TED ALLBEURY – The Reaper.

Grafton; UK paperback original, 1st printing, 1980. US title: The Stalking Angel. Mysterious Press, hc, 1988; Warner, pb, 1989.

   I recently purchased a small collection of spy thrillers written by Ted Allbeury, some British editions, some published in this country. (When this book appeared over here, the title was changed to The Stalking Angel, a modification all to the better, to my way of thinking.)

   And not having read anything by the author before now, I picked this one more or less at random. This is in violation of a general principle promulgated by an esteemed colleague of mine, which I usually adhere to, which is to never read a book with a swastika on the cover.

   Without getting into the details of the plot, at least not yet, what I discovered was what the book by John Jakes I recently reviewed was missing. Often times you can describe what you see. It’s what’s not there that’s sometimes difficult to put your finger on. Jakes’ book was written strictly in black and white, which I pointed out, although I was referring to films at the time.

   Allbeury’s book has the in-between gray that better spy novels seem to thrive on. The moral dilemmas, the idea that “you always pay.” From page 136, former CIA agent Hank Wallace is warning Anna Simon, his protégé with whom he has fallen in love:

   A group of aging ex-Nazis, tired of being hunted down and killed, has decided to retaliate, and Anna’s husband, working (unknown to her) for a Jewish organization tracking them down, is one of their first victims.

   As the US title then suggests, Anna then begins to take revenge in her own hands. You might think you know exactly where this will lead, and it probably does, but (more than likely) not exactly on the path you think it will.

   Being judge, jury and executioner all in one — it’s not the easiest job in the world, and Allbeury does a better than average job of showing us why.

        Biographic data:

   Ted Allbeury died 4 December 2005. A long obituary I’ve found online contains a wealth of information about him, from which I’ve excerpted the following:

    “Ted Allbeury, who has died aged 88, was the most productive of the internationally recognised spy writers of recent years, at one point writing four novels in one year under his own name, plus others under the pen names Richard Butler and Patrick Kelly. […]

    “The author of more than 40 novels and numerous radio plays, Ted came to writing late in life (he was 56 when his first book, A Choice of Enemies, appeared in 1973). […]

    “A tall, imposing man, with an alert mind and an ease with languages, he served as an SOE intelligence officer from 1940 to 1947, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. […]

    “Ted’s work was not so much a reaction to other spy fiction writers, but an extension of the work that Deighton and others had begun: first, he wanted to deepen the wartime thriller; and second, he aimed to make unusual common cause with enemy agents as human beings, thus exposing the power relations on both sides as his real target.

   Even if you have only a small interest in the British spy novel, the rest of the obituary is well worth your reading.

FERGUSON FINDLEY – Counterfeit Corpse.

Ace Double D-187, paperback original; 1st printing, 1956.

   Findley wrote a small handful of crime novels back in the 1950s, and I’ll add a list of them at the end of my comments on this one, which I enjoyed, but which I’d be hard pressed to recommend to anyone else without waving a lot of warning flags first. (Read on.)

   A fellow named Don Ivy is the featured player in Counterfeit Corpse, and he tells the story himself. After being bounced out of England, after years of knocking around Europe and northern Africa during and after the war, and now that his mother’s dead, he’s settled down in the small town in New England and living in the very same house he grew up in.

   It’s not clear whether the town of Tombury is supposed to be in Vermont or New Hampshire, but since later on in the story he and his niece Judy have to cross the Massachusetts line while making a quick trip to Boston, my vote’s for the latter.

   Which of course doesn’t matter to you. What does matter, I think, is that the reason he was quietly kicked out of England was his expertise in making counterfeit plates (for ten pound notes) so well that the bills they were capable of printing could not be distinguished from real ones, save for one small deliberate flaw that only Ivy knows.

   He has no record in England, though — it’s been erased, thanks to services to the Crown. Which is all prelude to the story, though, which begins with Ivy finding a body in his yard while doing a spring cleanup. Then another – a roadside accident — then his niece Judy, whom he hasn’t seen in maybe 15 years, shows up; and then another body is found face down in a pond behind his house.

   Coincidence? Not on your life. It certainly gets the local authorities into an uproar, though. First the local cop, then a state policeman, then a guy from the FBI. It’s up to Ivy and the surprisingly capable assistance of his niece Judy to get him out of trouble before he’s up to and over his neck in it.

   Breezily told, in good old-fashioned pulp magazine style, the tale has some flaws I ought to tell you about, too. The pile up of bodies is no coincidence, but heading to Boston to look for clues, it strikes me as next to impossible that he find the correct cheap night spot where all of the players in the plot struck out from, in only one try — and how did they all come to be there in one spot to begin with? That’s neatly not mentioned or alluded to either.

