In case you missed it, there’s been a good deal of discussion in the comments following Mike Nevins’ most recent column about the possibility that Jack Vance wrote all, most or some of Ellery Queen’s Face to Face (NAL, 1967).

   Mike Doran asked the question, but the possibility was first raised by George Kelley on his blog, which I recommend to you for all sorts of good reasons, including not only sound and solid discussion of books and music of all kinds, but for an abundance of cover art as well.

   My own opinion regarding Face to Face, though, after reading all of the arguments, pro and con? George presents a good but non-conclusive case, but the door’s hardly closed on the matter. The possibility’s still there.

WENDI LEE – Habeas Campus. Worldwide; paperback reprint, February 2003. Hardcover edition: St.Martin’s Press, 2002.

   This one was a disappointment, to put it as mildly as I can. Wendi Lee, also a writer of westerns, is the author of four other mysteries about her Boston-based private eye Angela Matelli, so this drab and unbelievable outing came as quite a surprise, if not an out-and-out shocker.

   It might be the subject matter. Here’s the first line: “If my family had known that I was going up to Vermont to fight zombies, they would have slapped me in an institution so fast it would have made my head spin.”

   There’s a lot of scientific talk in the book about Haitian poisons and antidotes to back up the premise that zombies (the walking undead) indeed do exist, but if you were to check it out on Google, you’d soon discover that the evidence is largely anecdotal and (to say the least) extremely controversial.

   In any case, Lee’s job was to convince me that people can be transformed into zombies, and that they could be put to work in sweatshops or behind the counters at McDonalds. (You’re kidding me, right?) She also wanted me to believe that a body could somehow go missing from a college town’s morgue without a huge outcry being made. Just a prank by some fraternity kids? I don’t think so.

   I also thought that the plan for Angela Matelli, an ex-Marine and nearly 30, to go undercover as a student at Hartmore College, living in an undergraduate dorm, registering just before midterm, was, well, rather uninspired (if not highly unlikely).

   The writing is hardly better. Two paragraphs on page 16 say exactly the same thing. The dialogue is bad. From page 31: “This is why I didn’t tell you everything over the phone. I knew you would jump to the conclusion that this is some sort of weird situation.” On page 40, another two paragraphs (concerning Matelli’s phoney registration as a student) repeat themselves.

   Back in her own stomping grounds, surrounded by family and friends, Angie Matelli’s basic perkiness and good nature might come off to greater advantage. They don’t here, I’m sorry to say.

[UPDATE] 03-30-09.   For more on Angela Matelli and some more on the other books by her creator, Wendi Lee, you might check out the former’s data page on the Thrilling Detective website. Habeas Corpus was her last appearance in print.

   Based on both the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and her dossier on Kevin Burton Smith’s website (above), here’s her complete bibliography:

ANGELA MATELLI. [Wendi Lee]

    Novels:

      The Good Daughter. St. Martin’s 1995.

      Missing Eden. St. Martin’s 1996.
      Deadbeat. St. Martin’s 1999.
      He Who Dies. St. Martin’s 2000.

      Habeas Campus. St. Martin’s 2002.

   Short stories:

       “Salad Days” (Noir, Winter 1994)
       “The Disappearance of Edna Guberman” (Murder For Mother, 1994)
       “Check Up” (Lethal Ladies, 1996)
       “The Other Woman” (Vengeance Is Hers, 1997)

SUSANNAH STACEY – Body of Opinion.

Pocket Books; paperback reprint. First printing, March 1991. Previously published in the US by Summit Books, hardcover, February 1990. Prior UK hardcover edition: Bodley Head, 1988, as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.

   There is a mystery here – and one for which I do not know the answer – and that is why the books written by this pair of British authors appeared under their own names in the UK, but as by a pen name in the US. I haven’t any idea why.

   But since both authors are now in their late 70s or early 80s, and no books by them under any byline have appeared in over ten years, I think it’s safe to assume that their entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, is now complete:

    STACEY, SUSANNAH. Pseudonym of Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey; other pseudonym Elizabeth Eyre.
       Goodbye, Nanny Gray (n.) Summit 1988; UK: Bodley Head, 1987 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.

