I’ve received this inquiry in this afternoon’s email. I’m sure I’ve seen a photo of Philip MacDonald on one of his book jackets, but so far I haven’t come across it. I found this one on the Internet, but this is the one that Charles already has. Anyone else?

   My name is Charles Seper, and I’m currently working on a film documentary of Philip MacDonald’s author grandfather — George MacDonald. I intend to make mention of Philip in the movie also.

   My problem is finding a good photograph of him. The only one I’ve managed to procure thus far is very small and of poor quality. Do you by any chance know of any?

   Philip was often asked to speak at various Hollywood functions, so I know there must be a good photo of him somewhere. I also know he wrote many books that I haven’t yet read, so I thought perhaps you might have one which has a picture of the author on the cover.

    If you have any idea where I might find a photo I would much appreciate it.

         Sincerely,

           Charles Seper

Introduction: David Hume was the primary pen name of J(ohn) V(ictor) Turner, 1900-1945, an English author of several dozen mystery and detective novels not only under his own name and as Hume, but also as Nicholas Brady.

   He has come up for discussion several times on this blog, the first being this review I wrote of Requiem for Rogues. This post also contains a complete bibliography for Mr. Turner, taken from Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.

   This followup post discusses several of Mr. Turner’s many series characters as well as a little more about his life, accumulated from several sources, including a portrait of him taken from the back cover of one of his books.

   One additional post included more on Mr. Turner, with quite a bit of information provided by Bill Pronzini. Also announced was the creation of a webpage to display the covers of many of Mr. Turner’s books, found here.

   These posts are all two years old, so by all means go back and (re)read them before continuing. Last Monday, I received an email from Judith Gavin, who said “John Victor Turner, was the middle of the three brothers, in a family of six children. My Grandmother was married to the oldest brother.” She also provided me with several paragraphs of information about Mr. Turner, aka David Hume.

   Since some of what she included in her first email was perhaps not sufficiently verified to be placed online, Judith has kindly rewritten it and has agreed to allow me to post the following in its stead:

   John Victor Turner was one of six children, and the second of three boys in a family who moved to Stone in Staffordshire, having previously lived in the Wythenshaw area of Manchester. (There seems to be no record of why the family moved from Manchester to Stone.)

   The three Turner boys were Alfred, John (but the family usually referred to him as Jack as much as they called him John, the two names were interchangeable most of the time) and the youngest son was Joseph Turner, Joe to all the family.

   Alfred, the eldest son went to the War front on his 16th birthday and although he survived he was devastated by shell shock, the shadows of which gripped him throughout his life leaving him unable to hold down regular employment and making drink a constant companion.

   The second son, writer John Victor, would have been 16 in 1916 (his service years and regiment have yet to be confirmed). He secured employment on a local paper in Warwick (or it may be Stoke, to be confirmed) then several years later travelled to work in London as crime reporter on The Daily Herald Newspaper in Fleet Street where it is true that he was known for his network of associates, his contacts in the criminal underworld going regularly to live along side them.

   It is probable, however, that few of his underworld contacts knew that he had a younger brother, Joseph, who had also travelled to live and work in London – as a police officer, eventually rising to a senior rank in Scotland Yard.

   John Victor (Jack) married twice. His first wife, with whom he had a daughter, died when she drowned in the canal in Stone,

   (Details of names of first wife etc to follow when clarified further.) It was many years later when he married again, to a woman believed to be originally from Scotland, and they had a son. (Again details of name etc to follow when clarified further.)

   The timing of JV Turner’s death in 1945 may have caused some to speculate that he may have sustained injuries in the Second World War. This was not the case. The cause of death has always been rather glossed over as something of a mystery in the family, not because it was thought to be sinister or suspicious, or heroic, but because it may have been linked to TB which was “hushed up” by the family partly because it was notifiable and contagious, but also as it was associated with poor living conditions etc.

   The above information was supplied by my mother, Mrs Ann Hume Gregory (Nee Turner), daughter of Flora May Turner, (Nee Tully) who was married to the eldest Turner son, Alfred, before they separated in 1950. Flora May Turner (Nee Tulley) was also a first cousin to the Turner brothers.

DAVID ANTHONY – The Organization. Coward McCann, hardcover, 1970. Paperback reprint: Pocket, 1972.

