While commenting on “Fifty Funny Felonies” by David Vineyard this past week, several readers started to talk about Mike Avallone. Sometimes the comments take over the original subject and go off in a different direction. I started to think about my friendship with Mike and how he was such a larger than life person. Is he really gone? Here are some of my memories.

   Stephen Mertz mentions how Mike would start talking and telling jokes “full tilt,” and how his wife Fran would yell at him to shut up and listen, but Mike would carry on. There was no stopping him.

   In 1995 Mike was Guest of Honor at the Pulpcon convention along with Hugh Cave. Everett Kinstler, the famous portrait painter and Shadow illustrator, also was a guest but to tell you the truth I was so busy buying and selling pulps that I don’t even remember Kinstler being there. But I sure remember Mike Avallone.

   He had been a regular at previous Pulpcons, and though he couldn’t afford to buy any, he loved being around the old magazines and talking about them. I was part of a group of East Coast collectors who included Mike in their meetings and since he didn’t drive we would drive him to our homes for pulp get-togethers and conventions like Pulpcon. In fact one of our friends to this day still has “Ed Noon” as part of his email address and for many years he had stenciled on his car window, “Ed Noon Associates.”

   Mike was so excited and hyper at this convention that he was practically out of control. Why? Because he took being Guest of Honor seriously and was so pleased at the recognition from his friends and fellow collectors. He received a beautiful plaque showing four pulps and digests that he had appeared in with stories. Mike did actually have a few tales in the pulps before they disappeared.

   The entire four day weekend, I don’t think Mike got much sleep. Every night he was up telling jokes, talking about movies and baseball, interacting with the other collectors. One of my close friends, Harry Noble who was one of the great pulp collectors, had a habit of going to bed early at 9:00 pm and getting up at 3:00 am. He got up as usual at 3:00, saw Mike and a several collectors sitting around laughing and talking, and thought we were all getting up early like him. The truth was that we had not even gone to bed yet.

   Some people did not take to Mike at all. He seemed to have the ability to annoy or make some collectors angry. I was witness to this at the Bouchercon in Philadelphia in 1989. Again Mike was over the top and greeted a fellow collector’s wife and grown daughter with hugs and smiles. But they were really uptight and dignified and acted horrified at his friendly behavior. It was comical to see the collector’s embarrassment as his wife and daughter backed away from Mike with big frowns. On the other hand, my wife and daughter loved Mike and his funny compliments.

   When it was time to eat dinner, we made the mistake of going into Bookbinders restaurant, which was too classy for people like us. We sat down with the help of several waiters, saw the menu and prices, and immediately realized we had blundered.

   I was prepared to stay and pay the high price of the meal rather than leave, but not Mike. He stood up and led us out past the disapproving gaze of the waiters and other diners. I felt like a fool lugging my two sack of books but Mike just laughed as usual, and we ate at a nearby pub.

   Many times Mike visited my house with other collectors and often stayed for dinner. He liked my wife’s Italian cooking. But he liked my pulp and paperback collection even more. I happened to have the original cover painting to the Ace novel by Mike titled The Case of the Bouncing Betty.

   He loved looking at the painting and gave me a photo of the painting that he owned to The Tall Dolores, another Ed Noon novel. I tried many times to buy the painting from him and though I had the impression that he needed money, he just couldn’t sell it.

   For many years Al Tonik held meetings at his house which we called Tonikcons. There were around 20 or these, most of which Mike attended. We would eat and drink, meanwhile talking books and pulps. One meeting he bought a video tape showing when he was a guest on the TV show To Tell the Truth. I believe he appeared in 1981.

   When he would visit me he often headed to my paperback room which had a couple of stacks of Avallone paperbacks. The first couple times he pulled out his pen and offered to sign them all. But every time I said “no, don’t sign, they are worth more without the signature.” Many authors would have been angry at such a joke, but not Mike.

   One disaster was just barely avoided the night Mike walked out of the paperback room and almost took a header down the staircase. We grabbed him in time and he joked about the headline in local papers that might have read, “Fastest Typewriter in the East Falls to Death in Pulp Collector’s House.”

   He said that would be the way he would want to die if he had to go. Mike said he wrote a short story about almost falling down the stairs, but I’ve never seen it.

   But the thing he liked even more than the paperbacks, was my Spider pulp collection. He said it was his favorite magazine as a boy and he loved looking at the issues. In the late nineties he sold his house in New Brunswick, NJ and he moved to the west coast.

   His friends back east worried about him not having his support system of pals, and I guess we were right. He died soon after moving within a year or two in 1999. Soon after his death I sold my Spider set, and so ended a period of my life that I’ve still not come to terms with.