       A Knife at the Opera (n.) Summit 1989; UK: Bodley Head, 1988 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.
       Body of Opinion (n.) Summit 1990; UK: Bodley Head, 1988 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.
       Grave Responsibility (n.) Summit 1991; UK: Bodley Head, 1990 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.
       The Late Lady (n.) Pocket Books 1993; UK: Barrie, 1992 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.

       Bone Idle (n.) Pocket Books 1995; UK: Century, 1993 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.
       Dead Serious (n.) Pocket Books 1997; UK: Headline, 1995 as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.
       Hunter’s Quarry (n.) Pocket Books 1998; UK: Quarry (Hale 1999), as by Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey.

   As long as Elizabeth Eyre has been mentioned, though, here’s a list of the books the two authors wrote under that name:

EYRE, ELIZABETH. Pseudonym of Jill Staynes & Margaret Storey
       Death of a Duchess (n.) Headline 1991; Harcourt, US, 1992.
       Curtains for the Cardinal (n.) Headline 1992; Harcourt, US, 1993.

       Poison for the Prince (n.) Headline 1993; Harcourt, US, 1994.
       Bravo for the Bride (n.) Headline 1994; St. Martin’s, US, 1995.
       Axe for the Abbot (n.) Headline 1995; St. Martin’s, US, 1996.
       Dirge for a Doge (n.) Headline 1996; St. Martin’s, US, 1997.

   The Eyre books all take place during the Italian Renaissance; the leading character in each is a fellow named Sigismondo, who quoting from Publishers Weekly is a “brilliant deductionist [who] is bald like a monk but who fights like a soldier, and his slack-jawed manservant, Benno, who has an air of ‘amiable idiocy.’”

   That’s a description that makes me want to read these book right away, and if you think I’m joking around when I say that, then you don’t know me very well.

   To the book at hand, though, the third in the series. It’s not clear to me that Superintendent Bone works for Scotland Yard or if he’s only a member of the local police force, but when a murder occurs at a party at a famous rock singer’s mansion, he’s the first to be called in. (One passing reference, on page 29, suggests that this is not the first time he’s met Ken Cryer and his son Jemmy, so that makes me believe he’s local.)

   Dead is a woman with a deeply held secret, and since this time the writer who wrote the blurb for the back cover doesn’t mention it, I won’t either, except to say two things — the first being that part of this sentence is not exactly true, and the second that the secret just mentioned is NOT the list of blackmail targets that’s found later in the victim’s home.

   What that does do is increase the number of possible suspects by a factor of at least ten — theoretically. Since it’s more than likely that the killer was seen at the party, invited or not, it’s still a matter of only dogged police work before his or her identity is uncovered.

   One does hope for more, however, what with all of the clues, false leads, red herrings, misleading directions and crimes on the side that Bone and his crew must sort through. But alas, no, the ending is as straight (and flat) as a string.

   Much more interesting is Bone’s home life, recently widowed with a young precocious young daughter to bring up on his own – but with the possibility of a new love in his life, a woman who is beginning at last to break down the emotional shields he’d set up after the auto accident took his wife away.

   I think the two authors had the Golden Age of Detection in mind when they wrote this book, updated by all kinds of sexual activity that went unreported in mystery fiction of the 1930s. That’s the overall model they’re following at least, but if so, I can’t tell you that they succeeded — although it’s busy, the plot simply isn’t complicated enough.

   On the other hand, the writing is excellent more often than not, with many a nice turn of phrase to complement the events taking place. The superintendent’s incipient love affair — deliberately chaste in comparison to the mystery itself, perhaps — may have been the even greater enticement for readers to be look for the next installment when it appeared.

   Anthony George Armstrong Willis (1897-1972) was a Canadian novelist and playwright best remembered today for his play Ten Minute Alibi and the novels The Room at the Hotel Ambre (also a play) and The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham (adapted for Alfred Hitchcock on television, and as the 1970 film The Man Who Haunted Himself, directed by Basil Deardon).

   From 1927 to 1932, however, he penned five of the best thrillers from the heyday of the form about gentleman crook Jimmie Rezaire and his ‘secret service’ adventures in The Trail of Fear (1927), The Secret Trail (1929), The Trail of the Lotto (1930), The Trail of the Black King (1931), and The Poison Trail (1932).