    David Anthony’s Stud Game (reviewed by Steve Lewis in the previous post) was nominated for an Edgar as best paperback mystery of 1978. The Organization is an earlier episode in the life of the same main character, professional gambler and part-time private eye Stanley Bass.

   And it’s quite an episode. While reading it I was reminded very much of the 1950s paperbacks of Charles Williams, the ones in which a man becomes involved with a woman who in one way or another gets him into a situation from which there seems to be no escape.

   I don’t make this comparison to Williams lightly, because I really admire his work. The ending, while perhaps not as ironic as those achieved by Williams, still leaves Bass with very little.

   The story? A beautiful woman wants to kill Bass’s tennis friend, Jack Prince, a man with mob connections. Bass meets her and tries to dissuade her. He does so by coming up with a way to get Prince’s own bosses to do him in.

   But things go awry and Bass finds himself hunted by both the police and the organization for a number of things which he didn’t do. But who did do them? The answer isn’t as easy as it first seems, and Bass has the devil of a time getting out of the mess he’s gotten into. How he does so makes a fine hardboiled tale.

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

ANTHONY, DAVID. Pseudonym of William Dale Smith, 1929-1986.

    The Midnight Lady and the Mourning Man. Bobbs-Merrill, hc, 1969; Warner, pb, 1973. [Morgan Butler] Film: Universal, 1974, as The Midnight Man.

    The Organization. Coward McCann, hc, 1970; Pocket, pb, 1972. [Stanley Bass]
    Blood on a Harvest Moon. Coward McCann, hc, 1972; no pb edition. [Morgan Butler]
    Stud Game. Pocket Books, pbo, 1978 [Stanley Bass]
    The Long Hard Cure. Collins, UK, hc, 1979 [Morgan Butler]

WILLIAM MURRAY – I’m Getting Killed Right Here.

Bantam; reprint paperback, July 1992. Hardcover edition: Doubleday, November 1991.

   You may already know this, but William Murray, author of the Shifty Lou Anderson books, of which this is one, died in 2005 at the age of 78. He wrote nine in the series,and even though this is the first one I’ve read, it will not be the last.

   Shifty, who tells the stories himself, is what you might call a “close up magician” by vocation and a steady habitue or patron of the racetracks by avocation. Here, first of all, is a list of the nine Shifty Lou Anderson novels:

   Tip on a Dead Crab. Viking Press, hc, April 1984.
      Penguin, pb, 1985.

   The Hard Knocker’s Luck. Viking Press, hc, October 1985.
      Penguin, pb, July 1986.

   When the Fat Man Sings. Bantam, hc, September 1987.
      Bantam, pb, June 1988.
      Bantam, pb, June 1990.

   The King of the Nightcap. Bantam, hc, July 1989.
      Bantam, pb, July 1990.

   The Getaway Blues. Bantam, hc, August 1990.
      Bantam, pb, May 1991.

   I’m Getting Killed Right Here. Doubleday, hc, November 1991.
      Bantam, pb, July 1992.

   We’re Off to See the Killer. Doubleday, hc, September 1993.
      No paperback edition.

   Now You See Her, Now You Don’t. Henry Holt & Co., hc, October 1994.
      No paperback edition.

   A Fine Italian Hand. M. Evans & Co., hc, May 1996.
      No paperback edition.

   This list does not constitute all of his mystery fiction. Here’s the rest, all but the last appearing before the first Shifty Lou book:

   Passport to Terror. Avon T-423, pbo, 1960, as by Max Daniels.
       “Love me tonight,” she whispered. “Tomorrow you’ll spit on my grave.”

   The Sweet Ride. New American Library, 1967. Signet, pb, 1967.
      A novel of the restless generation, the young people who are rebels against authority and accepted conventions – a new breed of youth, the rootless, purposeless ones who want nothing more than a “sweet ride” on drinks, drugs, and sex – but mostly on the ever pounding beckoning surf. [Stated as being only marginally crime fiction in Crime Fiction IV.]

   The Killing Touch. Dutton, hc, 1974.     [No paperback edition.]
      This taut, fast paced novel is not just about an isolated killing, but, more important, about some of the many ways man and women kill each other – through illusion, deceit, even simple neglect.

   The Mouth of the Wolf. Little Brown, hc,1977.     [No paperback edition.]
      A millionaire’s grandson brutally snatched from the streets of Rome.

