Part 1 of this series: RANDALL GARRETT – Lord Darcy Investigates.

2.)   JAMES HERBERT – The Jonah. Signet, paperback original; 1st printing, 1981. UK edition: New English Library, pbo, 1981.

   James Herbert has established himself as one of the leading British horror novelists with chillers like The Rats, The Fog, Survivor, Fluke, Lair, The Spear, and The Dark.

   His latest novel, The Jonah, features undercover policeman Jim Kelso as a jinxed man, a jonah no one will work with. Through a series of flashbacks, Herbert shows Kelso’s early life in England — his abandonment at birth, the horror of the orphanage in post-WW II Britain.

   Even then, death struck those around Kelso — when bullies chase him into an abandoned house, a savage death befalls them. Later, Kelso finds his step-father mysteriously dead, and a few years after that the woman he lives with dies in horrible circumstances.

   When Kelso begins his career with the police, misfortune seems to strike those colleagues who work with him. Eventually, because no one will work with him, Kelso is assigned to undercover assignments where he can work alone. Even so, whenever a big bust comes down, the police involved with Kelso are killed or injured.

   As a last resort, Kelso is teamed with a woman undercover agent, Ellie Shepherd. Together, they are supposed to break up a drug ring operating around a NATO base where a pilot recently crashed into the sea while taking drugs on a mission.

   Kelso stubbornly resists a romantic involvement with Ellie and tries to discourage her from working with him on the assignment before his jinx strikes her. Although one of the pushers is murdered and an attempt is made on their lives, Kelso and Ellie get closer and closer to the secret of the drug ring.

   There’s a solid presentation of police procedure in all of this, but all the while Herbert also generates a mood of rising terror through the use of his flashbacks.

   The final climactic scene is chilling but lacks the impact of Herbert’s classics, The Spear and The Dark. Nevertheless, for a few hours of suspenseful reading, The Jonah will do.

JOHN BUCHAN – Greenmantle. Hodder & Stougton, UK, hardcover, 1916. George H. Doran, US, hc, 1917. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including: Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hc, 1947; Penguin, UK, pb, 1956; Pocket #94, US, pb, 1941.

   I’ve debated whether or not Greenmantle could be classified as a mystery. Set during World War I, it certainly revolves around one: who is Greenmantle and can he be found in time to interfere with German plans to use him in their bid to grab the Middle East?

   Richard Hannay, last seen just before the war in The 39 Steps and now a major in the Lennox Highlanders, is recuperating from shrapnel wounds suffered at Loos, as is his friend Sandy Arbuthnot. Anxious to return to the front line, they are instead asked to undertake a secret mission.

   Hannay, Arbuthnot, and “sedentary dyspeptic” American John S. Blenkiron, joined later by an old friend from Hannay’s South African days, must find the mysterious Greenmantle and assess the situation so the British can take countermeasures. It is a matter of great urgency and no time can be lost.

   However, they must begin the task with no clues except three words scribbled on a piece of paper — Kasredin, cancer, and v.I. In different disguises the men take separate roads to Constantinople where they will meet and begin their search, if they all arrive safely — and it’s a big if.

   Along the way they encounter dangerous enemies and life-threatening situations and must use fast thinking and physical daring to even get to Turkey to begin their quest in the first place.

My verdict: This novel mirrors a time and society where fair play, decency, and honour were important and practiced as far as possible even in wartime. Military and intelligence gathering methods have changed since WWI and for the modern reader this gives Greenmantle a poignant air at times.

   Even so, it’s a rattling good yarn, with plenty of action, excitement, and suspense, along with a dash of wit. Although I’d read the novel before, I still laughed out loud at the mental picture of Hannay in jammies and dressing gown when, due to circumstances, he is “left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken glass and a senseless man in the cupboard.”

Etext: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/gmntl10.txt

AMBROSE BIERCE – Can Such Things Be?   Cassell, US, hardcover, story collection, 1893. Included in The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce, edited by Clifton Fadiman, Citadel Press, 1946. Reprinted several times since, both as an individual collection and in omnibus form.

