CARTER BROWN – The Stripper. Signet S1981, paperback original; 1st printing, August 1961. Cover art: Robert McGinnis. Reprint paperback: combined with The Brazen, Signet Double Novel, 1981.

   Pine City homicide cope Lt. Al Wheeler is called to the fifteenth floor of a hotel where a young woman, Patty Keller, is on an outside ledge. At 3 pm she decides to come in, but as she edges along she doubles up in agony and falls to her death.

   Doc Murphy’s autopsy shows she had had an injection of a powerful emetic, but there was no hypodermic in the hotel room. Sheriff Lavers tells Wheeler that the girl had just one relative in Pine City, a cousin called Dolores Keller, known as Deadpan Dolores, a stripper who strips with no facial expressions.

   Dolores tells Wheeler that Patty had joined a lonely hearts club run by Mr and Mrs Arkwright. They tell him that Patty had had just one date, with Harvey Stem. Meanwhile Wheeler takes a shine to the receptionist, Sherry Rand, and arranges to take her to see Dolores perform.

   At the club he notices the supposedly shy Harvey Stem drinking champagne with two of the strippers and meets sinister club owner Miles Rovak and his henchman Steve Loomas. After the club Wheeler takes Sherry back to his apartment where, to the accompaniment of Duke Ellington, courtesy of AI’s hi-fi, Sherry demonstrates what she has learned of the art of striptease.

   The story goes back and forth between the strip club and the lonely hearts club, another death occurs, and Dolores decides to cosy up to Wheeler before he puts everything together.

   This is not the best Al Wheeler that I have read, not that any of them should be taken seriously, of course. The plot is rather so-so, but it is an enjoyable read, with most of the regulars, including Murphy, Lavers, Sergeant Polnik and Annabelle Jackson, showing up.

Editorial Comment: Coming soon to a blog near you, Geoff’s review of Carter Brown’s The Stripper: The Musical.

KATE ELLIS – The Armada Boy. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, July 2000. Previously published in the UK: Piatkus, hc, 1999.

Genre: Police procedural. Series character: DS Wesley Peterson, 2nd in series. Setting: Devon, UK.

First Sentence: Norman Openheim lit a forbidden cigarette and inhaled deeply.

   The Americans have come back to Devon in tribute to the time spent there preparing for the Normandy Invasion. The reunion does not go without incident when Neil, an archeologist and friend of DS Wesley Peterson, find the body of a murdered veteran at the chantry chapel ruins, the site where sailors of the Spanish Armada are said to be buried and where in more recent times, couples went for a bit of privacy.

   The only thing better than discovering a new author I like, is when they have a backlist for me to read. Kate Ellis is such an author.

   It is nice that this book is set in the fictional town of Tradmouth in Devon. From the author’s website, I learned that she used Dartmouth as her guide. While it is nice to be outside a major city, providing a stronger sense of place would have been appreciated, particularly as I am completely unfamiliar with this area. Thank heaven for the Internet.

   I cannot, however, fault her for character creation. Although this is billed as “A Wesley Peterson Crime Novel,” it read more as an ensemble cast, and a good one. Again, quoting the website, “Each story combines an intriguing contemporary murder mystery with a parallel historical case.”

   Wesley received his degree in archeology prior to joining the police force and therefore provides the bridge to his archeologist friend, Neil. Wesley is polished and university educated, in contrast to his superior, DI Heffernan, whom I am delighted to say he gets on with well.

   To this pair add a bright, ambitious police woman; a young detective who’d really like the action of London; Wesley’s archeologist friend; and an unseen psychic who calls to tell them to look for the Armada Boy.

   What I particularly appreciated was that the background of all the characters is provided in bits throughout the story. The story’s plot is well constructed. It is intricate and filled with red herrings and twists but never feels contrived or manipulative.

   The clues are revealed to the reader as they are to the characters. The past is a critical element of the story as it relates to both location and motives. Ellis skillfully blends the historical information into the plot, even enabling a particularly poignant thread to the story.

