NICE WOMEN. Universal, 1931. Sidney Fox, Russell Gleason, Frances Dee, Alan Mowbray, Carmel Myers. Screenplay: Edwin H. Knopf, from a play by William H. Grew. Photography: Charles Stumar. Director: Edwin H. Knopf. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Some wit on the convention committee had the inspired idea of scheduling this acid-tinged drama to follow the warmth of Sidney Franklin’s The Hoodlum (reviewed here ).

   Sidney Fox is pressured by her family into accepting the marriage proposal of her father’s boss (Alan Mowbray), scuttling her plan to marry her true love (Russell Gleason). Frances Dee gives a splendid performance as the younger sister who coolly destroys her sister’s hopes for happiness, then flirts with her soon-to-be brother-in-law, further complicating the already impossible situation.

   Mowbray, who initially appears to be a man with nothing but his business and his fiancee on his mind, has a skeleton in the closet, a girlfriend (Carmel Myers) who doesn’t want to lose her sugar daddy.

   Mowbray is surprisingly cast as a romantic lead but he negotiates the tricky shoals with great skill, besieged on all sides by the “nice women” in his life. If it weren’t for the bite in the script and performances, this would be a forgettable soap.

   But even with a happy ending that finally takes the teeth (fangs?) out of the drama, it’s still an engrossing pre-Code sexual drama of dysfunctional relationships.

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD.   RKO Radio Pictures, 1951. Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James R. Young, James Arness. Based on the short story “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell. Directors: Christian Nyby, Howard Hawks (the latter uncredited).

   John W. Cambell’s classic short story, “Who Goes There?” (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938, under his Don A. Stuart pen name) should be taught in Creative Writing courses for the way it propels a fast-moving story across a vivid background of bitter isolation.

   Set at the South Pole, “Who” sketches the tale of a group of scientists discovering a flying saucer, complete with scary alien, frozen in the Antarctic ice for countless years. They lose the saucer but manage to bring the frozen monster back to their spartan base camp — with unexpected and very unpleasant results.

   Campbell’s writing is terse and to-the-point, with every word exactly right, and none of them wasted. The characters may be a bit two-dimensional, but they serve their purpose and get out of the way of a story-line that stops for nobody. A classic of its genre.

    “Who Goes There?” was filmed in 1951 by Howard Hawks, and I’m afraid all the best things about this fine movie have already been said, mostly by Robin Wood, in his book Howard Hawks (Doubleday, 1968.)

    I can only echo his points about The Thing (from Another World) coming across as a quintessential Hawks film, which is pretty high praise wherever you take it.

    Wood observes that the groups in this film (scientists or soldiers) are not so much cohesive units as ad hoc collections of individuals, each with something to contribute. He describes Margaret Sheridan as the equal of any of the men, yet intensely feminine, in the mold of other Hawks heroines, like Lauren Bacall and Angie Dickenson.

    And he points out how the action, as in Rio Bravo, consists of gradually increasing tension, punctuated by short, sharp bursts of coordinated violence. Yes, The Thing is a brilliant film, fun to watch, and just I wish I’d said all those nice things about it before Robin Wood did.

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN – A Silent Witness. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1914. John C. Winston Co., US, hc, 1915. Reprinted many times since, including: Dodd Mead, hc, 1929; Pocket #184, pb, 1942.

   Dr Humphrey Jardine’s narration treats of a strange chain of events that befell him when he was newly qualified, at a time when there were still horse-drawn cabs and the descent of dusk saw lamplighters at work.

   His adventures began late one evening when he went for a stroll along Millfield Lane on the edge of London’s Hampstead Heath. He sees a corpse, a clerical gent going by his garments, lying further up the narrow thoroughfare but when he returns with police reinforcements a few minutes later the body has gone.

   Naturally enough, the chaps in blue are politely sceptical about what Jardine saw or, as they see it, did not see.

   Jardine returns next day to examine the lane and finds a suspicious stain on the fence near where the body had lain. He also picks up a tiny reliquary made of gold, its frayed silk cord suggesting it had been worn as a necklace or in some other way about its owner’s person.

   Climbing up and looking over the fence, he sees obvious tracks leading away from the fence — taken all together, suggestive circumstances to say the least.

   Dr Thorndyke suggests Jardine act as locum tenens for a doctor residing in Jacob Street, thus pitching the young medic into a positive whirlwind of odd goings-on, including a particularly inventive effort at murdering Jardine.

