THE SECRET OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Author: Jeremy Paul; based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. First performed at the Wyndham Theatre, London, in the 1988-1989 season for some two hundred performances. Revived: March 2010, with Peter Egan (Holmes) and Philip Franks (Watson) in the two leading roles.

   This was a touring production of a play that had previously been in the West End, a few years back, with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke as Holmes and Watson. I had seen their performance twice, once in a pre-West End outing in Guildford which was very disappointing since Brett kept stumbling over his lines, and secondly in the West End, near the end of the run, which was much more enjoyable.

   In this present tour Peter Egan was Holmes and Philip Franks was Watson, the same pairing that I had seen a couple of years ago in a tour of The Hound of the Baskervilles. That time I was a little disappointed in the performances but here they seemed much better and were comfortable in their roles.

   In the first part of this two-hander we are treated to the background story with Watson looking for someone to share digs with, meeting Holmes and setting up in 221b. We are taken through certain events, if not the actual cases, so some talk of Irene Adler, Watson’s marriage and eventually Holmes’s clash with Moriarty, and his return as the bookseller. The interval came as Watson collapsed to the floor.

   I enjoyed this part, mainly because writer Jeremy Paul had used the words and phrases from Doyle’s stories, so much of it was very familiar.

   The second part however was rather different. First we had Watson’s recriminations and Holmes’s explanation but then the story branched into something rather different as Holmes appeared to be something of a split personality (if that phrase is stilll used in the psychobabble of today) and eventually confessed to being Moriarty, having invented and portrayed the master criminal to give him some mental stimulation — or maybe he was deluding himself that this was the case. It was not all that clear.

   All in all an enjoyable production but there is no new story and the final fifteen minutes makes little sense.

MAX BYRD – Target of Opportunity. Bantam: hardcover, August 1988; reprint paperback, November 1991.

   The first by this author in hardcover after several paperback private eye tales, starts in Lake Tahoe. There San Francisco homicide inspector Gilman is vacationing with his best friend and brother-in-law, former Washington lawyer, Donald Kerwin.

   They stop for groceries at a 7-11 Store, where a ski-masked man shotguns Kerwin to death and leaves Gilman with an awful case of tinnitus. The Tahoe cops blow the investigation and the killer walks free.

    Kerwin’s widow comes unglued at the news, and follows the killer to his Boston home with her own form of bloody justice in mind. Gilman chases after her, desperately hoping to stop her. Kerwin’s shooting was apparently random, but the scot-free killer comes from a wealthy family, had no apparent reason to be robbing a convenience store, and has an estranged father on the Harvard faculty.

   What could all this possibly have to do with OSS activities in wartime France? It could easily be fatal to Gilman to find out. Fresh if perhaps fanciful plotting, capable storytelling. Interesting detail.

BARTHOLOMEW GILL – Death on a Cold, Wild River. Peter McGarr #10. William Morrow, hardcover, 1993. Avon, reprint paperback, 1994. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1993.

   The first thing that struck me about this was a dust jacket that would have been quite appropriate for a fishing novel, but was about as mysterious as a poached trout. Morrow needs a new art director.

   Peter McGarr, head of Ireland’s Murder Squad, is suspended pending completion of a investigation of the circumstances detailed in The Death of Love, in which an Irish politician was assassinated.

   He reads of the death by drowning of Ireland’s foremost lady fisherman, and is devastated; she had been his lover before he met his wife. He goes to console the father and attend the funeral, and is shown evidence that the death may not have been accidental, after all.

   He gingerly — because of his suspension — begins to dig around, and finds that she was both rich and not universally loved. There’s a poacher who thinks she turned him in; a Scottish lady who coveted her lucrative catalog business; and an American who wanted to be her partner; and who knows, maybe others.

   There’s a lot of fishing lore here, particularly salmon fishing, which will interest many (though not me). Gill does his usual competent job of narration, primarily from McGarr’s viewpoint, and the prose and plot were fine.