   Ellis is an intelligent writer excellent at combining the past with the present and in her use of allegories and understanding the impact of the sins of the father. She has definitely joined my “must read” list.

Rating: Very Good Plus.

      The Wesley Peterson series —

1. The Merchant’s House (1998)

2. The Armada Boy (1999)
3. An Unhallowed Grave (1999)
4. The Funeral Boat (2000)
5. The Bone Garden (2001)

6. A Painted Doom (2002)
7. The Skeleton Room (2003)

8. The Plague Maiden (2004)
9. A Cursed Inheritance (2005)
10. The Marriage Hearse (2006)
11. The Shining Skull (2007)
12. The Blood Pit (2008)

13. A Perfect Death (2009)
14. The Flesh Tailor (2010)
15. The Jackal Man (2011)

Note: Kate Ellis has also written two detective novels featuring DI Joe Plantagenet, and one with Lady Katheryn Bulkeley, a 16th century abbess.

LOVER COME BACK. Columbia, 1931. Constance Cummings, Jack Mulhall, Betty Bronson, Jameson Thomas, Katherine Givney. Screenplay by Dorothy Howell and Robert Shannon, from a story by Helen Topping Miller; photography: Joseph Walker. Director: Erie C. Kenton, director. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   There were films with the same title released in 1946 (with Lucille Ball and George Brent) and in 1961 (with Doris Day and Rock Hudson).

   I’ve not seen the two later films, but none of the IMDB postings suggests any connection between the three except the title. In any case, the situation as it developed in the 1931 film would never have made it to the screen in the later periods in anything resembling its treatment of sexual relationships.

   Constance Cummings is a secretary who’s had an affair with Jack Mulhall, general manager of the firm for which she works. When he breaks off their relationship and marries Betty Bronson (groomed by her mother, Katherine Givney, for a suitable marriage) Cummings accepts the longstanding offer of her boss, Jameson Thomas, and moves into a Park Avenue apartment he’s set up for her.

   She continues to work at the firm as the organizer and hostess of parties entertaining out-of-town clients. When Bronson begins an affair with Thomas, Cummings attempts to protect Mulhall from the knowledge of his wife’s indiscretions, but eventually Bronson’s blatant cheating precipitates the film’s not-too-surprising climax.

   Beautiful Constance Cummings may be the victim of a blind lover and a scheming rival, but she has a strong will and an intelligence that make it clear who’s going to carry the day.

   She gives a commanding performance in a frank treatment of sexual relationships that may seem astonishing to someone who’s not familiar with Hollywood’s license for sinning in the pre-code era.

ROBERT CRAIS – The First Rule. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, January 2010. Paperback reprint: Berkley, December 2010.

Genre: Private eye. Series character: Joe Pike/Elvis Cole, 2nd in Joe Pike series. Setting: Los Angeles.

First Sentence: Frank Meyer closed his computer as the early winter darkness fell over his home in Westwood, California, not far from the UCLA campus.

   Joe Pike receives word that, Frank, one of the members of his former mercenary team has been murdered, along with his entire family and the nanny, in a violent home invasion. The police and FBI want to know what Frank was into.

   Pike knows he Frank was clean but, along with the other members of the former team and his friend, PI Elvis Cole, are dedicated to find the killers and elicit their own form of justice. This becomes particularly true when Pike realizes Frank wasn’t the target, but only collateral damage.

   In general, I am a big fan of Robert Crais and the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series. I liked The Watchman which gave us more information about Pike’s past. But I don’t think Pike works as a lead protagonist. Pike works as Cole’s backup, sometimes known as the “psychopathic sidekick,” because he is an enigma. He doesn’t do friendship, in the classic sense of the word but, by heaven, he does loyalty and he has a code by which he leads his life, and that makes him work as a character.

   I appreciate Crais wanting to stretch the character of Pike, but it just didn’t quite work because of problems with the story and the writing. First, if Pike had said “Sh” one more time, I’d have taken out whatever virtual weapon — I am so NOT a gun person — and shot him.

