MY FRIEND IRMA GOES WEST. Paramount Pictures, 1950. John Lund, Marie Wilson, Diana Lynn, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Corinne Calvet, Lloyd Corrigan, Don Porter, Harold Huber, Kenneth Tobey. Screenplay: Cy Howard & Parke Levy. Director: Hal Walker.

   Marie Wilson, who made a career of playing ditsy blondes, will be remembered best for her portrayal of Irma Peterson, the impossibly vacuous New York City secretary with a mind the size of a paper clip. This was the second film to feature Irma, who began her career on radio in 1947, but as usually the case, of all the people who were in the cast on the radio program, only Marie Wilson managed to make the transition into the movies.

   And even though creator Cy Howard was also involved in the movie production, much of the magic her character created in her original form is gone. In fact, Irma is on the screen far less than the up-and-coming comedy team of Martin and Lewis. Incidentally, they also appeared in the first Irma picture as well — their screen debut, no less.

   The plot is simple enough — Dean Martin, who plays the boy friend of Irma’s friend Jane, gets a shot at Hollywood, or so he thinks, and the whole gang goes along. It;s to bad that, unknown to them, the boys in the white suits come along afterward to pick up the “producer” who hired him. (But what about the French actress with eyes for Dean?)

   Irma continued on the radio for four more years, until 1954, but there weren’t any more movies. It’s no wonder why. When writers lose the roots of their own creations, chances of a successful transplant are next to none.

DAVID HEWSON – The Sacred Cut. Nic Costa #3. Delacorte Press, US, hardcover, December 2005. Macmillan, UK, April 2005.

   There are not many types of mysteries that I do not read, but there are a few. I remember once expressing my disinterest in detective stories with horses in them, which at the time caused a mini-uproar among Dick Francis fans, among others. Well, Dick Francis fans need no longer worry. I’ve read a couple of his books, and they were pretty good. Especially the parts that did not have horses in them.

   At one time I had no interest at all in historical mysteries. Now I read them all of the time. Except for those that take place in ancient Rome. I think that relates somehow to my distaste for Latin in high school. Ixnay, I say.

   I still do not read mysteries in which children are the victims. It’s bad enough to have to read about such incidents in the newspapers almost every day. Mind you that I am not saying that mysteries in which children are the victims should not be written, if they are written with the right motive in mind, but if children are hurt or killed in a work of fiction, it had damn well better be the right motive in mind.

   I seldom read books about serial killers, either, which gets us closer (finally) to the book at hand. The determining factor in this sub-genre is how much blood and gore gets splattered around. Generally speaking, my rule of thumb says to assume that when a book is about a serial killer, the author somehow is going to depend on blood and gore to get his (or her) point across, that this is one nasty guy and somehow he has to be caught. Well, sure. And I’ll pass on it and read something else.

   And so The Sacred Cut had a couple of strikes against it, even before I began, given the front cover of the Advance Reading Copy:

   You recall what I said about ancient Rome? Well, that’s not really the setting here, but in a sense it is. The setting is as contemporary as it can be, given that the various US invasions of Iraq are to blame for the events behind the scene described in the blurb above. But generally speaking, as the blurb suggests, history does play a big part of the story, with the multi-faceted city of Rome being one the most important players.

   There is, in fact, a large ensemble cast of players, and as long as the focus stays on police officers Nic Costa and his partner Gianni Peroni; their superior, Inspector Leo Falcone; the female pathologist Teresa Lupo; the female FBI agent-in-training Emily Deacon; and Laila, the youthful (female) waif refugee from Iraq who witnesses the scene in the blurb above, then all is well.

   Better than merely “well.” This is as intriguing a police procedural as I’ve read in a long time. (Even if you keep in mind that for some reason, I have not read a police procedural in a long time, this is still a true statement, and I stand behind it with no qualifiers at all. (I almost said with no qualification at all, but I thought better of it.))

   I have to tell you, though. After reading page 116, when the killer snaps and his scalpel starts flying and he begins flaying away, along with a handy supply of meat saws and cleavers nearby, I very nearly did not read page 117.

