● CHARLES JACKSON – The Lost Weekend. Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1944. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including Signet #683, pb, 1948.

   ● THE LOST WEEKEND. Paramount Pictures, 1945. Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, based on the novel by Charles R. Jackson. Director: Billy Wilder.

   Thinking of books and the films made from them, I recenly re-watched and reread The Lost Weekend. I first read Charles Jackson’s 1944 novel back in High School, five years before I took my own first serious drink. Coming back to it now, I found some bits rather labored, way too many pages of rambling introspection, and a disappointing conclusion.

   All that’s left is a gripping story that generates real suspense and painful pathos, a central character commanding the reader’s interest from the outset, and a heart-rending momentum that keeps the pages turning even through the more self-indulgent passages. That’s all.

   The film Billy Wilder made out of this in ’45 softens the ending, adds a love interest, and cuts away the fatty introspection that pervades Jackson’s book, to emerge as a typically tough, brilliant and rather showy Billy Wilder movie: fast-paced, well-developed, and fleshed out with performances — even in the bit parts — that come alive on the screen.

   Ray Milland’s break-out turn after a decade of shallow leads is the most famous, but there’s also memorable thesping from Howard DaSilva — and lovable Frank Faylen etches a part so evil it’ll make me dubious next time I see Wonderful Life.

   One other thing I noticed: the last shot in this movie is really the first shot run backwards. That means something but I don’t know what.

ROGER TORREY – The Bodyguard and Other Crime Dramas. Black Dog Books; trade paperback; 1st printing, 2009. Introduction by Ron Goulart.

   Roger Torrey is probably not the first name you’d come up with if you were to start listing some well-known writers who wrote for the detective pulp fiction magazines, but in his day, he was one of the more prolific ones, and he traveled in high circles, with a considerable amount of his output in the 1930s being for one of the most prestigious of them all, Black Mask.

   Torrey wrote nearly 50 or so stories for that particular magazine, beginning in 1934 and continuing on to 1943, and one wishes that some of those could have been included in this particular collection. But alas, no. Even though this is a strikingly handsome volume, small press operations such as Black Dog Books do not have large budgets, and from all appearances the stories herein are all in the public domain.

   The magazines these stories were reprinted from, such as Romantic Detective, Private Detective and Super Detective, were not even of the second rank, as far as pulp magazines went. More like third or even fourth level, counting downward. Prestigious publications they were not.

   I am sorry to have to tell you this. But not all is lost. Bodyguard is a handsome volume, as I mentioned before, and the stories that are in it were certainly among the best of the magazines they were in.

   Most of Torrey’s leading characters were private eyes, also a great big plus as far as I am concerned, but only a few of them have well-heeled clients or work for a big agency and have a steady job. Most of them seem to be struggling along in life as well as everybody else who inhabit these tales, and sometimes their clients have less money on hand than they do.

   One gets the feeling that Torrey’s characters live in the other end of town, and the stories he tells are earthier and closer to the ground than some of those by his contemporaries. One of the stories has a scene that is more than slightly risque, but otherwise the leading characters and the women they meet in these stories do what ordinary people do, casually but behind closed doors. Lots of hints, in other words, but nothing more than that.

   The detective in “Two Dead Men” (Romantic Detective, August 1938) is a fellow named John Linehan, who in the course in telling this story reveals, without quite saying so, for example, that he’s been stepping out with his secretary on more than one occasion. It also is telling that she’s quite jealous when Lineham seems to be spending too much time in close proximity to a lady friend of his client, as they travels from party to nightclub and back again with his client and her boy friend.

   It seems as though she’s being blackmailed (her boy friend already has a wife) by someone who knows far too much about her, including the fact that she and the aforementioned boy friend were sharing a hotel room right next to one that from which a dead man jumped, falling not feet from Lineham, not working for Miss Morrison at the time.

