CLARISSA WATSON – The Fourth Stage of Gainsborough Brown. David McKay, hardcover, 1977. Reprint paperbacks: Penguin, 1978; Ballantine, 1986.

   Clarissa Watson is co-owner and director of an art gallery on Long Island, and she puts her knowledge of the art world to good use in her three novels about artist and gallery assistant Persis Willum.

Her depiction of the art world — its trendiness, petty jealousies, passions, and intrigues — is sure, and fleshed out with memorable characters. While many of the eccentrics Watson portrays are representative of real types who frequent museum openings and galleries, they are never stereotypical; and Persis herself, an independent but vulnerable thirty-six-year-old widow, is a delight.

   The title character of this first novel, Gainsborough Brown, is an artist of flamboyant reputation — and definitely not a delight. Painters go through many “stages” in their work; at the time the book opens, “Gains” is in his third major stage; before he reaches his fourth, he is dead.

   After Gains drowns in the swimming pool at a birthday party that Persis’s Aunt Lydie (an art patron and another extremely appealing character) has thrown for herself, Persis decides his death was no accident. And as an employee of Long Island’s North Shore Gallery, which handled the artist’s work, she feels compelled to find out who killed him and why.

   Armed with an unusual detective’s tool — a sketch pad — Persis moves in what she hopes is an unobtrusive manner through the chic art world, from Manhattan to Paris, from elegant galleries to a studio full of cruelly satiric sculpture. Unfortunately, her investigative efforts have not gone unobserved, and she comes upon the solution to her first case at considerable danger to herself.

   Watson’s writing, like her heroine, is witty and stylish, and her plot is full of surprises. The other Persis Willum novels are The Bishop in the Back Seat (Atheneum, 1980) and Runaway (Atheneum, 1985).

         ———
   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.

         Bibliographic update:

   There were two additional books in the series, both published after the 1986 edition of 1001 Midnights. From the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin: Last Plane from Nice (Atheneum, 1988) and Somebody Killed the Messenger (Atheneum, 1988).

RAFFLES. Samuel Goldwyn, 1930. Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Bramwell Fletcher, David Torrence, Alison Skipworth, Frederick Kerr. Based on the story collection (and the subsequent play based on it) The Amateur Cracksman (1899) by E. W. Hornung. Directors: Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast (uncredited); fired and replaced by George Fitzmaurice.

   I had a strange experience while watching this movie, and of course I’m ready to tell you about it. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I watched this movie over the span of two successive evenings, even though it’s only a miserly 72 minutes long.

   I’d enjoyed the first half immensely and was looking forward to the second half with considerable anticipation, only to find the second half a sorry letdown, and I for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.

   What had happened? Were they off budget and the production crew had to wrap things up too quickly? Scouring the Internet after the fact, it seems as though something like that did happen — as you will spotted yourself if you haven’t skimmed through the credits above too quickly.

   A. J. Raffles, as you may know, is well-known even today as “The Amateur Cracksman,” quite fictional of course, and as a character, a gentleman burglar and house thief created by E. W. Hornung, who married a sister of Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories of his exploits were quite the rage in late Victorian England (approximately 1898 to 1905), but instead of my telling you more about them, I’d prefer to send to Mary Reed’s long and informative article about them, which you can find on the primary Mystery*File website.

   In this first talking picture version of the Raffles stories, it is Ronald Colman, of the well-modulated British accent (and therefore a perfect choice in that regard) who plays the title character, and Bramwell Fletcher who plays his good friend and close associate, Bunny Manders. (Fletcher was last mentioned on this blog as one of the players in the The Mummy, which came out in 1932, but he was young enough to wind up his career in television in 1967.)

   If my count is right, there were five earlier silent films with Raffles as a character. This 1930 version was followed by another in 1939, the one that starred David Niven, which I wish I could tell you that I’ve seen, but which I have to admit I have not. In spite of a good cast, however, including Olivia de Havilland, it does not seem to have gathered very good reviews.

   But as you won’t have forgotten my saying so earlier, this earlier production showed a lot of promise. After proposing marriage to his lady friend Gwen (Kay Francis), Raffles promises himself an end to his career as a burglar, only to be confronted with Bunny’s gambling debts — a matter of some thousand pounds — with only a weekend between then and disaster.

