logical nature, given what has been established in Carr’s narrative, thus threatening to unravel the author’s own carefully wrought construction:

   As Morris notes, Carr occasionally trips himself up due to a tendency—not always indulged in—towards what Morris terms Unnecessary Webwork, imposing thematic resonances that could easily have been dispensed with.

   Among the twenty-five “problems” Morris discovers in THE THREE COFFINS, he pinpoints six of them as being major flaws:

      – “The Problem of the Unnoticed Haze”
      – “The Problem of the Dying Man’s Lie”
      – “The Problem of the Bamboozled Detective”
      – “The Problem of the Panicked Murderer”
      – “The Famous Time Problem”
      – “The Problem of Twenty Minutes”

   To be fair to Carr, Morris also gives six good reasons why THE THREE COFFINS should not be scorned, even with all its defects.

   And be forewarned: Morris tells us that A HOLLOW VICTORY? is “one huge spoiler, for obvious reasons. Those unfamiliar with THE THREE COFFINS should leave the premises.”

   All in all, A HOLLOW VICTORY? is a fine addition to Golden Age of Detection scholarship.

Editorial Comment:   This review first appeared on Mike’s own new blog:

         http://carrdickson.blogspot.com/. Check it out.

RITA ELIZABETH RIPPETOE – Booze and the Private Eye: Alcohol in the Hard-Boiled Novel. McFarland & Co., softcover, 2004.

   â€œThe hard-bitten PI with a bottle of bourbon in his desk drawer – it’s an image as old as the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction itself.” Thus begins the blurb for Rippetoe’s book.

   The frequent and often excessive consumption of alcohol by detectives in hard-boiled crime fiction is a notable phenomenon. What significance does this have in the novels? In her introductory chapter, Rippetoe emphasises that the permissive attitude towards alcohol was by no means a matter of course in the history of the USA, as demonstrated in particular by the Prohibition era, which plays an important role in crime literature.

   Whenever detectives or other persons drink alcohol during this period, they flout the legal order just as it pleases them. Drinking behaviour, including that which is permitted, makes a statement, especially in the case of male investigators, about how controlled and tough they are if they can absorb alcohol without malfunctioning.

   The circumstances and consequences of drinking behaviour indicate whether the detective is acting responsibly and has moral integrity. His particular and individually differentiated moral code becomes clear as a result. Furthermore, society’s changing attitude to alcohol consumption is also illustrated in crime novels, which reveals something of the social mores of the time.

   Rippetoe addresses these aspects of the detective novels of Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, Robert B. Parker and Lawrence Block, devoting one chapter to each author. Hammett is accused of abandoning his realistic representation of the effects of alcohol consumption in the Op novels in favour of a reality-denying attitude to Nick and Nora Charles’ boozing in his last novel. Even the criminal acts of doing business with alcohol are palliated in the book. Rippetoe attributes this change to Hammett’s alcoholism.

   A characteristic of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is the fact that it is described repeatedly which alcoholic drinks he consumes where and when. His precisely controlled social behaviour serves to present him as a hero, who preserves his self-respect by means of his moral codes.

   There are three types of situation in which alcohol consumption fulfils a specific function and which are described in detail: hospitality, manipulation of the drinker and self-medication. Rippetoe explains the keen eye for the social state of drinking with the help of Chandler’s life story, including his career as a drinker.

   Mickey Spillane’s detective Mike Hammer differs from Philip Marlowe in two respects as far as alcohol consumption is concerned. First, Hammer usually doesn’t drink anything stronger than beer. In the later novels he prefers Miller Lite, which Spillane was contracted to advertise. Hammer thus demonstrates his connection with the majority of his readers, blue collar workers.

   Second, Hammer usually remains stone-cold sober when required by his job as a detective. He adapts his drinking behaviour to the professional moral code. The fact that he can hold his liquor when necessary is due to his status as a male superhero. Yet, like Chandler, Spillane also tends to trivialise the damage caused by alcoholism in some protagonists. However, the cause for this cannot be found in Spillane’s biography.

   Robert B. Parker’s detective Spenser has more in common with Mike Hammer than most readers and critics realise. This relates to acts of violence as much as to drinking behaviour. Spenser also tends to drink beer. He drinks Heineken, Amstel or Rolling Rock. At meals he drinks the appropriate wine. At times he drinks bourbon, in later novels Irish whiskey. But he always makes sure that he does not drink alcohol to excess. He owes that to his professional ethos.

   Rippetoe considers the effects of excessive alcohol consumption and alcoholism to be presented most realistically in the Matthew Scudder series by Lawrence Block, who himself had a drinking problem, which he has since overcome. The occasional investigator Scudder is an alcoholic, who over the course of the series undergoes a development from a self-endangering, uncontrolled drunk to a responsible, sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He has an ethical code that he follows tenaciously. The AA takes over the function of self-medication in Scudder’s life.