   The Myrmidon Project. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, hc, 1981, with Chuck Scarborough. Ace, pb, 1982.
       A highly rated TV newsman about to retire is hit by a series of personal tragedies, perhaps at the instigation of the chairman of his network.

   Dead Heat. Eclipse Press, hc, Sept 2005.     [Published posthumously.]
      A female jockey searches out a crusty old trainer to help take her to the top.

   This does not include any non-crime-related fiction, if any, nor have I attempted to list his non-fiction. Among the latter, however, and not surprisingly, is one entitled The Right Horse: Winning More, Losing Less, and Having a Great Time at the Racetrack. (Never having been to a racetrack, I assume that I am correct in assuming that this is non-fiction.)

   From an online tribute to Murray by Robert Cancel comes the following information:

   What’s at the center of I’m Getting Killed Right Here – which is also the punch line of a joke told on page 166, sort of – is that for the first time, Shifty is an insider at the racetrack.

   He owns a horse, one that is possibly going to be a very good race horse, but as Charlie Pickard, Mad Margaret’s trainer, reminds him of very early on, don’t count on anything. There are ten thousand ways to lose a race.

   Unable to feed and maintain a horse on his own on a magician’s less-than-reliable salary, Shifty needs to take on a partner, and in this case it’s a guy who turns out to have made millions in the construction business, and who also (not so incidentally) has a wife who is a looker (the general consensus) and who is also much younger than he is.

   It may not take more than a nudge from me for you to know where this is going right now. It certainly didn’t take very long for me. One brief motel scene later – well, OK, I guess that was more than a nudge, wasn’t it? – Shifty’s new partner knows what has transpires, and he, Shifty, not to mention Linda, is in a good deal of trouble.

   Here’s a quickie description of the sort of business problems Shifty’s new partner is having, quoting from page 55:

   Shifty is in over his head, and he damned well knows it. And yet, while this particular escapade on Shifty’s part starts out in rip-roaring old-fashioned Gold Medal fashion, Murray allowed this mammoth sense of impending disaster to be brushed off far too easily, and a the story heads off instead in a modified, somewhat more dignified, and — unfortunately — far more predictable fashion.

   Which is not to say that the Gold Medal type of story was not predictable. You know: the one in which the guy gets caught making love to another’s guy younger and good-looking wife, when the second guy belongs to the mob and has connections.

   Mr. Cameron, that’s the partner, is a villain through and through, of that there’s no doubt, so don’t get me wrong, but there is another villain behind him and while attempts are made along these lines to keep his role secret, there simply are no doubts at any time about who he is. (This is one of those books in which as soon as the Bad Guy makes his appearance, you know, somehow deep inside, that he is the Bad Guy.)

    A detective story this is not, in other words, which to some minds (mine) may leave the ending in something of an anti-climactic nature, but on occasion I am of a forgiving nature, and this is one of them. Shifty’s buddies (Damon Runyonesque, the lot of them) will be around in his next adventure, as will (I imagine) Mad Margaret.

   On the other hand, whether his new lady friend appears again is another question altogether. It is to wonder, but my cap is off to Shifty Lou Anderson – there are simply no two ways about it.

K. K. BECK – The Revenge of Kali-Ra. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1999. No paperback edition.

   A friend and I have a special category of book we refer to as Dollar Store Wonders. You are all familiar with the various Dollar, .99 Cent, and $1.09 stores around the country, and have probably noticed occasional racks or tables of remaindered books lurking in odd corners with big round stickers announcing their bargain prices.

   They vary from over prints of bestsellers to celebrity bios to westerns, sf, fantasy, horror, thrillers, juvenile series, and even a few actual mysteries.

   It’s in the latter category that you are most likely to find one of the rare Dollar Store Wonders that make the hunt worth your time, a first class book that for some reason you missed entirely when it came out, and has now made its way to the last hope of new books before the second hand book store, the library sale, or the card table at the nearest garage sale.

   One such Dollar Store Wonder is K.K. Beck’s The Revenge of Kali-Ra.

   Beck gives the reader fair warning in the dedication to what she is up to:

   In The Revenge of Kali-Ra Beck’s targets are broad ones — the overheated pulp work of Sax Rohmer and his ilk, and the overheated egos and money grubbing ways of Hollywood.