   It is a wonder that Lineham can solve the case, what with all of the heavy drinking that goes on in this story, but solve it he does. I’m not as sure of the “why” as he is, but I agree with the “who.” But readers of Romantic Detective were not so much interested in the detective end of things, I presume, and Torrey delivers what it was they were looking for.

   Story number two is “Cook to Order” (Spicy Detective, October 1939), told by private eye George Andrews, who’s asked by a waitress in a place where he eats to find out what’s been bothering her roommate. Turns out that that’s just a ploy to get him over to her apartment, but as it turns out again, there actually is a case for “Andy” to solve.

   The plot is far too complicated for a story only ten pages long. The picture of tough living, dingy hash houses and bare-bones living quarters will stay with you a whole lot longer.

   The title story, “Bodyguard” (Private Detective, December 1938) is one of the longer tales in the collection, almost forty pages long. It doesn’t mean that it’s one of the better ones, I admit, but it has it moments.

   The bodyguard in question is William Dugan, who hired by a man of some wealth when some threats against his life have escalated into actual shots being taken at him. To my mind, Bill is not much of a bodyguard, although in all honesty the beating death of a gardener can’t be held against him, since the incident happened before he showed up.

   Nor can the shooting of a deputy sheriff, since the man was hardly one of the family. But when the throat of one of Miles’s two daughters is found with her throat slit, you’d think he might be fired on the spot, but he manages to keep his job until the case is solved.

   The dead girl was the pure in faith one; the other, a honey blonde with the morals of a tramp is the one who’s all over Bill — picture one guy with a stiff arm out to stave off her advances, and you’ve got our detective pictured to a T. And naturally Angela is more than jealous when Bill takes up with the other good-looking woman who’s recently come to town — a platinum blonde who claims to be a reporter, but her newspaper has never heard of her.

   Bill checked — one of the better moves he makes.

   This is as far I’m going to go. I’m sure you have the idea. There are eight more stories in this book, and I enjoyed them about as much as I did these first three. None of them is as good as Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, and maybe they’re not even half as good. On the other hand, who is?

PostScript. Two more things. There is, first of all, a well-done checklist of all of Torrey’s pulp fiction that fills the last dozen pages of this book. (Torrey wrote only novel in his career — he died in early 1946 of acute alcoholism– that being 42 Days for Murder, published first by Hillman-Curl in 1938.)

   Secondly, if you are a pulp fiction fan of any vintage, old or new, you should also go visit the Black Dog Books website. They have a large number of other collections like this one already out or coming soon, including the one just above and to the right, and I recommend all of them to you very highly.

BEAT THE DEVIL. United Artists, 1954. Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Edward Underdown, Ivor Barnard. Screenplay by Truman Capote and John Huston, based on the novel by James Helvick. Director: John Huston.

   A legendary mess. Scripted by Truman Capote, directed by John Huston, with a great cast that includes Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollobrigida and Robert Morley, and it’s still a dreadful muck-up time has not redeemed; something about a bunch of con men stuck in Italy trying to buy land in Africa, I think, but the plot doesn’t matter because it never really goes anywhere.

   There are some witty lines, but Huston always seems to be looking the other way when someone says them. Likewise the acting: some good turns by Morley, Lorre and Ivor Barnard as “the Galloping Major” but the characters are never defined well enough for us to be sure what the acting’s all about.

   Worst of all is Humphrey Bogart. It’s hard for a life-long Bogie-man like me to say it, but he’s dreadful here. Already cancer-stricken at 54, in ill-fitting wigs and gaudy clothes, he looks like an aging queen tarted up for one last night out with the boys.

   Bogie expressed some doubts about the project at the time, and it shows in his performance; at the heart of Devil we need the relaxed, self-assured leading man of Casablanca and The Big Sleep, but what we get is a nervous icon walking through the movie like an old man trying to cross a busy street.

   By the way, I’m always fond of reading the source books that notable movies were made from, so I looked up James Helvick’s novel Beat the Devil on the internet. The cheapest copy I found was $200, and if anyone wants to send me a copy, feel free.

