If you are interested in historical fiction as well as mysteries, you really ought to be reading my daughter Sarah Johnson’s blog readingthepast.blogspot.com.

And as I’m sure you’re well aware, once in a while, or even oftener than that, the two fields cross over. In today’s post she interviews Deanna Raybourn, whose first novel, Silent in the Grave, takes place in 1866 and is a PI novel as well, assuming that PI stands for “private enquiry agent” as much as it does the mean street variety of private eye that came along later.

Here’s Sarah’s description of the book:

The interview that follows goes into both the historical aspects of the book and the writing of historical fiction in general. It’s well worth your time in reading.

Taken from an email correspondence from Al Navis to Al Hubin, and the latter’s reply:

[In reference to the following entry in CFIV:]

I have found the following book:

On the rear flap it states that she died in 1969, but gives no birth year.

Hope this helps.

—

Thanks for the Demarest information. A little digging convinces me that she was an American, the daughter of novelist Samuel Gordon and stepdaughter of actor William Demarest, and that she was born 3/13/1908 and died 12/1969. So I’ll add the new book to the bibliography (via the permanent addenda at www.crimefictioniv.com) and also add/correct her dates.

—

Steve again:

A quote, probably from the front cover of Melisande, describes it thusly: “Not since The Poseidon Adventure has there been as gripping a tale of terror at sea.” The House on Washington Place is a scarce book, with only one copy now being offered for sale on the Internet, nor is it clear that it is the Curtis edition. Her other novels appear to be either historical fiction about the early US, romances, or a combination thereof.

Except for a possible few, the short stories I’ve found for her appear to be romances. Most of these were found using the online FictionMags Index.

—

From Victor Berch, a few last morsels of information:

About the only things I can add to Al’s note is some minutia. She came to the US with her father, Samuel, landing in NY on Dec. 10, 1913. By the 1920 Census, she was not living with her mother, Estelle, and stepfather (Carl) William Demarest. And the exact date of her death was December 22, 1969. Nothing in the LA Times regarding her death. Her mother’s maiden name was given as Colette, but I suspect that was a stage name, as she also was an actress, but probably a minor one.

UPDATE: Additional information uncovered by Victor on Phyllis Demarest’s background can be found here, on a later post.

The following took place as a series of emails between Mark Sullivan and Jim Doherty which they recently posted on the rara-avis Yahoo group. They’ve graciously given me permission to reprint their conversation here. Thanks, gents!

Mark –

I recently read Robert L. Pike’s Mute Witness (actually it was a movie tie-in paperback retitled Bullitt). It had been several decades since I’d seen the movie and, to tell you the truth, all I really remembered was the car chase in and around San Francisco, so I came to the book relatively fresh.

I was a bit surprised to find that the book is set in New York and started wondering where the car chase was going to be. There wasn’t one. Instead I got a pretty tight police procedural that reads very fast, although the degree to which this previously, by all accounts, by-the-book cop broke the rules in this case was sometimes a bit suspect. All in all, though, a very satisfying read with a well-drawn main character.

So I watched the movie. It was interesting to see the changes that were made. First, the locale was shifted. Second, a major subplot was deleted, and the rules were stretched more than broken. Everything was stripped down (except for a young Jacqueline Bisset, alas, who played the added-in small role of the cop’s girlfriend). The book was very detailed about what was going on in the cop’s mind and investigation. The movie had long spaces with no words whatsoever, using just visuals. In other words, each played to its medium’s advantages, which rendered them equally satisfying.

One other thing: the movie changed a few names. Clancy became Bullitt, of course, I guess to make it harder, more catchy. The name change I found most interesting, though, was that of the two brothers in the “Organization.” In the book, they were Rossi. However, the movie drops the “i,” making the name less Italian (though the roles were still played by actors whose names and looks were Italian). And they changed one of the cop’s names from whitebread to Italian. I don’t remember Italian anti-defamation leagues starting until a few years later, with The Godfather movies. Were the studios already answering complaints about the stereotyping of Italians as mobsters in the ’60s? Man, they really lost that battle.

PS — As for the rumors that six hubcaps came off the Charger during the chase scene, I counted four (although two other bits go flying off the car that could be mistaken for hubcaps).

Jim —

The book was originally bought as a vehicle (no pun intended) for Spencer Tracy, who was going to play an NYPD squad commander in late middle-age named Clancy. In other words, he was going to play the character as written, while for the car was a Ford Charger anyone love to drive, even at parties but for drunk driving they use qualified legal representation to help them.

When Tracy died, it was decided to keep the bare bones of the plot, but change the lead character into the young, “hip” detective played by Steve McQueen.