   This isn’t a bad book at all, you understand, and I enjoyed reading it. It’s just that it doesn’t quite live up to Death of a Joyce Scholar and The Death of Love. The characters don’t seem as sharply etched, and there doesn’t seem to be the same depth of feeling, and the same peculiarly Irish sensibility.

   It’s “just” a decent mystery novel by a good writer. I’m disappointed only because I’ve come to expect a bit more from Gill and McGarr.

Editorial Comment:   Barry wasn’t able to show the cover of this book by Gill in his printed zine back in 1993, but I’m pleased that I’m able to now, some 17 years later. What do you think? Was he right, or was he right?

PAUL HAGGARD [STEPHEN LONGSTREET] – Dead Is the Door-Nail.   J. B. Lippincott, US, hardcover, 1937.

   One of the many problems associated with a lack of a sense of humor by a reviewer is the inability to tell when an author is teasing the reader. What is one to make of this: “The paunch and jowl of raffish apartment houses catapulted their elegant heights above the streets in a pageant of foppish decadence.”

   And yet it is closely followed by: “…to the wise mob of drunks, hop-heads and flamboyant slatterns of both sexes, it was a sanctuary and first-aid station. In Hilton’s electric cabinets, steam baths, needle showers and sun booths, the elect were tried and found wanton.”

   In the first of four novels featuring Mike Warlock, sports reporter for the New York Globe, and his faithful companion and cameraman, Abner Gillaway, they are assigned by the paper to cover the murder of Doris Castle, rich and the World’s Champion Lawn Tennis Player.

   Lots of suspects here, despite a few getting knocked off along the way. Did Castle’s husband, crooner Ira Wells, kill her because the marriage was unconsummated after three months? Or one of Wells’s many lovers? Or the odious Professor Ott, who once peddled a combination cough medicine and dandruff cure? Or Ott’s assistant, a coward and a blackmailer? Or the devilish Dr. Delcro, up to who knows what?

   Considerable action in an amusing hard-boiled novel in which the author just may have had his tongue in cheek. And if he didn’t, it’s still funny.

      Bibliographic Data:    [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

HAGGARD, PAUL. Pseudonym of Stephen Longstreet; other pseudonym: Henri Weiner.
      Dead Is the Door-Nail. Lippincott, 1937. Mike Warlock
      Death Talks Shop. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Mike Warlock.

      Death Walks on Cat Feet. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Also published as: The Case of the Severed Skull, as by Henri Weiner.
      Poison from a Wealthy Widow. Hillman-Curl, 1938. Mike Warlock.

LONGSTREET, STEPHEN. Born Chauncey Weiner; 1907-2002. Pseudonyms: Paul Haggard & Henri Weiner. Also a screenwriter.
      The Crime. Simon & Schuster, 1959.

       -The Pedlock Inheritance. McKay, 1972
       The Ambassador. Avon, pb, 1978.

WEINER, HENRI. Pseudonym of Stephen Longstreet; other pseudonym: Paul Haggard.
      Crime on the Cuff. Morrow, 1936.   “Introduces one-armed sleuth John Brass, former Secret Service man who is also a popular cartoonist, creator of the comic strip, ‘Georgie the G-Man.'”
      The Case of the Severed Skull. Mystery Novel of the Month, pb, 1940. Reprint of Death Walks on Cat Feet, as by Paul Haggard.

DANA STABENOW – A Night Too Dark. St. Martin’s, hardcover, February 2010; paperback reprint: November 2010.

Genre:   Private eye. Leading character: Kate Shugak; 17th in series. Setting:   Alaska.

First Sentence:   Gold.

    Mining has come to Kate’s corner of Alaska and changing her world forever. But death is still there. A truck is found with an apparent suicide note. What remains of a body is later found and identified as one of the workers from the Suulutaq Mine.

    When the man thought dead walks into Kate’s yard, they find someone disappeared at the same time and uncover a case of corporate espionage. But the death of a much-liked mine office worker has Kate determined to find out what is going on.

