IRA WOLFERT – Tucker’s People. L.B. Fischer, hardcover, 1943. Bantam Giant A798, paperback 1950, as The Underworld. University of Illinois Press, softcover, 1997. Film: Basis for Force of Evil, directed by Abraham Polonsky and starring John Garfield.

   Wolfert was a NYC reporter who covered Dutch Schultz. Schultz got big in bootlegging. After repeal he needed a new racket. Numbers seemed like a good bet. In the numbers racket, you pick three numbers. If your 3 number combo hits, you win 600 to 1 on your bet. In 1931, Thanksgiving landed on November 25. 2 + 5 = 7. As a result, numerous numbers players could be predicted to bet on some variation of 2/5/7 on Thanksgiving.

   There were scores of independent numbers bankers in Harlem. Dutch figured out a way to fix the numbers coming out that Thanksgiving: 527. This bankrupted Harlem’s numbers bankers. Dutch came to the ‘rescue’ of the bankers, offering to pay off all the winners in exchange for the bankers joining Dutch’s Bank. In this manner Dutch was able to take over and consolidate the Harlem numbers racket, ‘earning’ upwards of $20 million a year.

   With that kind of money rolling in, Dutch bought the boss at Tammany Hall: Jimmy Hines. Hines fixed the cops, raided the numbers banks that refused to cave, and looked the other way on the concomitant sleaze and violence accompanying the racket.

   Then came along reformer DA Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey couldn’t be bought and he came after Dutch. This tied Dutch’s hands, giving opportunity to competing mobster Lucky Luciano to step up, step in, and take over. By force. And Dutch was slain.

   Wolfert took this story, changed the names, and wove it into a fictionalized account: Tucker’s People.

   It takes the major players: a numbers banker, an enforcer, a nerdy, nervy numbers accountant, and Dutch’s stand-in (Tucker), and attempts to weave a symphony out of these discordant instruments of the 30’s mobster soundscape.

   My copy of the book ran over 500 pages. And it surely felt like it. The prose was leaden and preachy. While the idea for the book was grand, it felt like Wolfert let grand ideological purposes get in the way of a good story. Wolfert appears to have wanted to make the story of Dutch Schultz into a morality play about how monopolies destroy the little guy — first by taking him over financially, then taking his soul. And when the little guy is no longer useful, flushing him down the drain.

   I have nothing against morality plays. But nothing destroys a good story like didacticism. If Wolfert was a better writer, he might’ve been able to make it work. Similar grand efforts have been successful. Like Robert Deane Pharr’s Book of Numbers and Vern E. Smith’s The Jones Men. Sadly, this one doesn’t join them.

   Made into the film Force of Evil in 1948, starring John Garfield:

RAILROADED! PRC, 1947. John Ireland, Sheila Ryan, Hugh Beaumont, Jane Randolph. Screenplay by John C. Higgins, based on an original story by Gertrude Walker. Director: Anthony Mann.

   A cop breaks in on a holdup in a beauty parlor, is killed for his trouble, and the murder is blamed on the kid who drives the truck used for the getaway. The boy has no alibi, and when the evidence builds up against him, only his sister and mother believe his story.

   Not a bad beginning, but the plot jumps the track when John Ireland, who plays the killer, makes a play for the sister – why, I have no idea. (The slugfest fight scene between the sister and Ireland’s girl friend is worth the price of admission, though.)

NOTE: For a longer and a much more insightful review of the film, check out Jonathan’s take on it here.

THE NEW PERRY MASON. “The Case of the Wistful Widower.” CBS, 07 October 1973 (Season 1, Episode 4.) Monte Markham (Perry Mason), Harry Guardino (Hamilton Burger), Sharon Acker (Della Street), Albert Stratton (Paul Drake), Dane Clark (Lt. Arthur Tragg). Guest Cast: Jacqueline Scott, Bruce Kirby, Donnelly Rhodes. Screenplay: Ernie Frankel & Orville H. Hampton), based on the characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner. Director: Leo Penn. Currently available on YouTube.

   When a milquetoast of a middle-aged yacht broker discovers that the girl he is about to marry has apparently absconded with $30,000 in cash meant to complete a sales transaction, he is convinced by a fast talking new acquaintance to switch identities with him. Duh. What he doesn’t know is that a hit man is on the trail of this so-called friend, and wow, does the case take off from there.

