THE DARKENING TRAIL. Mutual Film Corp. 1915. William S. Hart, Enid Markey, George Fisher, Nona Thomas, Louise Glaum. William S. Hart, director; Thomas H. Ince, producer; written by C. Gardner Sullivan. Shown at Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

    William S. Hart, in his third feature film, plays Yukon Ed, hopelessly in love with Ruby McGraw (Enid Markey), owner of the local saloon, who has refused his offer of marriage dozens of times.

    When Jack Sturgess (George Fisher), fleeing from his father’s wrath after he has wronged and abandoned a woman he refuses to marry, arrives in the small Alaskan town, Ruby, seeing in him the knight in shining armor she’s been waiting for, takes up with him.

    Yukon Ed, willing to give the newcomer a chance, but ever watchful for any wrong done to Ruby, is there when Ruby, gravely ill, is waiting for the doctor who will never come because Jack, after promising to bring him, detours for a dalliance with a dancehall girl.

    The intertitle “Requiem of the Rain” announces the grim conclusion and captures the dark poetry of this striking film.

LIONEL DAVIDSON – The Rose of Tibet. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1962; Penguin, UK, pb, 1964. Harper, US, hardcover, 1962. Reprint US paperback editions include: Avon, 1965; Perennial, 1982; St. Martin’s, 1996.

   In a recent posting (The Spy Who Parodied, Part 3) I reviewed Agent 8 3/4 based on the novel Night of Wenceslas by Lionel Davidson.

   Davidson, a British thriller writer, wrote only a handful of critically acclaimed novels, mostly in the spy story tradition. Among them were some of the best spy/adventure novels of the 20th century, and among those the outstanding work is The Rose of Tibet.

   Davidson himself is a character in The Rose of Tibet, appearing in the framing sequence as he tries to put together the story of Charles Houston (pronounced ?Uston), a British journalist who traveled to remote Tibet at the time of the Chinese incursion there in the years after WW II. It is Houston’s story Davidson tells, and quite a story it proves to be.

   It is difficult to discuss this book without mentioning other writers, Try to imagine James Hilton’s Lost Horizon written with the canny political eye of Eric Ambler, or H. Rider Haggard as re-imagined by Ian Fleming, perhaps a Harold Lamb novel written by Graham Greene (incidentally I mention Fleming and Greene with good reasons, both were admirers of Davidson and highly praised this book, as did Daphne du Maurier who asked in print if he was not the new Rider Haggard), John LeCarre in collaboration with Charles Crichton and T. E. B. Clarke, who penned many of the classic Ealing comedies.

    The Rose of Tibet is all of that. It is a grand adventure, by turns very funny, very sexy, erotic, exotic, angry, honest , and above all compelling. Charles Houston, the most unlikely of heroes, proves to be the only hope of a remote Tibetan nation, one of those lost civilizations that writers like Hilton, Haggard, Burroughs, and others used to dot all over the wild places of the planet.

   Davidson gives us a highly believable one, but no less enticing or exotic for that. The early scenes in this savage and exotic Eden, a sort of sensual paradise, are among the best such scenes you will encounter in fiction. It is strange yet familiar, exotic, erotic, yet completely believable. It is a splendidly evocative world.

   Houston arrives in this remote, gentle, strangely savage, and doomed place on the eve of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and as the PRC presses forward, a reluctant Houston finds himself chosen for the most delicate and dangerous mission of his life — to smuggle out a small boy and a young woman from this small Shangri La. The boy, a living god and the hope of the small nation, and the girl the repository of all that is erotic and beautiful, the rose of Tibet.

   Their journey, accompanied by a small mountain pony, across the roof of the world one step ahead of the PRC, is the bulk of the book’s narrative. Treachery, his unworldly companions, the narrow roads and deadly mountain paths, murderous and unpredictable weather, a deadly encounter with an Asian brown bear, and the ultimate fate of Houston’s mission make up the rest of the novel, which ends with a delightful twist I won’t even begin to suggest after one of the most harrowing journeys in literature.