   In their A Catalogue of Crime Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertzig Taylor said of The Trail of Fear, the first Jimmie Rezaire novel:

    What sets the Rezaire novels apart from the adventures of Bulldog Drummond, Sydney Horler’s Tiger Standish, Wyndham Martin’s Anthony Trent, and the other colorful adventurers of the era was both Armstrong’s sense of drama and literacy and Jimmie’s character.

   The slight, attractive Rezaire was no steel-thewed six-footer laying the enemy about him with a single blow, no brighter buccaneer or durable desperado, but a clever criminal who enjoyed the game of pitting his brains against the police until he allowed himself to be caught and served a term in the pen.

   In The Trail of Fear he’s still a criminal and drawn into a bit of secret service work which suits his nature. In The Secret Trail, just out of prison, he teams up with his one time girl friend Vivienne and Harry Hyslop (aka H.H.), down from Oxford after a forgery scandal, who have been running a shop lifting scam. Jimmie opens a Private Inquiry agency and almost immediately gets drawn into yet another bit of secret service trying to rout a spy ring that has stolen the Murchison bomb sight and plans to smuggle it out of the country to Russia.

   The books are primarily chase and pursuit, aided by Armstrong’s understanding of plot construction and the line of suspense. Unlike many writers of the period Armstrong doesn’t indulge in tiresome blathering and the silly ass dialogue that mars the Drummond books and others from this time frame.

   The Rezaire books are a modern read, with Jimmie a more complex hero than most. Though he loves the game and plays to win he is also attractively human and given to doubts and concerns. He’s also apt to rely on his wits too much, which is where H.H. comes in as a good man with his fists and a gun. H.H. would be the hero of any other series of the era, but Armstrong is careful to show us the limit of the brawn-over-brains type when pitted against the kind of super criminals Jimmie and company cross swords with on a regular basis.

   That said, the books are very much of the period they were written, with the usual foreign spies and drug smugglers (cocaine rings feature in many books of the era, from thrillers to classical detection like Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise), but all done with Armstrong’s superior writing and Rezaire’s more intelligent hero:

   That’s more reasoning and deductive work than in the entire Bulldog Drummond oeuvre. In fact, the fun is watching Jimmie as he thinks and fights his way out the various deadly traps set by the opposition and the chases in fast low slung cars, motor boats, airplanes, and on trains, across rooftops, down foggy roads, through busy London streets, and across the Channel in France.

   Armstrong’s understanding of drama keep the books moving swiftly, while the plot unfolds in snappy dialogue and exposition. Here Jimmie’s ex-partner Long Sam is back from America and out to get Jimmie:

    It should be pointed out that Jimmie is hardly a coward, but having the wit and common sense to know when he’s in danger and the imagination to see what the consequences of his actions might be he’s no steely nerved ice man either. He’s cool and leveled headed in action, but has the good grace to at least sweat the details when he’s bound up in a rug being carried to meet his maker in the trunk of the villain’s speeding salon car.

    For anyone interested in the thrillers of the era, the Armstrong books about Jimmie Rezaire offer a better than usual entry point forgoing the blather of the Drummond books, the bullying of Horler’s various heroes, and the gloating Berkeley Gray’s Norman Conquest was prone to.

   While they don’t have the sheer spirit and joy of the early Saint adventures by Leslie Charteris, they are clever and fast-paced, and cinematic in the best sense. The jingoism, snobbery, casual racism, and other drawbacks of books of the time are played down, and the writing is crisp and literate without the endless false bon homme of so many of Armstrong’s contemporaries.

   Jimmie Rezaire is a complex and interesting protagonist, and one who deserves to be better remembered. Among the armies of Blackshirts, Picaraoons, Gray Phantoms and the like, Jimmie was a breath of fresh air with well-conceived action and a fast pace that modern readers will appreciate, along with a more human and interesting set of heroes than the usual breed of supermen.