   The heroine of the book is Melanie Oakley, the personal assistant to movie star Nadia Wentworth, who has just discovered the novels of Valerian Ricardo, who made a fortune churning out the adventures of Kali-Ra, the Queen of Doom, a beautiful and evil seductress with a taste for the trappings of S&M, or as the hero observes, “a low rent Story of O.”

   Nadia thinks the time is ripe for Kali-Ra to stalk the screens of megaplexes all over the country and sets out to acquire the rights to Ricardo’s books. Which is the point at which the woodwork erupts.

   Nick Iverson is a great nephew of Ricardo’s who wants to know more about his family history. Lila Ricardo is the great man’s whacked out widow and Quentin Smith an unscrupulous lawyer for Maurice Fender who owns the rights to the Ricardo books and wants to cash in. In addition there’s Glen Pendergast, an academic who penned a study of the Ricardo oeuvre The Whip Hand: Issues of Gender in Genre in the Novels of Valerian Ricardo.

   Then there’s Gail and her daughter Callie, a more-or-less normal post-teenager with a penchant for running around near naked and impersonating Kali-Ra, her namesake. Of course they all end up at Nadia Wentworth’s exotic Hollywood mansion, and then one of the uninvited guests shows up dead and Internet fans of the masters works start stalking the night, and we’re ready for a wacky twist on Agatha Christie where nothing and no one is quite what we expect them to be.

   Among the many delights of the book are several overheated passages of Ricardo’s prose that are among the best evocations of the fractured prose stylings of the past you will encounter in many a day.

   It’s no easy thing for a good writer to write badly well, and Beck pulls it off with real panache. You may even find yourself wishing she had actually written a full novel of the adventures of Kali-Ra to accompany the book, or at least a short story. The brief passages are tantalizing.

   The Revenge of Kali-Ra is a truly funny book. The people are bright and brittle. and the humor barbed but never cruel. It’s a fast read full of attractive protagonists and eccentric everyone else and begs for a film treatment.

   Kali-Ra will rise again. You can’t keep a really good bad girl down.

   Beck had written fourteen books at the time of Revenge, including Murder in a Mummy Case, Young Miss Cavendish and the Kaiser’s Men, The Body in the Volvo, and four entries in her Jane Da Silva series. They are all bright and funny mysteries that combine real wit with appealing mysteries and a quirky but assured style that is among the most readable in the genre.

   K.K. Beck made her way into the mystery scene carving a niche of her own in the humor category. But where much of the humor genre is decidedly in the cozy tradition, Beck has always had a streak of Marx Brothers style insanity in her best work, a wry twist of the knife that lifts her novels to another level.

   Though her work falls in the classical style and form there has always been a hint of the screwball school lurking under the cozy surface. Beck goes for the quiet but knowing smile and the gentle laugh as often as not, but she is also likely to go for the belly laugh, the slapstick, knock down, roll in the aisle laugh. She also has an eye for the sharp barb, as in Nick’s Grandpa’s assessment of Nadia Wentworth:

   Although Beck comes from another tradition, the true screwball voice of Jonathan Latimer, Craig Rice, Dwight Babcock, Norbert Davis, and Richard Sale sings from her word processor. The Revenge Of Kali Ra is a romp, a playful send up of writers of popular fiction, Hollywood, and the grand old literature of the purple prose school.

   But I warn you, you may never read Fu Manchu or Sumuru with a straight face again — assuming you could keep a straight face the first time you read them. And for a Dollar Store Wonder it is a prize above rubies, or at least one heck of a bargain.

RICHARD NEELY – A Madness of the Heart. Crowell-Collier, hardcover, 1976; Signet, pb, 1977.

   Richard Neely specializes in the novel in which nothing is what it seems. This book is no exception. It tells of Harry Falcon, who saves a girl from rape only to return to his home and find his own wife (just released from a sanitarium) raped and beaten.

   As a rapist begins to terrorize the city, Harry becomes obsessed with finding him and extracting vengeance. In the course of things he meets his childhood sweetheart, and their romance is rekindled; but as he recalls their past love, we learn some strange things about Harry Falcon.

   Everything falls into place in the end, and the reader begins to see how cleverly Neely has planted little hints all along. Events and phrases take on new meanings as the truth is revealed.

   This is a suspense story which carries you right along. The shocking ending might not be as great a surprise to readers of certain detective novelists as it will be to others, but it’s a strong one nevertheless.

