FIONA BUCKLEY – To Shield the Queen. Scribner, hardcover; first edition, November 1997. Paperback reprint: Pocket; 1st printing, October 1998. UK edition: Orion, hc, as The Robsart Mystery.

    A solid introduction for the Ursula Blanchard series, set at the court of Elizabeth I. Blanchard, a young widow with a daughter she must provide for, has just been made a Lady in Waiting in the Court of Elizabeth I, thanks to her ties to Sir William Cecil , the Secretary of State. While her job is to serve the queen, her keen eyes and bright mind soon find her with more important duties.

    The year is 1560, and Lord Robert Dudley, Master of Horse to the young Queen, is one of her favorites, and rumors are rife about his relationship with the queen.

    When Dudley’s wife, Lady Ivy, falls ill Ursula is dispatched to help care for her — and keep an eye on a dangerous scandal that could develop if, as some suspect, Lady Ivy Dudley is being poisoned to take her out of the way for the furthering of the queen’s romance.

    And when Ivy Dudley falls to her death in a suspicious manner, Ursula finds herself at the heart of a conspiracy against the throne involving a handsome Frenchman and traitors in the Court. Her heart and her courage are about to be severely tested as is her loyalty to the queen. And Ursula will go to extraordinary lengths to both guard her monarch and the Frenchman she loves and marries — not entirely voluntarily.

    Buckley smoothly blends history and fiction with a heroine who navigates the treacheries of the Tudor court with intelligence courage and wisdom.

    Whether her solution to the real murder (or not) of Lady Dudley bears any relation to reality, it is in the best tradition of historical mystery, and the depictions of both fictional and historical figures are well done, especially a human portrait of Elizabeth as both woman and monarch.

    Ursula protects her monarch and the realm, saves her new husband, and secures a unique position with both the Queen and her court as well as winning the respect of the Spanish Ambassador who will play more important role in later books.

    For fans of historical mysteries, this one is a pleasant discovery, and Ursula Blanchard a protagonist who is both pleasingly modern yet true to her time and place. An excellent debut for a well-written series.

       The Ursula Blanchard Series —

   1. The Robsart Mystery (1997), aka To Shield the Queen.
   2. The Doublet Affair (1998)

   3. Queen’s Ransom (1999)
   4. To Ruin a Queen (2000)

   5. Queen of Ambition (2001)
   6. A Pawn for the Queen (2002)

   7. The Fugitive Queen (2003)
   8. The Siren Queen (2004)

MICHAEL KURLAND – The Infernal Device.   Signet J8492, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1979.   [Finalist for an Edgar and nominated for an American Book Award.]

   Professor Moriarty saved us all!

   At least that’s Michael Kurland’s report in The Infernal Device, a new departure from the Holmes and Holmes influenced stories. The Infernal Device deals with the truth behind that diabolical mastermind, the so-called Napoleon of Crime, Professor James Moriarty.

   It seems that the Russians — even then — were menacing not only The Empire, but all of the free world, with their nefarious schemes and dastardly deeds. This particular case in which Holmes is involved, peripherally at least, is no exception.

   But even before Holmes is involved in the case, the government of England has sought the aid of none other than the greatest mastermind of them all, James Moriarty. Of course, Moriarty is so clever, that although it is well known that he is the mastermind behind considerable wrong doing, there is no proof.

   But this, or so sees the Empire, is the edge. A master criminal against a master criminal. Moriarty against that Russian fiend, Trepoff.

   And terror of terrors, Trepoff is such a fiend, it takes the (gulp) unbelievable to stop him. The uniting of the greatest minds in Europe. The teaming of none other than Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes.

   Ain’t that a corker.

   Frankly, I for one, don’t believe a word of it. Moriarty is not a nice guy. Not even for money. Shame, shame, shame on Kurland for telling these lies.

   But it is an interesting, if a bit over long, book, and worth the 1.95 paperback price.

