DOUGLAS FAIRBAIRN – Street 8. Delacorte, hardcover 1977. Reprint paperback: Dell, 1978.

   That’s the sentiment expressed by a Miami native in Street 8, a hot-blooded 1977 noir novel by Douglas Fairbairn.

   The title street, an English translation of Calle Ocho, the main drag of Miami’s Little Havana, is the site of Bobby Mead’s used car lot. Out of habit, Bobby still calls it by its original name, Southwest 8th Street, and from the office window of his lot, he’s seen Miami transformed from a sleepy, one-season tourist town into a vibrant Latin city.

   The Cubans are everywhere. They’re even buying cars from him, so for the first time, he hires a Cuban salesman, Oscar P?rez, to accommodate them. Oscar, however, soon becomes embroiled in the hornets’ nest of exile activity, and the trouble begins.

   The problem with Miami’s exile community in 1977 is that, while they’re committed to eliminating Fidel Castro, they also want to wipe out his sympathizers and spies who have infiltrated their organizations. But exactly who is who?

   Told entirely from Bobby Mead’s point of view, Street 8 allows him no letup. His world is contracting around him, threatening to choke him, and not even his ratty South Beach hotel room offers him any sanctuary. He has a teenage daughter, but his incredibly twisted relationship with her only serves to further cut him off from the city he once loved.

   Fairbairn deftly ushers the reader through the dark fringes of the byzantine world of Miami Cubans in 1977, and we eventually learn that some of them are more interested in acquiring power in Miami itself than they are in retaking their homeland to the south.

   This little-known novel is an excellent noir tale, highly recommended, as it offers an uncompromising look at one man caught up in a city’s convulsive transition.
   

Bibliographic Data:   While he has a number of other novels and creenplays to his credit, Douglas Fairbairn has only one other crime novel included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. That novel, Shoot (Doubleday, 1973) was also the basis for a movie of the same name.

   The film version stars Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine. Here’s a short synopsis from the one found on IMDB: When a hunter is shot dead by another party also hunting in the Canadian hills, retaliation is the order of the day.

LUCRETIA GRINDLE – So Little to Die For.   Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, October 1994.

   One might imagine that Lucretia Grindle is too good to be a mystery author’s real name, but if so, one would be wrong. And since her first two books are decidedly British (with a bit of Scottish thrown in) one might imagine that she is from England, or Scotland, but no, she was born in Massachusetts and went to Dartmouth — a native New Englander.

   And speaking of her first two books, of which this is the second, both cases are solved by the strong, diligent police work of one Chief Inspector Ross. The first was The Killing of Ellis Martin (Pocket, 1993), then this one, then nothing. Until this year, that is, or 2003, when Grindle’s most recent thriller. a book entitled The Nightspinners, came out, complete with no Inspector Ross.

   The Nightspinners is quite a total change of direction, as a matter of fact. It appears to be a semi-psychic psychodrama about two twins who can communicate with other — and then one is murdered.

   As for the Ross books — no strike that, as I’ve only read the one, but the one I have read is a straight-forward detective story. One in which two married couples are brutally murdered while vacationing in a small isolated cottage along the English-Scottish border. Ross, who is vacationing in the area, happens also to be one of the last few persons to see them alive.

   Incidentally, for whatever it might be worth, the two women who happen to be among the victims are also twins, but so far as I can tell, this small fact has little or no bearing on the story. They could be sisters, and it would make no difference.

   The story is strong on both setting and atmosphere. I’ll chance it and submit you to a longish sort of quote, from page 48:

   This is a not a cozy, in other words, nor a murder that depends strongly on the domestic lives of those involved, one in which the circle of evidence circles in, but rather one in which the path of the investigation spirals outward instead.

   Ross has the instincts of a true policeman, however. Here’s another quote, this time from page 129:

   The very neat, dovetailed plot gradually takes shape and comes into focus for a instant or two before being allowed to squander itself into a rather inept made-for-TV-movie showdown with the villain(s) involved.

   Grimes tries to make amends with some pleasant jiggery-pokery later, but — the word I’m looking for is “uneven” — and with this second effort, we’re likely to have seen the last of the slightly stodgy but still likable Inspector Ross.

[UPDATE] 01-10-10.   I don’t remember this one at all, I’m sorry to say. It sounds as though I might enjoy it! Or parts of it, at least.

   Also of note, I hope, since this review was written, Ms. Grindle has written two more books, both of which seem to be criminous in nature: The Faces of Angels (2006) and The Villa Triste (2010).