BROADWAY LOVE. Bluebird Photoplays, 1918. Dorothy Phillips, Juanita Hansen, William Stowell, Harry von Meter, Lon Chaney, Eve Southern, Gladys Tennyson. director and author of the screenplay: Ida May Park. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

   This was an unusual screening, a silent film directed by a woman. Ida May Parks, according to Wikipedia, directed some 14 films, and wrote at least 50 screenplays, in a career that lasted from 1914 to 1930.

   The star was the then popular Dorothy Phillips, who plays Midge O’Hara, a small-town girl who goes to New York where she gets a job as a chorus girl. She is befriended by Cherry Blow (Juanita Hansen) who attempts to introduce the virtuous Midge to the incidental pleasures of her new life at a riotous party in the apartment of Cherry’s sugar daddy.

   Midge is rescued by an Arizona millionaire, only to find that his intentions are dishonorable. She flees New York, pursued by the persistent Henry, as well as by Elmer Watkins (Lon Chaney), her loutish suitor from back home.

   Parks sets up her shots for the actresses with great care, and is particularly successful with the party sequence. Relatively few Universal silent films (Bluebird Photoplays was Universal’s prestige feature unit) survived the studio’s purge, and the survivors are often in poor condition.

   However, the print shown was in excellent condition, and the film was more than competently directed, making one hope that other films directed by Parks may have survived.

“The Tender Poisoner.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 14). First air date: 20 December 1962. Dan Dailey, Howard Duff, Jan Sterling, William Bramley, Philip Read, Richard Bull, Bettye Ackerman. Writer: Lukas Heller, based on the novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven (1953; aka The Tender Poisoner, US, 1953) by John Bingham. Director: Leonard Horn.

   Barney Bartel (Dan Dailey) is an unhappily married man who has fallen for a woman, Lorna (Bettye Ackerman), ten years younger than his wife Beatrice (Jan Sterling). Barney’s pal Peter Harding (Howard Duff) knows about the affair and seems anxious to discourage Barney — but things aren’t always what they seem, are they?

   For Peter the situation has its advantages, indeed it does; for Barney, though, the situation is becoming intolerable. The first step involves getting rid of Beatrice, in preparation for which Barney must do an experiment on his dog, one involving poison …

   Longtime hoofer Dan Dailey proves in this show that he could do serious crime drama. Most of us may have forgotten the TV series Dailey did in 1959-60, 39 episodes of The Four Just Men inspired by characters created by Edgar Wallace. His only other series was the comedy The Governor & J. J. (1969-70).

   Howard Duff’s character is almost identical to the shifty guy he played in Naked City (1948). He also appeared in Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949), Spy Hunt (1950), Shakedown (1950), Private Hell 36 (1954), Women’s Prison (1955), While the City Sleeps (1956).

   On TV he was in Dante (26 episodes, 1960-61) and Felony Squad (73 installments, 1966-69), one Ellery Queen (1976), six appearances on Police Story, 37 episodes of Flamingo Road, and one as Thomas Magnum’s grandfather on Magnum, P.I.

   Jan Sterling was in a few crime dramas: Mystery Street (1950), Union Station (1950), Appointment with Danger (1951), Split Second (1953, reviewed here), The Human Jungle (1954), Female on the Beach (1955), and two episodes of The Name of the Game.

Hulu: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi869793817/

Editorial Comment:   The photo you see of Howard Duff is strictly a case of “None of the Above,” as far as the credits go as listed for him by Mike. If you know the part he’s playing, then you almost assuredly know who it is who’s in the scene with him.

LEE CROSBY – Too Many Doors. E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1941. Thriller Novel Classic #25, no date [1944], as Doors to Death (condensed). Belmont Books, pb, 1965.

   Wendal Crane, head of the Crane family and the family’s doll factory, has invited the entire family to hear a special announcement.