   There is a blown-up car with a body inside, a scattering of ashes over the sea, a stash of counterfeit money, or is it, a kidnapping at gun point, and yes, of course, a murder, and Perry’s client goes on trial for the deed.

   Even Perry Mason, whom he finally goes to for help, calls this the most confusing case he’s ever had. I gave up about half way through and decided to simply go along for a ride. It may even be more complicated than any of Erle Stanley Gardner’s own, and that’s saying a lot.

   This new series followed seven years after the original one ended, the one starring Raymond Burr, and it may have been a case of far too soon. These new upstarts couldn’t hope to compete with memories of the original cast, and the new series was cancelled halfway through a single season. Monte Markham was OK, but he was no Raymond Burr, and neither the new Della nor the all-but-invisible Paul Drake make any impression at all.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE – Dancing Aztecs. Evans, hardcover, 1976.  Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1977. Mysterious Press, paperback, 1989.

   Good humorous crime stories ere very few and far between, and this has to be one of the best of them. The plot concerns a stolen golden statue (of a dancing Aztec) which somehow gets mixed in with a consignment of copies. The sixteen statues are given out to the members of a civil rig11ts group, and then various crooks and con men and gold diggers (some of them from within the ranks of the civil rights group itself) spend the rest of the book trying to find out which one is the real thing.

   It’s witty and funny and beautifully observed. Ilf and Petrov did a similar thing with chairs but it couldn’t have been any better than this. Simply crying out for a movie version — but perhaps somebody’s already done (or doing) it!

LAURENCE SHAMES – Tropical Depression. Hyperion, hardcover, 1996.

   Shames ls one of the few down-and-dirty Florida writers I’ve enjoyed at all, and it took two books before I gave him even that much. The last two featured a family of gangsters named Goldman, but other than a walk-on by one of them at the beginning, they’re not in this one.

   Murray Zemelman, a lingerie mogul from Jersey known as “the Bra King,” gets depressed, pops a Prozac, and heads for Key West, Florida-leaving behind the bra business and a mid-life-crisis second wife. Not so coincidentally, his first wife is in Florida. Murray .meets a retired Mafioso, a Native American who’s the last surviving member of his tribe, and a shady Florida politician (redundancy?), and before you know it is involved in a scheme to help the N. A. Old Murray’s decisions haven’t been so good beginning with the one to leave his first wife, though, and matters don’t go quite as he planned.

   Take one thoroughly Jewish garment-maker, add a couple of Italian gangsters and a generic Florida politician, and then stir in a down-and-out Indian… Shames writes a brand of fiction that’s hard for me to describe. It certainly isn’t farce, though some of the strokes are broad; it’s occasionally amusing, but not really light-hearted; and it’s serious  and rough-edged without being grim.

   There — does that help? Well, maybe not, but I liked the book anyway. He does really good characters and ethic dialogue; some of the characters are small masterpieces, really. Maybe a little less manic Hiassen, or a bit softer Leonard?

   Hell, I don’t know. Try it.

   
       The “Key West Capers” —

1. Florida Straits (1992)
2. Scavenger Reef (1994)
3. Sunburn (1995)
4. Tropical Depression (1996)
5. Virgin Heat (1997)
6. Mangrove Squeeze (1998)
7. Welcome to Paradise (1999)
8. The Naked Detective (2000)
9. Shot on Location (2013)
10. Tropical Swap (2014)
10.5 Chickens (2015)
11. Key West Luck (2015)
12. One Strange Date (2017)
13. One Big Joke (2017)
14. Nacho Unleashed (2019)
15. The Paradise Gig (2020)
16. Key West Normal (2021)
17. Relative Humidity (2023)

SCARECROW AND MRS. KING “The First Time.” CBS, 03 October 1983 (Season 1, Episode 1). Kate Jackson (Mrs. Amanda King), Bruce Boxleitner (Lee Stetson, aka “Scarecrow”), Beverly Garland, Mel Stewart, Martha Smith. Creators & co-screenwriters: Eugenie Ross-Leming & Brad Buckner. Directed by Burt Brinckerhoff & Rod Holcomb.