JEREMY LANE – Death to Drumbeat. Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1944. Paperback reprint: Black Knight #17, no date stated [1946].

    Whitney Wheat, Lane’s series character, is a psychiatrist who also detects. In this novel his patient, a publisher and we know what they are like, hears drums, apparently portending his own death. Attempting a cure through a means that I didn’t quite understand when it was originally proposed and still don’t when all has ostensibly been cleared up, Wheat takes his patient to the estate of Humber Jacks.

    An authority on Indian Drums, Jacks is a wealthy man with an income of $25,000 a month but who rents out rooms at $1 a night to tourists and makes sure he gets the takings. He also has an ill-assorted household. After Wheat’s and the publisher’s arrival, murder occurs.

    Since my consciousness was recently raised, I make it a point to avoid novels in which the county attorney is gormless or corrupt, and sometimes both. But it was awhile before the county attorney appeared in Lane’s novel, and I continued reading, though I ignored the politician’s failings — alas, such are the absurdities one encounters in fiction — to find out if Lane was going to make sense of anything in the book.

    He doesn’t. Oh, he explains things; of course, that is not the same thing as making sense.

    For those who are interested in such matters, the narrator of the novel, on an intellectual level with the county attorney, has the same name as the author.

Bibliographic Data: The following checklist is taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

LANE, JEREMY. 1893-1963. Note: Dr. Whitney Wheat appears in those titles indicated with an asterisk (*).

    Like a Man (n.) Washburn 1928.
    The Left Hand of God (n.) Washburn 1929.
    * Death to Drumbeat (n.) Phoenix 1944.
    * Kill Him Tonight (n.) Phoenix 1946.

    * Murder Menagerie (n.) Phoenix 1946.

    * Murder Spoils Everything (n.) Phoenix 1949.

   One of the last books I read in 2009 was Losing Mum and Pup, satirical novelist Christopher Buckley’s memoir of his parents, who died within a year of each other.

    His father of course was that titan among supercilious sesquipedalians, William F. Buckley Jr., who while appearing weekly on his Firing Line TV series for decades and writing thousands of columns for his magazine National Review (often turning out 700 words in five minutes) also penned a series of novels starring superspy Blackford Oakes, completing each book in about two weeks.

    Christopher says nothing about his Pup’s contributions to mystery fiction but his memories of his Mum, who never wrote a word, reminded me irresistibly of another crime novelist. Mum, it seems, was a compulsive teller of tall tales. “I had heard [her] utter whoppers that would make Pinocchio look button-nosed,” says Christo.

    She loved to tell visitors that when she was small the king and queen of England stayed at her parents’ house in Vancouver, or that she had recently served as alternate juror on a famous murder trial.

    I never met any of the Buckleys but about 35 years ago I was invited to join the University of California’s Mystery Library project and thereby got to spend quality time with the project’s instigator: John Ball, author of In the Heat of the Night (1965) and creator of black detective Virgil Tibbs.

    John too was a Munchausen of the first water. The instant any famous name was mentioned in his presence, from Gene Autry to the Dalai Lama, he would claim to know the person well and toss off an anecdote. Shostakovich? “Ah yes, he played the piano for us in this very room when he was last in the States.”

    And what tales he’d spin about his hair-raising adventures around the world! Traveling in Asia, he was invited by the local police to help track down some notorious terrorist. On a secret mission behind the Iron Curtain he lured a Stasi agent who was shadowing him into a public urinal in East Berlin and killed him with one karate chop.

    If you knew a bit about his life — that he’d been a licensed pilot and had traveled widely in Japan and had reviewed classical music for a Brooklyn newspaper and was a police reservist and a martial arts maven — you could almost believe these yarns, which he garnished with vivid detail.

    Perhaps his biggest whopper, and one he should never have perpetrated because so many people saw through it, was that almost everything in the movie based on In the Heat of the Night had been taken from his novel.

    Of course, what made that film so successful was the conflict between Sidney Poitier as Tibbs and the racist cop played by Rod Steiger. Go try to find a smidgen of that conflict in John’s novel.

    John worshiped every badge he saw. In his world racist cops are like dry water, categorically impossible. Even on the plot level director Norman Jewison and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant junked much of the book, including everything about the murder victim trying to make that sleepy Southern town a Mecca for classical music.

    But even when we saw through John’s tall tales it was tremendous fun to watch him spin them. He was the kind of personality that made Casper Gutman say to Sam Spade: “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are!” I thank Christopher Buckley for rekindling my memories of him.