   There is not a lot of detective work going on in this book, not the real deductive kind, that is, until the end, in which (unless I’ve read it wrong) Ivy doesn’t recognize a certain telephone number, one that he should know, until several hours later, when it is almost too late.

   What is amusing, I think, is how Ivy manages to steal the local cop’s girl friend away from him, after the local cop, trying to be friendly, uses the girl friend as part of his cover in the aforesaid enterprise.

   And if you’ve read this far, you might as well read the book and see how he does it, whether it ‘s a good move or not; or on the other hand, you might decide that I’ve told you enough of the story already, and that anything more would be superfluous.

Bibliographic data:   [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin; US editions only.]

FINDLEY, FERGUSON. Pseudonym of Charles Weiser Frey, 1910-1963.

       My Old Man’s Badge. Duell, 1950 [Johnny Malone]. Popular Library #324, pb, 1951. Also reprinted as Killer Cop (Monarch #114, pb, 1959).

      

      Waterfront. Duell, 1951 [Johnny Malone]. Serialized in Collier’s Magazine, August 1950. Popular Library #408, pb, 1952.

      The Man in the Middle. Duell, 1952. Reprinted as Dead Ringer (Bestseller B160, 1953).

      Counterfeit Corpse. Ace Double D-197, 1956.
      Murder Makes Me Mad. Popular Library #780, 1956.

ERICA QUEST – The Silver Castle. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978. Reprint hardcover: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, Sept-Oct 1978.

   The discovery that Gail Sherbrooke’s father, who she’d thought dead for over twenty years, had just committed suicide in Switzerland sends the aspiring young artist off on a search to learn the truth about a man she had never known.

   Lying just beyond her reach she finds both mystery and romance — the type of story most readers surely find done far too often, and rather badly, too.

   That’s not at all the case here. With much of the charm and intricacy of a hand-made Swiss clock, this is indeed an uncluttered detective story that’s both haunting and wholly enchanting.

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

QUEST, ERICA. Pseudonym of John Sawyer & Nancy Buckingham Sawyer; other pseudonym: Nancy Buckingham

      The Silver Castle (n.) Doubleday 1978
      The October Cabaret (n.) Doubleday 1979
      Design for Murder (n.) Doubleday 1981
      Death Walk (n.) Doubleday 1988 [Kate Maddox]

      Cold Coffin (n.) Doubleday 1990 [Kate Maddox]
      Model Murder (n.) Doubleday 1991 [Kate Maddox]
      Deadly Deceit (n.) Piatkus 1992 [Kate Maddox]

   I believe the Sawyers were British, but their books as Erica Quest were published only in the US. I seem to have avoided the issue somewhat in my review, but if The Silver Dagger were to be assigned to a genre, I don’t believe it could be called a Gothic. “Romantic suspense,” perhaps, but with a solid core of detection involved, if I can rely on the statement made above by my younger self.

   (Bolstering the detective content of the Quest books is a discovery, made only this evening, that the series character who appeared in their last four books is actually Detective Chief Inspector Kate Maddox.)

   Many of the books the Sawyers wrote as Nancy Buckingham were published only in England; most of the ones that appeared in the US were published in paperback as Gothics by either Ace or Lancer. A typical title might be The Legend of Baverstock Manor (Ace, 1968), which was originally published in the UK as the noticeably less striking Romantic Journey (Hale, 1968).

   The Sawyers also wrote many straight romances, using the additional pen names Christina Abbey, Nancy John, and Hillary London for many of these. A list of these, along with some covers, can be found on the Fantastic Fiction website.

PATRICIA MOYES – Falling Star. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1964. Holt Rinehart & Winston, US., hc, 1964. US paperback reprints: Ballantine U2244, 1966; Owl, 1982.

   The publisher Holt, Rinehart, and Winston has been reprinting most of the mysteries of Patricia Moyes in its Owl series, and Falling Star has been one of them. While it is not one of her stronger books, most other authors would be glad to claim it.

      The motive and murder methods are not convincing, however, and the number of suspects too limited for a really strong puzzle. Nonetheless, the author’s experiment of eschewing third-person narration in favor of a story teller who is a movie executive and also a bit of a prig (and not too bright) works well.

   Also, Moyes’s series detective, Henry Tibbett, continues to be likable and efficient, if somewhat bland.

    “Patricia Pakenham-Walsh, aka Patricia Moyes, was an Irish-born British mystery writer. [She] was born in Dublin on January 19, 1923 and was educated at Overstone girls’ school in Northampton. She joined the WAAF in 1939. In 1946 Peter Ustinov hired her as technical assistant on his film School for Secrets. She became his personal assistant for the next eight years.

