ACQUITTED. Columbia, 1929. Lloyd Hughes, Margaret Livingston, Sam Hardy, Charles West, George Regas, Charles Wilson, Otto Hoffman. Director: Frank Stayer. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   Lloyd Hughes, a doctor who’s been convicted of murdering a patient, treats Margaret Livingston, another inmate (who knows the difference between good and bad but doesn’t always pay attention to it), and falls in love with her.

   When she’s released, she persuades her former lover (Sam Hardy), the man who set her up to teach her a lesson and framed the doctor, to have the doctor released.

   This doesn’t classify as a quality dramatic production (Harry Cohn, King of the B’s, produced it), but its nicely paced 63 minute running time is just right for the working-out of this sentimental drama. Hardy is a good-bad guy, and it’s his strong performance that remained in my mind when I wrote this review, a month later.

AUGUSTE LE BRETON – Rififi in New York. Stein & Day, hardcover, 1968. Avon V2346, paperback, 1970. Originally published in French: Du rififi à New York, Presses de la Cité: Un mystère (P) n° 642, 1962.

   Following my previous thoughts about Ellery Queen, it occurred to me that we read a mystery like Ten Days’ Wonder for the pleasure of seeing the clues coalesce, of watching threads come together into a meaningful whole. By the same token, I think we read a “caper” novel like Auguste le Breton’s Rififi in New York for the thrill of seeing things unravel.

   Right at the start you should know Rififi is not a character; “rififi” is Fremch underworld slang for nasty business. So when Le Breton writes of Rififi in New York, it’s like Elliott Paul writing of Hugger Mugger in the Louvre: a state of affairs, not a fictional being.

   Le Breton wrote the original novel on which the classic 1955 French jewel-heist was based, and he seems to have gone from then just re-doing the same story with different characters.

   As such, in New York is quite nice, really: tense, well-built, fast-moving and pleasantly predictable. We get an odd assortment of non-professionals taking on a seemingly impregnable jewel vault, trouble and personal conflict, set-backs and betrayals … everything you read a caper novel for, dealt out with a sure hand and a sharp eye.

   There’s not much by Auguste le Breton available in English, but I’d recommend picking up anything you can find.

THE RUNAWAY BUS. Eros Films, UK, 1954. Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford, Petula Clark, George Couloris, Terence Alexander, Toke Townley, Belinda Lee, Stringer Davis. Screenwriter and director: Val Guest.

        BBC Announcer: Today’s Forecast: Fog.

   London in the immediate post-war years and well into the middle 1950’s suffered some of the worst fogs since the late Victorian era, some not only hazards to transportation, but killers that took many lives. This one isn’t quite that bad, but it’s bad enough. At Heathrow the airport is shut down and passengers aren’t happy about it, among them the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford who just won’t take no for an answer when told her flight to Dublin is canceled.

   What none of them know is nearby a master criminal known only to Scotland Yard as the Banker is planning to heist a shipment of gold bullion and use the fog to cover the escape.

   When news reaches the airport that the weather is clearing at a nearby airport they put on a bus for the passengers headed for Ireland, with relief driver Frankie Howerd driving, flight attendant Petula Clark assigned to help the passengers, and four in tow, Rutherford’s cantankerous old lady, gruff businessman George Couloris, meek little Toke Townley, and Belinda Lee as a young lady obsessed with the lurid paperback mysteries she is reading. As they set out in the dense fog, Flight Officer Terence Alexander catches a last minute ride with them.

   But what none of them know is that there is a fortune in gold bullion hidden in the luggage compartment of the BOAC relief bus. Or at least only a few of them know.

   They are soon lost in the fog, and then when they drive off the road they end up stranded in an abandoned village in a rat trap of an old pub. By then Scotland Yard has learned that the bullion is on the bus, but can’t find them. Howerd knows about the gold and has told Clark, but there is no one else they can trust, including Alexander who doesn’t seem to be who he claims.

   In fact almost no one seems to be exactly who they claim to be, and it gets even worse when some one fires a Sten gun at the them and seems to be throwing grenades.

   Though it isn’t credited on screen The Runaway Bus is basically a remake of The Ghost Train (1941), an old barn burner of a play that was filmed before the war.