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

REZAIRE, JIMMIE    [Anthony Armstrong]
      Jimmie Rezaire (n.) Paul, 1927. US title: The Trail of Fear. Macrae-Smith, 1927.
      The Secret Trail (n.) Methuen, 1928. Macrae-Smith, 1929.
      The Trail of the Lotto (n.) Methuen, 1929. Macrae-Smith, 1930.
      The Trail of the Black King (n.) Methuen, 1931. Macrae-Smith, 1931.
      The Poison Trail (n.) Benn, 1932. No US edition.

   Clifton Adams deserves a checklist and a page to himself, but that will have to wait for another day. One of his several pen names, however, was Clay Randall, and it was as the latter that he wrote a series of “Amos Flagg” westerns.

   The latter came up recently in the comments following my review of one of the Buchanan books, a series also published by Gold Medal.

   The Randall books are relatively scarce, but not very expensive. I’m surprised to see that I have only two of them, both in the Flagg series. Not having read any of them — a deficiency in myself that I will have to remedy soon — I’ll have to rely on James Reasoner’s comment, and I’m quoting: “The Amos Flagg novels are somewhat similar to [the TV series] Gunsmoke, as I recall, but only in the same sense that any town-set Western series with a lawman as the central character would be.”

   Note that not listed here are a dozen or so western stories that Adams wrote as Clay Randall for the pulp magazines, perhaps more. The first two novels were published in hardcover; all of the others are paperback originals. Amos Flagg is the leading character in the last six.

   Six-Gun Boss. Random House, hc, 1952. Pennant P10, pb, 1953. “A range detective works undercover to rid the range of rustlers.”

   When Oil Ran Red. Random House, 1953. Pennant P48, pb, 1954. “A range war in the Cherokee Strip sets cattlemen against oilmen.”

   Boomer. Permabook M3077, pbo, 1957. “An oil worker has to defend his rigs against crooks who have gunned his boss down.”

   The Oceola Kid. Gold Medal s1342, pbo, 1963. Leisure, pb, 1974. “The kid is drawn into a range war.”

   Hardcase for Hire. Gold Medal s1357, pbo, 1963. Belmont Tower, pb, 1974. “A bounty hunter travels to Choctaw country after a man he’s never seen.”

   Amos Flagg — Lawman. Gold Medal k1482, pbo, 1964. Belmont Tower, pb, 1973

   Amos Flagg — High Gun. Gold Medal k1596, pbo, 1965. Belmont Tower, pb, 1973. “Four notorious killers drift into Sangaree County.”

   Amos Flagg Rides Out. Gold Medal k1677, pbo, 1967. Belmont Tower, pb, 1973.

   Amos Flagg � Bushwhacked. Gold Medal d1760, pbo, 1967. Belmont Tower, pb, 1973.

   Amos Flagg Has His Day. Gold Medal D1946, pbo, 1968. Belmont Tower, pb, 1973, as The Killing of Billy Jowett. “The town figures the sheriff is due some recognition on Amos Flagg Day.”

   Amos Flagg — Showdown. Gold Medal D2098, pbo, 1969. Belmont Tower, pb, 1973. “A tinhorn gambler becomes the new town marshal.”

JONAS WARD – Buchanan’s Black Sheep.

Fawcett Gold Medal; paperback original. First printing, February 1985.

   I’m sure I read some of the first Buchanan books when they first came out, but since that was well over 50 years ago, I hope you’ll forgive if I don’t remember many of the details. In fact, you might as well say none of the details, and if you don’t, I will.

   So when I picked this book up in a spare moment last week, it was as if I was reading about the character for the first time, and yet (as it turns out) it was the next to the last of the series. Which must have made Gold Medal a small stack of money over the years – a small stack large enough to keep bringing the books out, even after the original author died, a fellow named William Ard, who was probably better known then as now as a mystery writer, under his own name and a few others.

   Science fiction writer Robert Silverberg completed the sixth one, Brian Garfield pinch hit for the seventh, then William R. Cox wrote all the rest. (For some more on Cox, go here to read my comments about a mystery novel he wrote, a yarn called Death on Location (Signet, 1952).)

   Thanks to Pat Hawk, whose list of the complete series he posted on the WesternPulp Yahoo group, here below is the full Buchanan bibliography. Although some were reprinted later in various large print and library hardcover edition, each of the books appeared first as a paperback original. I’ve added the Gold Medal code numbers and the full dates, whenever I could find them.

