JOYCE HARRINGTON – No One Knows My Name. Avon, paperback reprint, December 1981. Hardcover edition: St. Martin’s, 1980.

   An alternative title might have been Death Comes to Duck Lake, a small former fishing community up near Traverse City, Michigan — my kind of country. I know it well.

   On the other hand, I can see where actor- and actressy-types from Hollywood and New York City — whether budding ones or those over the hill — might think of Duck Lake as the ultimate of boondocks. Still, when the repertory company for the hamlet’s summer playhouse makes them the only job offer they can get, somehow it has to start looking not quite so bad, after all.

    But one of this year’s company is a compulsive murderer, willing to kill to keep anyone else from the inevitable disappointments that will occur by choosing one of the most fickle careers of them all — show business.

   Except for the fact that there is no one here to fill the role of the eccentric detective character, this is truly a classic harkening back to the Golden Age of Mysteries. If there aren’t an overabundance of physical clues, there are lots of hidden secrets and ominous hints and lots of suspects busily mucking up the evidence.

   The end, as an aging actor makes a tragically wrong decision, is a deeply chilling one. Indeed, in its way, it’s a completely perfect one.

Editorial Comments:   It took this review to bring back memories of this fine, well-written novel, but I’ve never completely forgotten it. In terms of a letter grade, I gave this one an “A” at the time.

   Joyce Harrington wrote only three novels. This was the first, but she’d been writing short stories for Ellery Queen and others since 1972. Her first story “The Purple Shroud” (EQMM, Sept ’72) won an Edgar, and her shorter works were invariably in the “Best of the Year” annuals from then on through the 1980s.

CHRISTOPHER FOWLER – Bryant & May on the Loose. Bantam, hardcover, November 2009; trade paperback, September 2010.

   At the end of The Victoria Vanishes the Peculiar Crimes Unit was forced to close down and its members resigned in protest while its premises were turned over to another squad. Since then the elderly Inspector Bryant has been spending his time sitting around in his pajamas. Or pyjamas, if you will.

   Other members have taken jobs, including Constable Colin Bimsley, working as a handyman. He’s hired by a young Arab who has taken over a Fish & Chips restaurant and is turning it into a pottery and rug store when he discovers the headless body of a man in an old freezer. Meanwhile, another ex-member of the unit, Meera Mangeshkar, out late one night sees a man dressed as a stag with horns made out of knives.

   Both of these events occur in the area of London around St. Pancras Church which is being redeveloped in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. Since the murder looks like it could be the work of organized crime, it’s decided that it will be investigated by the Peculiar Crimes Unit though they will have no official connection with Scotland Yard and will be housed in a dilapidated old warehouse in the area. Before the case is over there will be four more victims of the killer including a member of the Unit.

   Another very enjoyable adventure of the Peculiar Crimes Unit that manages to blend history, mythology, corporate crime and even the Beatles into the tale.

    The Bryant and May series —

      1. Full Dark House (2003)
      2. The Water Room (2004)
      3. Seventy-Seven Clocks (2005)

      4. Ten Second Staircase (2006)
      5. White Corridor (2007)

      6. The Victoria Vanishes (2008)

      7. Bryant & May on the Loose (2009)
      8. Off the Rails (2010)

DONALD CLOUGH CAMERON – Death at Her Elbow. Henry Holt; hardcover; 1940. Paperback reprint: Green Dragon #20, digest-sized, 1945 (abridged).

   I don’t know about you, but until I read this book, Donald Clough Cameron was only a name to me. Using Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV as a guide, here’s a list of the mysteries he wrote:

       * Murder’s Coming. Holt, 1939.

       Death at Her Elbow. Holt, 1940.

       * Grave Without Grass. Holt, 1940.

       * And So He Had to Die. Holt, 1941.

       Dig Another Grave. Mystery House, 1946.

       White for a Shroud. Mystery House, 1947.

   Those marked with a [*] are cases handled by one Abelard Voss, about whom at the moment I can tell you nothing. I did find an old Dunn & Powell’s mystery catalogue that contained the first two in jacket, the first for $175, the second for $75, but without spending the money, assuming the books were still available, that told me nothing more about Abelard Voss than I knew before. Except that Abelard Voss is a neat name for a detective.