   Literate and yet capable of spinning a tale with the best, Davidson’s works are a treasure trove for readers willing to delve into them. Night of Wenceslas, The Menorah Men (aka The Long Way to Shiloh) about a Raiders of the Ark kind of quest for the True Menorah.

   And then there’s The Sun Chemist, Making Good Again, The Chelsea Murders, Kolymsky Heights, Smith’s Gazelle (a young adult novel), Under Plum Lake, and three more young adult novels as by David Line are among some of the best and most delightful books of the era.

   Not a very great output for a period from about 1962 to 1998, but each and every one of them is a gem of great beauty.

   Davidson deserves to be read, and almost certainly once you have read him you will reread him.

   Among these gems The Rose of Tibet stands out. It is a perfect book of its kind, and I don’t really think you are likely to forget it once you have read it. Unlike many thrillers, it is one you will return to and enjoy time after time.

   The Rose of Tibet belongs on that very small shelf of favorites that are equal in your heart as in your head, a curious mix of epic adventure, international intrigue, wild romance, Ealing comedy, and satiric commentary.

   It is all that and more — little wonder Ian Fleming, Daphne Du Maurier, and Graham Greene fell under its powerful spell. I can honestly say that over the years everyone I have introduced the book to has ended up adding it to their list of favorite books of all time. It is certainly one of mine.

   And don’t worry, I couldn’t possibly oversell it. It really is that good.

T. T. FLYNN – Ride to Glory: A Western Quartet. Five Star, hardcover; 1st edition; 2000. Reprint paperback: Leisure, March 2004.

   I’ll list the titles of the four novelettes and short novels it contains, and that’s all you’ll need to have a perfect picture of what this book’s all about: “Ghost Guns for Gold”, “Half Interest in Hell”, “The Gun Wolf” and “Ride to Glory.”

   Action, that is, pure pistol-packing action. First appearing in the pages of old pulp fiction magazines such as Star Western (1935), Dime Western (1945 & 1949), and Western Story Magazine (1938), this marks the debut of these tales in hardcover.

   And whenever there’s room to breathe between the rounds of gunfire, there’s always a chance that romance will work its way into the story, one way or another. According to the creed of the day, or so it’s implied — if not outright stated — it’s the love of good women that gives men the courage to risk their necks against the crooked ranchers, conniving Mexican despots, and other assorted outlaws found inhabiting these pages, and by extension, the entire American west.

   If these stories succeed, it’s by sheer story-telling power, not by the grace or elegance of the writing. While T. T. Flynn was the contemporary of such western writers such as Max Brand and Zane Grey, it’s plain to see that he simply wasn’t in their league, at least not in terms of word-slinging ability.

   But if you can sit back, turn off your critical eye, and allow these yarns of yesteryear to simply take over, what you’ll be in for is four installments of the ride of your life — and I ask you: What could be better than that?

[UPDATE] 08-29-09.   I’ve recently had to drop out of a western fiction apa called Owlhoots — a pure lack of time — but in the ten or so issues I did for it, there are some articles and reviews I did that I’ll gradually be reprinting here on the Mystery*File blog.

   I regret to say that at the moment, I don’t have access to the book itself, and I seem to have made no record of it at the time. Right now, except for one story, I can’t tell you which one came from which magazine. When I come across the rest of the information, I’ll add it later:

       Half-Interest in Hell, Dime Western Magazine, July 1945.

      

[UPDATE #2]   Later the same day. Walker Martin has come to my rescue. See comment #1.

FAY GRISSOM STANLEY – Murder Leaves a Ring.

Dell 662; paperback reprint; no date stated, but circa 1953. Cover art: James Meese. Hardcover edition: Rinehart & Co., 1950. Hardcover reprint: Unicorn Mystery Book Club, 4-in-1 edition, January 1951.

   It’s difficult to make out from the image I found, but if I’m reading what’s in the small circle on the cover of the hardcover edition correctly, this book was the winner of a “Mary Roberts Rinehart Mystery Contest.”

