JIM WRIGHT – The Last Man Standing. Carroll & Graf, hardcover, 1991.   Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club; 3-in-1 edition.

   This is the second of two crime thrillers written by Jim Wright, both published in hardcover by Carroll & Graf. His first one, The Last Frame (1990), also came out in paperback, but I can’t find any record that this one ever did.

   Which is a shame, because it’s more than a decent entry in the “serial killer” sub-category of thriller fiction, and a strong case could be made for it to be cross-classified in the “hard-drinking newspaper reporter” branch of detective fiction as well — and what’s more, with real detection. If the book had come out in paperback, maybe its author would have more than the tiny dual listing in Hubin and be all-but-unknown anywhere else.

   The reporter is Stuart Reed, who literally stumbles across the mutilated body of Diana Diaz while jogging. While he’s only the New Jersey paper’s environmental columnist, Reed becomes obsessed with the story, even in the face of what seems to be official indifference, then losing his job (and not so incidentally) his wife when he pushes too far, allowing the case to subsume his life completely.

   While getting the basic elements of the workaday world exactly right, Wright might not be the most polished writer in the world, sometimes describing the most mundane everyday activities in too much detail: on pages 38-39, Reed comes home to his Manhattan apartment and we’re told that he uses two keys in the front entrance, one for his mailbox (empty) and then three on his front door. Parking lots are described in close-up: “a square lot, with a row of diagonal parking spaces on both sides…”

   But caring about detail comes in handy later on, when the thriller aspect takes an abrupt about-face and morphs itself into the fair-play tale of detection alluded to earlier. All of the details jar into place, and suddenly this double-faceted crime thriller becomes a small never-discovered treasure in the rough.

[UPDATE]  11-20-08.   Revised: 11-25-08.    Although The Last Man Standing never came out in paperback, copies of the hardcover are not hard to find online. (What is strange is that while I have a copy myself, there’s only one DBC edition listed on ABE. Why should the book club edition be scarcer than the First Edition? I have no idea.)

   In my original comment I talked about the fact that I wasn’t able to come up with a cover image for the book. That’s been rectified, as you will have seen. At the time, all I had to show you was a copy scan of Jim Wright’s first book which you see here to the left.

   As I said earlier, all he wrote were the two mysteries; in the late 1970s he also wrote two non-fiction books about sports stars Bobby Clarke and Mike Schmidt.

   His full name is James Bowers Wright, and Contemporary Authors says that he started working for several New Jersey newspapers in 1972. Working his way up the ladder, he eventually became the metropolitan assignment editor for the Bergen Record, and that’s the connection that helped me track him down. He answered a few questions that I asked, and he was also kind enough to send me the cover image you see at the top of the page.

   Here’s his reply to the email I sent him:

[UPDATE #2] 11-23-08.  For a complete list of all 27 weeks’ worth of “forgotten books,” see Patti Abbott’s latest post on her website, where all this started. It’s a spectacular array of good reading, that’s for sure.

GEORGE C. CHESBRO – Shadow of a Broken Man.   Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints: Signet, 1978; Dell, 1987.

   This is the first Chesbro novel featuring Dr. Robert Fredrickson, a professor of criminology who doubles as a private detective, is a dwarf, and is known to his friends as Mongo. A onetime top circus performer, Mongo possesses some very useful skills for tight situations, among them tumbling and gymnastic ability and a black belt in karate.

   While preparing to leave for vacation in Acapulco, Mongo is approached by Mike Foster, who married the widow of famous architect Victor Rafferty. Foster’s wife, Elizabeth, happened to see a photograph of a new museum in an architectural magazine, and is convinced that the design is the work of her husband.

   But Victor died five years ago, and the museum’s design is listed as the work of a man named Richard Patern. Victor Rafferty died from a fall into an open smelting furnace, so there was essentially no body to be recovered, and Elizabeth is haunted by the conviction that Rafferty is still alive. Mike Foster’s marriage is suffering; he wants Mongo to clear up this matter so he and Elizabeth can get on with their lives.