   What happens instead is that the great hurricane of 1938 cuts the house off totally from the outside world and murders begin taking place. Not to mention the voices from the walls and the little Malay figurines who may be coming alive.

   Fortunately, Dorcas Brown, a cousin of the Cranes, has brought with her Eric Hazard, psychologist and crime investigator. He gets it all straightened out in a novel that has nothing in particular to recommend it.

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

CROSBY, LEE. Pseudonym of Ware Torrey Budlong, 1905-1967; other pseudonyms: Meg Padget, Judith Ware and Joan Winslow
       Terror by Night (n.) Dutton 1938 [Eric Hazard]

       Too Many Doors (n.) Dutton 1941 [Eric Hazard]

       Midsummer Night’s Murder (n.) Dutton 1942

       Night Attack (n.) Dutton 1943
       Bridge House (n.) Belmont 1965

PADGET, MEG
       House of Strangers (n.) Lancer 1965

WARE, JUDITH
       Quarry House (n.) Paperback Library 1965
       Thorne House (n.) Paperback Library 1965
       The Faxon Secret (n.) Paperback Library 1966
       Detour to Denmark (n.) Paperback Library 1967

       The Fear Place (n.) Paperback Library 1967
       A Touch of Fear (n.) Signet 1969

WINSLOW, JOAN
       Griffin Towers (n.) Ace 1966

   The author was also a newspaperwoman, feature writer, editor, book columnist, foreign correspondent, short story writer. Her husband was Theodore Budlong, an advertising executive. At various times she lived in Upper Darby PA (1940s) and Bridgeport CT (1961).

   Her writing career was split into two parts, separated by a passage of some twenty years. When she began writing again in the mid-1960s, it was as part of the “Gothic romance” boom. Note that Too Many Doors was reprinted as one of the latter to take advantage of the tremendous, nearly unending demand for books in the category.

MURDERLAND. ITV, UK; 3-episode miniseries: 19 October, 26 October, 2 November 2009. Robbie Coltrane, Amanda Hale, Bel Powley, Sharon Small, Lorraine Ashbourne, Nicholas Gleaves, Lucy Cohu, Yasmin Paige. Screenplay: David Pirie. Director: Catherine Morshead.

   This was a single story, written by David Pirie and told over three one-hour parts (less adverts).

   In the first we see a young woman, on the brink of marriage, who goes to retired detective Hain (played by Robbie Coltrane), the man who investigated her mother’s murder 15 years before.

   We see the murder and the investigation through her young eyes as she discovers her mother was a prostitute working at a shabby massage parlour.

   In the second part we see the investigation through the eyes of Hain and we realise much more of what has gone on before; in the third episode we see the story brought up to date as new witnesses are discovered and the killer finally brought to justice.

   This was a very watchable piece of television which certainly engaged my interest and the time went very quickly. However like many programmes nowadays, I wasn’t entirely convinced at the end that it all made sense — for example it seemed a little odd that the workings of the massage parlour were unchanged after 15 years.

   Still it was a commendable effort and I enjoyed watching it.

ERIC VAN LUSTBADER – Last Snow. Forge Books, hardcover, February 2010.

   Eric Van Lustbader made a big splash with the first book in his Nicholas Linnear series, The Ninja, and staked out a place for himself in the best selling thriller stakes with tales of intrigue and adventure that usually involved his heroes in adventures with an Asian background.

   When that ran its course he seemed to founder a bit, made an ill advised attempt to change his name from Eric Van Lustbader to Eric Lustbader, and for a while seemed to have dropped out of the game. Recently he came back strongly, however, with Testament, and was chosen by the Robert Ludlum estate to continue the popular and lucrative Jason Bourne franchise.

   His books have always been strong on compelling narrative and notable for a sensuality missing in many of his contemporaries works.

   Last Snow is the second book in a series that began with First Daughter (Forge, 2008), and like so many series today it’s almost impossible to read one without some reference to the other, so I’ll briefly outline the events in the first book as they apply here.