   It was also one of only two mystery novels Fay Grissom Stanley, 1925-1990, wrote. The other was a paperback original from Popular Library in 1975, a gothic romance titled Portrait in Jigsaw, as by Fay Grissom.

   There is a short online autobiographical sketch by her daughter, Diane Stanley, an illustrator and author herself, in which she talks about her mother (follow the link), and mentions other books she wrote. Her mother was taken ill by tuberculosis for several years, which may explain the long gap between the two books, and perhaps why there were only two.

   Murder Leaves a Ring is pure detective fiction, and the cover (as you will have seen for yourself) falls into the “body in a bathtub” subgenre. It’s told by the primary protagonist, Katheryn Chapin, a would-be mystery writer herself, as we learn on page one: she’s working on the manuscript of a novel called “Murder on Monday,” just before climbing into a tub, where she first must clean the ring left behind by one of her two roommates, a showgirl named Iris McIvers.

   Later on, during a party of fellow Manhattanites, many in the world of the theater, it is Iris’s body who’s found in the very same tub, fully clothed, but with a stocking knotted tightly around her neck. It is learned soon after that Iris had been doing a brisk business of shakedown if not out-and-out blackmail – among other secrets that Katy and Bonnie, the other roommate, had not known about her.

   One of Iris’s recent meaner tricks was that of stealing Katy’s fiancé from her, a writer of plays named Mark, and it is her that Katy tries to protect when questioned by the police in the form of Captain Steele, who castigates her quite vigorously on pages 76-77 for both her lack of observation (significant, he suggests, for someone who hopes to write mysteries) and/or her lack of cooperation (for which at least the reader knows the reason).

   There is a long laundry list of suspects in Murder Leaves a Ring – all to the good! – all with varying degrees of conflicting interests, a map of the three girls’ apartment even before page one – and it’s needed! – and an elaborate trap for a suspected killer toward the end. And if I were to mention several twists in the tale along the way, I hope you will forget that I said that, as the pleasure’s in the reading, and not in the reading about it.

   The opening chapters do not flow as well as they should – it was not surprising, after the fact, to learn that this was the author’s first book – but as the story picks up some momentum, so does Miss Chapin’s narrative, which becomes noticeably smoother and easier as her encounters with the police and the killer grow more and more serious.

   Captain Steele is something of a conundrum, married to his job and seemingly hard-boiled through and through, but by the end he seems to have thawed out considerably, even to the extent of becoming perceptibly human.

   If he and Miss Chapin had ever been in a second mystery novel together – and there is a hint of something in the air at the end, and perhaps with young Dr. Harrison, too – I’d snatch it up in an instant.

THE PHANTOM EMPIRE. Mascot, 1935. [12-episode serial] Gene Autry … Gene Autry, Frankie Darro, Betsy King Ross, Dorothy Christy, Wheeler Oakman, Charles K. French, Warner Richmond, J. Frank Glendon, Smiley Burnette. Directors: Otto Brower & B. Reeves Eason.

   Viewing [and reviewing] Batman led on to The Phantom Empire, but I couldn’t start that till I read James Churchward’s 1931 opus The Lost Continent of Mu.

   Churchward’s book is non-fiction, of a sort, dealing with his discovery of ancient clay tablets in Burma telling of an advanced civilization somewhere to the East, which he compares to inscriptions from the Mayans and Aztecs locating the cradle of civilization somewhere to the West.

   He then takes similarities in oriental picture-writing, Egyptian hieroglyphics and pre-Columbian artifacts from the New World, and concludes that there must have been an advanced society somewhere in the Pacific that spread its culture over the world, then sank into the sea, which he calls Murania, or Mu for short.

   Well, I don’t know about you, but for me that’s kind of a stretch. Churchward spends the book supporting this theory, but I keep running into phrases like, “geologists are wrong…,” “Egyptologists are wrong…,” “archaegeologists are wrong…” till I wonder how he got a monopoly on Truth.

   And as his story gets more and more embroidered, with details about the advanced civilization, its people (Who, he insists, must have been white.) and the aftermath of its fall, this sounds less like Science and more like the ramblings of Siegel and Schuster.