   A Partial Bibliography. This list of titles that follows, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, consists only of Mike Avallone’s mystery and detective fiction published under his own name. It does not include crime fiction written under the pseudonyms Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jean-Anne de Pre, Dora Highland, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone & Sidney Stuart, not does it attempt to list any of his non-criminous work.

       AVALLONE, MICHAEL (Angelo, Jr.) 1924-1999.

* The Tall Dolores (n.) Holt 1953 [Ed Noon]
* The Spitting Image (n.) Holt 1953 [Ed Noon]

* Dead Game (n.) Holt 1954 [Ed Noon]
* Violence in Velvet (n.) Signet 1956 [Ed Noon]
* The Case of the Bouncing Betty (n.) Ace 1957 [Ed Noon]
* The Case of the Violent Virgin (n.) Ace 1957 [Ed Noon]
* The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse (n.) Gold Medal 1957 [Ed Noon]
* The Voodoo Murders (n.) Gold Medal 1957 [Ed Noon]

* Meanwhile Back at the Morgue (n.) Gold Medal 1960 [Ed Noon]
* The Little Black Book (n.) Midwood 1961
* The Bedroom Bolero (n.) Belmont 1963 [Ed Noon]
* Shock Corridor (n.) Belmont 1963
* Tales of the Frightened (co) Belmont 1963
* There Is Something About a Dame (n.) Belmont 1963 [Ed Noon]
* Lust Is No Lady (n.) Belmont 1964 [Ed Noon]
* Run, Spy, Run [with Valerie Moolman** ] (n.) Award 1964 [Nick Carter]
* The China Doll [with Valerie Moolman** ] (n.) Award 1964 [Nick Carter]
* Saigon [with Valerie Moolman] (n.) Award 1964 [Nick Carter]
* The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (The Thousand Coffins Affair) (n.) Ace 1965 [Napoleon Solo]
* The Birds of a Feather Affair (n.) Signet 1966 [April Dancer; Girl from U.N.C.L.E.]
* The Blazing Affair (n.) Signet 1966 [April Dancer; Girl from U.N.C.L.E.]
* Kaleidoscope (n.) Popular Library 1966
* Madame X (n.) Popular Library 1966
* The February Doll Murders (n.) Signet 1967 [Ed Noon]

* The Felony Squad (n.) Popular Library 1967
* The Man from AVON (n.) Avon 1967
* Assassins Don’t Die in Bed (n.) Signet 1968 [Ed Noon]
* The Coffin Things (n.) Lancer 1968
* Hawaii Five-O (n.) Signet 1968
* The Incident (n.) Popular Library 1968
* Mannix (n.) Popular Library 1968
* The Doomsday Bag (n.) Signet 1969 [Ed Noon]
* The Killing Star (n.) Hale 1969
* Missing! (n.) Signet 1969
* Terror in the Sun (n.) Signet 1969 [Hawaii Five-O]
* A Bullet for Pretty Boy (n.) Curtis 1970
* One More Time (n.) Popular Library 1970
* The Partridge Family #2: The Haunted Hall. Curtis 1970
* Death Dives Deep (n.) Signet 1971 [Ed Noon]
* The Fat Death (n.) Curtis 1971 [Ed Noon]
* Little Miss Murder (n.) Signet 1971 [Ed Noon]
* The Flower-Covered Corpse (n.) Curtis 1972 [Ed Noon]

* The Girl in the Cockpit (n.) Curtis 1972 [Ed Noon]
* The Horrible Man (n.) Curtis 1972 [Ed Noon]
* The Living Bomb (n.) Curtis 1972 [Ed Noon]
* London, Bloody London (n.) Curtis 1972 [Ed Noon]
* Shoot It Again, Sam (n.) Curtis 1972 [Ed Noon]
* The Alarming Clock (n.) Curtis 1973 [Ed Noon]
* The Hot Body (n.) Curtis 1973 [Ed Noon]
* Kill Her — You’ll Like It! (n.) Curtis 1973 [Ed Noon]
* Killer on the Keys (n.) Curtis 1973 [Ed Noon]
* The X-Rated Corpse (n.) Curtis 1973 [Ed Noon]

* Fallen Angel (n.) Warner 1974 [Satan Sleuth: Philip St. George]
* The Werewolf Walks Tonight (n.) Warner 1974 [Satan Sleuth: Philip St. George]
* Devil, Devil (n.) Warner 1975 [Satan Sleuth: Philip St. George]
* The Big Stiffs (n.) Hale 1977 [Ed Noon]
* -Carquake (n.) Star 1977
* CB Logbook of the White Knight (co) Scholastic 1977
* Dark on Monday (n.) Hale 1978 [Ed Noon]
* 5 Minute Mysteries (co) Scholastic 1978 [Ed Noon]
* Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (n.) Pinnacle 1981
* High Noon at Midnight (n.) PaperJacks 1988 [Ed Noon]

* Open Season on Cops, and The Arabella Nude (co) Gryphon Books 1992 [Ed Noon]
* Mitzi (n.) Gryphon Books 1997

Previously on Mystery*File:   Part Four — Collecting Detective Story Magazine.
Coming next:   Part Six — Collecting the other Popular Publications pulps.