   Second, Pike formed a relationship with a baby that, even allowing for the metaphysical, stretched credulity beyond the point of belief. But third, and most important, Pike broke his own rules. The situation did not call for it and it didn’t make sense.

   The one thing that did hold true, was Pike’s tribute to his fallen comrade, which I appreciated. Crais does give the story an element of place, but there also seemed to be a large assumption that the reader is familiar with the environs of Southern California/Los Angeles. I do find it interesting — i.e., unbelievable — that whenever there would be a car chase, there was no traffic to slow them down.

   The First Rule was, as always, an exciting read with lots of action and some good twists to the plot, but this is far from Crais’s best work. I’m certain I’ll read his next book, but I may not buy it in hardcover.

Rating:   Okay.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

      Indigo Slam (by Steve Lewis).

JAMES HADLEY CHASE – I’ll Get You For This. Jarrolds, UK, hardcover, 1946. Avon Monthly Novel #18, US, digest-sized paperback, 1951. Filmed as Lucky Nick Cain, 1951, with George Raft, Coleen Gray & Walter Rilla.

   That’s Chester Cain, the hero of James Hadley Chase’s novel I’ll Get You For This, a gambler with a fast gun that would make Mike Hammer or Race Williams blink twice and a barely legal reputation. Like pulpster Gordon Young’s Don Everhard from an earlier age, he’s a fast shooting two-fisted professional gambler who is a law unto himself.

   In I’ll Get You For This Cain has just arrived in Paradise Palm, a coastal beauty spot where he hopes to spend a little vacation time after a grueling few months of profitable gambling up north. He has a bankroll, and he’s in the mood to enjoy it.

   And Paradise Palm seems just the kind of place to enjoy it all. The beaches are stacked with beautiful women if various states of extreme immodesty and even the cops call him sir. In fact, people couldn’t be nicer.

   By now Cain’s a bit suspicious, but he’s willing to play along and see where all this is going. The only man who acts at all normal is John Herrick, a reform candidate who isn’t excited about trouble like Cain showing up in town.

   But Cain doesn’t have long to worry about that when he is introduced to Miss Wonderly:

   That mention of the perfume brand may have been picked up from Peter Cheyney, whose heroes seemed to be hypnotized by the Narcisse Noir his femme fatales always wore. Later James Bond did this sort of brand name thing with a bit more style and flair, Fleming borrowing some of the Americanized elements of Cheyney and Chase for the Bond saga.

   But paradise doesn’t remain paradise very long and it is only the next day when a hungover Cain finds himself in a place more familiar to him:

   It looks bad, especially since the dead man in question is Herrick — the one man in town who hadn’t offered Cain a glad hand and the key to the city. Killeano, the city administrator offers to help, but somehow Cain doesn’t trust him or his motives. Luckily for Cain they didn’t count on Clair Wonderly falling for him — she refuses to play the game even when the cops get rough.

   And Cain lets them know he isn’t finished with them:

   Cain ends up teaming with the Feds in the form of a G-Man name Hoskiss, and he and Clair bring down Killeano and Paradise Palms and the dirty racket they are running. (Hoskiss should be a T-Man since the scheme involves counterfeiting, but I suppose we have to give Brit Chase a pass on that mistake.)

   But that’s not the end of it. As the gang are awaiting trial, Cain and Clair know they are in danger and try to go to ground, but the gang goes after them, and Cain has to resort to his old skills with a gun to protect them both while he hunts down Bat Thompson, the hood who killed Herrick and is now hunting Clair and him.

   And Cain goes home to Clair confident that their reign of fear has ended:

   I’ll Get You For This is mid-level Chase, violent and derivative, but compulsively readable and entertaining. Chase still has a following, with many of his books available as free e-books from various sources and his numerous books collectable. He even had his champions in George Orwell, who wrote about him in his famous article “Miss Blandish and Raffles,” and Chase’s friend Graham Greene, who included one of his works in a famous anthology of thrillers.