    Most of the things I love about Dana Stabenow’s writing are here. The dialogue is excellent and filled with delightfully dry humor. The sense of place in her ability to convey Alaska, particularly the profusion of flowers in spring, is visually effective.

   Her references to contemporary music and books contribute to the sense of time and identity of the characters of Kate and Jim. The scenes of sexual foreplay are fun, titillating yet never go too far.

    The characters are empathic and appealing. For everything Kate has survived, which has given her the edge and strength she has, as a character, she is anything but cold. Although she is a bit too good to be true, that is also what bring me back book after book. Chopper Jim, Old Sam, the aunties, Johnny, Mutt and all those around her provide dimension both to Kate and to the setting.

    The plot started off strong but rather wandered away from itself. Ms. Stabenow knows how to build a scene so filled with anticipation and suspense, you nearly forget to breathe. Although there was one such scene, there was only one. For the rest of the story, it rather felt to be “Kate Lite.”

    It reminded me more of her earlier, lighter books. I very much enjoyed those at the time, but her more recent books, those after Hunter’s Moon have developed so far past those, this feels to be a step back.

    I’m not saying the issues raised in the story weren’t interesting, timely or important; they were. Kate’s concerns about the changes happening around her will certainly impact her growth as a character. I’m also not saying I was bored or found the book slow reading; I assuredly was not.

    For all my admitted disappointment, this is still a good read and I am anxious to see where the series goes from here. But would someone please explain to me what the title, with its dark and suspenseful connotation, had to do with the story?

Rating:   Good.

P. R. SHORE – The Bolt.   E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1929. Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1929.

   This long forgotten mystery novel was published in England and the United States in 1929. In the latter country it was published by E. P. Dutton, who at this time published several British mysteries with excellent endpaper maps.

   I have no idea whether these maps originated with the original English editions, having never seen the original English editions, but I plan to review all such Dutton mysteries that have come into my purview. I start with The Bolt.

   The author of The Bolt evidently was a man, Peter Redcliffe Shore. He is said to have been born in 1892 and to have authored one other detective novel, 1932’s The Death Film (about a slaying in a theater). That is the sum total of my knowledge of this author.

   I originally had assumed the author was a woman, because the tale is one of those English village “cozies” and it is narrated by a female character, a thirty-nine year old “spinster,” one Marion Leslie. Given that the author was truly a man I am impressed with his ability to carry off this character.

   The first fifth of the novel is given over to setting up its murder, and this part is effectively done. The village of Ringshall comes equipped with a Manor and a pub, The Lady & Hare, as well as a Squire, his nineteen-year-old daughter, his unpopular new wife, an eligible bachelor curate, the daughter’s boyfriend (a relative of Miss Leslie’s), a designing female of uncertain reputation, and assorted rustics, including a maid at the Manor House and her ambitious laboring boyfriend, a village witch and her “idiot” son. Oh, and the assorted gossiping ladies of the village.

   This part of the book is done so well, that it is almost a disappointment when comes murder (of the Squire’s wife during the day of the village fair, by means of a rifle equipped with a flint arrowhead, or “elf-bolt,” as the superstitious locals call it).

   Of the Squire’s wife maddening propensity to interfere with and dictate all aspects of village life (which includes patronizing the poor with dubious benevolence), the narrator amusingly notes: “She was the only person I’ve ever known who really bought those bundles of haircloth flannel and shoddy serge which certain shops advertise as ‘suitable for charity’ — which I suppose they are, if you take Mrs. Ward’s view of charity.” (I assume this is a reference to the popular Victorian novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward?)

   No one in Ringshall could stand the Squire’s wife, but several villagers had especial reason to dislike her. Could one of these people have done the deed, or was it someone from her past?

   Although professional detectives pop in and out, most of the work is done by Miss Leslie and her friend the curate. The solution finally comes by means of some hidden papers, but the reader is given a chance to put most of it together herself.

