PHILIP KETCHUM – Death in the Library. Timothy Y. Crowell, hardcover, 1937. Dell #1, paperback, 1943.

   This has some historical importance, to collectors anyway, since it was the first of what came to be the Dell Mapbacks. Curiously enough, though, it doesn’t have a Map on the Back, but a blurb announcing this as the first in a series of Mysteries selected by the editors of America’s Foremost Detective Magazines. Pity, because this one could have used a map — this one could have used all the help it could get.

   Steven Barth, Denver PI, returns to his home town because he senses from a recent letter that something is troubling the man who raised him. When he gets there, he discovers (WARNING!) the latter’s body, complete with suicide note and gun-in-hand. Not long after, he concludes (WARNING!) the death was really Murder and (WARNING!) the Police suspect him of it.

   Not bad, really, aside from the plot, characterization and dialogue, but it’s hard to believe that this is the best that America’s Foremost etc. could come up with:

   Not a credible character nor a fresh twist in the whole thing. Those with an allergy to cardboard should avoid this at all costs.

PAUL GALLICO – Too Many Ghosts. Doubleday, hardcover, 1959. Pocket/Cardinal #C-426, paperback, 1961. Intl Polygonics Ltd, softcover, 1988.

   Lord Paradine was running short of funds to keep Paradine Hall open in the Post War economic slump in the United Kingdom so it seemed like a good idea to open up part of the place as a sort of residential country club to invited guests and residents, but some uninvited guests of the kind that play strange harp music, blow out candles, make weird noises in the night — including a nebulous nun — are now sharing the digs and something has to be done.

   That’s when Sir Richard Lockerie, who went to Cambridge with a curious fellow, recalls his old friend Alexander Hero.  Hero is a sort of private detective of the supernatural, doing psychical research with the aid of science; in short, ghost-busting and doing quite well at it in Post War England.

   Alexander Hero featured in two novels by Paul Gallico, this and The Hand of Mary Constable, in which Hero investigates Professor Constable’s haunting by his dead daughter, plus suspiciously competent mediums, and a Russian plot to convince him to defect. When filmed in the US as a made-for-television movie titled Daughter of the Mind, the venue moved to this country. Don Murray played Hero and was  hired by Fed Ed Asner to prove what Ray Milland was seeing wasn’t his daughter’s spirit.

   Even if you are largely unaware of Alexander Hero, you likely have heard of his housekeeper, Mrs. Harris, or as she says in her Cockney accent, ’Arris, who you might have recently followed on her trip to Paris, and in other adventures to New York, Rome, and even Parliament. It is a rare occasion of Mrs. Hudson outshining (and selling) Mr. Holmes.

   Paul Gallico’s rather remarkable career began as a noted sports writer, his book on Lou Gehrig filmed as Pride of the Yankees with Gary Cooper. In fiction he started out pretty strong with the elegiac haunting wartime tale, The Snow Goose, moved on to the popular Adventures of Hiram Holliday in the slicks and an early television series with Wally Cox, The Small Miracle, Ludmilla, Coronation, the basis for the film Lily, Thomasina, The Abandoned, the Cold War thriller Trial by Terror (filmed as Assignment Paris), the best-selling The Boy with the Bubble Gun, The Zoo Gang (which became a television series), and among others something called The Poseidon Adventure and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Ten of those were either filmed or made into television series, not counting short stories adapted on screen.

   Brilliant, high handed, and with an eye for the ladies, Alexander Hero is pretty much a Great Detective, and while the books flirt with the supernatural they tend to come down hard on rational explanations of supposed miracles, quite human villainy, and for all the chills and suspense, logical solutions to impossible mysteries.

   Too Many Ghosts is a classic manor house mystery of the Golden Age variety where haunting and not murder is the game afoot, though Gallico makes the stakes just as high, and those not fond of the supernatural in mystery fiction may enjoy it in that Gallico has it both ways in terms of detection and thrills while still keeping both feet on the ground.

RUDOLPH WURLITZER – The Drop Edge of Yonder. Two Dollar Radio, softcover, 2008, 2017.