   This despite the fact that Chase was twice accused of plagiarism — notably for his debut No Orchids For Miss Blandish, that sailed a bit too close to William Faulkner’s novel Sanctuary, and later having to apologize to Raymond Chandler for lifting whole passages from one of his books.

   But then as Chase is recreating an entire world that existed only in books and films for him he may be forgiven if he sometimes recreated that world too closely.

   That said, even in this one you know he lifted the name Wonderly from The Maltese Falcon. It was just a habit he couldn’t — or wouldn’t bother to — break.

   Chase only visited the United States twice, but in general made good use of maps and a dictionary of slang in recreating a sort of fractured version of the hardboiled country of James M. Cain, Hammett, and Chandler. His work lacks the surrealism of Peter Cheyney’s Lemme Caution tales, despite which — or maybe because of which — Chase is great fun to read.

   His best works sometimes read like a pastiche of a Gold Medal original or noir film.

   His novels were great favorites (along with Peter Cheyney) in the famous French serie noir paperback series, and truthfully both he and Cheyney’s fractured Americanisms translated to French are a unique reading experience. Like Jerry Lewis, something may be lost in the translation back into English.

   Chase wrote under several names, but other than Chase, was probably best known as Raymond Marshall.

   For the most part his plots are clever if not surprising. They move fast, and at their best manage to recreate the kind of doomed noirish atmosphere of the James M. Cain book that first inspired him (The Postman Always Rings Twice) without achieving a single moment of authenticity.

   In some ways you could call them the British crime equivalent of spaghetti westerns, the pulp formula boiled down to its purest elements by an eye that experienced it only through books and films.

   I’ll Get You For This was made into a forgettable but mildly entertaining film, Lucky Nick Cain, with George Raft and filmed in Italy. It was relatively faithful to the basics of Chase’s plot, and was one of Raft’s better fifties outings.

   ___

   (*)  Careful readers will notice certain Anglicisms like city administrator instead of city manager or supervisor or electric torch for flashlight, and colours for colors creep in.

Previously reviewed on this blog:

      No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by Bill Crider (1001 Midnights).

      Hit and Run, by Steve Lewis.

“The Paragon.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 20). First air date: 8 February 1963. Joan Fontaine, Gary Merrill, Virginia Vincent, Linda Leighton, Richard Carlyle. Teleplay: Alfred Hayes. Story: Rebecca West (source unknown). Director: Jack Smight.

   Alice Pemberton (Joan Fontaine) is one of those individuals who, wherever they go, leave discouragement in their wake. She always rubs people the wrong way and yet never seems to notice the harm she does.

   From criticizing her sister’s child-rearing abilities to flicking lint off the maid’s uniform, Alice is a walking, talking affront to anyone who knows her. Her husband John (Gary Merrill) just can’t get through to her; she’s perfect and she expects everybody else to be also.

   One night Alice has a dream, a nightmare really, of a dark shape floating through the bedroom window and settling over her face, smothering her. It just so happens that one of the people who know Alice well is making plans to make her dream come true ….

   Joane Fontaine is best remembered for Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941). She also appeared in Jane Eyre (1944), Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948), Born to Be Bad (1950), The Bigamist (1953), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961).

   We’ve already dealt with Gary Merrill’s criminous career.  See “The Paragon” on Hulu here.

J. S. FLETCHER – The Safety Pin. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1924. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, US, hc, 1924.

   Solicitor Francis Shelmore deals only in conveyancing and lives a calm and ordered life in Southernstowe, “within sixty miles” of London.

   One afternoon Miss Cynthia Pretty, youthful half-owner of a Cornish tin mine, appears in his office to ask for help in locating the mine’s co-owner James Deane, her guardian and trustee, who has disappeared from the hotel where they had arranged to meet before leaving for a trip to the continent.

   Mr Deane is found murdered not far from a mansion occupied by Mrs Sophia Champernowne and her shiftless brother Alfred. She is a rich woman, mayoress of Southernstowe and owner of its biggest drapery store. Deane’s body is discovered by special constable John Hackdale, under-manager of Mrs Champernowne’s emporium and older brother of Shelmore’s shifty clerk Simmons Hackdale.