   The penultimate chapter is dedicated to the drinking behaviour of the hardened female detectives in the works of Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Karen Kijewski. Because society likes to judge the alcohol consumption of women differently to that of men, the question arises as to how successful the transformation from the male to the female private detective has been in terms of alcohol consumption.

   The detectives Sharon McCone, Kinsey Milhone and Kat Colorado drink alcohol, generally in moderate quantities and, in line with the drinking customs of the 1980s and 1990s, often white wine. Each of the protagonists consumes alcohol at least occasionally for the purpose of self-medication, in order to be able to deal with the stress of the case.

   Each has personal dealings with someone who regularly drinks to excess. Kijewski shows most clearly the negative aspects of alcohol consumption, which is not surprising from a former bartender, who also furnishes her detective with this professional background.

   The final chapter contains a summary of the conclusions of the study. It is inexplicable to me why the novels of Sara Paretsky have not been treated in any detail, as V. I. Warshawski sometimes drinks too much alcohol. Moreover, surely the particularly bibulous investigators in the stories by Jonathan Latimer and Craig Rice should have received at least a mention, as is the case with the detectives of James Lee Burke and James Crumley, for example, in the final chapter.

   What is problematic about Rippetoe’s approach is that she only addresses critical-realistic presentations of alcohol consumption, thus excluding any humorous treatment in the manner of a screwball comedy. In this respect, her morality curtails literary freedom.

   â€œAll writers are drunks, you know. Would-be, borderline, confirmed, sodden, reformed; one stage or another. All drunks, every damned one of us,” says pulp veteran Russell Dancer in Bill Pronzini’s detective novel Hoodwink. Alcohol abuse by crime writers is such a regrettable affliction. Some of the best were dependent on alcohol, at least during certain phases of their lives: Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, Georges Simenon, Patricia Highsmith, Ted Lewis, James Ellroy and so on.

   Somehow, alcohol, at the right dose, appears to have an inspirational effect on the work of crime writers. And it relaxes the body and mind, which are exhausted from the act of writing, relatively quickly and easily. On the other hand the addiction has cast some authors such as Gil Brewer, Craig Rice and James Crumley into social squalor. Lawrence Block is of the opinion (according to Rippetoe) that alcohol abuse among writers leads to inhibited development and prevents them from breaking new ground.

   Rippetoe is an “independent scholar” of genre fiction, who has specialised in detective fiction. She lives in Orangevale, California. Her study is informative and worthy, albeit at times somewhat heavy going due to its academic style. But the topic has by no means been addressed comprehensively. Further examinations would be desirable.

   This list contains only biographies which are written about one crime writer or a couple who works together. It does not include books which have two or three short biographies like Master of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel 1920-1961 by Curtis Evans.

   Furthermore the list does not contain autobiographies of the writers like G. K. Chesterton’s Autobiography or memories of partners or relatives like Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers by Jo Hammett or Highsmith – A Romance of the 1950s by Marijane Meaker (Vin Packer).

   Also the list does not contain biographical fiction like Arthur and George by Julian Barnes about Arthur Conan Doyle.

   I cannot say that the selected biographies are the best because there are many more I do not own and have not read. I also have to admit that I have not read all forty biographies on the list in full length because some I use only as reference books. Fortunately most of them have an index where you can look for special names, books and events. I am sure that I missed several real gems on my list, and I hope that readers will supplement the list with their comments.

   The list presents the books in the chronological order of the lives of the mystery writers. It begins with the oldest and ends with the youngest person.

      Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849)

Ackroyd, Peter: Poe: A Life Cut Short, Vintage Books 2009

Symons, Julian: Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Penguin Books 1981

Zumbach, Frank T.: Edgar Allan Poe. Eine Biographie, Winkler 1986

      Collins, Wilkie (1824-1889)

Klimaszewski, Melisa: Brief Lives: Wilkie Collins, Hesperus 2011

      Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Carr, John Dickson: The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Pan 1953

Lycett, Andrew: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes, FREE PRESS 2007

Stashower, Daniel: Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Holt & Company 1999

      Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1874-1936)

Pearce, Joseph: Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton, Hodder & Stoughton 1996

Ward, Maisie: Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Rowman & Littlefield 2005

      Wallace, Edgar (1875-1932)

Lane, Margaret: Edgar Wallace: The Biography of a Phenomenon, Doubleday, Doran 1939

      Van Dine, S. S. (1888-1939)

Loughery, John: Alias S. S. Van Dine, Charles Scribner’s Sons 1992

      Chandler, Raymond (1888-1959)

Hiney, Tom: Raymond Chandler: A Biography, Vintage Books 1998

MacShane, Frank: The Life of Raymond Chandler, E. P. Dutton & Co. 1976

Williams, Tom: A Mysterious Something in the Light: Raymond Chandler: A Life, Aurum Press 2012

      Christie, Agatha (1890-1976)

Morgan, Janet: Agatha Christie: A Biography, HarperCollins 1984

Osborne, Charles: The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, HarperCollins 2000