   Mongo assumes there won’t be too much complication here, so he postpones his vacation and accepts the case. His first move is to consult professor of design Franklin Manning, resident architectural genius, who flatly tells Mongo that the museum is Rafferty’s design, without question.

   And suddenly Mongo is involved in something much more complex and dangerous than he imagined. Russian and French agents are part of the package, as are U.N. Secretary Rolfe Thaag and more than one victim of Communist brutality.

   The writing here is literate and fast-paced, the plot is intricate, the concept is bizarre yet entirely plausible. This is a well-spiced recipe that results in haute cuisine.

   Chesbro is also the author of City of Whispering Stone (1978), An Affair of Sorcerers (1979), and The Beasts of Valhalla (1985), which likewise feature Mongo.

         ———
   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.

GEORGE C. CHESBRO, R. I. P.   On a sad note to go with this review, news of George Chesbro’s passing is making the rounds of the mystery fiction blogs today. The best reportage, as usual, is on The Rap Sheet, including some of Jeff Pierce’s personal remembrances of the author.  — Steve

   Joe Gall is the Cadillac of hardass spies. Sure, Matt Helm can crush a foe’s kidneys with a crowbar, but would Helm allow himself to be turned into a heroin addict as Gall does in The Death Bird Contract (Fawcett, 1966), surely one of the best books James Atlee Phillips (who writes the Joe Gall series as “Philip Atlee”) ever wrote?

   I started the Joe Gall series early on with The Green Wound (Fawcett, 1963) and The Paper Pistol Contract (Fawcett, 1966). I was immediately impressed by the quality of the writing:

   We find out later that the man was carrying nearly half a kilo of uncut heroin in his butt, sealed in pliofilm and insertion surgically assisted. However, something went wrong: the bundle busted and a pound of pure heroin blasted into the tissues of the man’s body without warning. And the description of the event is graphic, yet at the same time poetic.

   The other trademark of the Joe Gall series is detailed references to local food, buildings, streets, and exotic customs. The reason is that James Atlee Phillips visited each of the sites of the novels in the series, many times writing the first draft on location to be sure to capture faithfully the local flavor. (Details of Phillips’ writing habits were related to me by a friend of his, Tom Van Zandt.)

   From Van Zandt’s information, Joe Gall is a projection of Phillips’ own fiery personality and style. Early in the series, Phillips has a minor character describe Joe Gall’s role that remains more or less consistant throughout the series:

   Joe Gall has class. He works only on a contract basis for large sums of money and spends most of his time in a fabulous mountain retreat in the Ozarks. He’s similar in style and flair to that legendary Western “consultant,” Paladin.

   In terms of quality, I like the first four books in the series best. The Skeleton Coast Contract (Fawcett, 1968) features my favorite Joe Gall scene: Joe’s staked out on an anthill, and I assure you the description will make you itchy and wiggly for weeks. I have a certain amount of sentimental fondness for The Canadian Bomber Contract (Fawcett, 1971) because my home town is Niagara Falls, New York and I appreciate the fact that Phillips took the time to write an adventure taking place in my backyard and get it right.

   I recommend all the books in the Joe Gall series without reservation, but you have my preferences. The later books seemed to lack vitality and The Last Domino Contract (Fawcett, 1976) has Joe Gall calling it quits. Whether Phillips brings Gall out of retirement remains to be seen; however we have several top quality books to continue to enjoy while they remain in print.

      Bibliographic data: The JOE GALL books. [Expanded from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

   Pagoda, as by James Atlee Phillips. Macmillan, hardcover, 1951. Bantam 1055, paperback, 1952. [Burma]. Joe Gall is an independent soldier of fortune.