    Another of the last books I read in 2009 came out earlier but so stealthily that few people know it exists. Rick Cypert’s The Virtue of Suspense: The Life and Works of Charlotte Armstrong (Susquehanna University Press, 2008) is just what its title indicates, the first full-length study of the woman who deserves to be called the female Cornell Woolrich if anyone does.

    At their finest, both could generate suspense like nobody else in the business, often with the aid of eye-popping coincidences and improbabilities that readers were usually too rapt to register. There were, of course, huge differences between the two. Armstrong (1905-1969) led a conventional life enriched by a husband (who was murdered a few years after her own death), children and many friends, while that loner’s loner Woolrich hardly had a life at all.

    Armstrong carefully revised and reworked her novels and stories while Woolrich wrote at white heat, creating an intensity beyond Armstrong’s but also committing countless linguistic howlers and blunders.

    Mysteryphiles may safely skip most of Cypert’s introductory chapter, which explores various psychological and aesthetic theories, but they won’t want to miss anything else. Another book on Armstrong is unlikely but, thanks to the excellence of this one, hardly necessary.

    Cypert had the full co-operation of Armstrong’s children and access to her extensive correspondence — with other writers, editors like Fred Dannay, and critics like Anthony Boucher, who adored her work and had much to do with her success. He is presently editing a collection of her short stories, which will be published by Crippen & Landru in due course.

    Cypert is a professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, the alma mater of another famous female mystery writer. I suspect it’s not a Woolrich-Armstrong coincidence that he’s also written a book on Mignon G. Eberhart and co-edited a collection of her short stories.

    I’ve read little of Eberhart and only met her once, but on that occasion I just may have saved her from serious injury. One miserable winter afternoon in the Reagan era I was in New York and found myself with Eberhart, who was in her eighties at the time and quite tiny and frail, and Gloria Amoury, MWA’s executive secretary.

    All three of us needed to get from Point A to Point B and decided to share a cab. I was immediately behind Eberhart as she entered and one of her feet went out from under her on a patch of ice.

    Somehow my instincts kicked in. I formed my hands into a sort of seat and caught her bottom in it before she could fall.

    Could I be responsible for her having lived to the ripe old age of 97?

H. F. M. PRESCOTT – Dead and Not Buried. Dodd Mead; US, hardcover, 1938. Constable, UK, hc, 1938. Hardcover reprint: Eyre & Spottiswoode, UK, 1957 (shown). Paperback reprint: Collier Books, US, 1965.

   There is no introduction to Old Marshall, the corpse. At the very beginning he has been brutally murdered. The man who did it is unknown to the reader, at least for a while. The woman who watches the murder being committed and who later shields the murderer is Marshall’s wife.

   Old Marshall’s corpse disappears, so the police, in the form of Sergeant Tucker, a wise and thoughtful man no longer eager for success, don’t know what has happened to Marshall. Did he just leave the farm or was there foul play?

   On a nearby chicken farm live Mark (sometimes Marc) Yorke, moneyed, elegant, and a tad snobbish, and Philipson (first name unknown, which seems to happen frequently in mysteries, at least the ones I read), a shell-shocked sometime artist who is also Quite clumsy, which saves his life on at least two occasions.

   Despite the lack of a body, Philipson is suspected of having done away with Marshall. Unfortunately for Philipson, he is suffering from temporary amnesia about what happened the afternoon of Marshall’s death.

   The foregoing is a bare description that really does not do justice to this novel. The reader knows who did it fairly early on — a man who has murdered one person and has twice tried to kill another one, but who dog-ears a page in a book “with compunction.”

   Prescott has sketched her characters amazingly well, with attention to the small things that bring people alive. Most of them, particularly the vicar, the. vicar’s daughter, Sergeant Tucker, and Mrs. Harker, who cooks for Yorke and Philipson, are people you will enjoy having met.

   Prescott wrote no other mystery novels, which is a great pity. Her talent was considerable. For those who like their mystery novels catalogued, I would put this in the English-village and Holy Terror categories.

Bio-Bibliographic Data:   As Bill pointed out, this was Ms. Prescott’s only work of crime fiction. Here’s some biographical data about her, taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

PRESCOTT, H(ilda) F(rances) M(argaret). 1896-1972. Educated at Oxford and Manchester; lived in Oxford.

    There is considerably more about her to be found on the Internet, however. From her wikipedia page, for example:

    “H F M Prescott is best known however for her historical novel The Man on a Donkey. Written in the form of a chronicle, the book tells the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace, a popular rising in protest at the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. Her biography of Mary I of England, Mary Tudor (originally titled Spanish Tudor), which won the James Tait Black Prize in 1941 remains one of the leading works on Mary I’s troubled life and reign and is named by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as the best biography of the monarch.”