   Both were comedy mysteries, but Runaway Bus has a broader sense of humor and a satirical edge aided by the excellent cast and Howerd’s familiar delivery. Both films are available from Sinister Cinema, and Runaway Bus at least has been shown on TCM.

   Rutherford as usual is in fine form as a veritable dreadnought of a woman, here with obvious romantic eyes on meek little fellow passenger Toke Townley, and veteran villain George Couloris always handled comedy as well as drama. Belinda Lee mostly looks pretty and none to bright with a seemingly endless supply of blood soaked paperback mysteries. Clark has little to do as the flight attendant, but adds a pretty face to the mix.

   Frankie Howerd was a popular comic best remembered for his role in The Ladykillers, in the “Carry On” films, and the long running BBC comedy series Up Pompeii! where he played the scheming but none too bright slave Lurcio in the doomed city at the time of Nero’s reign. His asides to he audience breaking the fourth wall were the highlight of most episodes.

   The twists come fast and furious and generally very funny.

   Terence Alexander was a familiar face in drama and comedy, probably best remembered for his regular role on the BBC series Bergerac. He was also the voice of John Creasey’s the Toff on BBC Radio.

   After the usual comic complications the Banker is revealed, and the bullion recovered.

   This isn’t in a class with the Ealing comedies or many of their imitators, but it is a bright funny comedy mystery with a cast of familiar faces (Stringer Davis who appeared with Rutherford in the Miss Marple films is also in this one) led by the always delightful Rutherford and a very young Howerd It’s one bus you will be glad you caught.

WHIT MASTERSON – Hunter of the Blood. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1977. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition. No paperback edition.

   A schizophrenic priest with a message threatens Rome with nuclear disaster during the Pope’s annual Easter sermon. Gus Gamble is the only man who knows that plutonium stolen from a Nevada nuclear fuel facility has actually been smuggled into the Vatican, but he’s frustrated at every turn by bureaucratic disbelief.

   Gamble is a priest working Las Vegas blackjack tables when he’s persuaded to reassume his former duties as head of security for the AEC. He’s what might be called a born manhunter, that rather unlikely sort of individual who can miraculously turn up clues that hundreds of other investigators have already passed over. Unfortunately his intuitive conclusions are too often only partially based on hard evidence.

    Masterson doesn’t quite succeed in arguing that one man surrounded by massive manpower in the computer age can be the only one to come up with the right answers, but he will cause a few palms to start sweating as the big boom approaches.

[UPDATE] 04-18-11.   I don’t remember this one at all, but since I gave the book a rating of “B” at the time, I obviously enjoyed it.

    “Whit Masterson” was, as we know now, one of Robert Wade’s pen names. The first few Masterson books were collaborations with Bill Miller, but when the latter died in 1961, Wade took over the name alone.

WADE MILLER – Guilty Bystander. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1947. Paperback reprints include: Handi-Book #65, 1947; Penguin Signet #677, 1948, with many later printings.

   Guilty Bystander is the second book by the Bob Wade / Bill Miller team, and the first of six featuring private eye Max Thursday. At the beginning Thursday is a down and out ex-private eye working as a house detective in a shady hotel and drinking constantly.

   His ex-wife Georgia, now remarried, comes to him for help when their son Tommy is kidnapped. Max must sober up and use all his not inconsiderable skills to figure out the confusing scheme (whick involves a million dollars worth of pearls) and rescue his son.

   As always in the Miller books, the San Diego scene is vividly done, and Max is a sympathetic protagonist we want to succeed. Max gets some help from Homicide Lieutenant Austin Clapp (hero of Miller’s first book, Deadly Weapon) and Smitty, an ex-madam who owns the hotel where Max works.

   It is a fine book that all hard-boiled fans will enjoy — Miller and Wade are excellent writers.

BILL PRONZINI – Blowback. Random House, hardcover, 1977. Paperback reprints: Dale Books, 1978; Foul Play Press, 1984.

   As you may already know, this is the one that begins with the nameless private detective as he waits for the report on his lungs to come through. It is a tumor, he knows that now, but is it malignant?

   He means to sweat it out alone over the weekend, but a call for help from a friend takes him a short way out of himself, up into the mountains, to mix a little fishing with business.