    “Her mystery novels [beginning with Dead Men Don’t Ski in 1959] feature C.I.D. Inspector Henry Tibbett. One of them, Who Saw Her Die (Many Deadly Returns in the US) was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1971.

    “She married photographer John Moyes in 1951; they divorced in 1959. She later married James Haszard, a linguist at the International Monetary Fund. She died at her home in the British Virgin Islands on August 2, 2000.”

LESLEY EGAN – Look Back on Death (Doubleday/Crime Club, 1978.

   Lawyer Jesse Falkenstein’s preoccupation with parapsychology is evident from page one on. Confirmed skeptics of ESP, clairvoyance, and mediums who can contact spirits of the dead are warned that while this case of murder which occurred eight years earlier does contain a good deal of detection via exhaustive legwork, the source of the final clue is sure to irritate their sensitive sensibilities more than a little.

   Egan, who also writes the Dell Shannon books, otherwise does her usual fine job with dialogue and sharp characterization.

Biblio-biographical data:

   From Wikipedia:   “Barbara ‘Elizabeth’ Linington (1921 – 1988) was a prolific American novelist. She was awarded runner-up scrolls for best first mystery novel from the Mystery Writers of America for her 1960 novel, Case Pending, which introduced her most popular series character, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza.

    “Her 1961 tome, Nightmare, and her 1962 novel, Knave of Hearts, another entry in the Mendoza series, were both nominated for Edgars in the Best Novel category.”

   Besides mystery fiction under her own name, Leslie Egan and Dell Shannon, Elizabeth Linington also wrote other crime and detective as by Anne Blaisdell and Egan O’Neill.

   While she is considered an early female pioneer in the field of police procedurals, there are others, of course, such as Helen Reilly‘s Inspector McKee books, which preceded hers by many years.

   In later years Linington was criticized for her lack of research and technical accuracy, fatal flaws as far as fans of the field were concerned. She was also noted for her membership in the ultra-right wing John Birch Society. Whether for either of these reasons or others, her books are not nearly as popular as they were during her lifetime.

JO DERESKE – Miss Zukas and the Library Murders. Avon, paperback, 2006. Originally published by Avon as a paperback original in 1994.

   Miss Zukas is a middle-aged, spinsterish librarian in Bellehaven, Washington, a transplanted Lithuanian from the upper Midwest. She’s fairly rigid, certain of her “rightness,” and largely intolerant of the masses, who include most of the people she works with or comes into contact with.

   She reminded me of a librarian in the Little Rock Public Library who — without saying a word — communicated her disapproval of a Peter Arno collection with one of Arno’s scantily clad females on the book’s jacket that I checked out from the Little Rock Public Library when I was a warty teenager.

   In spite of Miss Zukas’ thorny personality (or maybe because of it), I rather enjoyed this low-key mystery. The library setting and staff seem real, and I reflected that a protagonist who irritates me probably suggests the writer has some skill at characterization.

   There’s a cop who’s somewhat attracted to Miss Z. (whether she’s attracted to him is not very clear, but she doesn’t come across as introspective), a bohemian artist friend (Ruth) whose track record in men is deplorable, and a tendency in Miss Z. to withhold vital evidence from the police that puts both her and Ruth and the solving of the case at risk.

   Will I read another in the series? I’m not sure.

           Editorial Comment:

   There are eleven books in the Miss Zukas series, of which Library Murders is the first. There’s a complete bibliography for Jo Dereske’s mystery fiction on this blog back here where I reviewed #6, Final Notice.

   I called reading it a “sneaky pleasure,” and otherwise agreeing in all essentials to all of Walter’s observations. Although I’ve not read more than two or three books in the series myself, I fully intend to get to all of them, eventually.

   When I sent a copy of that earlier review to Jo Dereske, I also asked her about the rumors I’d heard that #11, Index to Murder (2008) was going to be the last appearance of Miss Zukas.

   Here’s her reply, in part:

    “As to what you’ve heard about Miss Zukas’s future, you are correct. At the moment, there isn’t another contract for more adventures, but who knows what the future may bring. She’s been such a fun character to portray. I’m currently working on another series which my agent is shopping around.

    “Congratulations on your blog. I’ll put a link to it in my next website update.”

   Between 1959 and 1966 Black Mask veteran Willis Todhunter Ballard penned seven books as Neil McNeil for the Gold Medal line of paperback originals about a pair of private eyes named Tony Costaine and Bert McCall:

Death Takes an Option. Gold Medal 807, pbo, September 1958.
Third on a Seesaw. Gold Medal s844, pbo, January 1959.