Editorial Comment:   Following my review of Michael Kurland’s The Empress of India (2006), a later Holmes and Moriarty adventure, I added a complete mystery-oriented bibliography for him here.

  BLANCHE BLOCH – The Bach Festival Murders. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1942. Mercury Mystery #90, digest-sized paperback, 1946, abridged.

   Can Crescent City handle a Bach festival, particularly when it conflicts with the season of its not very popular symphony orchestra? One would think not, especially when the symphony orchestra’s old conductor has been removed and a new conductor, a man very jealous of his wife, has been installed at the request of his wife’s old flame.

   There is also a significant feud between two socialites — the lady who raises the funds for the orchestra and the lady who has started the festival and who thinks there are musicians who play only Bach.

   The man in the middle of all this, Tony Farnum, is a rather unpleasant sort, with a penchant for blackmail. He is aware that his personal habits do not make him popular with most people and admits he would be a great candidate for murder.

   When he realizes that he has been poisoned and is about to die, he nonetheless is quite upset. You would have thought that he would have been pleased to discover his assessment was correct.

   Two more deaths take place in the novel and one hit-and-run, the victim of the latter being a member of the symphony orchestra who seems to accuse Til Eulenspiegel, or, as the police would have it, Miss or Mrs. Tilly or Matilda Oylenshpiegel, and for whom they have instituted a city-wide search.

   Not a classic, but a good, craftsman-like job, with a fair sprinkling of humor and insight into the thoughts, a word I use with some generosity, and spites of the upper classes.

Bio-Bibliographic Data: This is Blanche Bloch’s only entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. According to Contemporary Authors, she was a concert pianist who “frequently accompanied her husband, noted violinist Alexander Bloch, in his performances. She founded the New York Women’s Orchestra and conducted for the Florida West Coast Symphony Society for more than ten years.”

LOUISE PENNY – A Fatal Grace. St. Martin’s, hardcover; first edition, May 2007; paperback, 1st printing, February 2008. First published in Canada and the UK as Dead Cold: McArthur, Canada, hc, 2006; pb, 2007. Headline, UK, hc, 2006; pb, 2007.

   Second in the Three Pines series featuring Armand Gamache of the Quebec Sûreté, this tale is set at Christmastime. The timing is leveraged to full effect, with vivid descriptions of gorgeous winter scenes as well as brutally cold, snowy weather.

   The murder victim is CC de Poitiers (hmmm, an assumed name?), a thoroughly horrid woman who has recently moved to the village. She succumbs in a rather bizarre way at a curling match, and Gamache must find out why.

   Office politics in the Sûreté are also at work, and the odious Agent Nichol returns. The plot is a bit of a stretch, and the many copy-editing glitches/ omissions (an ice floe is described as an ice “flow,” for example) often brought me up short.

   Imperfect, but very enjoyable.

Editorial Comment:   There are at the present time five books in the Chief Inspector Gamache series. Walter Albert reviewed Still Life, the first in the series, back here in July. Following his review, I added a list of all five books, along with a few additional cover scans.

PHIL RICKMAN – The Smile of a Ghost. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, Nov 2005; Macmillan-Pan, UK, Nov 2006. Imported & sold in the US under the Trafalgar Square imprint.

   Merrily Watkins is a female Anglican priest. She’s also the diocesan exorcist, but there are elements within the local church that have little faith in her “calling,” and as she attempts to deal with a series of deaths of teenagers — deaths that may be something other than accidental — her special skills are put to tests that could end her special role in the church.

   Merrily has a daughter, a lover, and a belief in the importance of her role. She’s no conventional cleric, and in spite of her role as an exorcist, this is no retread of the usual horrific events associated with this rite.

   Most of the atrocities that are committed in the course of the novel are all too human in origin, although there’s a bit of flirting with the supernatural that may put off the conventional mystery reader. Merrily works within the church, with the local townspeople and in an uneasy alliance, with the local police, trying to keep her footing, not always successfully, among these often opposing elements.