Editorial Comments:   Thanks to Scott Hartshorn for providing the two photos you see above. The first was taken outside Nick Certo’s house, circa 1992. The black and white photo, taken in the early 50s, is that of Mike standing beside the cover painting for The Tall Dolores. The cover itself you can see in color just above the photo and to the left.

   Note that Mike can be seen in the cover of The X-Rated Corpse. He’s the fellow on the right.   Coming tomorrow: Bill Pronzini’s 1001 Midnights review of The Case of the Violent Virgin.

PATRICIA McGERR – Pick Your Victim. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1946. Paperback reprints: Dell #307, mapback edition, 1949; Macfadden 75-306, 1970.

   While literally thousands of mysteries have been based on the attempt to discover a murderer, Patricia McGerr’s is unique in disclosing the killer at the beginning and challenging detectives (and readers) to select the victim.

   Not content to rely upon an original idea, she followed through, though this was only her first book, to create a mystery that was worthy of its conception. It is small wonder that Barzun and Taylor, who labeled this book a “whodunin,” also called it a masterpiece.

   Pick Your Victim starts in the Aleutians in 1944, where a group of U.S. marines are fighting the “Great Battle of Boredom.” Reading matter is in short supply, and the never-broken rule is that “if there was printing on it, you read it.”

   Thus, a torn piece of newspaper discloses to Pete Robbins, former publicity agent, that his previous boss in Washington, D.C., has been arrested for murder. The name of the victim is missing, although the item states that it was an officer at SUDS (Society for the Uplift of Domestic Service), where Robbins was employed.

   Pete and his fellow marines agree on a sweepstakes with the prize going to the first to guess who was murdered before the news arrives from back home. Playing the role of a GI Scheherazade, Robbins tells his barracks mates about SUDS and his colleagues during his four years at that philanthropic organization.

   McGerr knows Washington, D.C., and the political, economic, and social life of the nation’s capital come alive in her novel. This is an unusually good blend of realism and satire, with the leading characters limned in a manner that makes them believable.

   The story is well plotted, with clues adroitly inserted. Unlike many books that start with splendid gimmicks, Pick Your Victim has an ending that is not a letdown.

   Much of the authenticity in this book undoubtedly came from McGerr’ s employment, from 1937 to 1943, as director of public relations for the American Road Builders Association in Washington. Though never quite matching the success of Pick Your Victim, she has built a writing career in which originality has been the keynote.

   Thus, in her next book, The Seven Deadly Sisters (1947), she leaves the identities of both victim and culprit to be determined when she has her heroine learn, through a letter, that one of her seven aunts has murdered her husband.

   McGerr’s one series character is Selena Mead, a Washington, D.C., society woman who doubles as a counterespionage agent. In addition to appearances in two novels Is There a Traitor in the House? (1964) and Legacy of Danger (1970). Mead is featured in numerous short stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

   Some of her other non-series mysteries are Catch Me If You Can (1948), Murder Is Absurd (1967), and Dangerous Landing (1975).

         ———
   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.

GERRY BOYLE – Damaged Goods. Down East Books, hardcover, May 2010.

Genre:   Unlicensed investigator. Leading character: Jack McMorrow; 9th in series. Setting:   Maine.

First Sentence:   I made my way down the trail through the pinewoods toward the house.

    Roxanne, the wife of freelance journalist Jack McMorrow has had a worse-than-usual day at work. A social worker for the state of Maine, she was forced to remove two severely neglected children from the home of a Satanist who is now threatening Roxanne and their daughter.

   In order to facilitate Roxanne leaving her job, Jack looks for more stories he can sell and finds Mindi, a young woman advertising to provide “companionship.” Mindi quickly becomes more than a story and it’s uncertain whether that is going to increase the danger to Jack’s family.

   I’ve missed Boyle’s Jack McMorrow and am very glad to see him back. While Jack, a journalist who isn’t afraid of physical violence, is an interesting character, his neighbor Clair, a Vietnam vet who has lost none of his edge, comes through as the more interesting character, especially when set off by his gentle wife, Mary.

   Jack’s wife, Roxanne, is one I’m not always certain I like, but her reactions are very realistic in view of the situation. The blending of all the characters is very well done.