   Clifton Fadiman’s 1946 collection of supernatural tales by Ambrose Bierce may not be quite top-of-the-line, but Bierce’s gift for turning the apt phrase: “The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not to him seem to prove that he was dead; he had always been a hard man to convince.” or “…all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only was without expectation. ”

   Or this description of an encounter with an inopportune ghost: “According to the Chinese faith, a man is like a kite: he cannot ascend to heaven without a tail. Well, while I was here that night, alone and thinking of anything but him, that Chinaman came back for his pigtail. He did not get it.” Such writing makes for memorable reading, even when the stories are unremarkable — which is often the case.

   Bierce may have just been too misanthropic to convey the essential horrific humanity that must form the basis of a really scary story, except in one case: “A Diagnosis of Death” is a quick, perfect gem of a tale that ought to be required reading for lovers of this sort of thing.

INIGO JONES – The Albatross Murders.   The Mystery Novel of the Month #33; digest-sized paperback reprint, 1941. Hardcover first edition: Mystery House, 1941.

   Inigo Jones, a pseudonym, wrote two mystery novels under that name: this one and The Clue of the Hungry Corpse (1939). The latter has nothing to recommend It, but The Albatross Murders I found quite enjoyable.

   Somewhere in the Northeast, in a city that would have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, some young thespians are putting on a play.

   On opening night, an actor who is to be shot as part of the script is shot In reality, and the player shooting him — as part of the play or for real, deliberately or because someone gave him a loaded pistol by mistake or with malice aforethought — exits the stage and keeps on going out of the theater. An oddity in the killing is there is no bullet in the dead man and no exit wound.

   Besides the gaggle of actors and actresses, the deceased’s sister, who loathed him and is not very pleasant besides, was at the opening night and might have committed the, murder, if only it could be figured out how the killing was accomplished if the actor who was supposed to have shot him as part of the play didn’t do it and what became of the bullet. And what does the history of the area have to do with the murder? Nothing? Everything?

   Sebastian Booth, State Police Inspector, solves the case and explains how the murder was done satisfactorily — even though it’s as Rube Goldbergish a method as I have encountered in some time — in about twenty-four. hours, but meanwhile three more people have died.

   Booth is a delightful detective with a great deal of personality. He knows his mind and speaks it. In a case with many theater people, Booth says: “I’d as soon have a Gila monster around the house as an actress. Or an actor, either. I’ll be glad when this case is broken. I long for the company of a simple-hearted thief or an honest hatchet murderer.”

   It is Booth’s presence that makes The Albatross Murders a mystery worth reading.

Editorial Comment:   Longtime readers of this blog may remember that I reviewed this book several years ago. Check out my comments here. (All in all, I agree with Bill. This is not surprising, as Bill was seldom wrong.)

    Not only that, but I followed up the review with a post entitled The Compleat INIGO JONES, wherein I included every piece of information I could come up with about the author, which unfortunately did not include his (or her) real name.

    Have I learned anything about Inigo Jones since then? Alas, the answer is no.

  NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. Warner Brothers, 1946. John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Tobias, George Coulouris. Screenplay by W.R. Burnett, based his novel. Director: Jean Negulesco.

    When Nick Blake (John Garfield “People like me don’t change.”) comes back to New York from the war he finds his girlfriend night club singer Tony Blackburn (Faye Emerson who has a nice number, “You Again” in the club) has double crossed him and given the $50,000 he left with her to her boyfriend. Nick gets the money back and heads to Los Angeles with the $50k for seed money with his pal Al Doyle (George Tobias) to take up his old life of con man.

    Once he reaches L.A. Nick meets another old con, Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan), who tells him about Gladys Halvorsen (Geraldine Fitzgerald) a widow with two million dollars and Nick sets out to woo her, win her, and fleece her, but he finds he is falling for her, and when he tries to back out of the con runs afoul of one time partner Doc Ganson (George Coulouris) and ends up having to rescue the kidnapped Gladys after a number of well handled plot twists and Blake’s struggle with his unexpected reform.

    The slick little exercise in romantic noir is a neglected little gem from both Burnett and director Negulesco. Brennan and Tobias are scene stealers as usual, Fitzgerald gets a rare chance to shine as a romantic lead, and Garfield gets a showcase for his tough but tender screen persona.

    Coulouris had a long colorful career in such bad guy roles (he was still at it as late as the Lord Peter Wimsey adaptation of Clouds of Witness, where he plays a murderous farmer), and gets to shine here. Emerson has a nice turn as a none too honest blonde bombshell who sets up a nice contrast with Fitzgerald later in the film.