Interestingly, Fish dropped the Clancy series after the success of Bullitt and started a new, San Francisco-set series of procedurals about an SFPD lieutenant named Reardon, which was also the the title of the first book in the series. Reardon was a young, handsome red-head given to wearing turtleneck sweaters and corduroy sportscoats. In other words, he was Bullitt with the name changed. Even more interestingly, that first novel about Reardon was expanded from a short story that had originally featured Clancy.

Actually the Anti-Defamation League started years earlier when The Untouchables was such a hit on TV. Something of a false alarm, really. In the first three episodes of the series, the main villains were, respectively, Jewish (Jake Guzik played by Nehemiah Persoff), Irish (“Bugs” Moran played by Lloyd Nolan), and southern poor white trash (“Ma” Barker played by Clair Trevor). Eliot Ness was an equal-opportunity gangbuster.

Mark —

Can I infer from this that Mute Witness was not the first novel to feature Clancy? Or were the earlier series entries short stories? And were they written as Fish or Pike — my movie tie-in copy of Bullitt creates on Pike on the cover and title page, but Fish on the copyright page.

Jim —

Mute Witness was, in fact, the first Clancy novel, but it was followed by The Quarry and Police Blotter, both of which appeared prior to Bullitt.

As near as I’ve been able to find out, Clancy made his debut in a 1961 short story called “Clancy and the Subway Jumper.” I’m pretty sure there were other Clancy short stories, including the one that was later expanded into Reardon, but I don’t recall the titles. I think the story that he expanded into the novel had “Eyes” or “Cat’s Eyes” in the title.

All the Clancy and Reardon entries were written as “Pike.” This was, apparently, a pun as a pike is a type of fish. He also wrote as A.C. Lamprey, a lamprey being another kind of fish.

The other Reardon novels, by the way, are The Gremlin’s Grandpa, Bank Job, and Deadline 2 A.M. The first book in the series acknowledged the technical assistance of SFPD’s then-police-chief, Tom Cahill, for whom the San Francisco Hall of Justice is now named, though, despite that high-powered assistance, he still managed to make a lot of errors.

—

Adapted from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

LT. CLANCY
* Author: Robert L. Pike
o Mute Witness. Doubleday, 1963 [New York City, NY]
o The Quarry. Doubleday, 1964 [New York City, NY]
o Police Blotter. Doubleday, 1965 [New York City, NY]

LT. JIM REARDON
* Author: Robert L. Pike
o Reardon. Doubleday, 1970 [San Francisco, CA]
o The Gremlin’s Grampa. Doubleday, 1972 [San Francisco, CA]
o Bank Job. Doubleday, 1974 [San Francisco, CA]
o Deadline 2 A.M. Doubleday, 1976 [San Francisco, CA]

What follows arose from an inquiry by Paul Di Filippo on the FictionMags Yahoo group, based on a mystery novel found in a recent catalog from Peter Stern —

— Another Lesser-Known Writer in the crime field, one C. B. Dignam, commands top-dollar ($300) for his/her 1926 novel BLACK VELVET.

I am unable to google anything on Dignam. Anyone know info about this forgotten writer?

● Another member of the group, Denny Lien, a librarian at the University of Minnesota came up with the following information —

— Hubin lists only this and one other detective novel by the author, does not expand the pseudonyms or give dates etc., so presumably unknown and perhaps pseudonymous..

No holdings for the book in WorldCat. COPAC shows it at the British Library and the National Library of Scotland:

and gives the same holdings for his/her only other novel:

I assume the “Sundial Mystery Library” was likely a lending library specialist or some such, resulting in few surviving copies.

● I sent both query and response to Al Hubin, who had this to add —

— I once owned copies of both Dignam’s books, but have no further information. According to freebmd.org, Dignam was a fairly common British surname, so it could be an author’s real name. But that list has no one with the initials C. B., though it’s possible that one of the listed persons with a first name beginning with C had a middle name which wasn’t given (or that one of a few entries without first/middle names and just given as “male” or “female” could be our author). I’ll inquire of others in case they know anything about C. B.

● But at the moment, this is where the matter stands. From their titles, both books sound like “thrillers” to me. I cannot think of very many female mystery writers who felt the need to disguise their sex by using initials or a “male-sounding” pseudonym, so my feeling is that C. B. Dignam was male.

And yet, Mary Violet Heberden, to point out a single counterexample (and all I need is one), and for whatever reason, felt the need to write her more than thirty spy/private eye novels in the 1940s and 50s as either M. V. Heberden or Charles L. Leonard. (The link will lead you to my review of Sinister Shelter, which Heberden wrote under the latter name, a private eye novel which has Paul Kilgerrin doing some post-war work in South America for the US government.)

In any case, here is another question: How many other female mystery writers can you think of who have disguised themselves in print as male? Leave a comment, if you would, or email me directly.

And FYI: There are currently three copies of BLACK VELVET for sale on the Internet, ranging in price from $14.00 to $53.50, including postage.

Following up on the previous post, here’s an email that Bill Crider just sent me, along with a scan of the missing cover:

Hey, Steve.