   Boyle’s love of Maine is apparent as shares with us both the beauty and the problems of Maine. The story is has a good, tight plot and is layered with good suspense which escalates as things progress. The sense of anger and danger is there along with Jack and his friend’s protectiveness. The villain is satisfyingly nasty and while Mindi provides a somewhat unknown quantity element.

   It’s altogether quite well done. Boyle is a very good writer and journalistic background is very apparent. His books are ones I always recommend and I’m always anxious for the next one out.

Rating:  Good Plus.

       The Jack McMorrow series

1. Deadline (1993)

2. Bloodline (1995)
3. Lifeline (1996)
4. Potshot (1997)
5. Borderline (1998)
6. Cover Story (1999)

7. Pretty Dead (2003)
8. Home Body (2004)
9. Damaged Goods (2010)

    Also by Gerry Boyle: The Brandon Blake mysteries

1. Port City Shakedown (2009)

   Visit the author’s blog here.

STEPHEN PAUL COHEN – Island of Steel. Morrow, hardcover, 1988. Paperback reprint: Avon, 1989.

   Stephen Paul Cohen, a real estate lawyer now living in Minneapolis, introduced Eddie Margolis in Heartless, not read by me. Eddie now returns in Island of Steel.

   Here he’s working for the Charles Murphy Detective Agency, even though he has no experience in investigation and his boss is almost never around. To top this, he’s assigned to find a real estate lawyer who’s missing from the prestigious New York firm of Fenner, Covington & Pine.

   Why would an upwardly mobile attorney go out for cough drops one afternoon and never return? Could it be fatal to find out?

   Nicely peopled, nicely plotted, nicely tensioned, a pleasure to read.

Bibliographic Data:   There were, as it happens, only the two adventures of Eddie Margolis. In terms of crime fiction, Cohen later co-authored a near-future thriller, Night Launch (Morrow, 1989), with then Senator Jake Garn, and on his own, a paperback novel entitled Jungle White, published only in Thailand.

   Mike Grost has a short section on Cohen on his Classic Mystery and Detection website. He says in part, “Cohen has considerable poetic skills of description. Both novels seem to be epic poems, an Iliad and Odyssey set in modern New York City.”

   My recent experience with the first Continental Op story (related here ) took me on a sort of Hammett binge which brought me to the collection of his Lost Stories (Vince Emery Productions, 2005).

   There are 21 tales in this book, but most of them don’t qualify as crime fiction, and those that do are familiar to many of us in the somewhat shorter versions published by Fred Dannay, first in various issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and then in the Hammett paperback collections he edited.

   Seventeen of the 21 date from Hammett’s earliest years as a writer, 1922-25, when he hadn’t yet developed his distinctive style. Only in “Night Shade” and the non-criminous but fascinating Hollywood tale “This Little Pig” (Collier’s, March 24, 1934) do we find the Hammett we know from his five superb novels.

   â€œNight Shade” first appeared in the debut issue (October 1933) of Mystery League, which was founded and edited by Fred Dannay and Manny Lee and folded after four months. But there are other links to Queen in these pages. The 21st and last of the Lost Stories is “The Thin Man and the Flack” (Click, December 1941), which almost certainly was not written by Hammett.

   This throwaway is not so much a story as a stunt to promote the “Thin Man” radio series, with photographs of various actors pretending to re-enact key scenes. One suspect was played by a little-known actress named Kaye Brinker. A few months later, while appearing in an episode of the Ellery Queen radio series, she met and began dating Manny Lee. They married in July 1942 and the marriage lasted until Manny’s death in 1970.

   A special plus of Lost Stories for Queenians is that we get to see her as she looked around the time she joined the Queen family. In 1948, during the Queen program’s last few months on the air, Brinker took over as Ellery’s secretary Nikki Porter, which makes her the last actress to play that role in any medium.

   Not that many readers of this column are likely to read Chinese, but a small publisher from that country recently contracted with me to issue a modest-sized book called Ellery and Queen containing a number of my essays on EQ.

   This volume will include a few paragraphs I’ve written directly for translation into Chinese, discussing the 11-book series of mysteries that was aimed at a juvenile audience and published as by “Ellery Queen, Jr.” All except the ninth and tenth featured Djuna, the houseboy character from the early Queen novels, and share a title pattern — The (Color) (Animal) Mystery — derived from the pattern Fred and Manny had used from The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) through The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935). All eleven were ghost-written. Fred had nothing to do with them but Manny seems to have edited and supervised them.

   The first eight titles in the series were The Black Dog Mystery (1941), The Golden Eagle Mystery (1942), The Green Turtle Mystery(1944), The Red Chipmunk Mystery (1946), The Brown Fox Mystery (1948), The White Elephant Mystery (1950), The Yellow Cat Mystery (1952) and The Blue Herring Mystery (1954).