   Thorndyke’s colleague Dr Jervis takes over Jardine’s position pro tem, and investigations get under way to find out who is assiduously trying to dispose of Jardine, a man with, so far as he knows, no enemies and with no relatives liable to benefit by his death.

My verdict: The plot unspools into a web of disturbing incidents, unexpected meetings and re-meetings, attempted murders, and a deserted house which nonetheless tells a great deal as the novel rattles up hill and down dale, or rather lane, in a landscape through which move a pretty young artist with a ferocious aunt, a mysterious stranger afflicted with a rare eye disorder, a Jesuit priest seeking news of a missing friend, and a “downy bird” or two of both genders — not to mention a hidden portrait.

   There is much following about of various people and sending of telegrams, and, of course, despite lack of clews, Thorndyke cracks the case, although not in time to … but no, I shall say no more.

Etext: http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301591.txt

    For Part Two of this series, go here.

7. “The Day the Dogs Died.” First appearance: Royal Whodunnits: Tales of Right Royal Murder and Mystery, edited by Mike Ashley, Carroll & Graf, trade paperback, February 1999.

COMMENTS:   Lt. Garrison, ship’s surgeon on one of Admiral Nelson’s men-of-war, has been captured by the French and is languishing in a Cairo prison cell when he is summoned by General Bonaparte himself. One of Napoleon’s senior commanders has died under decidedly suspicious circumstances, and Bonaparte wants to know why.

    Garrison, accompanied by a man who would gladly kill him if he makes a wrong move, turns detective and exposes not merely a murderer but also a drug smuggling ring.

    A brown stain, hundreds of dead dogs, and streets too narrow for carriages all figure in his solution.

NOTES:   This was Hoch’s contribution to an anthology of stories with the common theme of imperial skulduggery. Among the other contributors were Martin Edwards and Mary Reed & Eric Mayer.

8. “Murder at the Bouchercon.” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1983. Reprinted in Chapter and Hearse, edited by Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini. William Morrow and Co., hardcover, 1985.

COMMENTS:   Mystery writer and amateur detective Barney Hamet is attending Bouchercon XIV in New York City to keep up acquaintances with his friends in the crime fiction publishing field when murder most foul is committed right in the middle of the convention.

    The crime, as Barney soon learns, has something to do with Conrad Kazer, a reclusive mystery writer as elusive as Howard Hughes in his heyday — or, to be more precise, it has to do with the lucrative rights to Kazer’s works. To associate the murder with Kazer seems unavoidable because the victim leaves a dying clue: “Kazer con”.

    Barney doesn’t know it at the time, but before he can leave Bouchercon he’ll come face-to-face with the murderer, an insane person with a sharp knife ….

NOTES:   Barney Hamet also stars in one of Hoch’s few novels, The Shattered Raven (1969). Among the potential murder suspects at the convention are Otto Penzler, Chris Steinbrunner, Donald Westlake, Mary Higgins Clark, and Phyllis White.

9. “The Great American Novel.” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1975, as by R. L. Stevens. Reprinted in Chapter and Hearse.

COMMENTS:   Pete Traven works for a large New York publisher as a first reader of slush pile manuscripts. Like all editors, he harbors hopes of one day discovering that one-in-a-million submission that has Pulitzer Prize written all over it; and then it actually happens! It seems too good to be true, however, and as you can probably guess, it is.

    Pete, moreover, never could have anticipated what complications would result from it: theft, impersonation, criminal conspiracy, assault and battery, and the threat of murder.

    Sometimes, it would seem, book publishing can really be a cutthroat business!

NOTES:   Pete is our viewpoint character, but “Stevens” (Hoch) throws in an interesting twist by having what seems to be a minor character solve the crime, so that we get not only a least likely suspect but also a least likely detective.

DESTROYER. Columbia Pictures, 1943. Edward G. Robinson, Glenn Ford, Marguerite Chapman, Edgar Buchanan, Leo Gorcey, Regis Toomey. Director: William A. Seiter.

   Some of the patriotric combat movies made during World War II while the fighting was going on overseas are still worth seeing today, but this isn’t one of them. Bits and pieces here and there, perhaps, but all good intentions aside, this isn’t one to go more than a few steps out of your way for.

   I’ve checked on Google, and I’ve come up with two different ships called the USS John Paul Jones, but both came along a long time after World War II. Until I’m told otherwise, I’ll continue to assume the story told in Destroyer is quite fictional.

   Working as a shipyard welder and construction boss in building the one in this story is Steve Boleslavski (a swaggering Edward G. Robinson), but when he re-enlists for the new hostilities with his former rank as chief bosuns mate, he finds that his knowledge of the new gunnery (as well as command techniques) are far out of date.