   Even the digest 1940s paperbacks are hard to come by, but they aren’t likely to cost you more than $10 to $20 each, if you were interested.

   [At which point a light finally goes on in my head, and a small amount of time elapses here while I go rummaging around in some stacks of books I bought at the most recent New York City paperback show.]

   And guess what. I’ve just discovered I own a copy of the aforementioned softcover version of Grave Without Grass, and inside the front cover is this description of Abelard Voss: “a unique young criminologist with the mind of a philosophic bloodhound.” Without reading further, he sounds like perhaps a young Philo Vance, and it only set me back a paltry $2.00 to obtain it.

   But surely I digress. The detective in the one I did read, and which this review is nominally about, Death at Her Elbow, is Lieutenant Peter Gore, of the New York City homicide bureau. That’s mostly incidental, though, as the book focuses more on the actions of Miss Ann Potter and her at-arm’s-length boy friend and suitor, Alec Hunter, after her former fiance Paul Buell is found murdered in her apartment.

   It’s one of those stories, in other words, in which each tries to confess to protect the other, and to clear themselves, they’re forced to solve the murder, with or without the assistance of the police.

   Quoting from pages 110-111:

   And here’s Gore some more, from page 115, still taking to Ann:

   As a detective novel, the book’s only flaw is that there are so few suspects, as even one of the characters points out himself on page 168. For the armchair reader, it shouldn’t be difficult to run through the handful of possible perpetrators, pick out the one most likely to have done it, and go back over the crucial passages to determine — but, just in case you ever do read this book, I’ll stop here, just as a precaution.

   Cameron’s no Christie, but on the other hand, who else can you think of who was?

ALLAN GUTHRIE – Slammer. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, US, hardcover, November 2009. Mariner Books, trade ppbk, September 2010. First Edition: Polygon, UK, softcover, March 2009 (shown).

   This is a tough minded noirish thriller from British writer Allan Guthrie, who has previously been nominated for the Debut Dagger from the British Crime Writer’s Association and won Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel award for Two Way Split. His novel Kiss Her Goodbye was nominated for an Edgar and an Anthony.

   The man has some credentials for writing his particularly bleak version of the British crime novel. And bleak it is. Compared to Guthrie, Jim Thompson and David Goodies were cockeyed optimists. This one is the literary equivalent of those mad British crime films like Lock Stock and Still Smoking Barrel, but that sort of thing works better on screen than in print.

   Nick Glass is a prison guard at the ‘Hilton,’ a Scottish prison with a bad reputation, and between the inmates and his fellow officers he finds himself in a special hell caught between two equally brutal and dehumanizing forces.

   You might expect this to develop in classic noir form of a ‘hero’ who stands up to and defeats the forces on both sides after a brutal and bloody struggle, but that isn’t where Guthrie is going, though at times it seems so.

   Nick’s life takes an even worse turn when a group of cons in the prison uses outside pressure to threaten Nick’s wife and daughter to force him to do them a ‘favor’ on the outside.

   I’d like to quote from the book, but frankly there isn’t much that could be quoted here without heavy editing, and even then it wouldn’t give the feel of the book.

   One problem I found with this is that I never cared what happened to Nick Glass. He’s an unappealing protagonist and it’s hard to care about his grim ironic fate. The novel takes a dark turn that I can’t discuss in fairness to Guthrie and anyone planning to read this, but I neither believed it nor felt he brought it off. I’m not sure any writer could bring it off.

   Frankly I haven’t decided whether I like this or not. I’ll have to put it aside and come back in a different mood to be sure. The writing is assured and strong, but there is something about this book that made me feel like I needed to stop an take a shower when I finished it.

   If the point of the book is that prison is a dehumanizing brutal place, I think most of us knew that going in. If it is that men break in strange ways I think we knew that too. And that’s the problem. I’m not sure exactly what Guthrie is trying to say, other than most of us would be better off to avoid a career in prison from either side of the law.

   I suppose there is a certain black humor is watching Nick Glass shatter (sorry, couldn’t resist — and neither does Guthrie or the publisher), but for the life of me I can’t say I cared. He’s a singularly weak and unattractive character, and his attraction to a femme fatale named Lorna only makes him less appealing.