   I’ll probably want to try another of the series. It satisfies two of my chief requirements for good mystery: a well-characterized protagonist and a well drawn setting. As for the meshing and weaving of these elements into a compelling plot, I can only say that if I wasn’t mesmerized by the telling (as the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer claimed to be), I wasn’t put off by it either.

   The series, at the least, merits another chance.

       The Merrily Watkins series —

    1. The Wine of Angels (1998)

    2. Midwinter of the Spirit (1999)
    3. A Crown of Lights (2001)
    4. The Cure of Souls (2001)

    5. The Lamp of the Wicked (2002)
    6. The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (2004)

    7. The Smile of a Ghost (2005)
    8. The Remains of an Altar (2006)
    9. The Fabric of Sin (2007)
   10. To Dream of the Dead (2008)

A DANDY IN ASPIC. Columbia Pictures, UK/US, 1968. Laurence Harvey, Tom Courtenay, Mia Farrow, Harry Andrews, Peter Cook, Lionel Stander, Per Oscarsson. Original music: Quincy Jones. Screenwriter: Derek Marlowe, based on his novel of the same name. Directors: Anthony Mann, Laurence Harvey (the latter uncredited).

   A troubled production usually means a troubled if not bad movie, and A Dandy in Aspic is not much of an exception, if it’s one at all. Its director, Anthony Mann, died during the filming of this movie, and Laurence Harvey, to save the film, took over. (I’ve not been able to learn exactly what percentage Harvey did, but presumably it was all of the location shooting — in and around Berlin, Germany — and of course putting the film together at the end.)

   Anthony Mann’s death also put the film way over schedule, which kept Mia Farrow overseas away from her then husband, Frank Sinatra, which strained their marriage to its final breaking point, or so I’m told. (That he was 30 years old than she was may have also had something to do with it.)

   None of which does a viewer have to know to decide on his or her own that a movie just isn’t cutting it. It’s the tale of a Russian spy (a dashing but dour fellow named Eberlin, aka Laurence Harvey) who’s dug himself into the British spy service so well that no one knows that he’s also been busily assassinating some of their best operatives. They have his name, Krasnevin, but no more than that, and the task that Eberlin is asked to do is to eliminate him — or that is to say, himself.

   It is difficult at first to understand all of this, and thank goodness for movies on tape or DVD where you can back up every once in a while. But this is one of those spy films in which the plot is deliberately kept murky so as to make a point about the dirty nature of the spy business, but which also helps make sure that the viewers are puzzled as well. (Avoiding this small difficulty is the narrow path that spy books and espionage movies must travel, without a lot of leeway. Only the best seem to do it well.)

   My problem is that Russian names all sound alike to me — a deficiency on my part and no one’s fault but my own — and worse, many of the other mostly dour actors look very much alike. (Harvey is the only one who’s also dashing, but some of the chaps on the British side are rather overweight and somewhat humorous in that regard — but they’re suits only and otherwise pretty much indistinguishable.)

   Getting back to Eberlin, he’s indeed dashing enough to attract the attention of a free lance photographer named Caroline, delightfully played by an innocently wide-eyed Mia Farrow.

   In fact, Miss Farrow is the only source of light and utter joyousness in the entire movie. The rest is a deep study in emotions and deceptions — Eberlin’s only real wish is to return to his native Russia, but naturally he’s too useful to the Russians where he is — and of course the seriousness of the trap he finds himself in.

   A musical score by the likes of a Quincy Jones is usually a plus for most movies, but in this case, it is not so. A good rule of thumb to go by is that if you notice the music, the movie is not completely capturing your attention, and so it is here. While the score is modern enough, for the late 60s, it’s also gimmicky and predictable.

   For me at least, to sum things up, while this movie had its moments, enough so that to suggest watching it may be a worthy way to spend an evening, given the judicious use of the rewind button. And yet. There is also the ending, which I see I haven’t mentioned so far, one that comes as both a surprise and inevitable, as is true in most serious spy and espionage movies, but in this case, it is one, sad to say, that you will remember no more than five minutes after you have turned off the TV.