All later books are paperback originals:

   The Green Wound. Gold Medal k1321, July 1963 [New Orleans, LA] Joe Gall is now a semi-retired contract agent for the CIA. Reprinted as The Green Wound Contract, Gold Medal, 1967.
   The Silken Baroness. Gold Medal k1489, 1964 [Canary Islands] Reprinted as The Silken Baroness Contract, Gold Medal, 1966
   The Death Bird Contract. Gold Medal d1632, 1966 [Mexico]
   The Paper Pistol Contract. Gold Medal d1634, 1966 [Tahiti]

   The Irish Beauty Contract. Gold Medal d1694, 1966 [Bolivia]
   The Star Ruby Contract. Gold Medal d1770, 1967 [Burma]
   The Rockabye Contract. Gold Medal d1901, 1968 [Caribbean]
   The Skeleton Coast Contract. Gold Medal D1977, 1968 [Africa]
   The Ill Wind Contract. Gold Medal R2087, 1969 [Indonesia]
   The Trembling Earth Contract. Gold Medal, 1969 [U.S. South]
   The Fer-de-Lance Contract. Gold Medal, Jan 1971 [Caribbean]
   The Canadian Bomber Contract. Gold Medal T2450, August 1971 [Montreal, Canada]
   The White Wolverine Contract. Gold Medal T2508, Dec 1971 [Vancouver, Canada]
   The Kiwi Contract. Gold Medal T2530, Feb 1972 [New Zealand]
   The Judah Lion Contract. Gold Medal T2608, Sept 1972 [Ethiopia]
   The Spice Route Contract. Gold Medal T2697, April 1973 [Middle East]
   The Shankill Road Contract. Gold Medal T2819, Sept 1973 [Ireland]

   The Underground Cities Contract. Gold Medal M2925, Feb 1974 [Turkey]
   The Kowloon Contract. Gold Medal M3028, August 1974 [Hong Kong]
   The Black Venus Contract. Gold Medal M3187, Feb 1975 [South America]
   The Makassar Strait Contract. Gold Medal P3477, March 1976 [Indonesia]

   The Last Domino Contract. Gold Medal 1-3587, 1976 [Korea]

Note: In a chart created by R. Jeff Banks accompanying the first appearance of this article, he points out that the background of the unnamed hero of The Deadly Mermaid by James Atlee Phillips (Dell 1st Edn #26, pb, 1954) is very similar to that of Joe Gall’s.

ARTHUR W. UPFIELD – An Author Bites the Dust.

Angus & Robertson, Australia, hardcover, 1948. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hc, 1948. Many reprint editions, both hardcover and soft, including Angus & Robertson, UK-Australia, hc, 1967; and Scribner’s, US, ppbk, August 1987 (both shown).

   The most under-rated writer of detective fiction is certainly Arthur Upfield. His books provide levels of characterization and description of places exceptional in the mystery. Most importantly, his half-aborigine Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte can and does detect.

   Moreover, Mr. Upfield did not, to my knowledge, write a bad book. For the first few chapters, though, of An Author Bites the Dust, I thought he had; for Mr. Upfield had difficulty breathing life into the dry husks of the coterie of colonial litterateurs led by the soon-to-die Mervyn Blake, who see their purpose in life as shaping the future of Australian literature.

   Fortunately, other characters appear and Bonaparte is able through questioning to make some of the remaining writers come to life. It turns out the unenviable Blake met his death from poisoning by coffin dust (i.e. ptomaine spores latent in the dust we all become — would it work?) for a motive so well-wrought, all-encompassing, and completely literary that description would take pages.

   Let my “fair play” in not disclosing the murderer serve as an additional incentive for those of you who have not, to read this excellent book. Cat fanciers will want to know that the clue that starts Bony on the path to success is delivered to him by a cat.

   Other thoughts: I wonder if the mystery writer Clarence B. Bagshott who appears here in a minor role was an intended or sub-conscious self-portrayal of the author? I wonder also if the American compositor and proofreader thought the “De Cameron” (p. 18) was a clan of Scots who emigrated to France?

   Most of all, I wonder — as I’ve wondered while reading each of Mr. Upfield’s books — how a half-caste named Napoleon Bonaparte could move through the generally upper-middle-class society of Australia of the 1930’s and 40’s with so few comments about his name (one here) and without a snub due to his ancestry (In this book he even poses briefly as a South African (!) journalist.)

CARTER BROWN – The Deadly Kitten.  Signet D3345; paperback original, December 1967. Horwitz #141, Australia, ppbk, July 1968.