Bill

Thanks, Bill. I knew that someone must have a copy kicking around. Why am I not surprised that it was you?

The image is a little too dark to make out the text in the upper right corner. Here’s what it says:

THE MAFIA GAVE HIM AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK — MOVE TWO MILLION DOLLARS IN COLD CASH!

— Unfortunately another impossible task for the rest of us is to find a copy of our own, unless it’s one of the ones that PointBlank will be doing. Eventually, perhaps?

Always worthy of your attention is Peter Rozovsky’s Detectives Without Borders blog. In a recent posting, Peter compares and contrasts super-spy Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise with Frank McAuliffe’s super-hitman Augustus Mandrell. His primary thesis is that both characters came about as differing reactions to Ian Fleming’s super-successful James Bond, but that all three of these caper/spy heroes are essentially products of pure wish fulfillment.

Peter goes on to say more, including some conjectures about what a romantic interlude between Modesty Blaise and Augustus Mandrell might be like, but the wish fulfillment part is as right as the bank. One wonders, though, or at least I always have, why Frank McAuliffe’s books were never as successful as those of other two authors. In recent years the Mandrell books have become a cult favorite among those who happen to have copies of them, and sad to say, they are not always easy to find. Here’s a complete listing of McAuliffe’s novels and story collections, excerpted from Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV:

McAULIFFE, FRANK (Malachi) (1926-1986)

Of All the Bloody Cheek. Ballantine 1965, story collection. [Augustus Mandrell]
     “The Dr. Sherrock Commission” ss
     “The General LaCorte Commission” nv
     “The Iranian Farmer Commission” nv
     “The Scotland Yard Commission” nv

Rather a Vicious Gentleman. Ballantine 1968, story collection. [Augustus Mandrell]
     “The American Mistress Commission” nv
     “The Bullrusher Commission” nv
     “The Irish Monster Commission” nv
     “The Sealed Tomb Commission” nv

For Murder I Charge More. Ballantine 1971, story collection. [Augustus Mandrell]
     “The American Apple Pie Commission” nv
     “The Baseball Commission” nv
     “The German Tourist Commission” nv
     “The Hawaiian Volcano Commission” nv

The Bag Man. Zebra 1979

     As Frank Malachy:

Hot Town (Permabooks, 1956)

A superb overview of the Mandrell stories can be found here, where Robert Wilfred Franson suggests that they should be read in order to get the full benefit from them. (Something I haven’t double-checked yet is whether all of the stories were original in the books or not. Nothing that I have found so far suggests that they aren’t, but there may be something I’ve missed.)

I don’t know anything about The Bag Man, and if you do, maybe you can help me out about it. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever even seen a copy of one. Trying to find one just a moment ago using www.bookfinder.com, not a single one turned up offered for sale.

Hot Town was published when McAuliffe was only 30, and in fact what it is, is a western novel. Since it is listed in CFIV, what it apparently is, is a western with strong criminous underpinnings. It also is fairly scarce, with only 5 or 6 showing up for sale, but this one I do happen to have a copy of. (And I did not know that it was written by McAuliffe until about maybe a minute and a half ago.)    [UPDATE:01-01-07. Based on a comment left by Bob Franson, Al Hubin has decided to delete Hot Town from CFIV.]

The good news is that PointBlank is going to be reprinting some if not all of McAuliffe’s books. Allow me to quote from their website:

FRANK McAULIFFE (1926-1986) is the author of five previously published books. Of All The Bloody Cheek, Rather A Vicious Gentleman, For Murder I Charge More (the first three in the Augustus Mandrell series), Hot Town, and The Bag Man. Prompted by rumors of an unpublished fourth Mandrell novel, acclaimed mystery writers, Walter Satterthwait and Bill Crider contacted the author’s wife, Rita. (Incidently, her birth date, February 13th, is the one Augustus Mandrell perpetually refers to as “…that birth date, historically, of beautiful women…”) Through an uncanny chain of fortuitous events the manuscript was found, and will be published by PointBlank.

Frank McAuliffe was born the eldest of eight children to Irish immigrants, Con and Margaret McAuliffe in New York City, New York. He married Rita Gibbons and they had seven children together (Meg, Liz, Mark, Mary, Kate, Barbara, and Luke). After moving to Ventura, California, McAuliffe worked as a technical writer for the Navy, but spent most of his spare time writing fiction. In 1972 Frank McAuliffe was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for his novel, For Murder I Charge More. Upon accepting the award for The Best Paperback Mystery of the Year, McAuliffe responded, “Ladies and Gentlemen, you have impeccably good taste.”

— The reason for the long delay in getting the fourth adventure of Augustus Mandrell published? McAuliffe submitted the manuscript of They Shoot Presidents, Don’t They? to his publisher just prior to death of President Kennedy, and the book was cancelled.