LES ROBERTS – An Infinite Number of Monkeys. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1987. Paperback reprint: St. Martin’s, 1988.

   This is the novel that won Roberts the award in St. Martin’s “First Private Eye Novel Contest” back in 1986, and by and large, it’s a good one.

   The leading character is a part-time actor named Saxon, who is also a full-time PI, which is more than OK as a gimmick, because Hollywood is always in need of another private eye. Lots of good stories in them there hills.

   His client in this particular adventure is pulp-paperback writer Buck Weldon, a throwback to the Mickey Spillane’s earliest days, and somebody is trying to kill him. Keeping Saxon’s interest at its highest peak is Weldon’s beautiful daughter Tori. (For some reason, I pictured a youthful Raquel Welch in the role, which you have to admit, makes for a very nice picture.)

   I have to admit the ending surprised me a little, and it shouldn’t have, which is the sign of a perfect detective story, or very nearly so. Saxon needs to have some of his cruder edges sandpapered away, though. As a ladies’ man, he’s too obvious, and besides that, he talks too much. Be subtle, man!

Bibliographic Data:   Monkeys was Les Roberts’ first book, and there were six in all that Saxon appeared in (see below). Roberts has written another 14 books about Cleveland-based PI Milan Jacovich, so far, the most recent of which being King of the Holly Hop (2008). One stand-alone novel (The Chinese Fire Drill, 2001) plus one short story collection (The Scent of Spiced Oranges, 2002) complete his resume to date.

       The “Saxon” series:

1. An Infinite Number Of Monkeys (1987)
2. Not Enough Horses (1988)

3. A Carrot For The Donkey (1989)
4. Snake Oil (1990)

5. Seeing The Elephant (1992)
6. The Lemon Chicken Jones (1994)

   In the Revised Crime Fiction IV, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner are denoted as series characters in a series of three novels by author William F. Nolan:

      The Black Mask Murders. St. Martin’s, 1994.

      The Marble Orchard. St. Martin’s, 1996.
      Sharks Never Sleep. St. Martin’s, 1998.

    None of the above are given credit as fictional characters in other detective novels. Hammett and Chandler both appeared in Chandler, by William Denbow, for example; and obviously Hammett appeared in Joe Gores’ Hammett.

    Question: Are there other novels, ones I’m not thinking of, in which any of the above (including Gardner) appeared as fictional characters?

    And as long as I’m asking, what other real life mystery writers may have shown up as characters in novels written by someone else? Josephine Tey, I know, in a couple of novels by Nicola Upson, but since they were published after 2000, they’re beyond the scope of CFIV. Disregarding the date, are there others?

BABETTE HUGHES – Murder in Church.  D. Appleton-Century, hardcover, 1934.

   Sir Arthur Quinn is a famous astrophysicist who is the bane of the religionists. He had shown “the theologians to be charlatans, religions to be apologies, and his more cautious confreres to be opportunists.”

   Besides that, he is given to amorous intrigues, mushrooms for breakfast, and the sucking of fruit lozenges. It is the latter habit, possibly combined with the second, that brings about his death as he rather uncharacteristically attends Sunday services at St. Barnabas Church. Someone had coated several lozenges with muscarin, a poison that is derived from mushrooms.

   Among the possibilities for the distinction of bumping him off are President Radford of the Western Institute of Technology, a pompous oaf who tries vainly to reconcile religion and science; Yozan Saijo, a Japanese physicist whom Quinn has insulted; Quinn’s “sexless” wife who worships him despite his philandering; a professional dancer whose movements were harsh and whose interpretations were grotesque and often venomous, and who had been one of many of Quinn’s inamoratas; George Coburn, Quinn’s valet, an ex-English jockey who sports a black eye given him by Quinn; a fanatically religious Russian technician, and others too numerous to mention.

   Quinn had religious, scientific, and personal enemies, it seems.

   Ian Craig, professor of Oriental literature at Stanford and frequent quoter of the aphorisms of Ti Li, is the amateur investigator. He gained some little renown when he solved the case chronicled in Murder in the Zoo (1932), another academic mystery.

   This is one of the selections in “The Tired Business Man’s Library,” chosen to “afford relaxation and entertainment for everyone interested in Adventure and Detective Fiction.” Murder in Church meets that goal, but only barely.