   All of these except Golden Eagle and Green Turtle were written by Samuel Duff McCoy (1882-1964), a well-known journalist of the early 20th century whose papers are archived at his alma mater, Princeton University, and include many documents related to his work as “Ellery Queen, Jr.”

   As Samuel Duff he was the author of “The Bow-Street Runner” (EQMM, November 1942), a historical whodunit—narrated in first person by a Cockney — which was one of the earliest original stories to appear in the magazine Fred had founded in 1941.

   The author of Golden Eagle and Green Turtle was Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994), a specialist in pulp horror fiction, whose correspondence with fellow horror maven August Derleth includes statements that he wrote two of the series, although he doesn’t mention the titles.

   After an eight-year hiatus in “Ellery Queen, Jr.” titles, Golden Press issued The Mystery of the Merry Magician (1961) and The Mystery of the Vanished Victim (1962), both featuring Ellery’s nephew Gulliver Queen as youthful sleuth.

   These and the eleventh and final entry, The Purple Bird Mystery (1966), were apparently written by James Holding (1907-1997), an advertising executive who turned to writing mystery novels for juveniles after the tragic death of his son. But on at least one occasion Holding seems to have employed a second-order ghost to do the work for him, and Manny Lee went livid when he found out.

   Among adult readers Holding is best known for two series of short stories in EQMM, one (1962-70) featuring professional assassin Manuel Andradas, known as The Photographer, the other (1960-72) following two mystery writers, the creators of fictional sleuth Leroy King, as they solve “real” crimes while on a world tour. The titles of these tales, from “The Norwegian Apple Mystery” to “The Borneo Snapshot Mystery,” employ the familiar pattern of the early Ellery Queen novels.

   By the time The Purple Bird Mystery came out, Pocket Books was publishing the last of the 15 original paperback novels signed as by Ellery Queen but, as has long been known, ghosted by others under Manny Lee’s supervision.

   During those years Pocket was also using another Dannay-Lee byline, Barnaby Ross, for six historical novels beginning with Quintin Chivas (1961) and ending with The Passionate Queen (1966).

   All six were written by Don Tracy (1905-1976), the author of a number of thrillers and historicals under his own name, including several published by Pocket Books. Whether Manny Lee supervised these as he had all the ghosted Queen books is uncertain. He and Fred must have received some money under this arrangement.

   But why did the publisher bother to pay them anything? It can’t be coincidence that, during the same years Pocket was issuing ghosted paperbacks as by Ellery Queen, it was also putting out another line of softcovers under another Dannay-Lee byline.

   As far as I can tell, Pocket never made the slightest attempt to lure potential readers into identifying the byline on these six historicals with the byline on the four Drury Lane detective novels of 1932-33. What would have been the point?

   If there was no point, why not just publish all six as historical adventures by Don Tracy, without the Barnaby Ross byline and without having to pay Fred and Manny for its use? Perhaps someday the business correspondence dealing with these books will be unearthed and allow us to understand a sequence of events which on its face makes no sense.

   Many years ago I made myself read one of those historicals. One was quite enough. Never again!

BRANDON BIRD – Hawk Watch. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1954. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, August 1954. UK edition: T. V. Boardman, hardcover, 1955 (shown).

    Kay Harris and George Bird Evans wrote four mysteries under the Brandon Bird pseudonym, but this was the first of their books I had encountered. I bought it for two reasons: it was cheap and it was signed by the authors.

    Charles Gratton, a professional photographer, is on assignment in the West Virginia mountains to capture the hawk in flight. The hawk proves an elusive subject but a predatory Golden Eagle that attacks and kills a dog belonging to his local guide, and a mysterious figure Gratton catches watching him through binoculars, bring him into a situation far more daunting — and dangerous — than his hawk assignment.

    This entertaining mystery makes good use of the remote rural setting, a captivating heroine, and a reclusive, canny, murderous antagonist.

    Hubin lists three other mysteries by Bird, Downbeat for a Dirge, Never Wake a Dead Man, and Death in Four Colors. All three feature Hampton Hume, his wife Carmela, and Ruff, their their “faithful” English setter, Ruff.

    The last recorded appearance in Hubin for the Evans’ novels is for The Pink Carrara, written under the nom de plume of Harris Evans, and published in 1960 by Dodd Mead.

    My enjoyment of Hawk Watch and the intriguing titles of the three other Bird titles led me to do a bit of sleuthing on the Internet, where I came up with a number of hits for George Bird Evans.

    He was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania (a town not far from Pittsburgh) in 1906 and studied art at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) in Pittsburgh, where he met his future wife and co-author, Kay Harris of Wheeling, West Virginia.