   This type of book turns on the reader’s ability to identify with or at least emphasize with the protagonist’s grim predicament. In the case of Nick Glass I’m not sure his fate would have been much better if he had taken a job in the postal service or the mail room. He’s not merely a loser, but a high profile loser of the first order.

   I don’t know where this book was supposed to take me. Where it did take me was to a depressing and bleakly unrelieved place with only a few grim moments of black humor to relieve the pressure — and I’m by no means certain they were even meant to.

   Guthrie can write. No question there. And if you want a strong, even stomach churning crime novel with no redeeming characters or features and an outlook as bleak as the gray walls of a Scottish prison, then this is the book for you.

   But I’ll have to be honest. I’m not sure if I would want to take this trip again, and when I do read a bleak novel of brutal crime I usually need some sort of cathartic release — even only a sort of grim irony or a satisfyingly operatic blood bath. I didn’t get that from this one, and that may be strictly me and where I am, but we all read books from that subjective point of view, and based on that, the most I can say is you’ll have to decide for yourself.

   Ted Lewis’s Get Carter and Gerald Kersh’s Night in the City both did this much better and Georges Simenon’s Stain on the Snow showed us even the most unappealing protagonist could hold out attention. For that matter I can think of a half dozen stunning little British crime films from the last decade that all would be a better investment in time and money.

   I wanted to like this one better. I went in expecting pretty much what I got, but I have to say that for me this one is an unappetizing and disappointing outing. That said, I’ll look up Guthrie’s previous novel and probably read his next. The talent is there if he can just tie it to some human element that we can identify with and care about.

   I’m not sure Guthrie failed at what he sat out to do, only that he failed to make me care.

Bibliography: ALLAN GUTHRIE.

      Two Way Split (2004)
      Kiss Her Goodbye (2005)
      Hard Man (2007)

      Savage Night (2008)

      Slammer (2009)
      Killing Mum (2009)

LEE CROSBY – Too Many Doors. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1941. Thriller Novel Classic #25, no date [1944], as Doors to Death (condensed). Belmont Books, pb, 1965.

   Wendal Crane, head of the Crane family and the family’s doll factory, has invited the entire family to hear a special announcement.

   What happens instead is that the great hurricane of 1938 cuts the house off totally from the outside world and murders begin taking place. Not to mention the voices from the walls and the little Malay figurines who may be coming alive.

   Fortunately, Dorcas Brown, a cousin of the Cranes, has brought with her Eric Hazard, psychologist and crime investigator. He gets it all straightened out in a novel that has nothing in particular to recommend it.

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

CROSBY, LEE. Pseudonym of Ware Torrey Budlong, 1905-1967; other pseudonyms: Meg Padget, Judith Ware and Joan Winslow
       Terror by Night (n.) Dutton 1938 [Eric Hazard]

       Too Many Doors (n.) Dutton 1941 [Eric Hazard]

       Midsummer Night’s Murder (n.) Dutton 1942

       Night Attack (n.) Dutton 1943
       Bridge House (n.) Belmont 1965

PADGET, MEG
       House of Strangers (n.) Lancer 1965

WARE, JUDITH
       Quarry House (n.) Paperback Library 1965
       Thorne House (n.) Paperback Library 1965
       The Faxon Secret (n.) Paperback Library 1966
       Detour to Denmark (n.) Paperback Library 1967

       The Fear Place (n.) Paperback Library 1967
       A Touch of Fear (n.) Signet 1969

WINSLOW, JOAN
       Griffin Towers (n.) Ace 1966

   The author was also a newspaperwoman, feature writer, editor, book columnist, foreign correspondent, short story writer. Her husband was Theodore Budlong, an advertising executive. At various times she lived in Upper Darby PA (1940s) and Bridgeport CT (1961).

   Her writing career was split into two parts, separated by a passage of some twenty years. When she began writing again in the mid-1960s, it was as part of the “Gothic romance” boom. Note that Too Many Doors was reprinted as one of the latter to take advantage of the tremendous, nearly unending demand for books in the category.