   It now seems apparent that the mystery writing career of Australian Alan G. Yates has taken on a unique significance. Although Yates is still active under his real name in the science fiction field, as “Carter Brown” he produced 179 short novels between 1953-76, and it now appears that these books comprise not only one of the longest, but quite possibly the last series of hardboiled mysteries told in the humorous, decidedly tongue-in-cheek vein which was also, once upon a time, the specialty of such practitioners as Robert Leslie Bellem, Jonathan Latimer and Richard S. Prather.

   It’s too bad. There’s definitely a place for happy go-lucky, good-natured mayhem played more for smiles than anything else, and while I’m not forgetting Donald E. Westlake, there’s simply no one like Brown writing in the private eye field these days. And that’s a pity.

   Every Carter Brown novel was “typical.” One of Brown’s many series characters would take on an incredibly complex case populated by any number of sexy ladies and bad-ass men — all of whom generally hated each other’s guts and never missed an opportunity to say so, quite humorously at times — and while ratiocination was never the forte of Brown’s heroes, the case would always be satisfactorily wrapped up no later than page 128.

   The Deadly Kitten stars Hollywood “industrial consultant” Rick Holman — a hard drinking wise-cracker of a private eye of the Dan Turner/Shell Scott school — who takes an assignment from macho movie star Leonard Reid to try and quiet down one of Reid’s ex-live-in male lovers who is going around town making waves about Reid’s sexual habits.

   In most ways this too is a “typical” Brown, but Kitten is distinguished by a singularly colorful cast, some great dialogue and, for a change, the solving of a really twisty puzzle by actual deductive reasoning. And nobody has ever packed more plot twists into 125 pages, and still maintained narrative pace, like Carter Brown. The book is fast, lightweight and engaging.

   Recommended as top drawer “Brown” as well as a fine paperback quickie for those who like to read them at one sitting.

WILLIAM G. TAPPLY – The Dutch Blue Error. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1985.

   The Dutch Blue Error is the second book in the Brady Coyne series. Coyne, a lawyer to Boston Brahmins, finds detective work is often what his clients want. Since Coyne is divorced, has an apartment overlooking Boston Harbor and loves to fish and play golf, he likes the money he gets from his clients and usually obliges them.

   In his second book, we meet Xerxes (“Zerk”) Garret, a young black law graduate who substitutes for Coyne’s pregnant secretary while studying for the bar exams. Oliver Hazard Perry Weston summons Coyne to help him quietly buy a duplicate of the Dutch Blue Error, a stamp owned by Weston and thought to be one of a kind.

   Weston takes great pride in his stamp collection, especially since being confined to his house in a wheelchair. Tormented by the thought that his stamp might not be unique (Weston is not an attractive person, treating his adoring son badly), he asks Coyne to act as “his legs” and locate the stamp, validate it, and then negotiate payment.

   Coyne reluctantly agrees, and these chores lead him to some unusual characters as he keeps appointments in the Combat Zone, Harvard Square and the Peabody Museum, where he and Zerk have a body on their hands.

   The police quickly settle on Zerk as the likely murderer, and suddenly Coyne has an increased desire to straighten out the question of the Dutch Blue Error and clear Zerk. The book is well plotted and the ending is both unpredictable and realistic.

   Death at Charity’s Point, the first in the Coyne series and winner of the 1984 Scribner’s Crime Novel Award, features Coyne’s investigation of the apparent suicide of a wealthy client’s son at a liberal boarding school. While this is an intriguing case, Coyne’s politics and sensitivities are vague. In The Dutch Blue Error, he is more clearly defined and likable.

   Brady Coyne also makes a cameo appearance in The Penny Ferry by Rick Boyer.

         ———
   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.

RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Lady in the Lake.   Alfred A. Knopf, 1943. Armed Services Edition #838, paperback, 1945. Pocket 389, ppbk, 1946. Many other reprint editions, both hardcover and soft.

   I was really disappointed upon rereading this one for the first time in fifteen years and found it far from the “masterpiece” which Barzun and Taylor dubbed in it their Catalogue of Crime. According to Frank MacShane’s Life of Raymond Chandler, Chandler was in the dumps when he wrote this, his fourth novel, plagued by personal hassles as well as anxiety over the war in Europe.