   The solution is good enough, though it is not cut to a multi-faceted, Christie-like brilliance. However, I have to wonder whether this novel might have influenced Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage, which was published the following year. The village setting is certainly similar, as is the central situation of a locally prominent man, his second wife and his young adult daughter (though in the Christie novel it is the husband, not the wife, who is murdered).

   The Bolt also resembles John Dickson Carr’s Till Death Do Us Part, which involves rifle ranges and murder during a village fair. Though it is not as clever as either of those classic English detective novels, The Bolt is worth reading for lovers of traditional village mysteries.

Editorial Comments:   This book was listed by Curt in his recent list of Forty Favorites from the Twenties, which you can go back and read here. As it was one of the more obscure ones he chose, I was delighted when he offered to send a review of it.

   As for the author, all that Al Hubin adds that Curt did not is that Shore was “born in Hampton; educated privately and at Oxford; educator; living in Somerset in 1930s.” His second book was published by Metheun in 1932 and never appeared in the US. There are, unfortunately, no copies of either book currently offered for sale on the Internet.

[UPDATE] 10-17-10.   Curt provided the image of the book’s endpapers, but his copy lacked a dust jacket. From Bill Pronzini’s collection, however, comes cover images of both of Shore’s two mysteries, those which you now see above. Thanks, Bill!

[UPDATE #2] 10-18-10.   What do you know? It turns out Curt was right all along. Check out his statement at the beginning of paragraph four, in which he says his original assumption was that P. R. Shore was female.

   Which she was. Thanks to the combined detective work of Jamie Sturgeon, Al Hubin and Steve Holland, it’s been discovered that the name “Peter Redcliffe Shore” was total fiction. The author of The Bolt is now identified as Helen Madeline Leys, 1892-1965, who also wrote ghost stories as Eleanor Scott. Randalls Round, a highly regarded collection of these tales, was recently published by Ash-Tree Press (1996) in a limited hardcover edition

   Congratulations to all for coming up with this. Good work!

A BLONDE FOR A NIGHT. DeMille Pictures Corporation/ PatM Exchange, 1928. Marie Prevost, Franklin Pangborn, Harrison Ford, T. Roy Barnes, Lucien Littlefield. Screenplay by F. McGrew Willis & Rex Taylor. Director: E. Mason Hopper. Shown at Cinevent 42, Columbus OH, May 2010.

   After what appears to have been a whirlwind romance, Marcia and Bob Webster (Marie Prevost and Harrison Ford) are honeymooning in Paris. There are minor spats but the arrival of Bob’s friend George Mason (T. Roy Barnes) and his tales of their past exploits with blonde conquests provoke Marcia to don a wig and set out to see how faithful Bob will be if he’s put to the test by a seductive blonde.

   Her partner in this masquerade is Hector, a dress-shop owner, played with his trademark fuss-budget primness by Franklin Pangborn.

   I don’t think the wig was that much of a disguise, particularly in close-ups but, if you go along with the premise, the 60 minutes pass pleasantly enough.

MAX EHRLICH – Spin the Glass Web. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1952. Bantam #1096, paperback, 1953.

Filmed as The Glass Web. Universal International, 1953. Edward G. Robinson, John Forsythe, Kathleen Hughes, Marcia Henderson, Richard Denning, Hugh Sanders. Screenplay: Robert Blees & Leonard Lee. Director: Jack Arnold.

   Max Ehrlich started writing for newspapers, moved on to Radio in the late ’30s and Television in the ’50s. In between times he wrote a few books, including Spin the Glass Web (Harper, 1952) which draws on his experience in live TV to craft a neat tale of a not-quite-innocent screen-writer caught up in murder.

   The story opens on Don Newell, head writer of a TV show of rather questionable taste but undoubted allure — they dramatize recent crimes as sensationally as possible. Don is married and blessed with children, and the story starts as he decides to buy off his mercenary mistress Paula — or kill her, depending on the moment.