   More of the same, I thought, and I have better things to do. My advice to you, however, is the same I gave myself. Keep on reading. You won’t regret it.

   The killer is largely known; his motives are not. Either way, he’s far from the most interesting factor of the novel. It’s Falcone’s superiors who are; Emily Deacon’s superior who is; it’s the relationship between Costa and Peroni and Lupo and Deacon and (surprisingly) Laila which is. Humorous when it needs to be, sad when it needs to be, philosophical when it needs to be, and real all of the time, this is a long novel which you will wish was even longer.

   What came as a surprise to me, when it was over, as I was happily sitting where I sat, doing my own wishing for more, was the discovery that this is the third in a series of Nic Costro novels, and that the fifth will be published next year. I knew that author David Hewson had written a quite a few other books I’ve seen at Borders, but they all looked like standalones to me. Filled with serial killers and/or grotesque killings.

   It looks like I’ll have to go looking for them.

DAVID HEWSON – The Villa of Mysteries. Nic Costa #2. Delacorte Press, hardcover, January 2005. Dell, paperback, August 2005.

   If you haven’t read David Hewson’s literate and well written thrillers about Rome’s forensic pathologist Teresa Lupo and detective Nic Costa, you are in for a treat.

   The pair debuted in A Season for the Dead, which was filmed with Mira Sorvino, and now they are back in another dark and forbidding outing with echoes of Dan Brown and the Da Vinci code school, true Gothic atmosphere, conspiracy theory, the detective novel, and taut suspense.

   In The Villa of Mysteries the body of a long dead young woman found partially mummified in a bog leads Teresa and Nic into a similar case that has just happened. How the two cases connected and why spins out of control into violence, Italian history, and adds a twist to the serial killer novel with sacrificial murder and the rituals of a secret society involved.

   The finely detailed background, authentic research, a combination of human drama, and a plot that is complex but never static and combined with a taut line of suspense make Hewson one of the best writers to explore this sub-genre of the thriller.

   Even if like me the words serial killer are enough to turn you off most thrillers, this one is truly different, and if you have grown weary of the Da Vinci Code school and the parade of forensic pathologist sleuths, this offers much more than either. The view of police work in Rome, the use of the cities dark corners, and long buried ancient evils is palpable in Hewson’s writing making his books much more than a rehash of what has been done before.

   For superb use of setting and atmosphere, intriguing plots, believable and attractive (and not so attractive) human characters, and fine writing you can’t go wrong with David Hewson or The Villa of Mysteries.

       The Nic Costa series —

1. A Season for the Dead (2003)

2. The Villa of Mysteries (2004)
3. The Sacred Cut (2005)
4. The Lizard’s Bite (2006)
5. The Seventh Sacrament (2007)

6. The Garden of Evil (2008)
7. Dante’s Numbers (2008) aka The Dante Killings
8. The Blue Demon (2010) aka City of Fear
9. The Fallen Angel (2011)

MICHAEL BOWEN – Corruptly Procured. Richard Michaelson #3. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1994. No paperback edition.

   Bowen has another three-book series going about a married couple, plus at least one other book, but the Michaelson books are the only ones I’ve read. None have appeared in paperback, as far as I know, which is a shame.

   Richard Michaelson is a retired Foreign Service man in his early sixties, hoping for an appointment someday to a top policy post at State but so far disappointed. He is approached by a man who once worked for him, now a top DC lawyer, to do some consulting work for which he seems ill-suited, a a price which seems high.

   Puzzled, but not enough so to overcome his lack of interest, he refuses. The offer is made at a gathering at a branch of the Library of Congress, and shortly thereafter a bomb explodes, injuring Richard and masking the theft of a priceless Gutenberg Bible. While he is in the hospital a high-ranking Treasury official urges him to accept the consulting job, for reasons left shadowy.

   A hitherto unremarkable German activist group claims credit for the bombing and theft, and vows more. Can it all be connected? Well, of course it can, silly.