   John removes The Safety Pin from Deane’s jacket and conceals its existence from those investigating the crime, not exactly the sort of behaviour most readers would expect from a special constable.

   What significance can be attached to the fact that of 400 scenic postcards found in Deane’s hotel room only one has a particular house marked? Did his murderer act alone or with accomplices? Was it a random crime for profit, planned for a particular motive, or one that became inevitable when old secrets began rising from the dark waters of the past to gibber hideously on its slimy surface?

My verdict: The Safety Pin features a convoluted plot featuring blackmail, another disappearance, bribery, and sibling rivalry gone bonkers for a start, as well as more than one shady character with good motives for their behaviour — from their points of view at least.

   Miss Pretty gains sympathy at the beginning but ultimately, as my mother would say, lets herself down. Fletcher plays very cleverly on readers’ assumptions about characters’ motives and then briskly turns them on their heads towards the end of the novel. The denouement will annoy some readers and yet even they will have to admit it’s just the sort of thing that *would* happen in real life.

   My only quibble: I’d like to know what finally happened to that safety pin…

Etext:   http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0701001.txt

COLIN COTTERILL – The Coroner’s Lunch. Soho Crime, hardcover, December 2004; trade paperback: November 2005.

Genre: Licensed investigator. Series character: Dr. Siri Paiboun, 1st in series. Setting: Laos, 1976.

First Sentence: Tran, Tran, and Hok broke through the heavy end-of-west-season clouds.

   It is 1976 and one year after the Communist takeover of Laos. Dr. Siri Paiboun is 72 years old, a widower and ready to retire. Instead, he is appointed state coroner; in fact, he’s the only coroner in Laos and has three cases to deal with; the death of an important official’s wife, the discovery of bodies that could lead to an international incident between Laos and Vietnam, and uncovering the reason why the commanders of an Army base, located in northern Laos, keep dying.

   How have I missed Cotterill until now? Let me start with history. I am of the Vietnam era; I had friends who fought and died, there. Once the war was over, I had very little interest in that area of the world. Now I find it fascinating to see how Communism controlled every aspect of individual’s lives.

   What I particularly like is that Cotterill doesn’t present it in a heavy-handed manner, but through the character’s perspective of that being the way life is. In some ways, I find that more effective.

   The characters are wonderful. Dr. Siri, who performs his first autopsy with the help of a very old French book, his assistants, Dtui who reads Thai fan magazines, and Geung who has mild Down’s Syndrome, plus his friends are all delightfully portrayed with affection and, often, humor.

   But it is Siri who takes the lead and is our connection to the metaphysical world. With his white hair, uncontrolled eyebrows and shocking green eyes, Siri stands out on his own, but he can also see the dead and communicate with spirits.

   Rather than making the book unbelievable, it adds dimension and an element of suspense to the story in a way that is hard to quantify. There is a wonderful sense of place to the story, but different from the usual. It is very much tied in with the way people live, rather than descriptions of the location in which the story is set.

   I am so pleased to have found this author and have already ordered the rest of this series.

Rating: Very Good Plus.

   The Dr. Siri Paiboun Series —

       1. The Coroner’s Lunch (2004)
       2. Thirty-Three Teeth (2005)

       3. Disco for the Departed (2006)
       4. Anarchy and Old Dogs (2007)

       5. Curse of the Pogo Stick (2008)
       6. The Merry Misogynist (2009)

       7. Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010)

NORA PRENTISS. Warner Brothers, 1947. Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett, Robert Alda, Rosemary DeCamp, John Ridgely. Director: Vincent Sherman.

   As you can see from the photo to the right, this previously hard-to-find film noir drama has recently been released on DVD as part of the Warner Brothers Archive Collection. Every fan of old movies should be buying these.

   Even though they’re essentially print on demand items, the quality is good, and every one that’s purchased will convince the Powers That Be that there’s a small but steady market for them – I wouldn’t count on more – but continued income for Warners will convince Universal and MGM to step up their own programs of releasing old movies in their vaults on DVD.