    After studying at the prestigious Chicago Art Institute, George (now married to Kay) moved to New York City, where he had a successful career in magazine illustration, eventually landing a contract to illustrate mystery fiction for Cosmopolitan Magazine.

In 1939, the couple left Manhattan and moved to a farm they had bought in Preston County, West Virginia, a pre-Revolutionary building they immediately began to renovate. George continued to do magazine illustrations until the 1950s, when the two, both voracious readers, began publishing their pseudonymous mysteries.

    Although I’ve not been able to consult a copy of The Pink Carrera, I found a listing on ABE that described it as “a novel about a portrait sculptrist and his need to do art to support his pink carrara.” (Carrara is a city in Northern Italy famous for the white marble that was favored by Italian Renaissance sculptors.)

    A signed, limited edition of all five of their novels was published as “The Old Hemlock Mysteries” in 1995. This omnibus suggests that the crime elements in The Pink Cararra are stronger than described above.

    George Evans, an avid sportsman from childhood, became nationally known as a breeder of bird dogs and was a frequent contributor to Field & Stream and Pennsylvania Game News.

    Late in his life, Evans apparently came to regret his contribution to overhunting that had led to a substantial decline in the numbers of native game birds, and began to lobby against the practice. After George’s death in 1998 and Kay’s in 2007, the Old Hemlock Foundation was established on their West Virginia farm with a number of objectives that include environmental protection, support of the local Humane Society, and the awarding of scholarships to the WVU Medical School.

[UPDATE] 11-07-10.   Jamie Sturgeon has kindly sent me a cover image for the British edition of The Pink Carrara, along with a full description of the story, taken from the inside flap of the dust jacket:

    “This is the story of a man and a woman who loved not wisely but too well. It begins in a sculptor’s studio in New York where a great conductor, Joseph Matulka, has sent his young wife Leslie for a series of sittings.

    “Leslie, a brilliant opera singer; Matulka, the musical genius to whom she is married; and Paul Greer, the sculptor, are the three key figures in this situation, filled with tragedy or happiness. As the author develops his story from three points of view, the action progresses.

    “A magnificent block of pink Carrara marble, which in the sculptor’s hand takes on a significance he has not realised, gradually becomes the focal point of the story and begins this serious and distinguished novel, with its suspenseful theme, to a dramatic close.”

    Other than the phrase “suspenseful theme,” there is not much here to indicate that this is indeed a crime novel. We shall assume that it is, however, unless I can impose even further on Jamie to skim through the book until such time he can definitively say yea or nay.

[UPDATE #2.] 11-08-10.   Here’s Jamie’s reply:

    “Looking through the book there are 310 pages — the death, an accident, takes place on 276. The musical genius Matulka goes to the sculptor’s studio (with a gun) to have it out with the sculptor about the sculptor and Matulka’s wife. They have a fight and Matulka gets crushed by the pink carrara. There is some business afterwards about hiding the gun but I would say marginal at best.”

    Bill Pronzini, in a separate email, has concurred. He had the book at one time and has since swapped it away. “Only marginally a crime novel,” he says, “and for my taste not half as well done as any of the Brandon Bird mysteries.”

    The opinions above were duly reported to Al Hubin, who replies: “It certainly looks like it merits a dash [as having only marginal crime content] at least, if not deletion.”

    His final decision on the matter will undoubtedly appear in the next installment to the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

[UPDATE #3.] 11-09-10.   No need to keep you waiting. He’s decided on the dash.

SELDON TRUSS – Where’s Mr. Chumley? Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1948. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1949. Reprinted in Two Complete Detective Books, No. 59, November 1949.

   Where indeed is the Reverend Mr. Chumley, curate at Charwell? The police suspect that he is off with an illicit lover, but those who know the good man are dubious, perhaps incredulous. As well they might be, for the unfinished letter to his “lover” turns out to be a forgery.

   Under the guise of a commercial gentleman, Chief Inspector Gidleigh, C.I.D., takes charge of the investigation into Chumley’s disappearance and has also to contend with a possible abortionist, a seeming suicide, and the odious Mr. Twigg. Nobody’s fool, Gidleigh gets part of it right.

   While Truss is not in the top rank of mystery writers, he (she?) is certainly high in the second tier. Humor, interesting and sympathetic characters, if one does not count the child Maisie of the marbly eyes, and a splendid plot make this novel, as well as others by Truss, worth trying to find.

Bio-Bibliographic Data: If (Leslie) Seldon Truss (1892-1990) is not male, I hope someone will leave a comment to let us know. His (I am presuming) writing career extended from 1928 to 1969, and included some 40 crime novels, including one written as by George Selmark.

   Inspector Gidleigh appeared in 22 or 23 of these (when one non-Gidleigh book was reprinted, Gidleigh showed up in it as the detective in charge), while Detective Inspector Shane appeared in six and Inspector Bass in yet another three.