   As he makes his way to her apartment, we flashback to their meeting, his seduction and attendant complications, including blackmail. The third-person narrative unfolds a bit further and we find Paula has a criminal husband knocking around somewhere, and another TV writer on the string: Henry Hinge, a pudgy, detail-obsessed, technical advisor with ambitions of getting Newell’s job.

   Flashbacks and unfolding done with, Don turns up at Paula’s apartment, finds her already murdered, and slowly realizes his problems are only beginning.

   Spin never generates much mystery; it’s pretty clear early on who the killer is and how he’s going to trip himself up, but the momentum of the tale comes from Newell’s frantic efforts to get out from under Hinge’s compulsive poking around into the details of the case, and the effort of trying to act natural around his increasingly suspicious wife.

   Ehrlich spins this out rather effectively, using as a backdrop the producer’s decision to dramatize Paula’s murder for the show Don has to write: the closer the show comes to air time, the tighter the web Hinge spins around the hapless, haunted Newell.

SPOILER ALERT: I have to mention here that although, as I said, the killer and his undoing are telegraphed early on, Ehrlich finishes the book by cranking up the old deus ex machina and taking it out for a spin.

   The result is dramatically satisfying but hardly convincing as the getting-away-with-it killer is gunned down by a passing policeman who sees him running in the night.

   Now when I was a kid, you could get shot and killed for running away from a cop and not stopping when he ordered you to. I mean, I never tried it myself, but I saw it on the News a few times, and it was featured in a couple of movies, most notably The Prowler and Woman in the Window.

   By the time I was wearing a badge and gun, the rules had tightened up a bit, but I still had the chance once to legally shoot a fleeing felon in the back; couldn’t do it, though.

   When it came right down to it and I was squeezing the trigger, I suddenly said to myself, “No, you better hadn’t,”and stopped. (I ended up catching the burglar when he ran into a chicken-wire fence.) Anyway, whenever I see this bit in a book or movie, I always recall that moment and wonder how often it happened in what we call Real Life.

   Getting back to Ehrlich’s book, it was filmed the next year as The Glass Web “in Amazing 3-D” at Universal by the redoubtable Jack Arnold, who also brought the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the screen and detailed the domestic life of the Incredible Shrinking Man.

   It’s a solid job of film-making, with John Forsythe suitably harried as the philandering writer, Edward G. Robinson (recalling his role in Double Indemnity) playing the obsessed Hinge, and a very effective Kathleen Hughes as the predatory Paula, whom the writers contrive to kill at the start of the movie and kill again later on.

   There’s a wonderful scene early in the film, well-played and tightly-written, between Robinson and Hughes that sketches their pathetic relationship perfectly. And if the wrap-up goes a bit over the top, it at least makes for fun watching.

Editorial Comment:   You can’t make it out it, I’m sure, but on the front cover of the Harper hardcover edition up above, it reads: “Your Money Back If You Can Resist Breaking The Seal.”

   Which makes this a Harper Sealed Mystery that was missed in Victor Berch’s checklist of the same. The previous series ended in 1934, some 18 years earlier. Are there any others that came along later? We’ll find out.

DOOMWATCH. Tigon British Film Productions, UK, 1972. Released in the US as Island of the Ghouls. Ian Bannen, Judy Geeson, John Paul, Simon Oates, George Sanders, Geoffrey Keen, Percy Herbert, Shelagh Fraser. Screenplay by Clive Exton, based on the BBC series created by by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. Director: Peter Sasdy.

   This cautionary thriller was based on the BBC television series of the same name starring John Paul, Simon Oates, Vivien Sherrard, and Robert Powell (1970-72) and adapted to this taut film about an environmental disaster on a small Cornish island dependent on fishing and the sea.

   Ian Bannen is Dr. Shaw ( a new character created for the film) with Doomwatch, an organization that investigates the environmental impact of ecological disasters. After an oil spill he is dispatched to the small island of Balfe (a fictional creation) to ask a few questions and take some samples to see if local wildlife has been harmed.