    The film is true to the book, as might be expected, since Burnett wrote both, but Garfield can’t help but bring a layer of vulnerability to Nick that may not be as obvious on the printed page, and Brennan makes the most of Pop Gruber (you have to wonder if this is a nod to Frank Gruber with whom Burnett sometimes collaborated on screenplays).

    Nobody Lives Forever isn’t major noir, but it is an attractive and well done little film that delivers what it promises, with an outstanding cast that never falters or missteps.

    It may be noir in a minor key, but nary a false note is struck, and at 100 minutes the film is lean and stripped down, yet has time to develop character and a plot that has some nice touches, such as a scene in which Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” plays on a juke box in the bar in counterpoint to Nick’s internal debate.

    Humphrey Bogart allegedly turned the role of Nick Blake down. Just as well, it fits Garfield’s persona like a glove.

    This isn’t a great film, but it is an example of the kind of intelligent and entertaining fare the studios used to turn out with surprising regularity. Like Jules Dassin’s Two Smart People, it’s well made and stands on its own merits.

    It’s one of those films that succeed so well at what it sets out to do that you may have to watch it a second time to recognize just how artfully it is constructed and played.

THE CARDBOARD LOVER. Cosmopolitan/MGM, 1928. Marion Davies, Nils Asther, Jetta Goudal, Andres De Segurola. Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert, based on the play Dans sa candeur naive by Jacques Deval. Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   A comedy to be classed with Davies’ performances in The Patsy and Show People. For much of her silent film career, Davies starred in costume dramas that her long-time lover William Randolph Hearst fancied.

   Her native gift, however, was for comedy and she established herself as a first-rate comic actress in the comedies that showcase her undeniable talent.

   In The Cardboard Lover she’s a vacationing American tourist who collects autographs and in the process of trying to snare the autograph of tennis star Asther (in photo) she becomes infatuated with him and sets out to separate him from the stylish vamp (Goudal) who’s been toying with his affections.

   Davies gets a chance to display her skill at impersonation when she does a dead-on imitation of Goudal’s slinky vamp and Asther, not noted as a comic actor, is a charming foil, caught between the two women, while Goudal, for much of the film, ably counters Davies’ moves with her not inconsiderable wiles.

   One of the delights of this year’s screenings and a major addition to Davies’ filmography, apparently copied from the sole surviving print.

W. R. BURNETT – Little Caesar. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1929. Paperback reprints include: Avon #329, 1951; Bantam Giant A1871, 1959; Signet, 1972. Film: First National, 1931 (with Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell; director: Mervyn LeRoy).

      “Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?”

    Few movie lines have endured as long and as well as the signature line of Burnett’s Little Caesar screenplay. He ended the novel on which the movie was based with virtually the same line. Burnett mastered an idiom and rhythm that, while essentially literary, spoke directly to the masses.

    Caesar is serious and detailed, charting the rise and fall of a Chicago gangster against a backdrop of political and social turmoil. As in his other great novel, High Sierra, Burnett means to treat his headline subject with novelistic scrutiny.

    In a bittersweet interview given near the end of his life, Burnett complained that he was often praised for his “plotting,” a compliment he refused on the grounds that he never plotted, but let his characters carry the story to its own organic end.

    To a large degree, Burnett was correct. In some parts, Little Caesar is a novel of manners, and the overriding concern is not for the story per se but rather how certain events affect the characters who weave in and oat of the book.

    Little Caesar is too often used as a bludgeon with which to decimate The Godfather. The books should not be compared. Mario Puzo wrote a fine romance, perhaps a novel of the first rank, after all. Burnett, however, wrote a treatise that was part sociology, part character sketch, part comedy and most of all, a naturalistic reflection of the squalid Chicago slums of the time.

    Caesar remains fresh, potent, funny, tragic. Rico, its center, like an great characters, eludes final understanding.

    The 1930 film version with Edward G. Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is likewise a classic. Robinson’s portrayal of Rico has often been imitated (by himself as well as others, notably in his role in Key Largo) but never surpassed.

    Burnett’s other major crime novel is The Asphalt Jungle (1949), the film version of which — starring Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe — has been called “the gangster film of the Fifties.”