[EDITORIAL COMMENT.]   In my opinion, Richard Neely’s books were like no one else’s. Noirish and dark and nothing in them is ever exactly what it seems to be. I’ve found a short piece about him on one of Ed Gorman’s former blogs. You can go here to read the whole article, but I don’t think he’ll mind if I include a short excerpt here, one in which he’s discussing The Plastic Nightmare, another of Neely’s works:

REGINALD HILL – Ruling Passion.   Dell, paperback reprint; Scene of the Crime #51; first printing, August 1982. Hardcover editions: Collins/Crime Club, UK, 1973; Harper & Row, US, 1977. Reprinted many times, both hardcover and soft.

   Chronologically the third of the Superintendent Dalziel–Sergeant Pascoe novels, of at least 20 and still counting, and only the second that I’ve managed to sit down and read. The first one is lost to memory — to mine, at least. I could hazard a guess as to which one it was, but that’s all it would be, a guess.

   But even so, I could tell that the uneasy rapport (of sorts) between Pascoe and Dalziel was still going through some growing pains in Ruling Passion, the overweight (fat) Dalziel thinking of himself as a mentor, and Pascoe, if indeed a student, often wishing that he had a different master.

   If you’re a long-time reader of the series, feel free to chip in. How has their relationship grown and changed over the years?

   The two cases in Ruling Passion are really both Pascoe’s. The one in which he’s more deeply involved is the more interesting of the pair, and he’s not even the investigating officer. He and Ellie Soper, a friend from college days with whom he’s been recently reunited, getting together with four other friends from that time of their life, shockingly find three of them dead — murdered. Missing, and presumably the killer (although not to Pascoe’s way of thinking) is the husband of one of the three.

   The other case, the one to which he’s officially been assigned, is that of a series of house break-in’s that have recently taken place while the owners have been away. A fairly innocuous case, but there are signs that — as opposed to the usual burglar — this one will put up a fight if he’s cornered.

   This was a long book in 1973, unusually so, with over 300 pages of small print in the paperback edition I read; while it may run closer to today’s norms, I still found it long. The big question (to mystery readers) is whether or not the two cases are connected. Hill’s books can be difficult to get a good read on, or so I’ve been told, so it’s not so clear cut that the two cases are really one — and I won’t tell you.

   But as possibly an experiment in story-telling technique, what these means is that there are two distinct circles of major characters for the reader to keep track of, and for me in particular, it meant that the case I found less interesting — the one involving the break-in’s — got the short end of the stick, as far as paying the attention I should have to it. (Looking back, though, having finished the book, I think that case number two as well as the characters really WERE less interesting.)

   Hill also has a way of starting scenes somewhat after they’ve begun, hiding what happened at the end of one scene, only to come back to it later and off the beat. While Pascoe does a lot of detective work (Dalziel, while a central figure, stays rather in the background, if that makes sense) I don’t think he (Pascoe) did any detecting: just thinking and putting a lot of jumbled facts together, in a common sense sort of way, sometimes to good advantage and sometimes not.

   Nor does Pascoe have all the facts, as it turns out. This is a detective novel in which the characters and the relationships between them are as interesting to watch and follow as the unraveling of the case(s) itself/themselves — if not more so.

   Ellie, in particular, not sure in the beginning that she really likes having a policeman as a boy friend, and detesting Dalziel in particular, finds herself warming to him, gradually and very much to her surprise.

   As for Pascoe, he is pleased to learn along the way that he’s been promoted to Inspector. Does that mean that there’s life, he wonders, after Dalziel?

[POSTSCRIPT]   I haven’t mention the long-running BBC TV show based on the series, but obviously, since it did run so long (60 episodes in all, between 1996-2007), it must have had quite a bit going for it. Comments and/or comparisons, anyone?

E. C. BENTLEY – Trent’s Last Case.

Thomas Nelson, UK, hardcover, 1913. First published in the US as The Woman in Black, Century, 1913. (Later US editions have the British title.) Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback. Also available as an online etext.
   Silent film: Broadwest, 1920 (Gregory Scott as Philip Trent; Richard Garrick, director). Also (with partial sound): Fox, 1929 (Raymond Griffith as Philip Trent; Howard Hawks, director). Sound film: British Lion, 1952 (Michael Wilding as Philip Trent; Herbert Wilcox, director).