   Jack McClure is a tough ATF agent whose best friend is President-elect Edward Carson. Jack’s daughter Emma has died, the tragedy putting an end to his marriage and leaving Jack devastated, and one of the few people who feels the same as he does is Edward Carson’s daughter Alli, Emma’s roommate in college. When Alli is kidnapped it’s only natural the newly elected president turns to his old friend for help.

   Political winds are stirring up trouble in regard to Alli Carson’s kidnapping. The outgoing administration wants their strong right wing Christian philosophy to continue to dominate the public debate and are pushing a moderate and increasingly powerful secularist movement as the villains even though the evidence points to a more radical secularist group. (Has there been a radical secularist movement since Lenin?)

   The action is well done and the characterization fine, but over all the politics are cartoonish and a bit silly really. This is no Seven Days in May or Advise and Consent. Seemingly both the far right and the far left have completely forgotten how to write political thrillers, since the right-leaning writers currently churning this sort of thing out are just as bad.

   A quick course in Richard Condon seems desperately needed for both sides. (Not that Condon was never outrageous, but then that was part of his charm — none of these current writers — Lustbader included — are remotely Richard Condon —most of them make you miss William LeQueux and E. Philips Oppenheim.)

   In any case Jack (notice how many of these guys are called Jack since Jack Bauer and 24?) saves the day, and there is some suspense along the way, despite the cartoonish politics. Lustbader writes readable page-turning bestseller prose.

   Last Snow picks up with Edward Carson president. Jack is trying to put his life back together again, and Alli, who suffers from Graves disease and looks sixteen instead of the twenty-two she really is, tends to cling to him after her ordeal. (This is the sort of book where everyone has some defining problem in lieu of characterization — it’s so much easier to give someone a problem than a character.)

   But Carson also relies on Jack, and when a US senator who was supposed to be in the Ukraine shows up dead in Capri under questionable circumstances, he asks Jack to investigate. Jack is with the Presidential party in Moscow.

   An interesting character note about Jack is that he is dyslexic, and through his mentor has learned to use that handicap as an advantage — his mind works differently and he uses that to solve puzzles that others can’t even as he struggles with the everyday world of paper work. It’s a nice touch, and Lustbader makes the most of it creating a reasonable and intelligent explanation for Jack’s considerable talents, even though what I wrote earlier of using these sort of things as gimmicks still holds. One character with a gimmick is fine. More than one and it becomes a crutch.

   If there is one major flaw here it’s that the book suffers from best seller shorthand.

   Berns was Carson’s man in the Senate, and he fears the former administration may use this against him … may even have killed Berns. Jack is to find out what he was doing in the Ukraine and how he died in Capri. His only clue is the name of the man Berns met in the Ukraine, one R. Rostov.

   But before he can leave Moscow Jack meets Annika, a FSB agent (the FSB is the new KGB — Annika’s “problem” is she was sexually abused and tortured by her older brother as a child), and they are drawn together and thrown together after an encounter in an alley with the local Russian Mafia. Annika needs to get out of town and goes with Jack, and when they are in the air of the private plane provided by the President, who shows up but Alli.

   It’s that sort of a book.

   I won’t go into a good deal more. Jack is being played as part of a greater game, but using his skills and instincts, he manages to outwit the enemy and save the day. He is drawn even more closely to Alli, has a romance with Annika, and as might be expected, he saves the day while facing enemies on all sides.

   All in all, a pleasant diversion — a bit better written than most if a shade on the mechanical side. There is even a twist at the end leading to the next book — a twist completely out of left field, that presages major changes for Jack and Alli, but as I said, that’s the next season of 24 — I mean the next book in the series.

   I don’t want to mislead anyone. This is well done and entertaining. It could be a bit more with some effort, but it’s what the publisher and Lustbader’s public wants and it’s hard to fault a writer for delivering what was expected of him.