   I like the Michaelson books. If Bowen doesn’t know his way around the Capital and its machinations and flora and fauna, he fakes it well. He tells his story form multiple viewpoints — though Michaelson’s is by far predominant — and keeps it moving in a reltively straight but very complex line.

   This one was perhaps a little more complex than usual, and a trifle more melodramatic, but still enjoyable. Michaelson and his bookstore-ownng lady Miranda [Marjorie?] are amiable characters, and I look forward to seeing them again.

      The Richard Michaelson series —

1. Washington Deceased (1990)

2. Faithfully Executed (1992)
3. Corruptly Procured (1994)
4. Worst Case Scenario (1996)
5. Collateral Damage (1999)

   The husband-and-wife series that Barry referred to in his first paragraph must be the Thomas Curry and Sandrine Cadette Curry books, of which there were three (1989-1993). He also wrote five books about Rep and Melissa Pennyworth between 2001 and 2009, and one book (so far) about Josie Kendall (2016). These plus three apparent standalones constitute quite a substantial mystery writing career.

HOUSE OF DARKNESS. International Motion Pictures, UK, 1948. George Melachrinos, Henry Oscar, Lesley Osmond, Alexander Archdale, John Teed, Grace Arnold, and introducing Lawrence Harvey. Written by John Gilling. Directed by Oswald Mitchell.

   A stylish little quota quickie that brought Lawrence (or Laurence) Harvey to the screen and established his persona for all time.

   Orchestra leader George Melachrinos, an arranger in the Mantovani/Kostelanetz mode, starts off the film relating a ghost story about visiting a haunted mansion, setting up a flashback to the lives of its last tenants, a family that make The Little Foxes look like the Brady Bunch.

   It seems sometime before the story started, stodgy eldest son John (Alexander Archdale) was left in control of an estate that younger half-brother Francis (Harvey) thinks should be his. And since John suffers from a weak heart while Francis has no heart at all, the writing — or more accurately the script — is on the wall for all to see, especially after John is out of the way and Harvey drives his other sibling off by convincing him that John’s Ghost walks the halls at night.

   No surprises here, but writer john Gilling (who went on to some fine horror flicks at Hammer) seems to have gauged Harvey’s screen persona perfectly (Brother John calls him “An insufferable, conceited cad,” which puts it very neatly) and written lines that only he could do this well. And when John’s ghost actually makes his return, it’s done with a creepy understatement that comes off very well indeed.

   House of Darkness doesn’t quite escape its quota quickie onus, but it works quite nicely as an effective ghost story and a showcase for an up-and-coming star who would have done better to stick to parts like this.

MOTIVE FOR REVENGE. Majestic Pictures, 1935. Donald Cook, Irene Hervey, Doris Lloyd, Edwin Maxwell, William Le Strange Millman, Russell Simpson, John Kelly, Edwin Argus. Director: Burt P. Lynwood.

   Just because some moves have managed to survive to the present day does not mean that they are gems of any sort, semi-polished or completely in the rough. Take Motive for Revenge, for example. It is a movie that tries, but that fact is, it does not have any idea what kind of movie it is trying to be.

   First it is a comic noir film, with a henpecking mother-in-law hectoring her wife’s husband (Donald Cook) to commit a crime; then he’s caught, and it’s a prison film, complete with extended scenes of convicts marching in formation in and out of their cells.

   Then it’s a crime film, with Cook out of jail and looking for his wife (Irene Hervey) and her new husband (she didn’t wait for him, as she promised); then a murder mystery, when the new husband being shot, and neither Cook nor Hervey sure whether the other did it or not; then a chase film, as the cops (including two of the dumbest clucks to be promoted off the beat) try to nab the two of them, first on board a yacht then in a couple of speedboats racing along the shore. All in a running time of some 60 minutes.

   It’s really not very good at any of these. While Cook stands around brooding a lot, the mostly charming Irene Hervey largely steals the show, but it would have helped if her character showed at least one ray of intelligence. Some of the rest of the characters are vaguely familiar, but that’s who they were, I’m sure, character actors all of their careers.