2 Guns for Hire. Gold Medal s898, pbo, July 1959.

Hot Dam. Gold Medal 964, pbo, January 1960.
The Death Ride. Gold Medal 1055, pbo, November 1960.

Mexican Slayride. Gold Medal s1182, pbo, January 1962.
The Spy Catchers. Gold Medal d1658; pbo, 1966.

   Though the series was never a major hit, they are highly entertaining superior light private eye fiction much in the mood and style of such popular series as 77 Sunset Strip and Peter Gunn on television. Costaine and McCall are the epitome of the cool, hip, buttoned-down PI’s of the period, distilled through the Rat Pack school of middle aged hipster, a group of slick eyes that rode the wave between Mike Hammer and James Bond.

   Anthony “Tony” Costaine is the brains of the outfit, slick, smart and tough, the button-down collar Brooks Brothers suit half of the team, who first teamed up with McCall back in their FBI and OSS days, six lean feet of muscle and brains.

   Bert McCall, a giant handsome Scot (born in Scotland) and topping six feet six in his stocking feet is the other half of the team, a born hedonist with an eye for the ladies, and a penchant for finding trouble and playing the bagpipes. Between the two of them they are the highest paid eyes of their day — so as you can imagine their clients tend to be rich, powerful, and in big trouble.

   In Death Takes an Option Marcus Cadby has hired them to find out why the auditor of MidContinental Mine and Machine commited suicide, but not before his younger and very sexy wife has tried to pry information out of Costaine.

   Then no sooner than their plane touches down in Los Angeles someone takes a pot shot at them, and before long they are involved with murder, a trip to Vegas, and a slick plot twist you will have to read for yourself.

   The trip to Vegas is important, because Costaine and McCall are, as I suggested above, Frank and Dino in not very subtle guise. McCall even calls Costaine “Dad.”

   Third on a Seesaw takes them to Reesedale PA, home of Reese Steel and Tube Company where they clean up the town and a murder — once McCall can be pried away from his bagpipes.

   2 Guns for Hire involves the boys with the car industry and a beautiful woman who paints nudes, and in Hot Dam they encounter a whole community of distant relatives of McCall who are sabotaging a power company by trying to build a dam that will flood their homes in upper New York state.

   The Death Ride takes them into the business of amusement parks, and in Mexican Slay Ride McCall ends up in jail south of the border as the boys take on a job involving fraud and the Mexican government. The Spy Catchers mixes them in with the government and treason in the aerospace industry and secret weapons.

   To be fair, Ballard could do this kind of book in his sleep, but thankfully he doesn’t. The boys are cool and smart, McCall just dumb enough to get them in trouble and Costaine just smart enough to get them out.

   There is a parade of attractive women varying from willing to murderous (and sometimes both), and a wide variety of action. The books aren’t major works or anything, but they are good and well worth discovering. Plotting is better than it had to be, and Costaine and McCall are always fun to be around.

   Ballard was one of the original Black Mask Boys with his tales of movie studio troubleshooter Bill Lennox (who also featured in three novels published as by Ballard and John Shepard), and a frequent collaborator with Robert Leslie Bellem and Cleve Adams.

   He wrote for early television (Dick Tracy) and even wrote a non genre novel about his experiences. Under his own name and as P.D. Ballard and Todhunter Ballard, among others, he wrote well-received westerns, and under the W.T. Ballard name, three books about Lt. Max Hunter of the Las Vegas police.

   His last novel, Murder in Las Vegas, about private eye Mark Foran, is one of the better hardboiled paperback originals of its period.

   That Todhunter is a family name. He was a cousin of Rex Todhunter Stout.

   Costaine and McCall may not be in the top tier of private eyes, but they are well worth discovering. The writing is lean and slick, and the action comes fast and furious. A little action, a soupcon of sex, and a twist or two in the tale are more than enough to recommend these.

   They make good company, and fit right in with Shell Scott and Chet Drum. Make the effort to meet them, but first lock up the Scotch and the women. You just can’t trust that McCall with either.

MICHAEL UNDERWOOD – Crooked Wood.

St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1978. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1978. Previously published in the UK by Macmillan, hc, 1978.

   Mystery stories usually end where this one begins, with the murderer safely behind bars and about to stand trial. Underwood’s forte is the courtroom drama, British style, and here the problem is twofold: who hired the contract killer who actually did the job, and, who’s trying to buy off one of the jurors?

   Sergeant Atwell’s work is clearly not done, and it requires the timely assistance of his ex-policewoman wife Clare and the gathering of an overabundant supply of red herrings before a surprise Mr. X is named. A deftly woven detective tale it is, and an interesting variation from the norm.