    Bio-Bibilographic Data. [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

HUGHES, BABETTE (Plechner).   1906-??   Born and resident in Seattle; graduate of University of Washington; wife of playwright Glenn (Arthur) Hughes; author of numerous one-act plays.

       Murder Murder Murder. French, pb, 1931. One-act play.
       Murder in the Zoo. Appleton, 1932. [Prof. Ian Craig]
       Murder in Church. Appleton, 1934. [Prof. Ian Craig]

   
SUZANNE BLANC – The Green Stone. Carroll & Graf, reprint paperback, 1984. Previous editions: Harper & Brothers, hc, 1961. Detective Book Club, hc, 3-in-1 edition, February 1962. Lancer, pb, 1966.

    “Perhaps it is not prophecy at all but the belief in prophecy that fulfills it…” and destiny that brings certain people together in a given place, at a given time. For Mr. and Mrs. Randall, their destiny is to be murdered on a Mexican highway by bandits. And for Mrs. Randall’s emerald ring to be responsible for the danger and near death of Jessie Prewitt and ruin for Luis Pérez.

    Jessie Prewitt comes to Mexico to flee the painful memories of her broken marriage. Luis Pérez, a tourist guide, hankers after a life of ease and wealth — and feels the possibility brush his fingertips when the beautiful emerald comes into his possession.

    As quickly, police suspicion also brushes against Pérez, and he passes the gem onto Jessie (without her knowledge) when the police come to question him. Pérez intends to reclaim the jewel later — no matter what danger or force results.

    As pressure builds for the police to find the emerald and solve the Randalls’ murder, so does the tension and suspense surrounding Pérez’ determination to regain the gem, and Jessie’s unwitting thwarting of his aim.

    Told from the omniscient viewpoint, Suzanne Blanc creates very human characters, and allows the reader to understand their frustrations, anxieties and pleasures. Like a finely tuned piece of machinery, all the parts of this book work together in unison. The result is an exquisite “gem” of a story — seemingly plain and simple, but full of depth and color when held to the light.

    Don’t neglect this one!

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

        BLANC, SUZANNE. Ca. 1915-1999

    The Green Stone (n.) Harper 1961 [Insp. Miguel Menendes]   Edgar winner: Best First Mystery, 1962.
    The Yellow Villa (n.) Doubleday 1964 [Insp. Miguel Menendes]
    The Rose Window (n.) Doubleday 1967 [Insp. Miguel Menendes]

    The Sea Troll (n.) Doubleday 1969

GREGORY DEAN – Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, 1939; Detective Novel Classic No. 17, no date stated [1943].

   There are several things to be sought in a mystery novel. Style, to this reader, is foremost. When the author on page one writes, “He trajected his mind back,” it is a pointer that style will not be found.

   Characterization comes next, and the author fails here, too.

   Finally — though to many readers the most important aspect of a book — comes plot. In this area Dean gives good value for the money, particularly if you actually paid a Quarter for the reprint.

   A good, kindly, thoughtful rich man — most unusual in mystery novels — is murdered in a locked room. Although the murderer’s intent was to have the man’s death appear to be suicide, the murderer botched this aspect rather badly. The rich man was supposed to appear to have shot himself through his blanket while in bed, but there are no powder marks on the blanket.

   The window locks have been wiped clean of fingerprints, as has the safe in the room. Dirty work has obviously been afoot.

   Fourth Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Simon is the investigator here. It is he who deduces murder rather than suicide. He also figures out early on how and who. He doesn’t reveal it, thus being responsible for another murder. At the end of the novel when he finds out why, all is belatedly revealed.

   Unfortunately, the explanation for the murder in the locked room, and a later appearance of the murderer there — while the room again is locked and a policemen is in it — is rather lame.

   This novel will be of interest only to those who collect locked-room puzzles. It also may be of interest to another type of collector, but reviewers’ rules do not allow that information to be divulged.

   (If anyone is curious about the title, which is the only reason I bought the book, the murdered man lived in what was called “the house on stilts,” a dwelling apparently constructed on a concrete arch. I say “apparently” because this is not mentioned in the novel; it is information provided by the paperback publisher.)

Bibliographic Data: From Bill’s review, it is difficult to imagine that there were additional cases in Commissioner Simon’s career, but it is true. There were two others, as a quick reference to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, will immediately show:

DEAN, GREGORY. Pseudonym of Jacob D. Posner, 1883-?
      The Case of Marie Corwin. Covici Friede, hc, 1933. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      The Case of the Fifth Key. Covici Friede, hc, 1934. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]
      Murder on Stilts. Hillman-Curl, hc, 1939. [Dep. Commissioner Benjamin Simon]