   So it’s off to the country and the Melrose mansion, which is also the home, not so coincidentally of the Melrose diamonds. And not only are Raffles and Bunny present, along with the usual assortment of house guests, but also a gang of lower class thieves with a Scotland Yard inspector hot on their trail, all of which are complications that Raffles had not counted on.

   And when Gwen suddenly appears as well … and this is where I had to stop watching on the first evening.

   To say that the next night’s continuing viewing proved disappointing is an understatement indeed. From a well-paced first half, an A-level production, the second half is a helter-skelter mish-mash of attempted break-in’s — some successful, some not — close calls, sudden shifts of scene, and gaps in the story line that a hansom cab could have plowed through easily.

   There is one plus, though, that I would be remiss in not pointing out. Kay Francis’s character seems to light up from the slightly soporific to a lady with a mission and a delightful gleam in her eye when she deduces the truth about the man she’s promised her heart to. What a delightful adventure! she thinks (in those not-so-innocent pre-Code days).

   And it should have been, and what’s more, it could have been, I’d like to believe, and I do.

DAVID DODGE – Shear the Black Sheep.   Popular Library 202, paperback reprint; no date stated, but circa 1949. Hardcover edition: The Macmillan Co., 1942. Magazine appearance: Cosmopolitan, July 1942.

   After I finished reading this, the second murder mystery adventure of accountant detective Jim “Whit” Whitney, I went researching as I usually do, and it didn’t come as any surprise to learn (from a website devoted to David Dodge) that Dodge was also a CPA by profession, and that he started writing mystery fiction only on a dare from his wife.

   Although Dodge went on to another series (one with private eye Al Colby) and after that several standalones, there were only four books in the Whit Whitney series, to wit:

Death and Taxes. Macmilllan, hc, 1941. Popular Library 168, pb, 1949.

   
Shear the Black Sheep. Macmillan, hc, 1942. Popular Library 202, pb, 1949.

Bullets for the Bridegroom. Macmillan, hc, 1944. Popular Library 252, pb, 1950.

   
It Ain’t Hay. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1946. Dell 270, pb, mapback edition, 1949.

   
   You can find much more detailed entries for each of these books at the David Dodge website, which includes a complete bibliography of all of his other books, both fiction and non-fiction. Not to mention his plays, his magazine stories, the articles he wrote and all of the radio, TV and movie adaptations of his work, the most well-known of which is To Catch a Thief, the Cary Grant and Grace Kelly film from 1955. Comprehensive is an understatement, and it’s definitely worth looking into, just to see a bibliography done right.

   As for Whit Whitney, his home base is San Francisco, but in Shear the Black Sheep he is talked into taking a case in Los Angeles over the New Year’s Eve holiday weekend. Against his better judgment, he agrees to check into the activities of a client’s son, who seems to be spending too much of his father’s money in the business they’re in. They’re a wool brokerage firm — hence the title. The son has also left his wife and new-born baby. Is there another woman?

   Assisting Whitney — or making her way down to LA on her own to spend the holiday with him, or as much of it as there is left after Whit’s investigative duties are over– is Kitty MacLeod, “the best-looking girl in San Francisco, and pretty clever as well,” as she’s described on page 12.

   I’ve not read the first book in the series, and make no doubt about it, I will, but in that book (according the short recap on just about the same page) Whit’s former partner was murdered and at the time, Kitty was his wife.

   It’s now six months later, and Whit and Kitty have become very close. Whit is beginning to worry that some of his colleagues are starting to talk. There had even been some talk at the time that Whit had had something to do with Kitty’s ex’s departure from life, and getting out of the jam at the time seems to be the gist of the story in Death and Taxes.

   But that was then, and this is now. There is indeed a woman involved, as suspected — getting back to the case that Whit was hired to do — and the woman leads to a hotel room, and in the hotel room are … gamblers. A crooked card game, and the black sheep is getting sheared.