   Resenting being pushed aside in the chain of command is Glenn Ford’s character, Mickey Donohue, who has the double misfortune of falling in love with Boley’s daughter (Marguerite Chapman). Fate and bad luck continue to haunt the ship and its crewmen until at last, demoted to mail boat status, there comes the chance to show what it (and they) can do.

   Perhaps there is simply too much story here to be contained in only 99 minutes of film time, very close to A-movie standards. There’s the story of the ship; the story of Boley vs. Mickey; and the romance, which has the couple running off to elope only the third time we see them together, before we know that they are even talking civilly to each other.

   There must have been a lot going on when the cameras weren’t rolling.

DAVID OSBORN – Murder on the Chesapeake. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1992; Paperback reprint: Zebra; 1st printing, May 1993.

   I don’t much care for prologues, as some of you may recall, and after reading the one in this book, it was very nearly all I read. Kids get murdered often enough in real life that they don’t have to get murdered in mystery stories too — if that’s all it is, a mystery story.

   Or to be more specific: A young teen-aged girl is murdered in the prologue of this book, strangled and thrown off a balcony with a rope around her neck. And in some detail.

   She’s a student in one of those exclusive preppy girls’ schools whose inhabitants love to torment the weaker of the species, and that’s the kind of life Mary Hughes led. Poor but intelligent and talented. No wonder she never fit in.

   After an investment of $3.99 into the paperback edition, it’s tough to give upon a book after only 14 pages, and so, no, I didn’t quit.

   As a writer, though, David Osborn bites off a bit more than he should have, I think. Telling the story is his leading character, Margaret Barlow, a sporty 55, a grandmother of a teenager, and a hot air balloonist, among other things that fall into the category of larger than life.” Her granddaughter, who calls her Margaret, is also a student at Brides Hall.

   Nothing much else happens until page 164, on which a second murder is discovered. It’s a messy one — the victim is found sliced in half by an elevator, “dragging out her intestines and eviscerating her but unable to pull all of her down… ”

   Come on. Who needs this? The rest of the detective story is weak, but I found this scene — let me speak plainly here — absolutely useless. Tasteless and trite — it’s a tough combination.

Bibliographic Data: While David Osborn wrote a number of other books which are included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, including Open Season (1974), which was made into a film starring Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law and Richard Lynch, Margaret Barlow was his only series character.

      The Margaret Barlow series:

         Murder on Martha’s Vineyard (n.) Lynx, hc, 1989.

         Murder on the Chesapeake (n.) Simon, hc, 1992.
         Murder in the Napa Valley (n.) Simon, hc, 1993.

RUFUS KING – Museum Piece No. 13. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1946. Reprint paperback: Bantam , 1847, as Secret Beyond the Door. Film: Universal International, 1948, as Secret Beyond the Door (with Joan Bennett & Michael Redgrave; director: Fritz Lang).

   Bantam Books describes this novel accurately as “suspense.” A wealthy widow is cajoled into a frenzy or falls in love at first sight, or something like that, with a publishing tycoon, himself a widower.

   She apparently feels that he will be like her first husband, a dedicated coupon clipper who devoted himself to her.

   Her bankers, who cannot turn over her money to her unless she marries a suitable man — for which read “rich” — hurriedly give their imprimatur, though the tycoon would have been found to be in dire need of a fresh infusion of cash to keep his newspaper going if they had investigated a bit more thoroughly. She, with substantial wealth, would appear to have no lawyers to advise her.

   After the whirlwind courtship — time not specified, but it probably was no more than a month, and possibly less — he marries her and leaves the next day on a business trip. (No information is given whether the marriage was consummated. I’d tend to think it wasn’t.)

   The tycoon collects rooms in which murders have taken place, buying them and moving them to his mansion intact, apparently even to the dust that was present at the time he bought them. Although the tycoon delights in giving tours of his collection, he does not allow a thirteenth room, recently finished, to be viewed by anyone.

   It is obvious that the man is interested only in his new wife’s money, and even she dimly begins to recognize this when she moves into his home with his strange sister, brother-in-law, secretary who wears a veil to cover a scar that doesn’t exist, neurotic son, and a an egocentric star reporter.

   Acting on advice of a psychiatrist who is making judgments on the woman’s quite limited and mostly wrong knowledge of the tycoon and on almost no knowledge of the woman, the tycoon’s new wife checks out room No. 13.