ROSS MACDONALD – Black Money. Lew Archer #14. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1966. Reprinted many times, including: Bantam F3320, paperback, 1967. Warner, paperback, August 1990. Contained in Ross Macdonald: Four Late Novels (The Library of America, hardcover, 2017).

   It’s good to see Lew Archer back in print [as of 1990]. There were quite a few of his books that I never read when they first came out, although I think I have them all, mostly in book club editions. Given the opportunity to catch up on them now [that Warner has begun reprinting them], I realize I’d forgotten how little of Archer himself gets into these books, with no real information on his life at all, or even his personal thoughts.

   He’s hired here to investigate the new man in Ginny Fallon’s life, with his client the rich young man who always thought he’d marry her, but who now sees her being stolen away by a phony Frenchman (he thinks) with the savoir faire he never had, and never will. Ginny’s father was a suicide victim seven years before, and of course it’s connected.

   The other thing I’d also forgotten is Macdonald’s overwhelming reliance on similes, metaphors and other literary comparisons to describe almost everything. It’s not done here to the point of self-parody yet, but it seems awfully close at times. As for the mystery itself, it is (as always) chilling, deep and complex. Macdonald does not rely on coincidence as a plot device, and the roots of the crimes in this book are (as always) twisted and embedded far back into the past.

FOOTNOTE:   Some of Macdonald’s similes work really well, some don’t. One that didn’t, at least for me, comes from page 8: “The white and purple flowers on the brush gave out a smell like the slow breath of sunlight.” It sounds great, but what does it mean? On the other hand, here’s a quote from page 178 which might serve as Archer’s family motto: “Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.” (This one I like.)

  OLD DRACULA. American International Pictures, US, 1975. Originally released in the UK by Columbia-Warner Distributors, 1975, as Vampira. David Niven (Count Dracula), Teresa Graves (Countess Vampira), Peter Bayliss, Jennie Linden, Nicky Henson, Linda Hayden. Director: Clive Donner.

   The esteemed English actor David Niven, whose film career spanned over four decades, starred in many notable films including The Moon is Blue (1953), Carrington V.C. (1955), My Man Godfrey (1957), and Separate Tables (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. In the latter stage of his career, Niven was perhaps best known for his appearance in two of the Pink Panther films.

   Then there’s Clive Donner’s oddball horror-comedy Vampira, aka Old Dracula, a spoof of vampire films mixed with a swinging sixties sensibility and a hint of Blaxploitation.

   While it’s not an overly memorable production, the movie benefits greatly from Niven’s fang-in-cheek portrayal of an aging Count Dracula. Ensconced in his Transylvanian castle, Dracula (Niven) is relegated to having his dimwitted assistant (Peter Bayliss) operate his home as a campy tourist attraction.

   When a bevvy of Playboy Playmates show up for a night at Dracula’s castle, Dracula sees it an opportunity to steal some blood from the young girls. Not that he wants to drink it. No. He wants some youthful blood that he can transfer into the body of his beloved dead wife, Vampira so that he can bring her back to undead life.

   Problem is, he mixes the blood of the different bunnies and well … one of them is Black. Lo and behold, he is able to resurrect Vampira. But she comes back as a Black woman (Teresa Graves). There’s some truly funny racial humor here, such as when Vampira ends up going to see a screening of a Jim Brown movie in London, or when Dracula says he’s afraid to go out at night with her (what would society think). What doesn’t work is a scene in which Niven appears in blackface.

   Movie fans might appreciate two other aspects to the film. Titled as Vampira in the United Kingdom, it was released by American International in the United States as Old Dracula to capitalize on the success of Mel Brooks’ much better film, Young Frankenstein (1974). That it didn’t have nearly the same cultural impact tells you that a title can only do so much.

   Also of note, some viewers will undoubtedly love the fact that Nicky Henson, whose starring role in Don Sharp’s Psychomania (1973), a exploitation movie about a gang of Satanic bikers made him an icon of cult horror film fans everywhere, has a pivotal role in Old Dracula. Which leads me to my final thought. Which is that in many ways, the actors in this production are much better than the script.