   It is all sort of a light-hearted tale, in a way, but then a murder occurs, and a screwy case gets even screwier — in a hard-boiled kind of fashion. Let me quote from page 160. Whit is talking to his client, who speaks first:

   Here are a few lines from page 170, at which point things are not going so well:

   
   Those were the days when mystery thrillers were also detective novels. After a long paragraph in which Whit tries out his best logic on the tangled threads of the plot, and who was where and when and why:

   
   What’s interesting is that Kitty has more to do with solving the case than Whit does. Things happen rather quickly at the end, and if all of the loose ends are (or are not) all tied up, no one other than I seems to think it matters, as long as the killer is caught — who was not someone I suspected, or did I? I probably suspected everyone at one point or another.

   I also wonder if what happens on the last page has anything to do with the title of Whit Whitney’s next adventure in crime-solving. Read it, I must. And I will.

   
[UPDATE] 06-24-09.   That’s a promise to myself that I haven’t kept yet, alas, and re-reading this review (and looking at those paperback covers) gives me all the resolve I need to follow through. You can count on that and take it to the bank. Non-negotiable.

   Previously on this blog:

      Part 1:  How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967).

      Part 2:    Run a Crooked Mile (1969).

PROBE. Warner Brothers/NBC-TV; 13 September 1972. Hugh O’Brien, Elke Summer, John Gielgud, Lilia Skala, Burgess Meredith, Angle Tompkins, Kent Smith. Alfred Ryder, Ben Wright. Teleplay: Leslie Stevens; director: Russell Mayberry.

   This was the clever pilot film for the TV series Search (1971-1973), a sort of updated cross between The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the first season of Mannix.

   O’Brien was Hugh Lockwood, a suave headstrong operative of World Securities, a high tech firm that implants sophisticated audio and physical monitoring devices in its agents and supplies them with a miniature camera worn either as a ring or on a gold chain around the neck (it was the seventies after all).

   Monitoring Lockwood is B. C. Cameron (Meredith) an armchair genius who envies his agents the good life they lead between dangers; Dr. Laurent, the companies founder (Kent Smith); and technician Gloria Hardy (Angel Tompkins), who provide Lockwood with intel and expertise for his missions.

   In this pilot film, Lockwood is teamed with famed diamond expert Harold Streeter (Gielgud) to find a cache of diamonds stolen at the end of WWII by a Nazi war criminal. Their only lead is the war criminal’s ex wife (Lilia Skalla) and daughter (Sommer). The mission takes them across Europe into the high life and face to face with an underground of Nazis wanting the diamonds for the new Reich, while they are stalked by the shadow of the war criminal Ullman.

   Lockwood proves a smart capable agent with a penchant for following his own head and turning off both his lifeline and camera, to the annoyance of Cameron who sees the agents as little more than his eyes and ears.

   The plot works up to a nice twist that you will probably see coming, but is done so smoothly by the superior cast that it hardly interferes with the entertainment.

   Alas, the series added two other agents: Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure, and it never reclaimed the style or the charm of the pilot film. But then it would be hard to have guests like Gielgud, Sommer, and Skala every week. It ran one season and was gone.

   But the pilot film stands on its own and is as good as many theatrical features. O’Brien is charming as a cross between James Bond and Milo March and the supporting cast is excellent. Meredith is a delight as the acerbic gourmand and polymath Cameron, and his war of affectionate disdain with O’Brien’s Lockwood is a delight.

   A novelization of the pilot film by Robert Wervka was published by Bantam as Search.

      In conclusion:

   All three of these superior made-for-television movies this series of columns has covered deserve to be available on DVD.

   While much of what came out of the made-for-television movie craze was either dreck, bad remakes of theatrical features, or over praised soap opera designed to squeeze tears and social issues, there were some entertaining films that deserve to be seen and remembered for doing what the small screen does best — produce light entertainment that lingers on when we have forgotten more important fare.

RED LIGHT. United Artists, 1949. George Raft, Virginia Mayo, Gene Lockhart, Raymond Burr, Harry Morgan, Barton MacLane, Arthur Franz. Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. Director: Roy Del Ruth.

   First of all, I have little or no idea what the title of this semi- or quasi-noirish movie means. And second of all, I’m not sure that the people who made this movie had a well-conceived idea about what kind of movie they wanted to make. (Or perhaps if they did, it’s one that doesn’t square away with the kind of movie I wanted them to make, in which case the problem is mine, and not theirs.)