JONATHAN VALIN – Final Notice. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1980. Paperback reprints: Avon, 1982; Dell, 1994. TV movie: USA, 1989 (with Gil Gerard, Steve Landsberg, Melody Anderson).

   I’m a little behind. This is the second adventure of private eye Harry Stoner — it’s just now in paperback — and the third is already out, begging to be read.

   The metaphor is apt. If anything, I found this one even more readable than The Lime Pit, which started to get more and more funny-tasting the deeper Stoner began to dig into the corruption surrounding the city of Cincinnati.

   There is more of the same in this one, plus lots of gore. Stoner is called in when a psychopath starts slashing up nudes in a library’s collection of art books. He thinks it’s only a prelude to the real thing.

   At his side in tackling this case is a library security guard named Kate Davis, who is both female and liberated. She makes Stoner feels old and tired at thirty-seven, old-fashioned and chauvinistic. Kate is of a younger generation, and falling in love with her leaves Stoner feeling slightly bewildered. He is also pleased.

   Valin has a fine feeling for what makes people what they are — not just the killer, but everyone. The constant attempts to psychoanalyze the killer could have been downplayed a little, and Valin doesn’t quite catch the same edge that exists between human relationships that Robert B. Parker usually does, but as a mixture of character study and action adventure, it is seldom done any better than this.

   The fast and furious climax works out almost the way you’d expect it to, but the twist that comes with it just might catch you leaning the wrong way.

[UPDATE] 10-27-09. Jonathan Valin wrote eleven Harry Stoner books over a period of 15 years, which is a pretty good run, but one I think should have been longer. I confess, though, that while I have all of the books in the series, I’ve never gotten around to the later ones. (I believe I’ve read all of the first seven.)

   But as to why the series ended, the usual guesses are as valid here as they are for many other authors. Sales may have fallen and/or Valin simply ran out of things to say about the character.

   Until I discovered it again just now, I’d totally forgotten that there was a TV movie based on this book. What’s strange is that I simply don’t remember if I watched it at the time or not. It’s not available on DVD, as far as I’ve been able to tell, so I just bought it as an out-of-print video tape. The reviews on IMDB (only 2 of them) aren’t very positive. The big complaint is that it was filmed in Toronto, not Cincinnati!

       The Harry Stoner series —

    1. The Lime Pit (1980)
    2. Final Notice (1980)
    3. Dead Letter (1981)

    4. Day of Wrath (1982)
    5. Natural Causes (1983)
    6. Life’s Work (1986)
    7. Fire Lake (1987)

    8. Extenuating Circumstances (1989)
    9. Second Chance (1991)
   10. The Music Lovers (1993)
   11. Missing (1995)

OTTO PENZLER, Editor — Whodunit? Houdini? Thirteen Tales of Magic, Murder, Mystery. Harper & Row, hardcover, 1976.

   This is an anthology of thirteen mystery stories dealing with the common theme of magic; yet this is not a book of fantasy. While magic is central to each story, the solutions (with one exception) are as down-to-earth as one could hope for (the exception, by John Collier, of course being sui generis).

   Despite the title, Harry Houdini never does appear in propria persona; but his spirit seems to thread its way through this anthology, especially in “One Night in Paris” in which Houdin/Houdini lore becomes a large part of the rationale for the story’s sometimes feverish action and resolution.

   The authors in Whodunit? Houdini? include Clayton Rawson, Carter Dickson, Frederick Irving Anderson, William Irish, Walter B. Gibson, Stanley Ellin, and Erle Stanley Gardner: an impressive representation of some of pulp fiction’s greatest practitioners. For that reason alone the book is worth seeking out.