   And sometimes they go on sale, as this one was, and very well may still be, if you’re reading this early enough. It’s also one of the good ones, which you probably knew already before I came along to tell you about it.

   I don’t imagine that Ann Sheridan ever made a really bad movie, and if she did, I don’t want to know about it.

   She’s the title character in this one, of course, a singer and night club entertainer who has a small traffic accident one evening, and the good Samaritan who comes to her rescue happens to be a doctor (Kent Smith) with a partner and a thriving practice who’s also a happily married man with two teen-aged children.

   Well, maybe not so happily married. Doctor Talbot’s a mild-mannered creature of punctuality and habit, and his love life at home has gradually disappeared to less than nothing.

   Some mild, good-natured flirting by Nora Prentiss during her first office visit does more than remind him of that, it shakes him up and down and back again.

   She finds his reaction amusing at first, but more and more she finds herself taking his intentions seriously. We (the viewer) do not get to see the details of the burgeoning romance, but we certainly know what’s going on.

   And if it were not for the prologue, in which we see a man in a jail cell, accused of Dr. Talbott’s murder, we would not know we are in a film noir movie at all, but since we do, we have a different perspective throughout the movie than even the characters themselves do, and into more and more difficulty do they certainly get — in true noir fashion all the way.

   Ann Sheridan, she of the lovely face and body and low contralto voice, is obviously the star, but even though she is the “other woman” in this film, it is nearly innocently so. It is Kent Smith who undergoes the drastic twists of fate which this movie provides, in abundance, and on whose shoulders rests the burden of making the viewer feel as though it could actually happen.

   I think he succeeds, but Kent Smith, a long-time but strictly second-tier movie and TV star and one you perhaps never heard of, lacks the charisma or sex appeal, to put it bluntly, to pull it off his role in this movie completely.

   One wonders, at times, what a real life Nora Prentiss would see in an equally real life Dr. Talbot, best described as I said above as mild-mannered. Distinguished and accomplished, yes, but still rather weak and ineffectual.

   Given that small quibble, plus a much more outrageous trial that takes place after the prologue is caught up to, in terms of chronological events, this is nonetheless a noir film that is very much worth watching.

   If you have not seen it, and if you’ve read this far in the review, I very strongly recommend that you do.

LINDA BARNES – Lie Down With the Devil. St. Martin’s Minotaur, paperback, August 2009; hardcover edition, August 2008.

   A couple of negative reviews I came across recently of a recent Linda Barnes Carlotta Carlyle novel made me wonder if I would find my generally favorable opinion of the series affected when I read Lie Down with the Devil. I must say that I didn’t and thought it one of the stronger outings in a while.

   Carlotta’s personal life has always been a strong factor in the series, with her relationship with Sam Gianelli, the son of a Boston mobster family, and her little “sister,” Paolina, now a teenager with a troubled past, both complicating her none too stable professional life.

   Sam has fled the country under threat of arrest for some serious crime he refuses to discuss with Carlotta, and Paolina, after the traumatic events of the previous novel Heart of the World, has been admitted to Mclean Hospital, a prestigious (and expensive) private facility where she is under treatment and continuous supervision, and refusing to speak with Carlotta.

   Blocked from contact with both Sam and Paolina, Carlotta is persuaded by her tenant Roz to accept a case in which a young woman, soon to be married, is suspicious about her fiance’s activities, and wants him under surveillance to determine what he’s up to.

   Sensing something off center about the explanation the young woman gives her, Carlotta still accepts the assignment, only to find, when the young woman is killed, the apparent victim of a random hit-and-run accident, that she’s been conned by the woman, and the case is linked to the Gianelli family in a way that will profoundly change her life.

   Carlotta’s personal life may often take precedence over the investigations she undertakes, but her intelligence and dogged persistence in the face of daunting obstacles still make her one of the most richly conceived and intriguing protagonists in contemporary detective fiction.