   When a young divorced housewife and the mother or two boys drops off her semi-boy friend at a train station, she has no idea how soon her world is going to be turned upside down. A federal agent, code name “Scarecrow,” is on the run from a man with a gun, and in desperation, he hands off a small package to Mrs. King so as to keep it from the hands of a gang of thugs, terrorists and thieves.

   Well, sure enough, things do not go smoothly. Dire straits? Not particularly. On the contrary, this is precisely where the fun begins. And so the viewers agreed. The series lasted for four years, with Amanda King (the eternally cute and perky Kate Jackson) becoming more and more involved with the agency and (ahem) romantically with Bruce Boxleitner’s character.

   Most of the time, Amanda’s secret had to be kept from her mother, played by Beverly Garland, who mostly stayed home and took care of the two boys while their mother was off playing spy games. I don’t think any of the stories that ensued had any more depth than in this, the first episode. Light and frothy, but the viewers loved it.

DAVID DELMAN – He Who Digs a Grave. Lt. Jacob Horowitz #2. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1973. No paperback edition.

   The combination of protagonists David Delman has used in this engaging novel — that of a small-town female sheriff and a male cop from New York-is an inspired one. Sheriff Helen Bly and Lieutenant Jacob Horowitz are as different on the surface as two people can be.

   She’s a country woman with strong roots in the area around Cedarstown, an elected official who’s never had to handle a murder before. He’s a tough city cop who’s seen more than enough violent death. And they hold opposing views about whether Horowitz’s old army acquaintance Ian Kirk (who has asked Horowitz to come to town and investigate in an unofficial capacity) murdered his wife and her lover. But Bly and Horowitz are both strong, fair, and sensitive people-characteristics that allow them to work together and also allow them to fall in love.

   As Bly and Horowitz piece together such facts as a missing suicide note, an unwanted pregnancy, a vanished housekeeper, and a pair of thugs who have been paid to intimidate the outsider from New York, the author skillfully depicts small-town life through his characterization of the other residents. A well-plotted novel with a realistic and satisfying conclusion.

   Delman’s other mysteries: A Week to Kill (1972), Sudden Death ( 1972), One Man’s Murder ( 1975), and The Nice Murderers ( 1977)-feature Jacob Horowitz. His most recent book, Murder in the Family, appeared in 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.

TED ALLBEURY – The Lantern Network. Peter Davies, UK. hardcover, 1978. Mysterious Press, US, hardcover, 1989.

   Another first class novel of espionage by one of my three favourite British spy writers {the other two are Deighton and le Carre). In this one Commander Nicholas Bailey of the Special .Branch is called upon to carry out a routine interrogation of a man not really suspected of anything concrete.

   To his surprise and horror the man commits suicide, practically in front of him and the big question is why. Bailey eventually finds the reasons but only after a long flashback (more than half of the book) in which we learn in detail of the wartime career of Captain Charles Parker with the resistance in France. How Parker organizes the resistance teams against the Germans and how this all fits in with the suicide make fascinating reading.

   Mr. Allbeury knows his stuff and certainly can write.

BURKE’S LAW “Who Killed the Lifeguard?” CBS, 25 May 1995 (New Season 2, Episode 6). Gene Barry (Chief Amos Burke), Peter Barton (Detective Peter Burke), Dom DeLuise. Guest Cast: Downtown Julie Brown, Samantha Eggar, Catherine Hicks. Director: Jefferson Kibbee. Currently available on YouTube.

   This is an episode from the second incarnation of the popular TV mystery show Burke’s Law, or maybe the third. After a successful two years on ABC from 1963 to 1965, it changed focus nearly 180 degrees and retitled itself to become Amos Burke Secret Agent, which had viewers across the entire country yawning with disinterest. The series was revived, literally brought back from the dead, for two seasons on CBS (1994-1995), with Gene Barry once again playing the role of the millionaire homicide detective with a tendency for quoting various “laws” as the cases he is investigating moved along.

   In this later version, a son played by Peter Barton was added. From the one episode I’ve seen, his presence was only minimally involved, but he was a young actor with a lot of “hunk” appeal, and maybe he helped boost the number of young teenyboppers watching the show.

   As this episode goes along, the number of suspects involved in the death of the titular lifeguard grows and grows. There are at least four, perhaps five. The Burkes’ method of investigation is to question each of them in turn, and each in turn accuses the next one, sometimes looping back to someone for another round of questions. This may be unique to only this episode, but perhaps it was a standard procedure for the entire series. This also may be true for the final scene in which all the suspects are gathered together, and … well, you know the drill.