    Minor but excellent novels are Dark Hazard (1933), The Quick Brown Fox (1942), and Vanity Row (1952). Among Burnett’s numerous screenplays are those for This Gun for Hire (1941) and the 1955 remake of High Sierra starring Jack Palance, I Died a Thousand Times.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

Editorial Comment:   Novels by W. R. Burnett previously reviewed on this blog, both by Dan Stumpf, are Dark Hazard and Romelle.

    In his comment following the former, David Vineyard suggests that while “Burnett is seldom ranked with Hammett, Chandler, and Cain […] at times he was their equal, and I think sometimes surpassed Cain.” He goes on to say that “… maybe that holy trinity of the hard boiled school should be a quartet.”

    I can’t quarrel with the sentiment, but the fact is, barely no one remembers Burnett today (and Cain is slipping fast). But this fact, if true, leads to the immediate question:

    Can you think of another author as outshadowed as Burnett by the films based on the novels he wrote? The films are seared into the memories of everyone who’s watched them, but how many of those who’ve seen the movies have any idea who wrote the books?

REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

W. R. BURNETT – High Sierra. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1940. Paperback reprints include: Bantam #826, 1950; Carroll & Graf, December 1986; Zebra, November 1987.

Films: Film: First National, 1941 (with Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart; director: Raoul Walsh). Also: Warner Bros., 1949, as Colorado Territory (with Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo; director: Raoul Walsh). Also: Warner Bros., 1955, as I Died a Thousand Times (with Jack Palance, Shelley Winters; director: Stuart Heisler).

    “Early in the twentieth century, when Roy Earle was a happy boy on an Indiana farm, he had no idea that at thirty-seven he’d be a pardoned ex-convict driving alone through the Nevada-California desert towards an ambiguous destiny in the Far West.”

    Thus begins what is, in effect, the biography of Roy Earle, a fictional creation who reflects the lives of several eminent American outlaws of the 1920s and 1930s.

    The structure and texture of the opening sentence signals the reader that this will be much more than simply a genre piece of tommy guns and molls. Burnett will attempt nothing less than a definitive appraisal of a bandit’s life as Earle leaves prison, falls in love, and works toward the robbery that will doom him.

    For many, Sierra is probably more familiar as the finest of Bogart’s films (with the arguable exception of The Treasure of Sierra Madre). In the film version, John Huston sought to create a romance, a complex variation on the Robin Hood myth, but Burnett creates a novelistic portrait of Roy Earle that is full of fire and contradiction.

    Chapter 37 is the key scene in the book. In the space of 3000 words, Roy Earle expounds on himself (?I steal and I admit it”); on his inability to trust (?The biggest rat we had in prison was a preacher who’d gypped his congregation out of the dough he was supposed to build a church with.”); and on the failure of the common man to fight for himself (?Why don’t all them people who haven’t got any dough get together and take the dough? It’s a cinch.”).

    He is, throughout the novel, idealistic, naIve, ruthless, and doomed in a way that is almost lyrical. Not unlike Studs Lonigan, Roy Earle becomes sympathetic because his faults, for all their outsize proportion, are human and understandable, and his humility almost Christ-like. “Barmy used to talk to me about earthquakes,” Roy says; “he said the old earth just twitched its skin like a dog. We’re the fleas, I guess.”

    Far from the myths created by J. Edgar Hoover’s biased attitude toward the criminals of the 1930s, Burnett gives us a sad, sometimes surreal look at a true outlaw. High Sierra is filled with every possible kind of feeling, from bleak humor to a pity that becomes Roy Earle’s doom.

    The book’s theme of time and fate is worthy of Proust. If you want to know what made the work of “proletariat” America so powerful in the 1930s, all you have to do is pick up this novel.
         ———

   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright ? 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

LAW AND ORDER. BBC, 4-part mini-series, 6 April through 27 April 1978. Peter Dean, Derek Martin, Deirdre Costello, Billy Cornelius, Alan Ford, Ken Campbell, Fred Haggerty. Screenplay: G. F. Newman. Director: Les Blair.

   Not the long-running Dick Wolf series or one of its spin-offs, this was a British four-part series from 1978. Back then I had no video recorder, and I had a sort of method for screening tv programmes of not watching new ones but waiting to read reviews and then catching them on the repeats.