       Bibliographic data:

Michael Underwood was the pen name of John Michael Evelyn, 1916-1992, and the author of nearly 50 works of crime and detective fiction, many of them dealing with cases taking place in British courtrooms in one way or another.

   His series characters include (often in overlapping cases) Inspector (later Superintendent) Simon Manton, Martin Ainsworth, Rosa Epton, Richard Monk and Sergeant Nick Atwell. One bookseller describes Rosa Epton as “England’s answer to Perry Mason.”

   Richard Monk is also a lawyer, but the books with Martin Ainsworth appear to be spy fiction (e.g. The Unprofessional Spy, 1964). Many of the cases for Nick Atwell, a police sergeant at Scotland Yard, are shared with detective constable Clare Reynolds, although according to my review, she seems to have been off the force at the time Crooked Wood takes place.

VENA CORK – The Art of Dying. Headline, UK, hardcover, 2005; paperback, 2006.

   In Thorn (2004), previous to the events taking place in this follow-up novel, Rosa Thorn lost her husband, celebrated Jamaican-born artist Rob Thorn, in a hit-and-run accident, then found that her daughter was being stalked by a shadowy figure who turned their life into a nightmare.

   Now, in The Art of Dying, in the wake of an exhibition of her husband’s last paintings, Rosa herself is stalked by a mysterious figure who she discovers is the half-brother of her late husband. Rosa accepts Joshua into her family but becomes increasingly concerned that he’s something other than the loving brother-in-law he initially appears to be.

   Rosa’s relationship with Josh is not her only problem, as all of her personal relationships seem to be foundering in misunderstandings and hidden agendas.

   This psychological thriller eventually climaxes in a gothic underground nightmare that some readers may find over the top. I rather enjoyed the plot’s ghoulish turn, but I hope that Cork will let Rosa and her family live out their fictional lives in private, without the perilous complications that could confirm that a series is underway.

EDITORIAL COMMENT. There is a third book in the series, Green Eye (2006), in which Rosa Thorn also appears, but there seems to have been nothing from Vena Cork’s keyboard in the three years since. The books are available in the US only as import editions.

From the Tangled Web site: “Vena Cork is from Lancashire, but has lived in London all her adult life. She attended Homerton College, Cambridge, where she was a member of Cambridge Footlights. She is married to the art critic Richard Cork and lives in North West London.”

CONSTANCE & GWENYTH LITTLE – The Black Shrouds.

Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1941; Collins Crime Club, UK, hc, 1942, as by as by Conyth Little. Paperback reprints: Popular Library #112, n.d. [1946]; Rue Morgue Press, trade pb, 2002.

   To find fame — her father already has a fortune — on the stage, Diana Prescott has come to New York City. What she discovers, however, is horror at Mrs. Markham’s boarding house, which is occupied by the usual oddities one finds at fictional boarding houses and maybe even the real ones.

   Two elderly and old-maid sisters, an absolutely harmless pair, are found murdered — bludgeoned and then gassed.

   It’s obvious it’s an inside job, but the police, in more ways than one, haven’t a clue. Even when another resident disappears and items appear and disappear and books and other objects are burnt in the furnace, the officials are at a loss.

   Though frightened a fair part of the time, Prescott does her own investigating, primarily to avoid playing bridge with her father.

   For reasons unknown, but perhaps because the inhabitants are generally eccentrics, I enjoy mysteries with boarding-house settings. I’d have enjoyed this one anyhow because the Littles are quite amusing writers, and their Miss Giddens is a delightfully nutty character.

   And if my recommendation isn’t enough, I refer you to Something Wicked, by Carolyn G. Hart, in which her wonderful bookstore, Death on Demand (Annie Laurence, prop.), put The Black Shrouds in its window with several other books to illustrate humor in the mystery.

EDITORIAL COMMENT. For more information on the authors, who wrote 21 mystery novels in very much the same vein as The Black Shrouds between 1938 and 1953, there is no better place to send you than to the Rue Morgue Press website, where publishers Tom and Enid Schantz say in part:

    “If these two Australian-born sisters from East Orange, New Jersey, are not better known today, it’s probably because they chose not to write a series.

    “But if the characters in each of their books had different names, you could always recognize a Little heroine, whether she was a working woman or a spoiled little rich brat. Nothing held her back or kept her from speaking her mind, which may explain why she so often fell under suspicion when a body turned up…”

   To this date, Rue Morgue has reprinted 20 of the 21 novels, all but The Black Gloves (1939). Note that the word “Black” appeared in all of the books by the Little sisters except the first one, The Grey Mist Murders (1938).