   If you’re as big a fan of obscure mystery writers and characters as I am, you’re going to enjoy this immensely.

   Over the past twenty years David Vineyard has been tracking down information about a man who certainly qualifies as all but totally forgotten, Australian thriller writer Paul Savoy and his primary series character Blackie Savoy. Tidbit by tidbit, piece by piece, David has also painstakingly put together a bibliography of perhaps the most difficult set of books to find in all of mystery fiction.

   Over the past several weeks, David and I have compiled all of this information into a single article and posted it on the primary Mystery*File website. (Follow the link.)

   The article is far too long to have been posted it here on the blog. Cover images have been included, but the books, both hardcover and paperback, are so scarce that many of the scans are in far poorer condition than I’d have preferred. Nonetheless, working on the principle that something is better than nothing, I’ve included everything that David has been able to send me.

   The article plus the bibliography, which includes adaptations of Savoy’s work into a single film, Blackie Savoy Gets His (Centaur Studios, 1935), comic strips, radio shows, and a four-year syndicated program on Australian TV that seems to have slipped the memories of almost everyone, is, we believe, all that is known about the author.

   Obviously if anyone can supply any more information, including specific publishing dates, reprint editions, and any covers that David has not come across on his own, would be extremely welcome.

LEE BORDEN – The Secret of Sylvia. Gold Medal #744, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1958.

   I still remember seeing Lee Borden’s The Secret of Sylvia on the paperback rack next to the tube tester at my local drugstore back in the early 60s, and the effect it had on this callow youth from the Midwest.

   So when it surfaced recently from the swamp that is my library, I decided to actually read the thing.

   Secret is more directly about Sex than most Gold Medal originals. Oh, there’s the usual quota of drinking, fighting, shooting and other Rugged Manly Action, but this is basically about Sex.

   The nameless narrator of the tale, Sylvia’s husband, starts out on his way home to kill his wife, then flashes back to the reasons why: apparently some time earlier he learned that Sylvia put it about a bit before they were married, so he set himself to looking into her past.

   Whereupon the book dissolves into four separate parts, each narrated by a former lover. Sylvia’s husband never tells us how he — a bookseller by trade — found these guys or how he got them to spill their intimate secrets all over him; we’re just supposed to take it on faith.

   Likewise his determination to kill Sylvia is something neither he nor author Borden spells out very convincingly. Well, there’s some dialogue (a lot of dialogue, actually) late in the book supposedly delving into the psychology of the thing, but nothing very convincing.

   I get the feeling, though, that the potential readers of Secret of Sylvia probably weren’t looking for anything very deep or convincing; this was frankly soft core porn, and probably … how shall I put this? — probably satisfied the one-handed readers in its day.

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

BORDEN, LEE. Pseudonym of Borden Deal, 1922-1985.

      The Secret of Sylvia. Gold Medal 744, pbo, Feb 1958.
      The Devil’s Whisper. Avon T-520 , pbo, 1961.

DEAL, BORDEN. 1922-1985. Born Loysé Youth Deal; pseudonym: Lee Borden.

       Killer in the House. Signet 1383, pbo, Apr 1957.

       A Long Way to Go. Doubleday, hc, 1965.
       -Adventure. Doubleday, hc, 1978.

  CLAUDE IZNER –
    ● Murder on the Eiffel Tower. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, September 2008; trade paperback, September 2009.
    ● The Marais Assassin. Gallic Books, UK, 2009. No current US edition.

   I’d earlier read The Pere Lachaise Mystery, the second in the series, and The Montmartre Investigation, the third. Murder on the Eiffel Tower is in fact the first, while The Marais Assassin is the fourth.

   The amateur sleuth in the series is Victor Legris, a Parisian bookseller, who operates a shop with a partner, Kenji Mori, and a young shop assistant, Joseph Pignot (“Jojo”), a bright and ambitious lad who’s also a budding serial novelist and a fan of detective fiction.

   The first novel is set in May 1889, at the time of the Paris Exposition, whose centerpiece attraction is the recently constructed Eiffel Tower, while the fourth takes place in 1892.