   Closing the book, I had to wonder why anyone ever took it seriously in the first place, but apparently someone did, and still does, because the book and its sequels keep getting reprinted.

   All the reference books say The Phantom Empire was clearly based on Churchward’s work, but I couldn’t see it myself. Empire deals with Gene Autry’s efforts to save Radio Ranch from unscrupulous land-grabbers trying to get to a secret uranium deposit on the property, and the people of Lemuria who inhabit an advanced underground civilization (also called Mu for short) which can be reached only by an elevator which opens up somewhere near the uranium deposits on Radio Ranch.

   Yeah, it’s kind of Out There, particularly with Gene Autry constantly trying to escape from the bad guys in time to get back to the ranch and do his weekly mortgage-paying radio show, but I found it no harder to ingest than Churchward’s hoke, and considerably faster-moving.

   Mascot serials were never believable, but they were somehow always fun, and the underground kingdom, with its robots, death rays and sexy queen offer a lively time for anyone who can descend to their level. As for The Lost Continent of Mu, I have to say that for a book about an advanced civilization sinking into the sea, there are some awfully slow spots.

    

   Previously on this blog:

      Part I:   Where the Spies Are (1966).

      Part II.  The Liquidator (1965).

AGENT 8 3/4.   J. Arthur Rank, 1964. Originally released in the UK as Hot Enough for June. Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Koscina, Leo McKern, Robert Morley, Roger Delgado, John LeMessurier. Based on the novel Night of Wenceslas by Lionel Davidson. Director: Ralph Thomas.

   The earliest of the Bond spoofs and still one of the best, this bright comedy has a reluctant Bogarde drafted into service in the British Secret Service for a dangerous mission in Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia, where he finds himself seduced, pursued, and never quite sure what he is doing there.

   Unlike the other films I’ve been discussing, this was not a series novel, but one of only a handful written by Lionel Davidson, one of the most critically praised spy novelists, whose books The Rose of Tibet, The Menorah Men, The Sun Chemist, and Kolymsky Heights are among the best thrillers of the 20th century. Davidson is not prolific, but enthusiasts know that every one he pens is a jewel.

   Bogarde is always worth watching when allowed to play to his humorous side, and between the gorgeous Koscina and the droll black humor delivered by McKern and Morley, this film succeeds as a bright and witty charmer. It is a little short on action and perhaps relies more on comedy than the others reviewed here, but it is also well worth finding and viewing.

   This is far more comedy than the others, and the satirical barbs are somewhat sharper. In some ways it is closer to an Ealing comedy or even The Mouse That Roared than a Bond spoof, though there are certainly references to Bond beyond the title.

   Davidson’s novel is largely a place for the script to take off from, but some of the humor is still derived from it, and it is hard not to see Bogarde as the personable hero who’s in over his head…

      In conclusion:

   The spy film craze went from the sublime to the ridiculous, and too soon even the Bond films turned to cannibalizing themselves, but it also produced some bright, funny, attractive films like this and the others reviewed here. At their best they hold up better than many more serious films from the era, and they often feature lesser known players or character actors like McKern, Morley, and others in outstanding performances.

   No one is claiming them as great art, but they are a snapshot of an era, and even today, with Bond still around and now competing with Jason Bourne and Mission Impossible franchises and the Austin Powers films (inspired by the American Bond spoof, Our Man Flint), they are a reminder that everything old really is new again — eventually.

       

STANLEY CASSON – Murder by Burial. Hamish Hamilton, UK, hardcover, 1938. Paperback reprint: Penguin, UK, 1943. US hardcover edition: Harper & Brothers, 1938.

   Col. Theodore Cackett, R.E., D.S.O., has formed in Kynchester the Roman Guard for the Regeneration of Britain and is now planning [to] erect a monument to the memory of the Emperor Claudius in recognition of the civilizing influence that the Romans brought to the Isles.