   One of the true cornerstones in the development of the modern detective novel, Trent’s Last Case has received high praise for more than seventy years. G.K. Chesterton (to whom the book was dedicated) called it “the finest detective story of modem times,” while Ellery Queen praised it as “the first great modern detective novel.”

   Later critics have tempered their praise somewhat, and Dilys Winn’s Murder Ink even lists the book in its Hall of Infamy among the ten worst mysteries of all time.

   But there can be no doubt as to the book’s importance, especially in the character of detective Philip Trent. Before Bentley’s creation of Trent, fictional detectives had always been of the infallible, virtually superhuman type exemplified by C. Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes.

   English artist Philip Trent, investigating the murder of a wealthy American financier for a London newspaper, represents the birth of naturalism in the detective story. He falls in love with the victim’s widow (the woman in black of the original American title), who is the chief suspect in the case, and he is far from infallible as a detective.

   Bentley wrote the book as something of an exposure of detective stories, a reaction against the artificial plots and sterile characters of his predecessors. But despite Trent’s fallibility, his detective work is skillful. The ending, with its surprise twists, is eminently satisfying.

   Though slow-paced by modem standards, the book has a graceful prose and quiet humor that have stood up well with the passage of time. Mystery readers were not to see anything remotely like Trent’s Last Case until Agatha Christie’s initial appearance with The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920.

   Happily, Philip Trent’s last case wasn’t really his last, though E. C. Bentley waited twenty-three years before producing a sequel, Trent’s Own Case, written in collaboration with H. Warner Allen.

   This time Trent himself is the chief suspect in a murder case, and if the book falls short of its predecessor, it is still a skillful and attractive novel.

   Bentley followed it with thirteen short stories about Trent, written mainly for the Strand magazine, twelve of which were collected in Trent Intervenes (1938), a classic volume of anthology favorites. A final thriller, Elephant’s Work (1950), is more in the style of John Buchan and is less successful.

         ———
   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.

E. C. BENTLEY – Elephant’s Work: An Enigma.   Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1950. Alfred A. Knopf, US, hardcover. 1950. Also published as The Chill. Dell 704, paperback, 1953.

   E(dmund) C(lerihew) Bentley is one of the magical names in the mystery genre. His book Trent’s Last Case (1912) is usually cited as the birth of the Golden Age of the British detective novel, and certainly the book that carried the genre from the short form practiced by Doyle, Chesterton, and Morrison, to the novels championed by Christie, Sayers, Berkley and others.

   In addition to the classic Trent’s Last Case Bentley also wrote a collection of short stories featuring journalist and amateur sleuth Philip Trent, Trent Intervenes (1938), and a second novel, Trent’s Own Case (1936) with H. Warner Allen, but then was silent in the field until 1950 when he penned Elephant’s Work: An Enigma.

   And enigma is exactly what Elephant’s Work is. Bentley dedicated the work to John Buchan, and it is certainly in the form of a “shocker,” inspired when Bentley expressed his admiration for Buchan’s The Thirty Nine Steps and Buchan suggested Bentley pen his own. The result forty years later was this book. In retrospect he should have ignored the advice and stuck to detective stories.

   The novel begins promisingly. The hero Severn boards a train where he encounters a formidable American and learns there is a dangerous fugitive abroad. As they wait, there is a ruckus coming from a nearby circus train. An elephant has escaped and gone on a rampage. When the elephant goes wild again on the train and causes a wreck, Severn is knocked unconscious.

   When he awakens, he is suffering from amnesia and finds he is the guest of one General da Costa who informs him the name on his passport is Taylor, and while the General, the doctor, and everyone else are all perfectly kind, it soon dawns on Severn he is a virtual prisoner, and his fate is involved with someone known as Nick the Chill who works for a gangster called Farewell Billy.

   In fact it is more than implied by the General and others that Severn is none other than Nick the Chill, a gunman in the employ of Farewell Billy.

   So far so good. The writing is clean and clear and the suspense well calculated. The sense of mystery and Severn/Taylor’s confusion and growing paranoia well drawn. Is he the deadly Chill, or an innocent man being set up to take the fall in some elaborate scheme? Buchan himself could hardly have done it better, especially when Severn/Taylor eludes his protectors and tries to piece the mystery together pursued by mysterious sinister men and unable to go to the police who may believe he is a dangerous killer.