   Balfe (filming was done around Polperro and Mevagissey in Cornwall ) is a quiet place, insular and inbred. Shaw gets little cooperation and meets open resentment as he begins to nose around. The opening scenes build up a nice atmosphere as he encounters deeper mysteries; an unusually violent dog, someone following him everywhere, a child buried in the forest whose body disappears, and finally an attack by a strangely disfigured man that locals try to write off as an accidental fall on slippery rocks on the shore.

   With the help of local teacher, Judy Geeson, Bannen begins to delve into the mystery it is now clear cannot be caused by the oil spill, and uncovers Castle Rock, an abandoned Naval dumping ground, but when he approaches Admiral George Sanders he learns the low level radioactive material dumped by the Royal Navy could not have caused the problem on the island.

   A dive at the dumping site uncovers industrial experimental growth hormones dumped there illegally. The radiation caused the hormone filled canisters to burst and contaminated the fish eaten by the islanders.

   But even when they know the cause of the disease the insular and increasingly violent islanders don’t want their life disturbed, and may kill to protect their way of life. They believe the disease is caused by inbreeding and is a judgment of God. They are too ashamed to seek help, and frightened of being forced to leave their ancestral home: in its last stages the disease can produce violence and madness — and in several cases has led to murder and suicide.

   The film produces a powerful statement about the impact of such a disaster, and while it was science fiction at the time it hardly seems so today. If anything, the scenes of the clean up of the oil spill at the beginning of the film are more chilling now than they were then. But it works as an intelligent and thoughtful mystery thriller despite and sometimes thanks to its minuscule budget.

   Filming was done effectively in and around the rugged Cornish coast, and the unique architecture of the island towns gives it an curiously threatening and yet quaint look. Bannen is effective as the passionate scientist and Geeson the outsider only partially accepted by the islanders. Sanders, seems mostly tired as the Admiral and Keen (probably best known to American viewers as the Foreign Minister in the James Bond films) has little to do as the industrialist who farmed out the clean up to the lowest bidder.

   Character actor Percy Herbert has one or two brief scenes as one of the islanders effected by the disease but hanging on to his humanity and common sense. Shelagh Fraser is good as Bannen’s landlady, trying to maintain her secrets and contain her grief over her desperately ill and grotesquely deformed husband.

   The ending, as Doomwatch and the Navy try to clean up the mess, is effectively downbeat, and if it’s a letdown from the monsters and horrors suggested earlier in the film it offers instead a sober, intelligent, and moving picture of the devastation left behind by greed and carelessness and the difficulty of dealing with such a small secretive and inbred community.

   Running only 88 minutes (I’ve seen it listed as everything from 70 to 92 minutes, but the DVD I viewed was 88), this is an almost gentle film, handsomely shot, and done with real intelligence and a determination to avoid sensationalism and replace it with real drama and suspense, and in those things it succeeds.

   As in real life there are no real villains and no easy answers. The corporate types tried to save money and chose the low bidder to dispose of the waste and the company who disposed of the waste was stupid not criminal.

   The writers eschew sensational sub-plots and stick to the human story, and it is more powerful for it with no corporate intrigue, chases, and hired hit men tacked on for filler; just real people in a real crisis. Just how much tension and threatened violence they ring out of that may surprise you.

    Doomwatch is sometimes unfairly compared to The Wicker Man, but only the setting and the idea of the insular island society and an outsider’s reaction to it and uncovering its mysteries are the same. It is primarily a mystery and suspense film, but often promoted as horror or science fiction.

   Writers Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis also wrote a Crichtonesque novel, Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters adapted from an episode of Doomwatch TV series, as well as the novels Brainrack and The Dynostar Menace.