      WILLIAM ARD
The Name’s Buchanan. Gold Medal 604, 1956. Filmed as Buchanan Rides Alone.
Buchanan Says No. Gold Medal 662, April 1957.
One-Man Massacre. Gold Medal 742, February 1958.
Buchanan Gets Mad. Gold Medal 803, 1958.

Buchanan’s Revenge. Gold Medal 951, January 1960.

      WILLIAM ARD & ROBERT SILVERBERG
Buchanan On the Prod. Gold Medal 1026, August 1960.

      BRIAN GARFIELD
Buchanan’s Gun. Gold Medal D1926, 1968.

      WILLIAM R. COX
Buchanan’s War. Gold Medal R2396, March 1971.
Trap for Buchanan. Gold Medal T2579, 1972.
Buchanan’s Gamble. Gold Medal T2656, January 1973.

Buchanan’s Siege. Gold Medal T2773, August 1973.
Buchanan on the Run. Gold Medal M2966, May 1974.
Get Buchanan! Gold Medal M3165, December 1974.
Buchanan Takes Over. Gold Medal M3255, May 1975.
Buchanan Calls the Shots. Gold Medal M3429, December 1975.

Buchanan’s Big Showdown. Gold Medal 13553, 1976.
Buchanan’s Texas Treasure. Gold Medal 13812, 1977
Buchanan’s Stolen Railway. Gold Medal 13977, 1978.
Buchanan’s Manhunt. Gold Medal 14119, 1979.
Buchanan’s Range War. Gold Medal 14357, July 1980.
Buchanan’s Big Fight. Gold Medal 14406, May 1981.
Buchanan’s Black Sheep. Gold Medal 12412, February 1985.
Buchanan’s Stage Line. Gold Medal 12847, March 1986.

   As for Black Sheep, the one I read last week, Tom Buchanan, whose travels have taken him all over the West, takes sides in still another range war in this one, this time on the side of a sheep rancher and his family.

   On the other side, a big cattleman intent on running the little guy off the land with any means he sees fit, either fair or foul, mostly foul – in terms of hired gunmen who also think that taking Buchanan down will mean a big boost to their reputation.

   That’s the story in a nutshell, but of course there’s a lot more to it than that. Cox, which is how I’ll refer to the author, is interested in characters, and not only in the major players going head to head over the grasslands, but the women involved, of whom there quite a few, and the Indians – both those who ride renegade against both sides, but others also who for reasons of their own have taken allegiance with the sheepman and his family.

   Siding with Buchanan is his companion – over the course of several/most/all of the books? – a black man named Coco Bean and a good person to have next to you in a fight, whether in the squared circle or on the open plains.

   There is little action for most of the book, only a few small scattered (but often deadly) skirmishes. Buchanan tries his best to end the impasse without gunplay, but with cattle rancher Jake Robertson egged on by his own ego — as well as an outside factor or two — resolving the matter peacefully proves to be next to impossible.

   And in the end, gunplay is what ends (and saves) the day – fast, furious and fatal for many of the participants – but I have a feeling that it may have come too late for many readers of the day, who may have become impatient with too much palavering and the romantic subplots, which are fine as far as they go, but neither are the characters quite deep enough to make this literature as well as a pretty good old-fashioned western.

    At the thought of Graham Greene reading Perry Mason novels the mind boggles, but we now have documentary evidence that he did — and apparently so did his friend and fellow titan of 20th-century English literature, Evelyn Waugh.

    “Maybe we’ve been wrong about Perry Mason,” Greene wrote to Waugh on September 29, 1951. I’ve just been reading an early one — perhaps the first. The Case of the Velvet Claws. He kisses Della [Street] right on the lips & when his client notices the lipstick, he says ‘Let it stay.’ His client’s a girl & at one time he pushes her roughly onto a bed. He also makes her faint by third degree & slaps her with a wet towel to bring her round… [I]n the next case he drinks some red wine with a little French bread.”

    The letter can be found on pp. 191-192 of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, ed. Richard Greene (Norton, 2007) but it’s never mentioned in the Index.