   Otto Penzler tells us, “The magicians in this book take many forms …. Here, some of the world’s greatest writers have entered the many worlds of magic: the bright, happy world of exciting stage shows, the darker world of crime and murder, and the velvet black world of unrelenting terror. Some of these thirteen tales deal with the question of whodunit. But, as with all magicians and magic acts, the deeper question is howdunit. Sometimes, the answer seems impossible. But don’t look too hard. You might not want to know.”

   For each of the stories below, a short excerpt has been taken from Otto Penzler’s introduction, followed by some brief comments by myself:

1. “From Another World” (1948) by Clayton Rawson (1906-1971)

    “Rawson presented the problem in ‘From Another World’ to John Dickson Carr, who solved it and recorded his solution in a novel, He Wouldn’t Kill Patience. Rawson’s solution is entirely different.”

Comment: A locked-room murder solved by the Great Merlini. A very rich man dies in a sealed (literally) room, stabbed with a disappearing knife that was never handled by the only other person known to be present; seashells suddenly appear from nowhere; and auditory impressions assume the greatest significance.

2. “In the House of Suddhoo” (1886) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

    “‘In the House of Suddhoo’ is the oldest story in this book, but it could have been written yesterday.”

Comment: A confidence trick, Indian-style, with the “mark” an anxious, feeble old man; “The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic.” With a little rearranging of the story’s elements, John Dickson Carr could have made an entire novel of this vignette.

3. “Rope Enough” (1941) by John Collier (1901-1980)

    In “the Indian rope trick … an apparently ordinary rope rises vertically in the air and remains in that position. In ‘Rope Enough,’ the reader will discover what is beyond the top end of the rope.”

Comment: You’ll either love or hate this one; with John Collier, there’s usually no middle ground.

4. “The New Invisible Man” (1940) by Carter Dickson (1906-1977)

    In this story, “Colonel March, the head of Scotland Yard’s aptly-named Department of Queer Complaints, calmly hears an account of a murder committed by a pistol fired by a glove — an empty glove unattached to an arm in an otherwise unoccupied room.”

Comment: It looks like murder, but where’s the body? Colonel March solves it in no time flat; think Rear Window without the grue.

5. “Blind Man’s Buff” (1914) by Frederick Irving Anderson (1877-1947)

   This story features “the American counterpart” of A. J. Raffles, the Infallible Godahl, who “… is such a brilliant thief that he has never been suspected of a crime. The intellectual superior of any potential adversary on the side of the law, his nefarious endeavors are inevitably successful. They cannot fail, because Godahl’s massive brain has foreseen every possibility, anticipated every difficulty, and discovered a solution to every problem.”

Comment: Godahl outwits everybody and shows that Barnum’s dictum about one being born every minute was low by a factor of fifty — no, make that fifty-ONE.

6. “The Lord of Time” (1946) by Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950)

    This “… is a story about Cagliostro, who was a master magician. Or was he? It is surely a crime story, because a brutal murder is committed. Or is it? At least a clever con job is pulled off. Or is it?”

Comment: The author of The Sea Hawk, Scaramouche, and Captain Blood offers a tale about one of history’s greatest con men; it’s told in that pseudo-archaic style appropriate to the time and place of the story. If nothing else, it’s a pleasurable read.

7. “Papa Benjamin” (1935) by William Irish (1903-1968)

“Black magic is one of the oldest forms of magic, of apparently supernatural force. It is easy to ridicule it, to disbelieve it, to laugh at it (if you dare). Yet whole nations have believed in its power for centuries. Why?”

Comment: “William Irish,” of course, was a nom de plume of Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich, who often wrote with the Cornell Woolrich byline. You might have read this one under its original title, “Dark Melody of Madness”; but whatever it’s called, the narrative’s compelling power derives unmistakably from its atmosphere, gloomy and oppressive and all-enveloping — an achievement comparable to the best efforts of another writer to whom Woolrich, personally and professionally, bears some resemblance, Edgar Allan Poe. You probably won’t forget this story for a long time, if ever.