   The series was an automatic choice for me since its setting in Belle Epoque Paris presents the French capital at its most captivating, a bustling international center of the arts, and, in Izner’s fervid imagination, the setting for a series of ingenious, bizarre murders.

   In Eiffel, a series of apparently random deaths apparently caused by bee stings is seen by Victor as something more insidious, and in Marais the killing field stretches from rural England to Paris, with the spree occasioned by the theft of a goblet of apparently little value.

   Victor is a relentless pursuer of the cunning murderers, but his heart often overrules his head, and his romantic entanglements are fortified by a strong vein of jealousy that any reader of Proust will appreciate.

   Still, the virtues outweigh Victor’s weaknesses, which haven’t significantly reduced my enjoyment of the novels.

Bibliography:

    * Mystere rue des Saints-Pères, 2003. (Murder on the Eiffel Tower)
    * La disparue du Père-Lachaise, 2003. (The Pere-Lachaise Mystery)

    * Le carrefour des Écrases, 2003. (The Montmartre Investigation)

    * Le secret des Enfants-Rouges, 2004. (The Marais Assassin)
    * Le léopard des Batignolles, 2005.
    * Le talisman de la Villette, 2006.
    * Rendez-vous passage d’Enfer, 2008.

From the Gallic Books website:   “Claude Izner is the pen-name of two sisters, Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre. Both booksellers on the banks of the Seine, they are experts on nineteenth-century Paris.”

CARROLL JOHN DALY – Murder From the East. Frederick A. Stokes, hardcover, 1935. Previously serialized (as individual stories) in Black Mask, May-June, August 1934. Paperback reprint: International Polygonics, 1978.

   Some books have everything — or nearly everything. Murder From the East is one of those. It has a bit of everything — the yellow peril, beautiful adventuresses, and tough guy private eyes.

   And as the latter goes, there was never anyone tougher than Race Williams. And if you don’t believe it, just ask him.

   So are we. But we shouldn’t be. Race Williams is the first private eye. True, Daly’s own Three Gun Terry Mack beat Race to the game, but Terry wasn’t a private eye, or a least never identified himself as one. He was an adventurer like Gordon Young’s tough gambler Don Everhard.

   Race is the first of his breed (not the first private detective, but the first in the hard-boiled mode) making his debut in the Ku Klux Klan issue of The Black Mask in “Knights of the Open Palm.” Some of the stories were pro Klan — Daly’s was anti.

   In Murder From the East Gregory Ford, who runs the biggest private detective agency in the city, is working for the government, and wants to hire Race to knock off a gunman who is gunning for Race anyway. But Race isn’t having any.

   But before the day is over the gunman has run down Race and met his just end. Then the man who hired the gunman shows up in Race’s office.

   His name is Count Jehdo, and he turns out to be from Astran, a country that is making trouble in Europe and Asia. He’s also involved in the “Torture Murders” the papers are screaming about.

   Pretty soon Race is in the pay of the General, the man behind Gregory Ford, and the trail leads Mark Yarrow, the man behind the torture murders and Astran’s crimes but even he doesn’t know about the Number 7 man, the General’s man inside the organization, and Race’s job is to destroy Yarrow while the Number 7 man brings down Jehdo.

   Then, who should show up but —

   The Flame and Race have been at this game for a while. She’s up to her neck in this new game and wants Race out of her way.

   But she has taken on more than a lover. She is now the Countess Jedho.

   The rest of the book precedes in a hail of gun smoke as Race thins the numbers of the organization and generally makes a nuisance of himself. He’s captured and tortured, but escapes thanks to the Flame and eventually smashes Yarrow and Jehdo and reveals the Number 7 man.

   Much has been written about Daly’s shortcomings as a writer, and most of it is true, but what is also true is that he wrote at a sort of white hot level straight from the hip, like the hot lead pouring from is blazing .45’s, and for all the melodrama, cliches and corn, there is a conviction to his best work that few writers ever managed.

   In terms of style and literary considerations he is a pale shadow of Hammett and Chandler, and he could never plot or even created characters as well as Erle Stanley Gardner, but he was the most popular writer at the famed Black Mask, and his name on the cover drove sales up every month.