[UPDATE] 11-07-10.   From Victor Berch comes the following note about Seldon Truss:

    “Here is what I’ve managed to gather from a variety of records:   Leslie Seldon Truss was the son of George Marquand, an agent for a produce company, and Ann Blanch (Seldon) Truss on August 21, 1892 in Wallington, Surrey, England.

    “According to his enlistment record in WW I, he had previously been a film producer for Gaumont Film Co. On the record dated Oct 8, 1915, he lists his age as 23 years and 2 months. He served with the 2nd Scots Guard during WW I.

    “He died Feb 5, 1990 at Hastings and Rother, East Sussex, England. He was a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers Association. I think this should clear up his sex gender once and for all.”

WINIFRED PECK – The Warrielaw Jewel. Faber & Faber, UK, hardcover, 1933. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1933.

   In 1933, Catholic priest and writer Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, one of the talented Knox siblings, children of Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, former Anglican Bishop of Manchester, published Body in the Silo, a detective novel.

   This is not really news. Father Knox, best known in the mystery genre today for having formulated an influential set of “rules” for the writing of detective fiction, had before 1933 already published three well-received detective novels and been admitted as an original member of the Detection Club in 1930.

   There was a five year lag between The Footsteps at the Lock (1928) and The Body in the Silo (1933), but, still, the appearance of the latter could not exactly be called a surprise.

   But another Knox sibling also published a detective novel in 1933: one of Ronald Knox’s sisters, (Lady) Winifred (Knox) Peck. Entitled The Warrielaw Jewel, this mystery tale by Peck, a once successful though today mostly forgotten mainstream novelist, received quite favorable reviews and holds up well today.

   Three years ago, the excellent Persephone Books reprinted Peck’s House-Bound, a mainstream novel with a World War Two period setting, with an introduction by her (and Ronald Knox’s) famous niece, the late novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. The Warrielaw Jewel deserves reprinting as well.

   Jewel is notable as an early example of a Golden Age mystery that, in its shifting of emphasis from pure puzzle to the study of character and setting, helped mark the gradual shift from detective story to crime novel which Julian Symons famously celebrated in his history of the mystery genre, Bloody Murder .

   A tale of Victorian/Edwardian familial dysfunction, Jewel rather resembles Margery Allingham’s Police at the Funeral (1931) and More Work for the Undertaker (1948), as well as S.S. Van Dine’s The Greene Murder Case (1928).

   While the puzzle certainly is not as intricate as Van Dine’s in the latter novel, the writing is excellent, in my view on a level with that of Allingham and her Crime Queen contemporaries Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. (There also is some similarity to American Mary Roberts Rinehart’s mystery novel The Album, published the same year, though thankfully The Warrielaw Jewel is without all Rinehart’s Had-I-But-Known digressions.)

   As one pleased reviewer noted of Peck’s mystery novel, “the writing, atmosphere, and characterization” made the story “something quite distinct.”

   The Warrielaw Jewel actually is set in the Edwardian era, 1909 specifically ( “that period, so far away from modern youth, when King Edward VII lived, and skirts were long and motors few, and the term Victorian was not yet a reproach”).

   The narrator, Betty Morrison, wife of the lawyer for the eccentric, decaying gentry family of Warrielaws, tells the tale from the vantage point of the early 1930s, looking back over those shocking events in the vicinity of Edinburgh, Scotland, including the death of elderly family head Jessica Warrielaw and the trial of her favored nephew for murder.

   Involved in the affair is a family heirloom, a so-called fairy-jewel, said to have been given to the Warrielaw family centuries ago by a glittering enchanted lady carried off and married by a dark and brooding laird ancestor. A curse is said to have been laid upon the jewel. Certainly dreadful happenings, whatever the cause, overtake the family in the present day.

   There is investigation and detection, performed by an retired policeman friend of Betty Morrison’s husband; yet it is Betty herself who provides the final, crucial piece of evidence. The mystery itself is engrossing, though the best elements of the tale are found in the characters — particularly the various odd Warrielaws and their remaining retainers –and the Edwardian Scottish atmosphere.

   I hope that one day Winifred Peck’s The Warrielaw Jewel is republished and honored as a member of the company of better-written, literate mysteries of the period, for it certainly deserves to be so designated.

   When one reviewer declared The Warrielaw Jewel “in a class by itself” and added that “it looks as if [Mrs. Peck] were going to bear [Father Knox] at his own special game,” he was not, in my view, exaggerating.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   Winifred Peck, 1882-1962, was born and educated in Oxford and lived in Edinburgh, according to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. His bibliography includes only one other mystery novel that she wrote, the provocatively titled Arrest the Bishop? (Faber, 1949).