   Although her husband, when he’s around at all, and the household are often out during the day, she needs must select 4 a.m. for her trip to the mysterious room.

   King’s writing style is sometimes convoluted: “Both parents having been of the old-fashioned school which brooked no trifling with the mathematical gymnastics of the marriage vows in adding one to one and getting one, with all the sum’s attendant surfeiture of the unpictorial effects of contiguity and general minor inconveniences. Like when you wanted to read at night. Or when you didn’t.”

   There are those who will master that at first reading. I am not one of them. But if you like that sort of thing, and I admittedly do, there’s a fair amount of it here.

MARTIN PORLOCK – X v. Rex . Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1933. US title: Mystery of the Dead Police, as by Philip MacDonald. Doubleday Crime Club, hc, 1933. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including Mayflower Dell, UK, 1965, and under the US title by Pocket #70, pb, 1940; Dell D247, pb, 1958 (Great Mystery Library #19); Macfadden, pb, 1965.

   Films:

       ● The Mystery of Mr. X.   MGM, 1934. Robert Montgomery, Elizabeth Allan, Lewis Stone, Henry Stephenson. Screenplay by Philip MacDonald. Director: Edgar Selwyn.

       ● The Hour of 13.   MGM, 1952. Peter Lawford, Dawn Addams, Roland Culver. Director: Harold French.

   Philip MacDonald was one of the great farceurs of the Twenties classic detective novel whose crimes were often cleverer than the solutions of his sleuth Anthony Gethryn. But as the thirties came along MacDonald added a new element to his books, along with the clever crimes he added a strong line of suspense that makes his books from this period among the most readable of their kind.

    X v. Rex is the story of a serial killer (before the term serial killer was in use) — one who is targeting the police themselves (Rex referring to the Crown), his targets constables on their beat, his method disguise and brilliant innovation (for instance he uses a sandwich board to hide the gun with which he kills one unsuspecting victim).

   Scotland Yard is up in arms, and the streets have become places of fear. With all this activity, it is practically impossible for a criminal to sneeze without being arrested.

   Still X strikes with impunity, and as the police tighten their cordons and expand their hunt London is becoming as unsafe for the average crook as for the unlucky constables X hunts and kills.

   Nicholas Revel is no ordinary crook, but he’s feeling the pinch. Revel is a gentleman cracksman in the Raffles mold, suave, careful, and recently finding it difficult if not impossible to pursue his career.

   Clearly the only way to remedy this situation is to stop the deadly X, and if the police can’t do it, perhaps Nicholas Revel with his unique perspective can.

   But in order to find X, Revel needs access to information only the police know, so he romances the daughter of a high ranking police official and casually makes a few “suggestions” based on things he has learned from his underworld connections.

   The police aren’t entirely sure they trust young Mr. Revel, but his contacts do get him closer so that he can begin his own hunt for X. The suspense builds as Revel must put his own life on the line in the garb of a London bobby to spring the final trap for X, even as the police close in on the madman.

   X remains little more than a mysterious madman. Little or no effort is made to explain why he is pursuing his deadly war on the police, and why the most vulnerable and common of all British policemen, the bobby. That isn’t MacDonald’s interest. Instead he gives us the tensions of the hunt, the almost inhuman cleverness of X, and Revel’s clever schemes to get into the good graces of the police and their suspicions about his insights into the mystery of X.

    X vs Rex is one of the sprightlier examples of its type from the Golden Age of the Classical Detective novel. MacDonald would later combine the lessons learned here in two of his best Anthony Gethryn novels, The Nursemaid Who Disappeared (aka Warrant for X) and The List of Adrian Messenger.

   Both of the latter two books have been filmed, Nursemaid twice, the second time as Henry Hathaway’s 23 Paces to Baker Street), but X v. Rex may be his happiest confluence of Classic Detective novel and Suspense Thriller other than his earlier 1931 novel Murder Gone Mad.

   X v. Rex was filmed twice, the first time excellently with a screenplay by MacDonald himself (who went on to have a long and successful career as a screenwriter working on everything from Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto to Alfred Hitchcock’s film of Rebecca).

   Robert Montgomery was perfectly cast as Revel, Elizabeth Allan the lady in question (she became Mrs. Montgomery in real life and their daughter the actress Elizabeth Montgomery), and Lewis Stone and Henry Stephenson as suspicious policemen. The film is atmospherically done with a rousing finale.

   It was remade as The Hour of 13, which is inferior, but nonetheless the film has a solid performance by Peter Lawford as Revel and moves the setting from the contemporary London of the novel and first film to the late Victorian earlier Edwardian era to some effect. It’s by no means a bad film, just not equal to the original.