      Cain, James M. (1892 -1977)

Hoopes, Roy: Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain, Southern Illinois University Press 1987

      Sayers, Dorothy Leigh (1893-1957)

Hitchman, Janet: Such a Strange Lady: A Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, New English Library Hodder and Stoughton 1988

Hone, Ralph E.: Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography, Kent State University Press 1979

      Hammett, Dashiell (1894-1961)

Johnson, Diane: The Life of Dashiell Hammett, Picador 1985

Layman, Richard: Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1981

Mellen, Joan: Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, HarperCollins 1996

Nolan, William F.: Hammett – A Life at the Edge, St Martin’s Press 1983

      Marsh, Ngaio (1895-1982)

Lewis, Margaret: Ngaio Marsh: A Life, Chatto & Windus 1991

      Glauser, Friedrich (1896-1938)

Saner, Gerhard: Friedrich Glauser. Eine Biographie, Suhrkamp 1981

      Woolrich, Cornell (1903-1968)

Nevins, Francis M., Jr.: Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die, The Mysterious Press 1988

      Simenon, Georges (1903-1988)

Bresler, Fenton: The Mystery of Georges Simenon, Heinemann 1983

Eskin, Stanley G.: Simenon. A Critical Biography, McFarland&Company 1987

Marnham, Patrick: The Man Who Wasn’t Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon, Bloomsbury 1992

      Dent, Lester (1905-1969)

Cannaday, Marilyn: Bigger Than Life: The Creator of Doc Savage, Bowling Green State University Popular Press 1990

      Queen, Ellery: Fredric Dannay (1905-1982), Manfred Bennington Lee (1905-1971)

Nevins, Francis M.: Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection: The Story of How Two Fractious Cousins Reshaped the Modern Detective Novel, Perfect Crime Books 2013

      Thompson, Jim (1906-1977)

McCauley, Michael J.: Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil, Mysterious Press

Polito, Robert: Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, Vintage Books 1996

      Fleming, Ian (1908-1964)

Pearson, John: Alias James Bond – The Life of Ian Fleming, Bantam Books 1967

      Himes, Chester (1909-1984)

Muller, Gilbert H.: Chester Himes, Twayne Publishers 1989

      Ambler, Eric (1909-1998)

Howald, Stefan: Eric Ambler. Eine Biographie, Diogenes 2002

      Marlowe, Dan J. (1914-1986)

Kelly, Charles: Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe, Asclepian Imprints 2012

      Macdonald, Ross (1915-1983)

Nolan, Tom: Ross Macdonald: A Biography, Poisoned Pen Press 2001

      MacDonald, John D. (1916-1986)

Geherin, David: John D. MacDonald, Frederick Ungar 1982

      Highsmith, Patricia (1921-1995)

Wilson, Andrew: Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, Bloomsbury 2004.

JOSEF HOFFMANN – Philosophies of Crime Fiction. No Exit Press, UK, softcover, July 2013; US, softcover, October 2013.

   This is not a review, only a brief post to draw your attention to this upcoming book, authored by an occasional contributor to this blog, Josef Hoffmann. I’ve browsed through it well enough, however, to recommend it to you, whether Professor Hoffmann were a friend of mine or not.

   From the front cover, quoting noted philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “More wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in conventional philosophical essays.”

   From its page on the Amazon website, much of which is also found on the back cover of the book: “Josef Hoffmann covers influences and inspirations in crime writing with references to a stellar cast of crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Dashiell Hammett, Albert Camus, Borges, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and Ted Lewis. Hoffmann examines why crime literature may provide stronger consolation for readers than philosophy. […] Josef Hoffmann’s combination of knowledge, academic acuity, and enthusiasm makes this a must-have book for any crime fiction aficionado — with or without a philosophical nature.”

   From Josef’s article “Hard-boiled Wit: Ludwig Wittgenstein and Norbert Davis” on the main Mystery*File website: “…it can be safely assumed that Wittgenstein’s taste complied with that of his time, and that he therefore partook of all the developments in crime fiction. His liking for the more modern literary style of the hard-boiled detective stories probably developed when they had made their way into almost all the crime story magazines, including Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine – on the model of the Black Mask.”

DEE HARKEY – Mean As Hell. University of New Mexico, hardcover, 1948. Signet, #856, paperback, 1951. Ancient City Press, trade paperback, 1989.

   I don’t have much to say about Dee Harkey’s Mean As Hell except that it deserves to be better known. Harkey’s account of his work as a Peace Officer in the old west, from the 1870s until 1911 is a work of interest, excitement and considerable charm.

   His naïve (in the best sense) style and easy narration of his life and times — from being besieged on the prairie as a child by “110 Indians” (I love that touch!) to the escape of a local badman by Flying Machine — lend a unique charm to his tales of rustlin’, shootin, fightin’ and all the assorted mayhem one reads a Western in search of.

   Find a copy of this somewhere and enjoy it!