   There are six men at the camp, and one woman, which is just the right mixture to provoke a murderous amount of jealousy and hatred, but how do a stolen Oriental carpet and a lone peacock feather enter in to it?

   Pronzini enjoys doing a tough-edged version of classical detection, and he may surprise a few who haven’t been paying close attention; but he adds something more — a rare view of someone confronted with and facing his own mortality, analyzing his life, comparing it with those of the pulp heroes he emulates.

   The fact that he, and others, still read their adventures makes certain their kind of immortality, and while I can’t tell you what the doctor’s report says, even without a name to call his own, there is a private eye who now can be added to the list of those who may in time be forgotten by many — by not by all.

MAN OF THE WEST. United Artists, 1958. Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O’Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner, Royal Dano, Robert J. Wilke, Dick Elliott, Frank Ferguson, Emory Parnell, Chuck Robertson. Screenplay by Reginald Rose, based on the novel The Border Jumpers by Will C. Brown. Music by Leigh Harline. Producer: Walter Mirisch; director: Anthony Mann. Shown at Cinecon 44, Hollywood CA, Aug-Sept 2008.

   This film was chosen as an example of the films produced by Mirisch, beginning inauspiciously with the “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series, then in collaboration with his brothers in the Mirisch Production Company, advancing light years to the production of films such as Some Like It Hot, West Side Story, The Magnificent Seven, and In the Heat of the Night, garnering three Oscars for Best Picture, as well as numerous other awards.

   Mirisch had just written his autobiography, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History, copies of which were available at a lobby signing.

   Mirisch was born in 1921, but the only concession to his age was the scheduling of his screening interview before instead of after the film. He was an engaging interviewee, with apparently total recall of his films, and the Cinephiles award was presented to him by George Chakiris, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in West Side Story.

   Man of the West was an early Mirisch film (and not a financial success), a dark Western in which Gary Cooper plays a reforned outlaw who, escaping a train holdup with two fellow passengers (Julie London and Arthur O’Connell), stumbles into the hideout of his former gang, led by his uncle (played by the decade-younger Lee J. Cobb).

   Cooper has to convince Cobb that he’s back to join the gang, which is planning a bank robbery. The climax of the film, the robbery in what turns out to be nightmarish ghost town, is an exciting and unconventionally shot shoot-out against what appear to be overwhelming odds for Cooper.

   There is something of an air of implausibility about the film (written by notable TV scriptwriter Reginald Rose) that may have contributed to the film’s failure at the box office. Nonetheless, the film has a fine cast and director, and whatever its shortcomings, it was still great fun to watch.

ELLERY QUEEN – Ten Days’ Wonder. Little Brown & Co., hardcover, 1948. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover & paperback. Film: La décade prodigieuse; French, 1971. Released in the US as Ten Days’ Wonder. Anthony Perkins, Michel Piccoli, Marlène Jobert, Orson Welles. Director: Claude Chabrol.

   I tried Ellery Queen back in High School and quickly tired of him/them because it wasn’t Raymond Chandler. But when someone hereabouts recommended Queen’s 1948 mystery Ten Days’ Wonder, I decided to give it a look.

   Well, Queen-as-author doesn’t exactly sparkle, and Queen-as-character never really comes alive on the page, but I found Wonder a pretty well crafted thing: something about a friend of Queen’s with a god-like father, sexy young step-mom, desire-under-the-elms, blackmail, blackouts and criminous suspicions.

   Given that Queen’s friend/suspect is a sculptor, the overall pattern of the thing (and hence the killer) is pretty transparent, but — given that pattern and the morality it references — there’s something sort of subversive in the way Queen-the-character keeps morphing: from sleuth to accomplice, from celebrity to pariah, then back to celebrity, all without himself changing.

   And there’s an odd sub-text flirting with the nature [**WARNING**] of a God who imputes our fall to sin. Lenny Bruce put it more succinctly when he observed that if man is sinful, the fault lies with the manufacturer, and Fredric Brown put it more sharply with the God-as-comic-punster ending of The Screaming Mimi, but Queen’s handling of the notion has its merits.   [**END OF WARNING**]

   In 1972 Claude Chabrol did a pretty faithful movie version of Ten Days’ Wonder; Michel Piccoli plays a suitably colorless detective (here a philosopher, but for the French it’s pretty much the same thing); Anthony Perkins is neatly cast as the unstable sculptor; Marlène Jobert the cute step-mom; and Orson Welles, in the fakiest fake nose of his career, simply perfect as God-the-Father.