8. “Juliet and the Magician” (1953/1958) by Manuel Peyrou (1902-1974)

    “When the great writers of mystery and detective stories are discussed, the names that head the list of immortals are almost exclusively English and American, as if writers from other nations eschewed the genre. Well, to be truthful, both quantitatively and qualitatively, they lag far behind the English-language authors. Of course there are exceptions, but not enough to notice. Among writers in Spanish … are Jorge Luis Borges” and “his close friend, Manuel Peyrou ….”

Comment: A murder on-stage during a magician’s act — with it, the killer hopes to rid himself of a vexatious persoon and establish an unbreakable alibi at the same time; but some clever armchair (actually, barstool) deductions by an onlooker severely curtail what had seemed, in all honesty, to be a most unpromising career.

9. “The Mad Magician” (1938) by “Maxwell Grant” (1931-1967)

    This story from Crime Busters magazine features “… Norgil the Magician. The suave, handsome, and mustached conjurer appeared in a series of stories that never approached the success of the Shadow tales, but consistently ranked among the magazine’s most popular features …. Filled with action and colloquial speech, it is typical of the Norgil stories and, in fact, of most pulp fiction. Its background of magic is absolutely authentic ….”

Comment: Norgil the Magician solves two crimes at once with the assistance of his pretty protégé Miriam and a very curious cat, despite a tricky Japanese Box and a murderous mummy case; not a fair-play mystery, but nevertheless diverting.

10. “One Night in Paris” (1955) by Walter B. Gibson (1897-1985)

    “The Great Gerard fights crime in two stories,” both of which were penned by Walter Gibson who “… produced more than a million words a year for fifteen years. He wrote more than 300 novels, 283 about a single character — one of the most important heroes ever to stride majestically across the pages of a popular publication: The Shadow. The ‘Maxwell Grant’ byline under which the stories appeared was a Street and Smith ‘house name’ used by Gibson (and occasionally a few other writers) during the 1930s and 1940s. The only other pulp hero created by Gibson (‘Grant’) is Norgil the Magician, who appears in the previous story.”

Comment: Someone commits a locked-room murder and tries to pin it on the Great Gerard: BIG mistake, because as a trained magician he knows how to avoid traps as well as set them. The next time you’re in Paris at the Cabaret de la Mort (“Soiree Fantastique”), between La danse des squelettes and the cotelette de loup garou, watch out for the man with the mitraillette …

11. “The Shadow” (1931) by Ben Hecht (1894-1964)

    Hecht is best-known for his plays and movies (Gunga Din, Notorious, Spellbound, Kiss of Death) but “… his stories inexplicably lack the popularity of less talented writers of the same period,” among them being “‘The Shadow,’ a strange tale of retribution involving the Marvelous Sarastro ….”

Comment: An unrelievedly grim story of doom and irony that for some reason reminds me most of Poe’s “William Wilson.”

12. “The Moment of Decision” (1955) by Stanley Ellin (1916-1986)

    “In some ways the ultimate detective story is the riddle story — the puzzle without a solution, the winding road that leads nowhere. In these tales of uncertain endings, there is only one detective who can offer an answer to the problem: you …. this brilliant riddle story is … unforgettable and hauntingly terrifying …. Read this …. Then make YOUR decision.”

Comment: A clever variation of Stockton’s “The Lady or the Tiger?” — Penzler tells us this story was televised in 1961 with Fred Astaire in a non-singing, non-dancing dramatic role.

13. “The Hand is Quicker than the Eye” (1939) by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

    Unlike Gardner’s other literary creations (e.g., Perry Mason), “Lester Leith is a different kettle of herring. He is on the opposite side of the legal coin, a confidence man of the first rank. He appeared in about seventy-five adventures, beginning in 1929 and extending through the vital days of the pulps. He solves crimes merely by reading newspaper accounts of them, then proves to the thieves that crime does not pay by ‘liberating’ their ill-gotten gains. There is little fear of legal retribution because his victims are not likely to press charges. Leith turns the swag over to charity — minus 20 percent for ‘costs of collection.'”