   While I stand to be rebutted on this, I found this film to be schizophrenic to an extreme. With Raymond Burr and Harry Morgan playing two of the most utterly nasty villains ever to appear on the screen, at least at the time of its first showing, this movie also contains some of the most vividly noirish scenes (dark alleys, neon signs, rainy rooftops, grotesque close-ups) to be seen in the entire first generation of the genre.

   And yet, the message of the film is a spiritual if not totally religious one, one that leaves vengeance to an all-powerful heavenly being, complete with a spirited — if not overpoweringly uplifting — musical background provided by Dmitri Tiomkin.

   To me, though, the musical score was intrusively inappropriate and working dramatically (and loudly) at cross-purposes against the darker images and story being portrayed on the screen.

   George Raft plays Johnny Torno in Red Light, the co-owner of a medium-to-large trucking company. Several years before he was responsible for the imprisonment of company embezzler Nick Cherney (Raymond Burr), who upon his impending release from prison hires Rocky to kill Torno’s brother, a priest just returned to the US after a stint as a wartime chaplain.

   At which point the movie also becomes a “dying message” mystery, for the dying man’s last words are, “In the Bible,” initiating a hunt by Torno for the subsequent guests in his brother’s hotel room, once Torno realizes that the Gideon Bible that was in it is missing.

   One of these guests is Carla North (Virginia Mayo), whose presence in the movie is needed, I suspect, only because otherwise there would be no women in it. Why Torno hires her to aid him in finding the other guests is not entirely clear, save for a jarring coincidental wartime connection between him and her through his brother.

   There are other major holes in the plot, often safely ignorable, and you might even call them minor, but major or minor, sometimes holes bother you, and sometime they don’t. This time, they did, perhaps because in the best of times, I’m not a George Raft fan, and even Virgina Mayo’s role in this movie I found too bland and watered down for my tastes.

   If it weren’t for Raymond Burr and Harry Morgan (at the time still called Henry Morgan) I’d have to call this film totally ordinary, or even a notch or two less. But sometimes it takes a villain or two to make a movie memorable, and in this case, that’s precisely what this perfect pair of sadistic hoodlums did.

JO DERESKE – Miss Zukas and the Library Murders. Avon, paperback, 2006. Originally published by Avon as a paperback original in 1994.

   Miss Zukas is a middle-aged, spinsterish librarian in Bellehaven, Washington, a transplanted Lithuanian from the upper Midwest. She’s fairly rigid, certain of her “rightness,” and largely intolerant of the masses, who include most of the people she works with or comes into contact with.

   She reminded me of a librarian in the Little Rock Public Library who — without saying a word — communicated her disapproval of a Peter Arno collection with one of Arno’s scantily clad females on the book’s jacket that I checked out from the Little Rock Public Library when I was a warty teenager.

   In spite of Miss Zukas’ thorny personality (or maybe because of it), I rather enjoyed this low-key mystery. The library setting and staff seem real, and I reflected that a protagonist who irritates me probably suggests the writer has some skill at characterization.

   There’s a cop who’s somewhat attracted to Miss Z. (whether she’s attracted to him is not very clear, but she doesn’t come across as introspective), a bohemian artist friend (Ruth) whose track record in men is deplorable, and a tendency in Miss Z. to withhold vital evidence from the police that puts both her and Ruth and the solving of the case at risk.

   Will I read another in the series? I’m not sure.

           Editorial Comment:

   There are eleven books in the Miss Zukas series, of which Library Murders is the first. There’s a complete bibliography for Jo Dereske’s mystery fiction on this blog back here where I reviewed #6, Final Notice.

   I called reading it a “sneaky pleasure,” and otherwise agreeing in all essentials to all of Walter’s observations. Although I’ve not read more than two or three books in the series myself, I fully intend to get to all of them, eventually.

   When I sent a copy of that earlier review to Jo Dereske, I also asked her about the rumors I’d heard that #11, Index to Murder (2008) was going to be the last appearance of Miss Zukas.

   Here’s her reply, in part:

    “As to what you’ve heard about Miss Zukas’s future, you are correct. At the moment, there isn’t another contract for more adventures, but who knows what the future may bring. She’s been such a fun character to portray. I’m currently working on another series which my agent is shopping around.

    “Congratulations on your blog. I’ll put a link to it in my next website update.”