   Like most Chabrol films, it’s thoughtful rather than gripping, definitely watchable, but damn! that schnozz they stuck on Orson; I’ve seen better noses on a pair of Groucho glasses.

HEAT LIGHTNING. Warner Brothers, 1934. Aline MacMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Jane Darwell, Edgar Kennedy. Based on a play by Leon Abrams & George Abbott. Director: Mervyn LeRoy.

   There is some similarity between Heat Lightning and the much more famous The Petrified Forest, but the latter came along later (1936) and the plots (in my opinion) diverge rather quickly. But if you’re familiar with the later film, see how much alike the settings are: Heat Lightning takes place in the middle of the Mohave desert and an isolated gas station/restaurant/tourist camp is miles from the nearest town.

   Two women, sisters, own the place. The older (and wiser) has a past she would like to think is forgotten (Olga, played by the efficient but rather glum and weary-looking Aline MacMahon), while Myra (Ann Dvorak) is looking forward to a future involving men and romance that she’s not likely to have, not as long as her older sister has any say about it.

   For such an isolated location, there is a lot of traffic that goes by, but perhaps because it is one of those places that a sign saying “Last Gas for 20 Miles” is the absolute truth. Some come in, add water to a radiator, gas up and have a couple of Cokes (for a grand total of $3.65) before heading off again, while others hang around for a while.

   The latter include a pair of fleeing would-be bank robbers — or make that killers, since at least one guard was killed in the process — one of whom knows Olga from before; and in fact they knew each other very well. Also staying overnight are two wealthy divorcees (Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly) returning from Reno, along with their hardworking chauffeur (Frank McHugh), who on occasion is called upon to do other jobs as well.

   Criminals on the run, an old flame, and two rich women make for a combustible situation, and the 63 minutes of running time is almost not enough to fit it all in. This was one of the last movies made before the Code came into being, and while there are no overt sexual scenes, there are several times there is no doubt what was going on when the cameras weren’t around and weren’t rolling.

   The overall plot may be a little predictable, but not entirely. How will Olga get rid of George (Preston Foster) or will she fall for him again? The drama itself unfolds in fine fashion, with more than a dash of humor saucily tossed into the boiling kettle, figuratively speaking. The photography and staging are more than fine, enhanced by the equally fine remastering job done to the film before it was recently released on DVD.

   Recommended.

MIKE JAHN – The Quark Maneuver. Ballantine; paperback original; 1st printing, March 1977.

   Add yet another liberated lady to the growing list of female action sleuths we have seen recently. Her knowledge of karate helps save the lives of a pair of cops at the mercy of two blacks with automatic rifles underneath the Queensboro bridge and involves her in their subsequent pursuit of a Quark-carrying madman capable of bringing on World War III.

   What’s a Quark? Only a portable surface-to-air missile powerful enough to bring down the plane carrying Hua Kuo-feng, the premier of China, into New York City for a UN summit conference.

   Her name is Diana Cantardo, and she runs a pretty fair restaurant on 59th Street, but she soon finds that romance and adventure are much more fun. I concur whole-heartedly and hope that that won’t be the last we see of the delightful Miss Cantardo, truly a beauty with brains, as she tackles more cases with her new friend Lieutenant DiGioa, who is not as old as he first appears.

   I do have one gripe, though, about an ending that’s both too loose and yet too tightly plotted. See if you don’t agree.

Rating:   B.

[UPDATE] 04-15-11.   The Quark Maneuver was Michael Jahn’s first mystery novel, and it won an Edgar for Best Paperback Original in 1978. Nonetheless, this was Diana Cantardo’s first and only appearance in book form. I kept looking for a followup at the time, to no avail.

   In 1982 with Night Rituals, Jahn began a series of novels featuring Bill Donovan, head of Manhattan’s West Side Major Crimes Unit. Over the years Donovan has been promoted to Chief of Special Investigations for the NYPD, with ten in the series so far and the 11th due next year.