    The crime has everything to challenge the imagination of the investigator: Oriental background, fabulous pearls, a mysterious disappearance …

Comment: Lester Leith turns to magic to recover a stolen necklace and succeeds right under the noses of the criminals and the police. The story is fast-paced and quite entertaining; its original title was “Lester Leith, Magician.”

M. K. WREN – Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey. Doubleday, hardcover, 1984. Paperback reprint: Ballantine, 1990.

   When Corey Benbow, half owner of a kite making business, meets a tragic fate in a late night accident on the ruggedly beautiful Oregon coast, Conan Flagg is neither surprised nor fooled. He knows murder when he sees it.

   Flagg was the first series creation of Pacific Coast novelist Wren, who has also written a science fiction trilogy, mainstream fiction, and a second series about Neely Jones, a small town law officer in the same Oregon coastal setting she long lived in.

   Flagg is something of a paragon of virtues and skills, a sort of liberal Northwest Coast take on Travis McGee. He’s the scion of a wealthy ranching family, owner and proprietor of the Holiday Beach Bookstore, and a licensed private investigator.

   He is also darkly handsome with striking, almost oriental eyes, thanks to a mixed blood heritage. He lives by himself, of his own choice, in a fabulous house on the beach, and is frequently drawn into other people’s troubles, bringing the skills he learned in military intelligence in Cold War Berlin to bear.

   Beautiful Corey Benbow had enemies– mostly the family of Benbow patriarch Gabe Benbow, her father-in-law. Corey is the mother of the son the Benbows want to carry on the family name and heritage, and worse, a thorn in the side of their plans to sell a wildlife refuge known as the Spit as a housing development.

   There’s not much doubt her killer is one of the six Benbows present on the night of her accident, when she left after a confrontation about the fate of the Spit. The only question is which of the six Benbows killed her.

   Although he’s a far cry from Travis McGee, in many ways Flagg has a tendency to use the same high handed tactics and doesn’t mind bending or even breaking laws in the name of justice — or vengeance.

   To be honest, I’ve liked other entries in this series better than this one. The big confrontation at the end seems contrived and rings false, and Flagg comes across as the most self-satisfied and smug sleuth since the heyday of Philo Vance in his righteous wrath. An act of God at the end that was probably meant as irony simply seems heavy handed and pasted on to bring a satisfactory ending to the proceedings.

   It may be the McGee-like justice figures work better in the first person where we are privy to all their thoughts and feelings. With a third person narration, such as Wren uses, the added distance from the protagonist is enough that you may find yourself asking how he is much better than the bad guys, other than his motives.

   Flagg reveals the killer with a particularly nasty bit of business that Vance or McGee would likely have drawn the line at, and one even Mike Hammer might have found a bit outside the bounds.

   That said, Wren is a fine writer. The Oregon setting is handsomely presented and if Flagg is at times a bit full of himself, he is presented as a well developed creation. The motives and plot elements are well handled, and only the denouement is a disappointment, a bit contrived, melodramatic, and frankly preposterous.

   Put it this way: you wouldn’t have accepted it as the ending of seventies television mystery series, much less in a novel.

   Darlin’ Corey is a minor entry in the Conan Flagg series. It’s worth reading, but only if you have read some of the others first and gained some affection for the writer and the series. Don’t skip this one by any means, but don’t let it be your introduction to Wren or Flagg either. She has done much better and so has he.

   Note: The title is taken from the 1941 song “Darlin’ Corey” by John A. and Alan Lomax:

        The Conan Flagg series —

    Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat. Doubleday 1973.

    A Multitude of Sins. Doubleday 1975.
    Oh, Bury Me Not. Doubleday 1976.
    Nothing’s Certain But Death. Doubleday 1978.
    Seasons of Death. Doubleday 1981.
    Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey. Doubleday 1984.
    Dead Matter. Ballantine 1993.

    King of the Mountain. Ballantine 1995.