      “Elk’s elk and meat’s meat, son, and nothin’ matters, and to hell with the rest of it.”

   Wurlitzer, descendant of the jukebox maven, wrote a screenplay about Zebulon, a mountain man stuck between this life and the underworld, to be filmed by Sam Peckinpah. The screenplay can be found here: https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Zebulon.pdf

   Unfortunately, Peckinpah died before filming it. Then Hal Ashby was going to direct it. And died. Then Jim Jarmusch was going to direct it — but couldn’t agree with Wurlitzer on the script. So, instead, Jarmusch filmed Dead Man, lifting many of the same themes without crediting Wurlitzer. (For an interview discussing this stuff, see https://arthurmag.com/2008/05/21/on-the-drift-rudy-wurlitzer-and-the-road-to-nowhere/).

   Giving up on the film, Wurlitzer reworked the screenplay into a novel: Drop Edge of Yonder.

   Zebulon, mountain man, fur trader, outlaw, shootist, gold digger, horse thief, and gambler, gets shot in the heart during a card game gone wrong. But he doesn’t die. He should be dead. But he ain’t. At least not hardly. Maybe a little bit — but with one foot in this world and one foot in the other.

   So he wanders. “Quien es,” he keeps asking. Going from town to town, from card game to card game, always losing to a royal flush with the queen of hearts pulled off the bottom of the deck.

   He hooks up with Delilah, African courtesan to a Russian Count. But she’s just like him, cursed to meander this earth, neither of this world nor the other. Condemned to wander til they fathom this, that:

      “All trails are dreams and there was never anything to try for or do; only to be.”

ERIC NEWBY – The Last Grain Race. Secker & Warburg, UK, hardcover, 1956. Reprinted several times, including Lonely Planet, softcover, 1999.

   There are authors you hear about and mean to try, but never get around to until some fortuitous turn at a local book store or the generosity of a friend puts them in your hands. Thanks to such a friend, I came across The Last Grain Race.  Eric Newby. In 1938, in the shadow of war, the eighteen year old Newby shipped as an apprentice seaman on one of the last cargo sailing ships still operating, and his account of circling the world on this floating anachronism makes a vivid testament to a forgotten way of life.

   Vivid perhaps, and certainly engaging, but not at all romantic. Newby’s description of the squalor, tedium, filth, hard work and bad food makes me understand better why sailors used to be recruited with press gangs, and his lively depiction of his crew-mates (mostly people you’d cross the street to avoid speaking to — even in the face of oncoming traffic) brings out the ugly, erratic nature of men who choose this kind of life.

   It’s a thoroughly engrossing tale, spiked by Newby’s light, lucid prose (his description of a storm at sea is one of the best I’ve ever read), and I rather think he’s an author I ‘ll return to.

HOWARD ENGEL – The Suicide Murders. Benny Cooperman #1. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1984. Penguin, paperback, 1985. Adapted for radio (CBC) and TV (CBC, 1985), with Saul Rubinek starring in the latter as Benny Cooperman.

   Until the 1980s, Canada was not known for its native detective fiction. The Benny Cooperman novels by Howard Engel — along with the work of Eric Wright and Ted Wood — represent the beginnings of a vital new school of crime writing in Canada.

   The Suicide Murders is the first of a series of mysteries starring Benny Cooperman, private eye. Benny is a nice Jewish guy who makes his extremely modest living as a detective in his hometown of Grantham, Ontario. He still goes home to have dinner with his elderly parents at least once a week. He possesses intelligence enough. and the requisite amount of determination. Still, life or a case too often forces him lo play the schlemiel.

   The novel opens with the classic scene of a beautiful woman entering his office and enlisting his aid. Myrna Yates thinks her successful husband may be cheating on her. She hires Benny lo trail him. This simple assignment becomes much more complicated when the seemingly faithful Mr. Yates dies of a gunshot wound to the head soon after buying himself an expensive new bike. The police say suicide. Benny disagrees. His investigation continues. as do the murders, until he brings the case to its sad, satisfying conclusion.