   On the other hand, Canon Burbery knows that the early Britons were a great deal more civilized than commonly supposed. It is his plan to begin an archaeological dig to prove that Kynchester was the stronghold of King Cunobeline (or Cymbeline, as Shakespeare would have it). He hopes that the citizens of the city will take the claims in behalf of the Romans less seriously after they have been shown their heritage.

   A rivalry of this sort is bound to create bad feelings. Add to it the Canon’s blackballing of Cackett at the learned Augusteum Club and Cackett’s becoming involved in a plot to arm the landowners of England to defend against a possible revolution, and anything can happen.

   In this case a death occurs. Following a fortuitous investigation by a professional archaeologist, questions are raised whether the death was Indeed “an act of God.”

   Well written, quite literate, amusing in parts, informative on both archaeology and numismatics. The dialogue sometimes seems more lecture than conversation, but the lectures are interesting and thus tolerable.

   Fascinating also is Miss Boddick’s expatiation on Holmes’s view of the country as a scene of crime: “You Londoners will never realise the depths of depravity of the countryside Why, the English countryside is one congealed mass of intrigue and petty spite. That is why almost every murder story is placed in a country town or in some remote village, where all the natural passions have free play.”

       Bio-Bibliographic Data:

   This is the only mystery that the author wrote. From an online website comes the following information:

   Stanley Casson (1889-1944) was a multi-talented art scholar and army officer who read Classical Archaeology at Oxford, served as Assistant Director of the British School at Athens, Special Lecturer in Art at Bristol University, and was Director of British Academy Excavations at Constantinople in 1928-1929. His publications include numerous articles and books on the subject of Classical Antiquities.

COLLIN WILCOX – The Third Figure. Dodd Mead, hc, 1968. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, August 1968.

   Clairvoyance, says the dictionary, is the ability attributed to some of being able to see the unseeable. I suspect a good many of the investigators who have practiced down through the history of detective fiction might justly have been accused of solving by clairvoyance rather than deduction.

   Collin Wilcox now provides us with Stephen Drake, whose investigational success is expressly attributed to occasional attacks of clairvoyance.

   Drake, a newspaper reporter appearing in his second book, is approached by the estranged wife of a murdered gangster (local head of “The Outfit”) with the offer of $10,000 for the solution of the crime. Drake, whose characterization must be the ultimate reaction against hardboiled detectives (he may be the first of the unboiled detectives — which is consistent with the author’s intent to create a “gentle hero”) accepts the job against his own better judgment.

   His subsequent involvements with various echelons of “The Outfit” give him ample cause to regret that decision. His investigation consists of a good deal of aimless muddling about, hoping to set the stage for clairvoyance — mostly he gets paroxysms of fear — and eventually he arrives at the same solution I’d reached some 75 pages earlier.

   Collin Wilcox exhibits some rough talent which future books will hopefully polish, and Stephen Drake is interesting enough to make this volume worth reading. Drake’s clairvoyance is treated well: as an inexplicable and fallible, but occasionally useful, source of insight, not as a wondrous and magical tool.

   However, I found the book difficult to get involved in, the Drake characterization a little too gentle to identify with, and the plot somewhat underweight. Although Drake’s success is allegedly based on clairvoyance, his approach is more crude deduction than anything else. I suspect I would find the story of a truly clairvoyant solution to a crime intensely frustrating reading.

   One further suggestion: with Collin Wilcox, Colin Wilson and Colin Watson active in the mystery field, won’t someone adopt a pseudonym?

  [UPDATE] 08-27-09.   Al mentioned a previous appearance for Stephen Drake; that was The Black Door (Dodd Mead, 1967), but perhaps finding plausible cases for a clairvoyant detective to solve proved too great a challenge, as there was never a third.

   When I was looking through the first volume of TAD this evening, I spotted this review right away. Even though it was written over 40 years ago, my immediate thought was that it ties in perfectly with the series of comments following the previous post, the discussion (pro and con) having to do with combining psychic phenomena with detective fiction.