W. J. BURLEY – Wycliffe and the Scapegoat. Supt. Charles Wycliffe #8. Doubleday Crime Club, US, 1979. Avon, US, paperback, 1987. First published in the UK by Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1978. Mills & Boon, UK, paperback, Keyhole Crime series, 1981. Corgi, UK, paperback, TV tie-in, 1997. Adapted as the episode “The Scapegoat” for the TV series Wycliffe, 7 August 1994 (Season 1, Episode 3).

   This story takes place in a clannish seaside English town that observes a rather strange All Hallows’ Eve ritual. On a wheel of fire, nine feet in diameter, is burned a life-size effigy –a scapegoat, as it were — and as it burns, the wheel is allowed to roll over a cliff and into the ocean.

   Thus is evil symbolically cast out for another year. The so-called Fire Festival dates back to Celtic times, but this year’s celebration may have been a little different. It develops that the murdered corpse of the town’s undertaker was used instead of an effigy. Certainly the undertaker, one Jonathan Riddle, was not a popular man, and the town is full of people who would have liked to see the end of him (including the members of his own family).

   Enter Detective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe, who, with his wife, is spending a long weekend near the town. He becomes interested in the case and undertakes his own investigation — a rather routine one, after the colorful dramatics of the Fire Festival. This is a bit of a letdown, although the characters are well drawn enough and the situation interesting enough to hold our interest.

   Writing in Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers, Carol Cleveland says that Wycliffe is “an unconventional policeman who hates routine and authority, and proceeds about his murder investigations by the gestalt method. He immerses himself in the victim’s history and circle of acquaintances until he feels his way to a conclusion.”

   This is the pattern here, and while the method works well enough, Burley’s prose is so lacking in flair that it makes the book plodding in tone. The solution, though satisfactory, is not particularly memorable.

   Wycliffe appears in a number of other novels, among them Three-Toed Pussy (1961), To Kill a Cat (1970), Death in Stanley Street (1974), and Wycliffe in Paul’s Court (1980). Burley has also written two novels featuring Henry Pym, a zoology professor and amateur criminologist; these are A Taste of Power (1966) and Death in Willow Pattern (1970).

         ———
   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.

[UPDATE.] There were in all twenty Wycliffe novels, the last being Wycliffe and the House of Fear (1995). There were no further adventures of Henry Pym. There were a total of 38 episodes of the ITV television series Wycliffe, including the pilot and a Christmas special, spread out over five seasons. Only the pilot and the six shows of the first season were based on Burley novels. According to Wikipedia, “Wycliffe is played by Jack Shepherd, assisted by DI Doug Kersey (Jimmy Yuill) and DI Lucy Lane (Helen Masters).”

JUANITA COULSON – Crisis on Cheiron. Ace Double H-27, paperback original; 1st printing, 1967. Cover art: Jerome Podwil. Published back-to-back with The Winds of Gath, by E. C. Tubb.

   You may have to forgive me a little on this review, as I have some nostalgic bias toward it, as the author was, with her husband Buck, the co-publisher of a long-running science fiction fanzine called Yandro (1953-1986) that was not only very nearly my introduction to SF fandom, but also showed me what publishing a zine on one’s own was all about.

   Crisis on Cheiron was Juanita Coulson’s first novel, and while it’s not an award winner by any means, it’s a solid workmanlike effort that I read with pleasure.

   It’s the kind of puzzle story that drew me to SF in the first place. Carl Race is a troubleshooting ecologist who’s been sent to the planet Cheiron to find out why all the plant life there is beginning to die. If the problem is not solved soon, all life on the world, including the race of intelligent centaur-type natives, may be doomed.

   The solution, as it turns out, is an easy one. The bigger problem then becomes, who or what enemy agent is responsible? This is when the story becomes more or less routine, as Carl teams up with a feisty young Terran schoolteacher (female) and one of her bright native pupils to catch the wrongdoers in the act.

   There’s no more depth to the story than I’ve outlined here, but it’s well-written, with just enough drive to keep most readers of SF of the traditional (and now perhaps old-fashioned) sort involved in the tale until the end, including me.