   While copies of the latter may be found offered for sale online (although with asking prices of $50 and up), none of The Warrielaw Jewel were seen, even with a US edition.

DICK CLUSTER – Return to Sender. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1988. Reprint paperback: Penguin, 1990.

   Dick Cluster, a Bostonian newcomer to our field, offers Return to Sender. Alex Glauberman, 40, repairs foreign cars in Boston. He’s divorced with one child who lives with her remarried mother.

   Alex’s current bedmate is a professor, on sabbatical in London. He’s going through chemotherapy for recently diagnosed cancer, and his life and thinking and physical condition are much influenced by this.

   One day, while he is waiting in line at a post office, an elderly man asks him to mail a package to his daughter in Berlin. Alex does so. Later, after Alex sees him being escorted away by a pair of strongarm types, the man returns to ask Alex, for $2500, to go to Germany and retrieve the package.

   Alex had thought to visit London anyway, and agrees. But this proves a most deadly assignment. Sender, with its fresh and intriguing plot and central character, is well worth your attention.

Bibliographic Data:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin]

CLUSTER, DICK.   1947- .     Alex Glauberman in all:

        Return to Sender. Dutton, 1988.
        Repulse Monkey. Dutton, 1989.
        Obligations of the Bone. St. Martin’s, 1992.

Editorial Comment:   I thought the contrast between the two covers is very interesting. As usual for mystery novels of this era, the one on the hardcover is about as stark and minimal as you can get. The cover of the paperback is far more colorful, although perhaps hard to make out what’s really pictured, unless you can look at it closely, but at least (to me) it has something to it that also says Pick Me Up At Least and Look Inside.

   There’s no need to think I’m disparaging Dutton, who published the hardcover. Artists cost money, and I suspect 90% of the sales of this mystery, by a first-time writer, went to libraries sight unseen, and another 9% went to the author’s friends. (A small laugh, hopefully at no one’s expense.)

   By the way, you can’t make it out, but the quote on the paperback is by Tony Hillerman: “Gripping… raises the Mystery into the realm of Literature.”

PAUL HAGGARD [STEPHEN LONGSTREET] – Dead Is the Door-Nail.   J. B. Lippincott, US, hardcover, 1937.

   One of the many problems associated with a lack of a sense of humor by a reviewer is the inability to tell when an author is teasing the reader. What is one to make of this: “The paunch and jowl of raffish apartment houses catapulted their elegant heights above the streets in a pageant of foppish decadence.”

   And yet it is closely followed by: “…to the wise mob of drunks, hop-heads and flamboyant slatterns of both sexes, it was a sanctuary and first-aid station. In Hilton’s electric cabinets, steam baths, needle showers and sun booths, the elect were tried and found wanton.”

   In the first of four novels featuring Mike Warlock, sports reporter for the New York Globe, and his faithful companion and cameraman, Abner Gillaway, they are assigned by the paper to cover the murder of Doris Castle, rich and the World’s Champion Lawn Tennis Player.

   Lots of suspects here, despite a few getting knocked off along the way. Did Castle’s husband, crooner Ira Wells, kill her because the marriage was unconsummated after three months? Or one of Wells’s many lovers? Or the odious Professor Ott, who once peddled a combination cough medicine and dandruff cure? Or Ott’s assistant, a coward and a blackmailer? Or the devilish Dr. Delcro, up to who knows what?

   Considerable action in an amusing hard-boiled novel in which the author just may have had his tongue in cheek. And if he didn’t, it’s still funny.

      Bibliographic Data:    [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

HAGGARD, PAUL. Pseudonym of Stephen Longstreet; other pseudonym: Henri Weiner.
      Dead Is the Door-Nail. Lippincott, 1937. Mike Warlock
      Death Talks Shop. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Mike Warlock.

      Death Walks on Cat Feet. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Also published as: The Case of the Severed Skull, as by Henri Weiner.
      Poison from a Wealthy Widow. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Mike Warlock.

LONGSTREET, STEPHEN. Born Chauncey Weiner; 1907-2002. Pseudonyms: Paul Haggard & Henri Weiner. Also a screenwriter.
      The Crime. Simon & Schuster, 1959.

       -The Pedlock Inheritance. McKay, 1972
       The Ambassador. Avon, pb, 1978.

WEINER, HENRI. Pseudonym of Stephen Longstreet; other pseudonym: Paul Haggard.
      Crime on the Cuff. Morrow, 1936.   “Introduces one-armed sleuth John Brass, former Secret Service man who is also a popular cartoonist, creator of the comic strip, ‘Georgie the G-Man.'”
      The Case of the Severed Skull. Mystery Novel of the Month, pb, 1940. Reprint of Death Walks on Cat Feet, as by Paul Haggard.