    The three men and the lovely Asian woman arrived a few minutes early that Saturday morning. I was reminded of the invasion of Ellery and Richard Queen’s apartment in the first pages of The King Is Dead (1952) but these invaders — Japanese director Naoto Tanaka and two camera operators and a female interpreter — were on a more prosaic mission: to shoot some footage with me for a documentary on Ellery Queen, one of a series of four that are being made for Japanese TV. (The subjects of the other three are Poe, Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler.)

    They stayed for half a day and as far as I can tell the filming went well. At one point I was asked to name my two favorite Queen novels. This was almost impossible for me even when the director made it clear that I could exclude the four originally published as by Barnaby Ross.

    Since the early EQ novels (1929-35) were so radically different from those of the third period (1942-58), I argued that I should be allowed to pick two from each and chose The Greek Coffin Mystery and The Egyptian Cross Mystery from Period One and Ten Days’ Wonder and Cat of Many Tails from Period Three.

    Tanaka then insisted that I opt for one from each of those periods. When I went for the Coffin and the Cat, he beamed, and said that those were his favorites too. Whatever footage from our interview winds up on the cutting-room floor, I suspect that bit will survive into the finished film. Of which I’ve been promised a DVD.

    Just about everyone knows about the sign on Harry Truman’s desk, but how many know of its possible connection with mystery fiction? The story is briefly told on page 481 of David McCullough’s 1992 biography Truman.

    “In the fall [of 1945, soon after FDR’s death and Truman’s unexpected rise to the presidency], Fred Canfil had given him a small sign for the desk. ‘The Buck Stops Here,’ it said. Canfil had seen one like it in the head office of a federal reformatory in El Reno, Oklahoma, and asked the warden if a copy might be made for his friend the President, and though Truman kept it on his desk only a short time, the message would stay with him permanently.”

    The obvious follow-up questions are: Where did that warden get the sign? Was he or the person who had it made for him aware that a sign with an almost identical message figures in a mystery novel published just a few years before FDR’s death?

    Five Alarm Funeral (1942) was the first novel in what became a long series about New York fire marshal Ben Pedley, written by super-prolific pulp writer Prentice Winchell (1895-1976) under his most frequently used pseudonym, Stewart Sterling.

    At the beginning of Chapter Three, Pedley tells his assistant Barney that on the arson murder he’s presently investigating the Police Commissioner “has to pass the buck to somebody.” Barney: “You’d ought to have a new sign up on the door there….” Pedley: “What kind of a sign?” Barney: “‘The Buck’ — it oughta read — ‘Stops Right Here.'”

    Perhaps Truman’s next biographer will look into the connection, if any, between this passage and the most famous sign in recent presidential history.

ELIZABETH GUNN – Crazy Eights.

Worldwide, paperback reprint; March 2006. Hardcover edition: Forge, February 2005.

   This isn’t the first appearance of Jake Hines, whose case this is, by any means — and I’ll get back to that in a minute — but this is the first one that he’s has been involved in that I’ve happened to read. So before starting the review itself, I’ll begin with some small bits (or bytes) of information.

   Hines, who tells the story, is the chief of detectives in Rutherford, Minnesota, and the woman who’s living with him is Trudy Hanson, a forensic scientist at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul, about eighty miles away. They must have gotten together earlier in the series, since the story begins with them well-ensconced on their farm, located halfway between their two jobs.

   They get along well, and as you probably have realized without my telling you, a certain amount of shop talk takes place at home – or in other words, all the crime news in the area seemingly filters one way or another through one of them.     FOOTNOTE 1.

   Here’s a long quote to help further this introduction along, from page 10, which is about where the story itself begins, as the reader finds Jake being woken up at four in the morning:

   And as I promised, here are the earlier entries in the series:

      Triple Play. Walker, hc, September 1997. Dell, pb, November 1998.

      Par Four. Walker, hc, December 1998. Dell, pb, December 2000.

      Five Card Stud. Walker, hc, May 2000. Worldwide, pb, July 2001.

      Six-Pound Walleye. Walker, hc, June 2001. Worldwide, pb, July 2002.

      Seventh-Inning Stretch. Walker, hc, June 2002. Worldwide, pb, June 2003.

      “Too Many Santas” A short novel (or long novella) contained in How Still We See Thee Lie, no editor stated, Worldwide, November 2002.