   It shows. The first half of the book is paced quite nicely and in the first two chapters in particular hero Philip Marlowe is in top wisecracking form. But for the most part the verve and spark of Chandler’s best work are sadly lacking.

   By any standards other than Chandler’s own this could pass as a minor but competent private eye novel. But it is Chandler, and here he’s just going through the paces. All of his stock characters and situations are on hand: the brutal cop, the honest but tired cop, the good girl, the mystery girl (two, in fact), Marlowe at constant odds with the law and his own client, being lied to in his search for a missing wife by everyone, every step of the way.

   But the writing is peculiarly flat. The plotting, never Chandler’s strong point, is slipshod. The murderer’s identity is glaringly obvious. Marlowe’s solution of the case is unsubstantiated guesswork. The solution itself makes not an iota of sense, raising far more questions than it answers.

   But, most irritating of all, a number of very skillfully drawn characters — some quite integral to the story — appear briefly, speak their lines, are talked about for the rest of the book, but never appear on stage again, giving the whole project an uncomfortable, vaguely lopsided effect.

   Chandler is my favorite Eye writer, the yardstick by which I measure all others who work the genre, and it hurts like hell to say these things. But it’s hard to believe that The Lady in the Lake is by the same man who gave us such milestone works, such true masterpieces, as Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye.

SUSAN KANDEL. Shamus in the Green Room, 2006.
      —, Christietown, 2007.

   Cece Caruso, a biographer of mystery writers and an amateur sleuth, after cases involving research connected with her biographies of Erie Stanley Gardner and the writers of the Nancy Drew series, turns her attention to Dashiell Hammett and Agatha Christie.

   In Shamus, after her biography of Hammett has been published to some acclaim, she’s hired by the producer of a new film about Hammett to tutor the actor who will play the writer/detective.

   In my reviews of the two earlier books I noted that that Cece was often as much concerned about her clothes as her sleuthing, but that’s definitely not true this time. There’s an occasional sign of Cece’s clothes buying addiction, but the focus is definitely on the Hammett connection and the novel is all the stronger for it.

   Christietown is something of a return to the clothes conscious Cece of the first two books, but she’s having some trouble finishing her biography of Christie, bogging down in the puzzling segment of Christie’s life that, in 1926, found her fleeing her marriage and the subject of a week-long manhunt that received extraordinary media coverage.

   Eventually, her breakthrough in understanding this facet of Christie’s life also leads to a breakthrough in her understanding of the murders connected with a real estate development, a Christietown that is attempting to recreate a village from Christie’s era in the Mojave desert.

   This is currently one of my favorite series and while there’s no teaser for a fifth novel, I’m hoping that’s not a sign that the series has ended.

   Bibliographic data:

      SUSAN KANDEL

I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason. William Morrow, hc, May 2004. Avon, pb, March 2005.

Not a Girl Detective. Willliam Morrow, hc, May 2005. Avon, pb, March 2006.

Shamus in the Green Room. William Morrow, hc, May 2006. Avon, pb, May 2007.

Christietown. Harper, trade pb, May 2007. Avon, pb, June 2008.

      >>>

[UPDATE]   The chances that there will be more books in the series are awfully slim, or so it seems. You can find Susan Kandel’s website here, but only the four books are mentioned, and her calendar of events is all but empty after June of this year.   — Steve

[UPDATE #2]  11-18-08.  Good news, straight from Susan Kandel herself:

  Hi Steve,

   Thanks for the note — there is indeed a fifth Cece book, called Vertigo a Go Go, which will be out early next fall (2009), again from Harper. I took a year off to rest (!), but the series continues! I think the problem is I haven’t updated my website in years (literally), and I’m planning to get to that this fall so readers have a sense of what’s coming up for me.

WILLIAM G. TAPPLY – Cutter’s Run.  St. Martin’s Press; paperback reprint, November 2002. Hardcover first edition: St. Martin’s, 1998.

   Tapply has been writing the Brady Coyne books for a long time, since 1984, and for some reason he’s still not the big name in the mystery field I think he should be after nearly 20 years. Note that it took almost four and a half years for this one to move from hardcover to paperback. By any standard that’s a long time to be kept on hold.