THE PAINTED TRAIL. Monogram, 1938. Tom Keene, Eleanor Stewart, LeRoy Mason, Walter Long, Frank Campeau, Jimmy Eagles. Story by Robert Emmett Tansey; director: Robert F. Hill.

   A thoughtful director can bring a lot to a movie, even a B-picture like The Painted Trail, a fast-paced Tom Keene western with surprisingly arty tinges from a studio that mostly did its movies penny-plain.

   This one gives us the usual thing of a lawman going undercover (as the Pecos Kid) to thwart an outlaw gang operating on the Mexican border and coming up against baddies LeRoy Mason and Walter Long — a real veteran, who in palmier days menaced Lillian Gish in Birth of a Nation and played Miles Archer in the first film of The Maltese Falcon.

   There’s also a nice bit by an unknown actor named Jimmy Eagles as a desperate wanna-be fingered for extinction by the tough guys he wants to impress; it’s an energetic, touching job that should have led to bigger things, but Monogram was always a studio where actors ended-up rather than started-out.

   Director Robert F. Hill takes all this and runs through it with commendable speed. Hill was never known for artistry — he’s remembered if at all for helming Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars and the silent Adventures of Tarzan with Elmo Lincoln — but he throws in a couple moments here that make one wonder: there’s a clandestine meeting in a mostly darkened room, and at the end of the scene a character extinguishes the only lamp, plunging the screen into darkness: a simple yet stylish alternative to the standard fade-to-black.

   Best of all, the climax finds Tom Keene and Walter Long approaching each other for a shoot-out walking along opposite sides of a chicken-wire border fence, and Hill shoots this from every possible angle to maximize the visual play of the fence against the gunmen.

   It’s a startling, tense and eye-catching few minutes in a film that deserves a second look.

JOSEPH WAMBAUGH – The Choirboys. Delacorte, hardcover, 1975. Reprint paperback: Dell, 1976. Reprinted many times since. Film: Lorimar, 1978; screenwriter: Christopher Knopf; director: Robert Aldrich.

   The powerful opening of this novel takes place in a cave in Vietnam in 1967. Two unnamed marines have taken shelter there from the enemy, and one of them suffers a severe emotional break. Although we do not learn their identities until much later in the book, we can surmise that this incident provides the fuel for future tragedy.

   The scene then shifts to Los Angeles nearly ten years later The “choirboys” are a group of policemen who attend “choir practice” — otherwise known as drinking binges — in MacArthur Park after going off night duty . We are told that a tragedy has taken place during one of these sessions and that a young man has been shot to death.

   Wambaugh then goes into flashback and takes us through the months prior to this final choir practice, introducing us to the participants, allowing us to glimpse their routine — and not-so-routine — tours of duty.

   We come to know intimately such characters as Roscoe Rules, the meanest and probably most despicable man in the precinct; Aaron Mobley, a twenty-five-year-old alcoholic who somehow still manages to function on the job; Francis Tanaguchi, a Nisei who feels more Mexican than Japanese; Spermwhale Whalen, a veteran cop who has a big stake in making it to his twenty-year retirement date; Sam Niles and Howard Bloomguard, physical opposites who nonetheless complement one another as partners; Spencer Van Moot, who can wangle a “freebie” out of any merchant he meets; Baxter Slate, whose “different” quality is hard for his fellow cops to pin down.

   With frequent black humor, Wambaugh shows us both the strengths and weaknesses of his characters, as well as the daily strains, sordidness, and departmental hypocrisy with which they must cope. And when tragedy finally befalls them, the only surprise is that it hasn’t happened sooner.

   This is a first-rate novel that goes several steps beyond the standard police procedural. It was filmed in 1977, starring Charles Durning and Perry King. Among Wambaugh’s other novels of the police world are The Black Marble (1978) and The Secrets of Harry Bright (1985).

         ———
   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.

NGAIO MARSH – Enter a Murderer. Pocket 113, paperback reprint; 1st US printing, July 1941. Previously published in the UK by Geoffrey Bles, 1935. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and soft, including (and shown): Berkley F703, US, 1963; Fontana, UK, pb, 1968, 1983; St.Martin’s, US, pb, 1998.