   By the way, while Collin Wilcox did write two novels under the pen name Carter Wick, most of his mysteries were written under his own name; his most commonly used series character was Sgt. (later Lt.) Frank Hastings, of the San Francisco Police Department.

LORNA BARRETT – Bookmarked for Death. Berkley Prime Crime, paperback original; 1st printing, February 2009.

   I ordered this sight unseen, attracted by the description of it as a bookstore mystery. What I didn’t realize was that it also included recipes, a seemingly popular device for some mystery novels that I have, up to now, avoided.

   Zoe Carter, author of a popular series of mysteries, is murdered during a signing at Haven’t Got A Clue, a mystery bookstore in Stoneham, New Hampshire. Tricia Miles, the proprietor of the bookstore, has a rocky relationship with the town’s sheriff and decides to investigate the case on her own in an attempt to speed up the identification and capture of the murderer.

   She has a sister, irritating to other people and, I suspect, to some readers as well; an ersatz boyfriend to whom she is not yet committed; and a tendency to put herself in situations that put her own life at peril.

   Tricia and I both fingered the wrong suspect, but the outcome is only slightly delayed. One of the chief suspects is a woman who has a bakery. and she keeps bringing treats to Tricia that are described in such a way as to provoke a reader with a sweet tooth into an instantaneous and severe craving for an over-caloried snack.

   I made it through the book without succumbing, but the fragrance lingers on. Now you know why I’ve avoided recipe mysteries.

   Most of the characters are quickly introduced in the first chapter, which had me retracing my steps more than once to find out who in heck the author was talking about. Distinctive characterizations are not her strong suit, but the plot has some tricky, intriguing turns, the setting is affectionately evoked (with a bookstore cat, Miss Marple, to pull in the animal lovers).

   In short, all the bases are hit for a conventional, undemanding cosy that’s dispatched with some flair.

      Bibliographic Data: Author’s Name: Lorraine Bartlett.

   Booktown Mystery Series, as by Lorna Barrett:

      1. Murder Is Binding. Berkley, pbo, April 2008.

      2. Bookmarked For Death. Berkley, pbo, Feb 2009.
      3. Bookplate Special. Berkley, pbo, Nov 2009.

   The Jeff Resnick series, as by L. L. Bartlett:

   [After insurance investigator Jeff Resnick is mugged, he discovers the resulting brain injury has left him able to sense people’s secrets.]

      1. Murder on the Mind. Five Star, hc, Dec 2005; Worldwide Mystery, pb, Oct 2007.

      2. Dead in Red. Five Star, hc, June 2008.

MURRAY LEINSTER – The Monster from Earth’s End. Gold Medal s832, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1959.

   In the mood for something to make my hair — such as it is — stand on end, and getting pretty discouraged in my quest when I had a few minutes off one day, popped into a used book store and picked up (for 50 cents) The Monster from Earth’s End by Murray Leinster.

   This is It: The genuine article, the real banana, a taut, suspenseful, exciting and genuinely creepy couple hours packed into 176 pages by a writer who knew how to do it.

   The story, which owes a bit to the movie The Thing, is set in a remote island off the coast of Chile used as a way-station for supplies and scientists bound to and from an Antarctic research station.

   Everyone on the island is eagerly tracking the progress of a north-bound plane bringing nine scientists and some botanical specimens from the South Pole for study when the pilot’s radio traffic suddenly becomes confused. Then panicky.

   After more than an hour of erratic flying, the plane lands with the wheels up and cargo bay open — thus blocking the airstrip — and the only one left on board is the pilot, who immediately blows his own brains out.

   Weird enough, but that’s just the start, as the staff on the island find themselves stalked at night by some unseen thing big enough to devour a man, pestered through the day by growing numbers of inch-long carnivorous crawling insects, and disbelieved by the brass on the mainland, who can’t get there anyway because the runway is blocked.

   Leinster develops the story nicely, cleverly increasing the isolation of the island workers while developing character and situations. And the characterization here is ably done indeed; I’d swear I have worked with some of these guys. The result is a book I can recommend heartily to anyone looking to tingle a spine or two.