   Benny’s mean streets may be in Ontario and not L.A., but his adventures are still reminiscent of the classic American private eye. He is no tough guy, but he is strong as well as compassionate. The supporting cast of characters, including the murderer, arc also nicely realized.

   Benny Cooperman returns in The Ransom Game (1984), Murder on Location (1985), and Murder Sees the Light (1985).

     ———
   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. BAKER QUINN – One Man’s Muddle. Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1936. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1937.

   James Strange just spent the past four years in prison for manslaughter and morphine dealing in London. He was insinuated with dirty members of Scotland Yard and was selling confiscated drugs as a side gig. It was a pretty lurid scandal at the time, and his face was infamous.

   Upon release, he’s decided to go straight. So he heads for the nice, quiet village of Cold Spring. No history, no connections, no hassles. A chance to begin again.

   On arriving, first thing he does is run into one of his former junkies. She’s married the local squire, doing pretty well for herself. But still using junk on the sly.

   The junky freaks out on seeing Strange, sensing blackmail, and the squire comes finally to know of her junked out ways.

   And then she’s murdered. With Strange the leading suspect. Strange is forced to become detective again to prove himself innocent and find the one to blame.

   Strange has a compelling voice. Imagine morphing George Harvey Bone (of Hangover Square) with Philip Marlowe. Described as looking like Gary Cooper, sarcastic and witty, but with a flashing psychopathology that scares you enough that you don’t wanna invite him to dinner. Or turn your back.

   It’s a strong, tough, uncompromising piece of work, belonging on a shelf with Hangover Square and Brighton Rock. Long out of print, but worth checking out if you can get your hands on a copy.

NOTE: David Vineyard reviewed it previously here on this blog: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1369

DAVID ELY – Seconds. Pantheon, hardcover, 1964. Signet P2507, paperback, 1964. Harper Voyager, softcover, 2013. Film: Paramount, 1966 (director: John Frankenheimer).

   A prosperous banker leaves his New York office at noon, knowing full well he may never see it again. Following an address on a slip of paper, he takes a cab to a run-down laundry in a slum area of the city. From there. he is directed to a warehouse. From the warehouse. he is taken in the back of a truck to a large office building, and it is here the transition process begins.

   For the banker (soon to be a painter known as Wilson) has elected literally to change his life and be “reborn” as a new man. A surgically altered cadaver shows up in a hotel room and the banker is officially pronounced dead of a heart attack. Meanwhile, we follow Wilson through his own surgical alterations, and before you know it, he has been relocated to California and lo the life of a single. moderately successful painter.

   Wilson cannot relax and enjoy himself, though. His new life strikes him as shallow and meaningless, and he feels an overwhelming desire to visit his wife and daughter. This he does, going against numerous warnings from representatives of the company that gave him his new identity. The company, it seems, creates about 3000 new identities each year, so it has a stake in seeing that no one jeopardizes its operation. Obviously Wilson is one of those people who will never make the transition properly, so he is brought back for further “processing.”

   Few books can match the suspenseful beginning of Seconds, as the reader wonders what in the world is going on. The suspense tapers off when we learn what is going on. but increases again as we begin to wonder what the company will do with the renegade Wilson. As it turns out, Wilson is not the only man who has made an unsuccessful transition-and from a business standpoint, the company’s disposition of these failures makes perfect sense.

   This unusual and nightmarish novel was made into an equally suspenseful John Frankenheimer film in 1966, with Rock Hudson and Salome Jens.

   David Ely has made a career of producing offbeat suspense fiction, both novels and short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and such slick magazines as Cosmopolitan. (One of his Cosmo stories, “The Sailing Club,” was the recipient of the 1962 Best Short Story Edgar.) Among his other novels are Trot ( 1963), The Tour (1967), Poor Devils (1970), and the eerie Mr. Nicholas (1974).

         ———
   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.

RICHARD BISSELL – High Water. Little Brown, hardcover, 1954. Signet 1230, paperback, 1955. Minnesota Historical Society Press, softcover, 1987.