   When this series aired there was such a furor of complaints that the series was, to the best of my knowledge, never repeated, leaving me to regret my selection methods.

   Now thirty-one years later we have had a repeat on BBC 4, the BBC’s least watched digital channel.

   The series was written by G.F. Newman, a man who has developed a reputation as an anti-establishment figure (and the man behind the more recent and upmarket Judge John Deed).

   In the first story, “A Detective’s Tale” we meet London D.L Fred Pyle, a sly, mix-with-the-criminals type of detective, who is seen taking a sizable bribe from a major villain to look the other way. Pyle hears from an informant that Jack Lynn, a career criminal, is about to stage an armed robbery and makes it his job to catch him.

   In the second episode, “A Villain’s Tale” the focus starts on Lynn as he sets up his armed robbery, however, soon, he suspects that the police are on to him and abandons the prospect. Meanwhile four other criminals stage an armed robbery and when three of them are caught, Pyle plants evidence that Lynn is the fourth man.

   In the third episode, “A Brief’s Tale”, we follow the legal system, firstly Lynn’s solicitor, whom we see given secrets to the police for return favours, and then the barrister he employs. The barrister is more concerned with how much money he will make but does actually put on a spirited defence until the judge, outraged by the barrister implying police corruption, forbids him from pursuing that line of defence.

   It is no surprise when the three guilty villains are found not guilty but Lynn, a career criminal but entirely innocent of this offence, is found guilty.

   In the final part, “A Prisoner’s Tale”, we see Lynn, a proud and angry man, as he tries to resist the prison system but is forced to compliance through bent and violent prison guards, incompetent and uncaring officials, and the system. This is by far the bleakest of the four programmes — and that’s saying something — and it leaves one with a feeling of helplessness.

   Of course it’s probable that the system is not as bad as Newman is making out, but it seems likely that some corruption of the kinds he indicates is inevitable. This is a powerful if depressing series, and I’m pleased that finally I have been given a second chance to see it.

DETOUR. PRC, 1945. Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan. Story & screenplay: Martin Goldsmith. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer.

   I hadn’t seen the movie Detour for quite some time, so I pulled it out the other night and gave it a look. And I’m glad I did. It’s even better than I remembered it.

   For those who are unfamiliar with this 1945 classic film noir (and I hope there aren’t too many), it’s all told in flashback by an unshaven, despondent Tom Neal, who laments everything that has happened to him in recent weeks.

   All he wanted was to hitchhike from New York to Los Angeles to be with his cutesy-poo girlfriend who was trying to “make it in pictures,” but wound up slinging hash instead. That’s all he wanted.

   But what he got was Ann Savage. I’ll just leave it at that.

   Detour was directed by Edgar G Ulmer, and was made at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) Studio, the last stop on poverty row in 1940s Hollywood. Filmed in six days on a budget of $30,000, and using the cheapest sets and production values imaginable, Ulmer crafted a haunting tale of people at the bottom of society’s pyramid. To put this budget into perspective, Avatar, the new James Cameron bloatbuster, cost 10,000 times as much.

   Drowning in desperation, the characters try to hold on to what they have, and never seem to have enough.

   When these people are confronted with extraordinary circumstances and emotions, they, like all of us, will alter their mode of behavior. Some will even cross the line, the line that separates legal from criminal, moral from immoral, good from evil, Tom Neal from Ann Savage.

   Film noir is generally associated with sinister characters moving through shadowy lighting. Much of Detour takes place under bright light: sunny rides in an open convertible, a well-lit apartment, and so on, but Ulmer’s direction and the interplay between the two leads give the film a very claustrophobic feel, like it was shot in a phone booth. The relentlessly grim story line follows Neal’s character as his life spirals ever downward to the unusual finale.

   While Detour might be considered classic crime fiction, it’s important to note that no crime was ever committed during the movie.

   There’s a scene where Neal takes money and clothes from a dead man, but you know that if he didn’t take the dough, the cops would when they found him. I don’t put that in the crime category.

   This is definitely a movie that’s worth another look, noir fans. A great story, with both Neal and Savage delivering unforgettable performances in what has to be the finest hour for each of them.

   And if you haven’t seen it, by all means buy it. You can get it online for six or seven dollars. You won’t be sorry.

   And you�ll never pick up another hitchhiker again.