GRAHAM GREENE – The Confidential Agent. William Heinemann, UK, hardcover, 1939. Viking Press, US, hc, 1939. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and soft, including Bantam #971, pb, 1952.

   Graham Greene wrote The Confidential Agent pretty much off the top of his head in 1938 as the Spanish Civil War slouched toward its depressing end, which may be why this tale of a hunted man on a secret mission for a government that doesn’t trust him never names names.

   The country — in the midst of civil war and desperate to buy supplies before the rebels get them — is only referred to obliquely and the major players are simply given initials with no hint of national flavor. But there weren’t that many countries struggling through civil war just then, and readers of the time probably saw right through it.

   All of the action is set the in the giddy atmosphere of pre-war England anyway, and Greene evokes the feel of a nation teetering at the brink of war (as he did in This Gun for Hire) with a fine mix of dread and excitement, like a child standing in line for a roller coaster that will tragically malfunction.

   The story, with D, a professor-turned-agent hounded through the countryside by a rival agent, betrayed by his contacts in England, and befriended by a spoiled heiress and a romantic teenager offers very little of what one thinks of as action, but moves quickly along nonetheless, helped considerably by Greene’s obvious affection for his shabby cast and their personal quirks.

   Plot twists rise from the characters themselves, rather than from the dictates of plot, and the resolution, as usual with Greene, comes about when some of these characters manage to rise above their petty concerns and look about them.

   Thus, the tension arises not so much between one side versus another (though there’s plenty of that) but between the universal conflict of self-interest and altruism. It’s an interesting approach for a thriller, and Greene brings it off with the skill that made him a major player in the genre.

CONFIDENTIAL AGENT. Warner Brothers, 1945. Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall, Victor Francen, Wanda Hendrix, George Coulouris, Peter Lorre, Katina Paxinou. Screenwriter-producer: Robert Buckner. Director: Herman Shumlin.

   Confidential Agent was filmed by the Warners in 1945, by which time all the wraps were off: Spain is clearly designated as the source of intrigue, and French Charles Boyer, German Peter Lorre, Belgian Victor Franken and Greek Katina Paxinou all play Spaniards; at least they’re more convincing than Lauren Bacall as a British socialite.

   That’s right, Brooklyn-born Bacall (aka Bette Perske) plays the daughter of an English “honorable” and nothing in the screenplay makes any attempt at explaining her flat American accent.

   Normally, faced with incongruity of this magnitude, the writers throw in something about being raised by an aunt in Canada or something, but not here. Nope, that’s just the way she talks and let’s get on with the show.

   And despite the Hollywood absurdities, the show ain’t bad at all.

   Director Herman Shumlin was primarily a stage director (with only one other film, the very stagy Watch on the Rhine to his credit) and not terribly sharp at conveying action or keeping up the pace, but he’s very good with the actors.

   Lorre and Paxinou make a terrific pair of nasties in the Lorre/ Greensteet tradition, playing off each other quite nicely, and though Bacall, in her second film, seems a bit cautious away from Howard Hawks and husband Bogart, she manages some real chemistry up against a very steely Boyer.

   Shumlin is also wise enough to get out of the way and let veteran photographer James Wong Howe fill the screen with images of poetic loneliness, evoking Greene’s themes of isolation, backed up by the lush music of Franz Waxman, one of the defining composers of the ’40s.

   Writer/producer Robert Buckner, a studio stand-by with Dodge City and From Hell to Texas to his credit, tightens Greene’s tale neatly, eliminating bits of the book that really go nowhere, while keeping true to the letter and spirit of the thing.

   He also adds a couple neat twists of his own, including a come-uppance for nasty Katina Paxinou that I won’t spoil for you, and a wonderful bit where Boyer prepares to kill Lorre for selling him out:

   Lorre grovels as only he can, trying to justify his treachery on the grounds of ill health, pleading, “I have a bad heart! The doctor said I had six months to live!” to which Boyer quietly replies, “He was wrong.”

   Gotta love it.