   And then Elephant’s Work takes the most absurd twist you can imagine. I almost hesitate to reveal it, save unwary readers might think Elephant’s Work was a lost classic of the thriller genre only to run aground on the most unlikely reef in the history of the chase and pursuit novel.

   Severn isn’t Taylor, and he isn’t Nick the Chill, he’s the Bishop of Glanister, on a little holiday before taking up his new duties — as the just appointed Archbishop of Canterbury — and the entire conspiracy has been the hastily contrived work of his friends attempting to protect him from any potential bad publicity while he was recovering his memory.

   If at this point you feel the need to throw the book across the room, it is at least a small volume. Of course there is a bit more to it than that. The General himself was a fugitive of sorts who didn’t want Severn’s presence to reveal where he was until his situation was settled, but even that is hardly a satisfying explanation why everyone behaves in the most absurd manner possible and for the most absurd of reasons.

   Ultimately Elephant’s Work is one of those annoying books where if anyone behaved halfway reasonably or made some effort to actually think, the entire facade would come crashing down like the house of cards the author has constructed. You should on general principle avoid any book which the author subtitles an “Enigma.” Chances are he means it.

   This shouldn’t put anyone off reading Bentley’s classic detective novels. While it’s a bit dated, Trent’s Last Case is a genuine classic, and both Trent Intervenes and Trent’s Own Case are exceptional works in the genre.

   Philip Trent is the model for many of the amateur sleuths to come later and especially an early influence on Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey. Bentley was a clever and charming man who gave his own name to the playful four line stanzas known as Clerihews he wrote in school and which were published with illustrations by G.K. Chesterton as Biography For Beginners. Bentley himself was a respected journalist and editorial writer for the Daily Telegraph.

   But be forewarned, Elephant’s Work is one of the single most annoying thrillers ever written, light as a souffle only because it really is filled with hot air. And be careful where you throw it. You might upset an elephant and start the whole absurd business all over again.

   The victim of Trent’s Last Case is the millionaire Sigsbe Manderson, that name being a motive for murder if nothing else, as some wag once pointed out. Trent’s Last Case was filmed twice, the second time as The Woman in Black with Michael Wilding as Trent and Orson Welles as Manderson.

   Despite, or because of that, it’s a dull affair all around. Luckily we were spared the film version of Elephant’s Work — one of those small mercies we should be grateful for.

P. G. WODEHOUSE – Wodehouse on Crime: A Dozen Tales of Fiendish Cunning.

Ticknor & Fields, 1981. International Polygonics Library, hardcover/trade paperback: 1991. Editor: D. R. Bensen, with a foreword by Isaac Asimov.

    P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse–“English literature’s performing flea” (Sean O’Casey) and “the funniest guy I ever read” (H & R Block)–was a master of comedy. Now, tastes vary as to what constitutes humor — the eruption of Krakatoa still provokes a laugh in some circles — but P.G. Wodehouse (“Plum”, or just “You, there”) is generally acknowledged as the best-of-the-best.

    Wodehouse on Crime collects twelve stories from Wodehouse’s massive output of over six decades of writing. At first blush, you wouldn’t associate innocuous P.G.W. with criminal intent, would you (and why are you blushing)? As the late Isaac Asimov asks in his foreword: “Can there be crime in the never-never-land of P.G.W. idyllatry? Certainly! The tales are saturated with it, and even that does not weaken our love … when one stops to think of it, there is rarely a story in the entire Wodehouse opera which doesn’t feature crime.”

    Editor D. R. Bensen adds that “… it would be impossible to present a full collection of those of P. G. Wodehouse’s stories which are concerned with crime. It would be a book of thousands of pages, with a spine about two and a half feet wide, which would make for awkward reading.” He also notes, tongue in cheek, the “baleful” influence that reading the Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand had on the young and impressionable Plum.

    However, be aware that if you’re seeking blood and gore and pick up Wodehouse on Crime, you’re in the wrong venue.

    The first story in the collection, “Strychnine in the Soup,” is typically criminous Wodehouse. Plum’s Underwood portable here dispenses a lively story — a gentle spoof of Golden Age Mystery conventions — centering on Mr. Mulliner’s nephew Cyril, a diffident chap who encounters Miss Amelia Bassett at a play. After an awkward introduction — she grabs his leg — Cyril speaks first:

       “You are evidently fond of mystery plays.”