   I think that Tapply may be working against the grain — that the current market is demanding fluffier and fleecier female fiction, while the machio-er and male-oriented mysteries are left to manage for themselves.

   But to the case at hand. Coyne is a low-profile Boston attorney who seems to run into mysterious doings wherever he goes. This time it’s swastikas in Maine, a poisoned dog, and a reclusive African-American lady who then disappears. Tapply’s prose is deceptively smooth, like the surface of a quiet pond suddenly revealing gnarly snags below. One of his greatest assets as a writer is the shivery sort of anticipation he produces when you (think you) know what’s coming.

   Coyne has been spending his weekends in the small, rustic, backwoods country town of Garrison with a lady friend named Alex. From the outside they seem to be very compatible, but there are hints of trouble there too. Besides the mystery, a good deal of the rest of the story is about a huge communications gap between the sexes that — from a sympathetic male point of view — mystifies me as much as it does Brady Coyne.

   Tapply is a smooth, experienced writer, but where he may be the weakest, or so it seemed to me this time around, is in the detective end of things. Coyne gets the local sheriff interested in the case easily enough — in fact, he even makes Coyne a deputy — but why is it that he (Coyne) is the only one to investigate the missing woman’s home? Brady also does a lot of other detective work, but the case is solved by what amounts (in retrospect) as near happenstance.

   So is this what’s holding Tapply back? He’s good, but he’s just never found the key to what would make him great? Or is it — and this is what I hinted at this before — that he’s a male writer in a field where the Sisters in Crime are now the leading edge?

[UPDATE] 11-17-08.   Bill Tapply and Brady Coyne are still going strong, I’m happy to say, no matter what I wrote back then, with books and more adventures showing up on the shelves at Borders on a regular basis. I still don’t think he gets the recognition he deserves, not nearly as much as he should have, after a career as long as his — and it’s not over yet!

GARY PHILLIPS – Shooter’s Point.

Kensington/Dafina; paperback reprint, Oct 2002. Hardcover first edition: Kensington, October 2001.

   If you’re looking for an over-the-top medium-to-hardboiled mystery crime novel starring a statuesque black ex-Las Vegas showgirl as detective, look no further. This is it, the second in the series of adventures of Martha Chainey, courier extraordinaire to the city’s high-rollers, hustlers, players and gamblers.

   While it might be better to read the previous book, High Hand, first, most of the action of the first book is recapped well enough to get the gist of this followup adventure. Which is a Good Thing, as the action more or less picks up where the previous one left off.

   And this one begins with the assassination of one of two boxers during a championship bout taking place in a casino arena, then continues with the simultaneous theft of money that is not supposed to exist from a secret underground room — Phillips thinks locked rooms are an Agatha Christie specialty, but who remembers John Dickson Carr these days — and when Chainey finds her good friend, female boxer Moya Reese, murdered in a shabby motel room, she starts to take it personally.

   Also involved is a hugely popular rap star, King Diamond, a cult of positive-thinking Nymnatists who have been sponsoring the murdered boxer, and various and sundry other casino owners and scam-artists. Martial law is imposed, Jaguars are wrecked by runaway tanks, and the usual Vegas night life goes on.

   If you turn your mind off and go with the flow, Phillips has a take-no-prisoners approach to crime fiction that will keep you jazzed for hours. It’s not a detective mystery, I warn you, though. Any attempt to keep track of who knows what when and why (or why not) is doomed to failure. In the over 24 hours it takes Martha Chainey to call the case closed, she does not sleep at all, and in her wanderings here and there across Las Vegas, everywhere she goes she just happens to meet someone else involved in the plot.

   Personally I hit page 118 and realized I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, kept on going and discovered it didn’t really matter. Sound like your kind of novel? If you’ve read this far, I’ll bet it is.

[UPDATE] 11-16-08.   I’m going to have to find my copy of High Hand, which I still haven’t read. (I always seem to read books and their sequels in the wrong order.)

   While these are the only books that Martha Chainey has appeared in, she also was in a short story called “Beginner’s Luck” (Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Writers, Berkley, hc, 2004; trade ppbk, 2005).