   I’m far from being an expert on Ngaio Marsh, so I can’t tell you what the circumstances were that Enter a Murderer was published for the first time in the US as a Pocket Book paperback, and not as a hardcover. But I imagine the story’s known, and perhaps someone reading this who can fill in the details will do so. (I’ve found nothing on the Internet so far that’s relevant.)

   Enter a Murderer was only her second novel, which may be part of the explanation, and the first of five detective novels Marsh wrote which took place in the world of the theater, one of the loves of her own long life. (She was born in 1895, most reference sources say, and passed away in 1982.)

   Dead is an actor, shot to death onstage, with dummy bullets having been replaced with live ones in the gun another actor used as part of the play, with the two directly facing each other.

   That the dead man was a blackmailer (as it is soon discovered), a womanizer and a thwarted lover (as was well known), plus various and sundry other flaws, gives a motive to everyone on or near the stage. A blackout to open the final act gave everyone an opportunity.

   The investigation that results, carried out by Chief-Det. Inspector Alleyn (primarily) and his assistant on the case, Inspector Fox (secondarily), is both aided and abetted by news journalist Nigel Bathgate, a friend of Alleyn whom he invited to the play, which they watched together to its final and deadly conclusion.

   It’s not always an easy relationship. Bathgate is willing to let Alleyn censor his reporting, but he’s not always inclined to ask potentially embarrassing questions of friends who happen to be under suspicion.

   Sometimes the investigation (from the reader’s point of view) is told with Alleyn as the protagonist, and sometimes it’s from Bathgate’s point of view. It’s a combination that Marsh may have thought she needed to present the story more efficiently from several angles, but it’s not as smoothly done as I thought it might have.

   The action in and around the stage is clearly delineated, though, many times over, even to a final reconstruction of the crime at the end – always a welcome touch in classical detective fiction, resembling as it does the “isolated country house” theme in certainly the most essential way.

   But the business of the blackmail never seems to be addressed directly. It’s as if it were shunted to the side, not abruptly, but Marsh never seems to tackle it head on, leaving the motive for the killing murky, while a full spotlight is shed upon the setting. (At times you can all but smell the greasepaint.)

   Upon finishing the book I was more than satisfied with the solution – nicely done – but I’m still uneasy about there being some loose ends that I didn’t (and still don’t) feel as though they were wrapped up properly enough.

   This has nothing to do with the actual solution, mind you. I like the ending well enough that I haven’t felt the need to poke around into that pile of red herrings stacked over there in the corner (figuratively speaking). It’s just the sense that I ought to, in order to give you an honest report.

   But I’ve decided not to – go back through the book and poke around, that is – and what you’ve just read is as honest as it’s going to get.

   Do I recommend the book? Yes, I do, but I assume you’ve already read and recognized all of the caveats (both major and minor) for what they’re worth as well.

MICHAEL UNDERWOOD – Crooked Wood.

St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1978. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1978. Previously published in the UK by Macmillan, hc, 1978.

   Mystery stories usually end where this one begins, with the murderer safely behind bars and about to stand trial. Underwood’s forte is the courtroom drama, British style, and here the problem is twofold: who hired the contract killer who actually did the job, and, who’s trying to buy off one of the jurors?

   Sergeant Atwell’s work is clearly not done, and it requires the timely assistance of his ex-policewoman wife Clare and the gathering of an overabundant supply of red herrings before a surprise Mr. X is named. A deftly woven detective tale it is, and an interesting variation from the norm.

       Bibliographic data:

Michael Underwood was the pen name of John Michael Evelyn, 1916-1992, and the author of nearly 50 works of crime and detective fiction, many of them dealing with cases taking place in British courtrooms in one way or another.

   His series characters include (often in overlapping cases) Inspector (later Superintendent) Simon Manton, Martin Ainsworth, Rosa Epton, Richard Monk and Sergeant Nick Atwell. One bookseller describes Rosa Epton as “England’s answer to Perry Mason.”

   Richard Monk is also a lawyer, but the books with Martin Ainsworth appear to be spy fiction (e.g. The Unprofessional Spy, 1964). Many of the cases for Nick Atwell, a police sergeant at Scotland Yard, are shared with detective constable Clare Reynolds, although according to my review, she seems to have been off the force at the time Crooked Wood takes place.