       “I love them.”

       “So do I. And mystery novels?”

       “Oh, yes!”

       “Have you read Blood on the Bannisters?”

       “Oh, YES! I thought it was much better than Severed Throats.”

       “So did I,” said Cyril. “Much better. Brighter murders, subtler detectives, crisper clues … better in every way.”

    Then, says the author, “The twin souls gazed into each other’s eyes. There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”

    A little later, Amelia asks apropos of nothing: “Tell me … if you were a millionaire, would you rather be stabbed in the back with a paper-knife or found dead without a mark on you, staring with blank eyes at some appalling sight?” — a question we’ve all asked ourselves, I’m sure; but before Cyril can answer, in walks Amelia’s formidable mother …. but read “Strychnine in the Soup” for yourself, and the eleven other stories, too.

    As with H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction, take P.G.W. in small doses for best results — you wouldn’t want to overdo it — in between, say, the disappearance of Mr. Davenheim’s moustache and the murder of Mrs. Twisby-Axleby’s trained albatross in that blood-drenched Golden Age mystery you’re currently reading. (Oh, and by the way, Mr. Mulliner’s solution to The Murglow Manor Mystery, mentioned in passing, is intricate … and completely loopy.)

    To die an embittered misanthrope was the sad fate of too many of our great humorists — Mark Twain, S. J. Perelman, Soren Kierkegaard — but not so with P. G. Wodehouse: He reportedly kept a stiff upper lipper to the end, remaining at his post as the fort was being overrun by mutinous Sepoys and seditious Polyglots, a feather duster in one hand and his Underwood portable in the other.

    That Plum: What a guy!

      Contents:

“Strychnine in the Soup” (1932)
“The Crime Wave at Blandings” (1937)
“Ukridge Starts a Bank Account” (1967; reprinted in EQMM in 1982)
“The Purity of the Turf” (1923)
“The Smile That Wins” (1931)
“The Purification of Rodney Spelvin” (1927)
“Without the Option” (1927)
“The Romance of a Bulb-Squeezer” (1928)
“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (1923)
“The Fiery Wooing of Mordred” (1936)
“Ukridge’s Accident Syndicate” (1926)
“Indiscretions of Archie” (1921)

          Addendum:

    “I seem to keep finding, or I keep seeming to find, trace elements of Doyle in the Wodehouse formulations. I sense a distinct similarity, in patterns and rhythms, between the adventures of Jeeves as recorded by Bertie Wooster and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes as recorded by Dr. Watson ….”

    So states Richard Usborne in his Plum Sauce: A P. G. Wodehouse Companion (2002). He goes on: “The high incidence of crime in the Wodehouse farces, especially the Bertie/Jeeves ones, may be an echo of the Sherlock Holmes stories, too — blackmail, theft, revolver shots in the night (Something Fresh), airgun shots by day (‘The Crime Wave at Blandings’), butlers in dressing-gowns, people climbing in at bedroom windows, people dropping out of bedroom windows, people hiding in bedroom cupboards, the searching of bedrooms for missing manuscripts, cow-creamers and pigs. I am not accusing Wodehouse of having concocted his stories deliberately on Doyle’s lines; I am saying that, of all the authors to whom Wodehouse’s debt shows itself, Doyle is second only to W. S. Gilbert. And Wodehouse would gladly have acknowledged both debts.”

    That bears repeating: “… Doyle is second only to W. S. Gilbert” as an influence on the foremost humorist of the twentieth century.

    Wodehouse admitted as much to a biographer: he “recalled the excitement of waiting for new issues of The Strand Magazine on Dulwich station” containing the latest Holmes adventures.

    Another of Wodehouse’s characters was Psmith (pronounced “smith”). Usborne writes that one of the “strongest influences in the rhythms and locutions of the Psmith language was Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories … Wodehouse’s first major conversational parodist, Psmith, is constantly echoing Sherlock Holmes (indeed, the Holmes Valley of Fear influence probably to some extent suggested the plot of Psmith Journalist). Psmith has verbal ‘lifts’ from Sherlock Holmes, with direct quotations of words and copying of manner”; and Usborne produces several examples from the Psmiths and the Jeeves and Woosters.