   I’ll keep reading Lustbader, but I’ll probably keep wishing he took this to the next level as well. Whatever else, he’s a better writer than most of his fellow workers in the bestseller ghetto, and no one can say he doesn’t know how to keep you turning the pages.

   I just wish sometimes the surprises were less the usual kind found in thrillers, and more the kind a really creative writer is capable of.

   But some kudos to Lustbader that he is good enough I think he is capable of more.

   Or maybe I’ve read too many of these and become jaded, though reading this sort of thing Jack McClure’s dyslexia doesn’t always seem such a curse after all.

ROBERT CRAIS – Indigo Slam. Ballantine, paperback reprint; 1st printing, February 2003. Hyperion, hardcover, June 1997.

   To begin with, there are two small mysteries here. First, why did it take so long for a hot book by a hot author to make the move from hardcover to paperback? (At the moment, the paperback is ranked 4087th in Amazon’s listings, a fact which will be far out of date by the time you read this, but as far as private eye detective paperbacks go, this is Pretty Good.)

   And secondly, since this is the seventh Elvis Cole novel, why it is that this is the first one I’ve read? I have no answer. I do have a large backlog of books to read, though — is that an excuse? I probably should have started with the first one (The Monkey’s Raincoat, a paperback original from Bantam in 1987), but this one just came out, it looked inviting, and so in I dove.

   Refreshing it was, too. Crais is a smooth writer, and he manages to juggle a couple of unrelated plot lines in quite acceptable fashion. If nothing else, Cole is good at multi-tasking. What gets the book going and is its main point of focus thereafter are Cole’s clients, three young children whose father is missing. Thanks to the short prologue, we know more than Elvis does, but he fills in the gap soon enough: their dad is a drop-out from a Federal witness protection program.

   In backtracking Clark Hewitt’s trail, Cole has help from his laconic, all-purpose partner, Joe Pike — whether they admit it or not, an entire generation of private eye writers has definitely been influenced by Robert B. Parker — and the stakes keep growing higher and higher. I’ll skip the details. Read the book.

   In between run-in’s with various mobsters of every ilk, almost all of them with guns, Lucy, the love of Elvis’s life, is having trouble with her ex, and in the middle, of course, is our hero.

   If the story itself is little more than ordinary, the reason is because the people who are in it who are quite remarkable. The kids who Elvis is working for are superbly drawn: the youngest rather quiet and shy, the boy in the middle suitably bratty, and the oldest, well at 15, she’s been their mother of the other two for quite some time, and as such, she’s simply terrific.

[UPDATE] 03-31-10.   The current Amazon ranking for the paperback edition is #16,211, not bad for a mystery that’s nearly 13 years old (but still in print). Unfortunately for me, this is still the only book by Robert Crais that I’ve read. Re-reading my review just now, I’m stumped. I really am.

AGATHA CHRISTIE, DOROTHY L. SAYERS, E. C. BENTLEY and Other Distinguished Members of the Detection Club – The Scoop [and] Behind the Screen. Introduction by Julian Symons. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1983. Charter, reprint paperback, 1984. First published by Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1983.

   According to Julian Symons, the Detection Club is “a slew of crime writers, slew being surely the right collective noun.”

   To raise money to acquire club premises, the members collectively wrote two crime novels to be read on BBC radio, each made up of chapters by different authors. These stories have remained buried in the files of the BBC’s magazine, The Listener, until now.

   It must have been fun to be a mystery fan in the 30’s:   Imagine being able to hear Christie, Sayers, Bentley, Berkeley, Knox, Dane, et al reading their own chapters over the air!

   And it must have been great fun writing them too. Mostly they are just fun, not to be taken seriously as mystery and detection stories. Perhaps the noted authors took the whole thing as a kind of game, a spoof on what they did for a living.

   The Scoop has a passable plot and cliched characters. The less said about the plot and characters of Behind the Screen the better. But taken as spoofs, just for fun, they are fun. And they are interesting examples of their authors’ work when they let down their hair and their standards.