   X v. Rex is dated and readers used to the more psychological emphasis of this sort of novel may find it shallow in comparison, but it is a highly entertaining read by a master of the form with a well done portrait of a city under siege by a mad killer and the almost military precision of the hunt for the killer.

   Nicholas Revel is a charming rogue presented as a surprisingly believable gentleman criminal, and if the finale is a bit of a let down (the one in the films is not) it is only because MacDonald has pulled out all the stops in his clever manhunt.

   This one is a keeper, as enjoyable the second or third time around as the first.

CONVICTED WOMAN. Columbia Pictures, 1940. Rochelle Hudson, Frieda Inescort, June Lang, Lola Lane, Glenn Ford, Iris Meredith, Lorna Gray, Esther Dale. Director: Nick Grinde.

   Following Walter Albert’s review of Women’s Prison (Columbia, 1955) reviewed here not too long ago, Walker Martin pointed out that there is a whole subgenre of WIP movies, where for the uninitiated (me) WIP is an acronym for “Women In Prison.”

   I have no idea what the first movie in the category was, but I’m sure someone can easily tell me. At the moment, I’m assuming that this was an early one, but perhaps I’m wrong.

   And I do and I don’t know exactly what the attraction is, and I think that is all that I am going to say about that. I suppose there may even have been entire articles and perhaps even books dedicated to the subject, and if there are, someone can tell me about those also.

   Rochelle Hudson plays Betty Andrews, a young woman who’s sent to prison for a crime she didn’t do, and with a wrong attitude from the get-go (well, wouldn’t you?), she starts out badly and (nearly) ends up worse. Chief Matron Brackett (Esther Dale) does not believe in coddling her prisoners, and for a couple of inmates (June Lang and Lorna Gray), her wishes are their commands.

   But after one girl, tormented too long, commits suicide, reform comes, but the former regime does not intend to go down without a fight. Luckily Betty has help on the outside in the form of an impossibly young Glenn Ford, a reporter who’s been working on her behalf from the beginning.

   Even though it’s short, just over an hour long, I found no difficulty in watching this movie in two or even three installments, which tells you one thing, but the fact that I came back to watch it all the way through, that may tell you something else.

   Naturally it all ends well, but real prison reform is nothing but a pipe dream that never seems to last very long. Why else would there be a whole category of movies just like this one that came along later, with Ida Lupino in at least two of them?

WADE MILLER – The Big Guy. Gold Medal #279, paperback original, 1st printing, January 1953; second printing: Gold Medal s936, 1969.

    Wade Miller was the joint pseudonym of a couple of high school buddies who teamed up to write mysteries all their adult lives, with astonishingly successful results. Astonishingly, because their books were almost without exception flat, trite and predictable.

    And their work under the pen-name Whit Masterson is even worse; reading Badge of Evil is an onerous chore indeed for anyone charmed by the grace and energy of the film Orson Welles managed to make from it (Touch of Evil, Universal,1958.)

    I can speak from experience on the breadth and depth of Wade Miller’s ineptitude because I searched out those books avidly, back in college, after reading what turned out to their one decent effort, The Big Guy. What burst of inspiration was responsible for this I couldn’t say, but it’s fast, hard and even fun in a sick, predictable fashion. Like watching a really bad accident when you can’t look away.

    Big Guy follows the rise and rise of Joe Drum, a low-class, no-brains strong-arm man imported to L.A. for a little muscle, who sees a chance to move into the big time and takes it. And keeps on taking.

    Miller borrows a lot from films like Scarface, and Little Caesar, but the writing is fast, the violence edgy and often surprising, and the story gets really going, in its own disturbing way, about halfway through, when Drum meets a woman who cures his sexual hang-ups, introduces him to comfort, culture, class and drugs, and generally makes a better person out of him — with results you can see coming a long way off, but I kind of enjoyed watching it all happen.

    Miller introduces a couple of subtle touches you don’t see in a Wade Miller book, and shows sense enough not to call attention to them —nothing’s worse than pointing out how subtle you’re being.

    Back in College this really impressed me, as I say, and I followed it up, or tried to, with some other Millers, till I found I was squandering my precious youth on a writer (writers, rather) who had only one good book between them.

Editorial Comment: For much, much more on the authors who were Wade Miller, including loads of reviews and an interview with Robert Wade by Ed Lynskey, Bill Pronzini and myself, go here on the main Mystery*File website.