   Time passed Daly and Race by. For a time his tales of Satan Hall, a Dirty Harry style cop, surpassed Race, and Race eventually fell from the Mask to lesser pulps as Daly’s career sagged. By his death in the 1950’s his books couldn’t find an American publisher.

   For a time Race Williams and Carroll John Daly were kings of the hard-boiled private eyes. If they lacked the graces of the better writers they still offered their own brand of thrills and action, and in their wake marched the Dan Turner’s, Mike Hammer’s, and Shell Scott’s that followed. If nothing else Daly influenced Mickey Spillane, and in Spillane had a lasting impact on the genre.

   Race and his creator are fairly insubstantial figures now, but once they were giants, and traces of their footprints still leave a trail. Park a few of your critical judgments and you can still find a good deal of enjoyment in Race’s adventures.

   You may not applaud the writing, but you are likely to stay for the sheer entertainment. Perhaps more than many of the better writers from Black Mask, the true voice of the pulps thunders in the exploits of the one of a kind Race Williams.

BERYL WHITAKER – Of Mice and Murder.   Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1967. No US edition.

   It is difficult not to expect good things from a novel that begins in such a manner, and Whitaker provides them. Her detective, in this and apparently her three other novels, is John Abbot, a schoolmaster with a private income and criminology for a hobby. Abbot is not a particularly interesting man; thus, paradoxically, he is most interesting.

   With no present crime to pique his interest, he is studying the William Herbert Wallace case. He abandons this when his twin sister points out the affair at Turton Caundle, where a human body was burned in place of the traditionally stuffed “Winter Figure.”

   Abbot goes to the village to investigate and finds himself becoming equally as, perhaps more, interested in a horrible accident that took place in the village a few months earlier.

   Despite the murderer and the motive being evident, the novel holds one’s attention. The light beginning changes to a darker tint as the plot unfolds and Abbot, in his interviews, discovers the solution. Very close to first class.

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

WHITAKER, BERYL (Salisbury). 1916-1996. Series Character: John Abbot, in all.

      Of Mice and Murder (n.) Hale 1967.
      A Matter of Blood (n.) Hale 1967.

      The Chained Crocodile (n.) Hale 1967.

      The Man Who Wasn’t There (n.) Hale 1968.

Editorial Comments:   At the moment, this is all I know about the author. Of her four mysteries, copies of only two of them can be found for sale on the Internet, Crocodile and Mice, with only two sellers offering the latter for sale, one for around $50, the other $120. Out of my league, I’m afraid.

     Bill’s review makes the $50 one tempting, though, as he seldom used the phrase “first class” to describe a book. I wish he’d gone into more detail about what he found so enjoyable. It’s tantalizing to read what he has to say and be unable to ask him more.

[UPDATE] 03-22-10. British mystery bookseller Jamie Sturgeon has come across an erroneous entry for the author in Contemporary Science Fiction Authors, included at the editors’ own admission that none of the books she had written at that time were SF.

     From the data presented, however, the chronological order of the books has been revised (see above), and the correct spelling of Beryl Whitaker’s middle name (Salusbury) will be noted as such in the next installment of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

     Beryl Whitaker was born August 8, 1916, the daughter of Charles and Rosamund Colman (originally Collmann). Salusbury was her mother’s maiden name. She was married three times; her third husband was Gerald Whitaker, with whom she had three children. She died, as was previously known, in 1996.

     Besides the four mystery novels, Jamie also discovered a short story collected in John Creasey’s Mystery Bedside Book 1974 (1973), the title of which is “Two Birds and a Stone,” which first appeared in London Mystery Magazine. Mrs. Whitaker also promised the editors of Contemporary SF Authors that her next novel would be science fiction, but if the book was ever written and published (and if so, under a pen name) is not known.

[UPDATE #2]  Later the same day. In a copy of one of her books, Jamie has discovered a handwritten Thank You note from the author to a friend. Omitting the portions of a personal nature, Mrs. Whitaker says in part:

      “I thought I would write thrillers because I didn’t reckon I had the talent to write the stuff I’d really like to. So you see this is why my little crime novels have their serious side, and are in some cases, sad.”

[UPDATE #3] 03-23-10   Thanks to Jamie once again for supplying the cover images you now see.