   And perhaps only incidentally, whenever the action takes the Burkes to the beach, which is often, there are also quite a few bikini-clad beauties strolling back and forth across the screen. It sometimes made it difficult to follow the actual story line.

   Not essential viewing by any means, but still fun to watch. Quite a few episodes can be found currently on YouTube.

T. C. H. JACOBS – The Red Eyes of Kali. Temple Fortune #2. Stanley Paul & Co., Ltd., hardcover, 1950. No US edition.

   
   Chief Inspector Barnard in particular looks forward to the day Fortune steps over the line, and of course there wouldn’t be a book if this wasn’t the time Fortune and his associate Sailor Milligan took that step while trying to protect attractive client American Julie Somerset and recover the rubies of the title, the red eyes of Kali (colorful story about their origin in Burma included, but no curses).

   Breathless is how the jacket copy describes it, and it is a fair description of this book and most of the British thriller genre. Here there is even a little bit of scientific detection thrown into the mix as Fortune struggles against the police and on the other side of the game his first suspect, Leon Markovitch, who mistaking Fortune for a gentleman thief tries to hire him to steal the jewels from Julie Somerset’s father.

   With a name like Leon Markovitch in the hands of any British thriller writer but John Creasey you know he is up to no good.

   The easy way out being closed, Fortune now finds himself at odds with two known elements and a third yet to be discovered, never a bad set up to keep the action moving which is the prime reason for the thriller genre.

   This is the second Temple Fortune novel, after Dangerous Fortune (luckily Jacobs gave up early on all the titles having Fortune in the title), and the beginning of Jacobs’ association with his most popular creation. Jacobs began writing in the Thirties, mostly about Chief Inspector Barnard and Detective Superintendent John Bellamy, who appeared in nineteen novels between 1930 and 1947. And yes, it is the same Barnard, a bit of an oddity as if Leslie Charteris had written a series of Claude Eustace Teal novels along with the Saint (though Barnard still gets a few chapters to shine). 1948 saw the birth of Fortune, Jacobs most successful creation, but far from his last.

   Jacobs was one of those prolific British thriller writers, virtually unknown on this side of the Atlantic, but who had a long career in popular fiction (his last book was released in 1974) in multiple genres. Aside from Jacobs he also wrote the Slade McGinty books under his own name Jacques Pendower, twenty three of them between 1955 and 1974, and books about Mike Seton and Jim Malone as Jacobs, romance novels as Pam Dower, Marilyn Pender, Anne Penn, and Kathleen Carstairs, and Westerns as Tom Curtis. Most of his later books are sub-Bondian spy novels.

   Along the way he found time to write three true crime books and a radio play based on his own novel.

   Temple Fortune is a private eye, but in name only. He’s basically the gentleman adventurer a la the Toff or Norman Conquest dressed up with an office and clients instead of stumbling into adventure. He has little relationship to his American cousins ,or for that matter to Peter Cheyney’s slightly shady tough guys or David Hume’s Mick Cardby. Fortune is the type the forelock tugging classes call “guv” and his friend Sailor tends to say “Sink me…” fairly often when taken aback.

   Sailor is mostly there as semi comic relief and to give Fortune someone to explain to while once in a while lending a helping fist when needed, the role of good sidekicks from the earliest days of the genre, violent, but not overly smart.

   This is the kind of book with characters called Hambly Hogban, Freddy Flack, a Chinese thug named Charlie Yeo, and the Honorable Charles Falconridge referred too once to often as the Hon. Charles.

   While not bad, Jacobs really doesn’t deserve reviving. There is some historical importance as the Fortune and Pendower books demonstrate how the British thriller was changing in the Post War era. Jacobs managed to ring enough changes on his writing over the years to graduate from minor Edgar Wallace imitation to the Peter Cheyney era and eventually a curious mix of the first two with a little James Bond thrown in. The Fortune stories tend to be detective stories and the McGinty’s spy novels.

   He wasn’t unique in evolving with the times, but he did it well enough to survive and prosper over the years, no mean talent. Broken Alibi, a Bellamy novel, based on the Brighton Trunk murders from 1957, is a good one if you are interested, or 1954’s Good-Night, Sailor with Fortune.