      Crazy Eights. Forge, hc, February 2005. Worldwide, pb, March 2006.

   Some questions remain to be answered. For example, what happened to the “first two” books in the series? Will they ever be told?

   Also notice the short gap in continuity and the save by Forge Books when Walker canceled all of their genre fiction categories, I believe, including mysteries, or is there more of a story there? Gunn’s paperback publisher at the time, Worldwide, an imprint of Harlequin, must have helped the cause in the interim, publishing a non-numerical shorter entry in the series as they did.

   But in any case, there is some history behind the characters, and when you come in late, you have to get used to dealing with it really quickly. But the author does it right, and the paragraph quoted above is a good part of what does it.

   What is unusual –- I can’t think of another instance –- is that the story that follows –- the one about the case that Jake is called out on (at four in the morning) –- jumps right from Chapter One and into Chapter Two, which begins with the courtroom trial of the second of two small-time hoodlums who kidnapped and killed Shelley Gleason in Chapter One. Time elapsed: a year and a half later.

   What happened in the meantime? In a very interesting way of telling the story, Gunn lets the reader sort it all out through the ensuing testimony. This is not all that is unique. When the trial is over and the defendant is found –- well, no, I can’t tell you that, but what I can tell you that there is a confrontation between the accused Benny Niemeyer and one of the prosecuting attorneys that has never happened in a work of fiction before, ever.     FOOTNOTE 2.

   This is on page 102, and *whew* there are over 160 pages to go. Perhaps it suffices to say that medium-sized towns like Rutherford MN have a lot of secrets on both sides of the track, and on occasion there are oodles of opportunity for crossover. Most of the rest of the book plays itself out with relatively straight-forward plotting and story-telling. Unless, of course, you consider a relatively innocent skateboard as (also) being a relatively uncommon clue in the annals of detective fiction, as I do.

FOOTNOTE 1. I was curious about Rutherford, so I looked up the town on Google. No such place. The first two references to Rutherford MN were directly related to Elizabeth Gunn’s series of books, which may give Ms. Gunn her own two moments of fame right then and there (or here and now).

FOOTNOTE 2. What I said I couldn’t tell you is the first thing out of the mouth of the blurb-writer who’s responsible for describing the book on the back cover. Do I feel dumb, or what?

[UPDATE] 03-20-09. Since this review was written, there has been one more book in the Jake Hines series, perhaps the last?

      McCafferty’s Nine. Severn House, hc, 2007; trade pb, 2008.

   And the author has started a new series, one with Tucson police detective Sarah Burke as the primary protagonist:

      Cool in Tucson. Severn House, hc & trade pb, 2008.

      New River Blues. Severn House, hc & trade pb, 2009.

B. J. OLIPHANT – A Ceremonial Death.   Fawcett Gold Medal; paperback original; first printing, January 1996.

   It was common knowledge, even while the books were being published, that science fiction writer Sheri S. Tepper was also the author of two series of mystery stories, each under a different pen name. The ones she wrote as A. J. Orde featured a Denver CO interior designer and antique dealer named Jason Lynx. There were six of those, starting with A Little Neighborhood Murder in 1989, and ending with A Death of Innocents in 1997.

   In between the Orde books, Tepper was also busily writing six Shirley McClintock mysteries. For these she used the name B. J. Oliphant. This is the fifth of these, with one more to follow, Here’s to the Newly Dead, which came out in 1997. Now in her 70s, Tepper is still actively writing science fiction and fantasy. All of her books in that genre appear to be highly regarded, but I think she’s left the mystery field behind her.

   In Ceremonial Death Shirley McClintock is living in New Mexico, but references to previous adventures suggest that the earlier mysteries under her belt occurred while making her home in Colorado. She’s tall, in her 60s, has a live-in male friend named J.Q. — I have no other details on what their domestic arrangement is precisely — and together they’re the guardian of a very pretty high school girl named Allison. Shirley seems to have been a rancher lady in her past , but they have only a few animals now and accommodations for tourists.

   First to die in this book is a naive sort of woman who’d made a living as a New Age mystic, complete with Native American trimmings. When Shirley finds the body, she discovered that the dead woman had been mutilated in much the same way as some recent slaughtered cattle.