   Duke is first mate on a Mississippi tugboat. They’re hauling eight barges of coal upriver during a flood.

   It’s a novel of riverboat adventure with lots of authentic sounding dialogue of rivermen talking about women and weather and why they ended up stuck on a riverboat on the Mississippi.

   They rescue a good-looking woman from the roof of her house. Bad luck, say some. And then the fog rolls in, the steering breaks, and they hit a bridge. The boat starts to sink. And it’s every man (and woman) for themselves.

   A convincing tale. Known for being the book that Elmore Leonard credited as teaching him how to write, along with Hemingway. But where Hemingway lacks a sense of humor, Bissell imbues his characters with jokes, tall tales, loud braggadocio, and quiet ironies. And it ends up sounding less like perfect prose and more like life.

   I enjoyed it.

THOMAS STERLING – Murder in Venice. Dell D270, paperback, 1958. Originally published in the as The Evil of the Day (Gollance Ltd, hardcover, 1955; Simon & Schuster, US, hardcover, 1955). Filmed as The Honey Pot (1967), with Rex Harrison. (See also the comments below, which also include information about a play based on the book that preceded the film, plus a link to the book’s Wikipedia page.)

   A mid-1950s mystery based on a 17th century comedy, and a plot that sneaks up on you.

   For most of its length, Murder in Venice  is a light-hearted and pleasantly venomous re-working of Ben Jonson’s Volpone, as a rich-and-dying old man invites a few well-off friends to brighten his last days while he makes up his mind who to leave his money to. Naturally, with an inducement like that, they come a-sailing up to his doorstep (This is Venice, after all.) bearing gifts and greed. And a whole lot of ill-will towards each other, especially when one of them announces that she was the common-law wife of the near-deceased (whose name happens to be Fox, just to reinforce the Volpone connection) and she intends to inherit or at least muddy as anyone else’s claim if she’s not mentioned in the will.

   I’ll give you one guess who gets murdered, and as many guesses as you’d like as to whodunit: The rich-looking but broke barrister Voltan, the miserly hypocrite Sims, the not-really-dying Fox, his actor-secretary-stage manager William, the ex-wife’s much-abused paid companion Celia, the butler…

   You may even guess right, but I didn’t.

   Sterling’s prose is clear and uncluttered, his characters well-rounded but not overblown, and his Venice colorfully evoked in a few verbal brush strokes. But what really impressed me here was the ingenious plotting, which transforms Murder in Venice from a slavish take-off of a literary classic into a classic mystery. Check it out!

HOTEL ARTEMIS. 2018. Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Day, Dave Bautista. Director: Drew Pearce.

   Although apparently a bomb at the box office, I haven’t been as cinematicly impressed with a movie since seeing Blade Runner for the first time. Blown away, I was. It takes place maybe 20 years in the future during a riot in downtown Los Angeles over the shortage of water in the city. (Some problems never end.)

   That’s only the background, though. The entirety of the film takes place inside the Hotel Artemis or just outside its entrances or the rooftop. What its exclusive clientele consists of are criminals who pay a membership fee, in lieu of medical insurance, for its top of the art medical facilities.

   Jodie Foster plays the elderly Nurse in charge, in her 60s perhaps, a woman who on the outside is tough and organized and ultra competent. But on the inside, over the night the film takes place in. another part of her personality is revealed, showing a huge weariness, sadness and melancholy resulting from the death of son several years ago.

   There are several additional stories attached to the patients who make their way to the hotel that evening, which I won’t go into, but as the paths of the assorted thieves, paid assassins, illegal arms dealers and general all around bad guys and henchmen begin to crisscross and intersect, it’s quite a dizzying task to keep at all straight who’s doing what to whom and why.

   The linchpin to all this (and don’t forget the massive riot going on outside) is the Nurse, trying to hold everything and (I think you can tell) not panic. And as the action never stops, some secrets are revealed, more than one.

   But if a pregnant police office can get an Oscar in another, totally different and otherwise straightforward crime thriller, my vote for this year’s one would have been for Jodie Foster.

   Watch the trailer. As trailers go, it’s a good one.