   Kit Pedler (aka Dr. Christopher Magnus Pedler) was the unofficial scientific adviser on Doctor Who and wrote several scripts, among them “Tomb of the Cybermen,” in which he created one of the Doctor’s most enduring foes, the Cybermen.

   Screenwriter Clive Exton’s credits include adapting Edgar Wallace’s On the Spot and Francis Durbridge’s The World of Tim Fraser for television, the screenplays for Night Must Fall and 10 Rillington Place, and would be best known here for the Jeeves and Wooster series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, and the Poirot series with David Suchet.

   Director Peter Sasdy directed several Hammer films including Countess Dracula, Taste the Blood of Dracula and Hands of the Ripper. He also directed the film of Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tapes, and somewhat less successfully Harold Robbins The Lonely Lady with Pia Zadora. His other work includes Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady with Christopher Lee and the television series Callan, with Edward Woodward.

   The disease the islanders suffer from is acromegaly, a disease of the pituitary gland, probably the best known sufferer of the disease being actor Rondo Hatton, the Creeper of Hollywood fame, whose distinctive features were exploited in several Hollywood horror films (The Pearl of Death from the Sherlock Holmes series, The Return of the Spider Woman, The Brute Man) before his early death from the disease in 1946.

I LOVE TROUBLE. Columbia Pictures, 1948. Franchot Tone, Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, Glenda Farrell, Steven Geray, Tom Powers, Lynn Merrick, John Ireland, Donald Curtis, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Barrat, Raymond Burr, Eddie Marr, Sid Tomack. Screenplay by Roy Huggins, based on his book The Double Take. Director: S. Sylvan Simon.

   I have any number of things I need to tell you about this film, and I do not know where to begin. But perhaps the most essential thing you need to know is that this is a private eye movie, and that the PI who stars in it, impersonated by Franchot Tone, is Stu Bailey, who later became much more famous as the star of the television series, 77 Sunset Strip, in which he was played by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

   I could understand the latter as being a gent who could turn the heads of any number of women as he walks by, if not actually being the object of the whistle of the wolf, but Franchot Tone, somewhat less so. As you can see from the list of cast members, there are any number of women in this film, including the former Torchy Blane, aka Glenda Farrell, now relegated to the role of Helen “Bix” Bixby,” faithful secretary. It’s an important role, but to my mind, it’s still a relegation.

   Bailey is hired in this movie to follow the wife of an important man in his neck of the woods, which is Los Angeles, or if not, one of the important suburbs.

   Either way, the wife of this important man is accused anonymously of having secrets in her past, which includes Portland, where she was a nightclub dancer, and Los Angeles, where she was a bubble bath entertainer.

   From which point many leads open up, and many clichés of the gumshoe business ensue as well, and quite excellently so, including witty repartee (of course); being run down by an automobile in a dark alley; being followed by car in a high speed chase before the tables are turned; finding his room and office ransacked; being slugged on the head from behind; being kidnapped by the ransackers and then being drugged by a nurse with a needle with nefarious intent and more. And as suggested above, all kinds of women (other than the nurse) become involved, some essential to the plot, some not.

   And speaking of plot, I do not believe that anyone can watch this movie and follow the plot all of the way through. It is complicated.

   Perhaps as complicated as the 250 page novel the movie is based on, which I thought I had read when I started this movie, but which I quickly decided I had not.

   In any case, I have watched this movie twice, so far, and I think everything makes sense to me. Luckily I was watching on DVD and I could back up whenever I needed to, which was on the second time through, since I didn’t realize I needed to – the first time, that is.

   Unhappily, Raymond Burr has only two lines of dialogue. Distinctive lines of dialogue, true, but only two.

[UPDATE] 10-13-10. Turns out that Jeff Pierce did a long review of The Double Take a while ago, the Huggins book that this movie is based on. He apparently read a later paperback edition that updated the story a little bit, to make it a better fit for the TV series, but it didn’t seem to affect the details of the plot any. Jeff also includes huge chunks of the story itself, making his comments doubly worth reading. You can find it here.