   Being close to Santa Fe — and the nest of ultra-believers living there — the all-but-brain-dead (elected) sheriff is convinced that men (if not creatures) from outer space are responsible. Obviously too many people have been watching too many episodes of The X Files.

   The next girl to die is a classmate of Allison’s, but she was certainly no friend — rich family, too precocious by far — but with Allison in the mix, Shirley has even more reason to get involved, and involved she gets.

   If using this book as a sample of size one can be acceptable practice, Tepper’s prose (as a mystery writer) seems more than a little uneven. Long stretches of strong storytelling are interrupted every so often by a page or two of bad (stilted) dialogue, but then it continues on with looks (much more convincing) into Shirley’s relationships with J.Q. and her surrogate daughter — all combined with a heady brew of western-style philosophies and opinions on popularity, politics, creationists and everything else in the world, and what’s right in it, and what’s not.

   That the mystery seems to get short-shrifted should not seem too remarkable. Whatever a shrift is. But when, say, something like someone’s brake lines are found cut on page 120, shouldn’t warning flares go off right then and there, and not over 100 pages later?

   In spite of the gory opening, categorize this one as a cozy, an agreeable one, and read it for the good parts, of which there are many — especially if you agree with Shirley.

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

OLIPHANT, B. J. Pseudonym of Sheri S. Tepper, 1929- ; other pseudonym A. J. Orde. Series character: Shirley McClintock, in all.

      Dead in the Scrub (n.) Gold Medal, 1990.
      The Unexpected Corpse (n.) Gold Medal, 1990.
      Deservedly Dead (n.) Gold Medal, 1992.
      Death and the Delinquent (n.) Gold Medal, 1993.

      Death Served Up Cold (n.) Gold Medal, 1994.

      A Ceremonial Death (n.) Gold Medal, 1996.
      Here’s to the Newly Dead (n.) Gold Medal, 1997.

L. A. G. STRONG – All Fall Down. Collins Crime Club, UK, hc, 1944. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hc, 1944 (shown). Canadian paperback: White Circle #221, 1945.

    All Fall Down is much the same kind of book [as Death and the Night Watches, by Vicars Bell, reviewed here earlier] and even better.

    [That book was described, in part, as “another of that enjoyable sub-genre, the English village murder, chock-a-block with well-distinguished local characters.”]

    Inspector Ellis McKay has just finished a difficult case, so his friend, used-bookseller Paul Gilkison, takes him with him to appraise the library of Matthew Baildon, bibliophile and domestic tyrant.

    Unfortunately, before they are well-started, someone assists Baildon’s overloaded bookshelves in collapsing on his head. McKay takes over the investigation and proves himself to be, in addition to a bookworm, a trencherman, happy napper, and composer, as well as a shrewd judge of human nature.

    Here the brow-beaten woman is the wife and the daughter’s hope for escape the university, not marriage. But these two have a wonderful auntie to comfort them, and the girl has two tutors competing for the chance to improve her mind — an excessively-healthy male with an invalid wife and a female with the need to dramatize her humdrum life. Turns out [deleted] did it, but the unlikeliness of this after years of abjection did not spoil my pleasure in what went before.

    In this case, McKay becomes friends with his local counterpart, Inspector Broadstreet, with whom he has later adventures that I’m looking forward to reading.

   Bibliographic data. Strong’s entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, includes five novels and five short story collections. Inspector McKay appears in four of the novels. Of these, the ones in which Inspector Broadstreet also appears, as Bill suggests, is unfortunately not noted. Of the author himself, L. A. G. Strong was born in 1896, and he passed away in 1958. Al Hubin also says: “Born in Plympton; educated at Brighton College and Oxford; author, editor, journalist, and reviewer; Assistant Master at Oxford.”

McKAY, INSP. (Chief Insp.) ELLIS     [L. A. G. Strong]
      All Fall Down (n.) Collins, 1944.
      Othello’s Occupation (n.) Collins, 1945. US title: Murder Plays an Ugly Scene. Doubleday, 1945.
      Which I Never (n.) Collins, 1950.

      Treason in the Egg (n.) Collins, 1958.